We’re living in maddening times; I’d be a fool to suggest otherwise. But to say that you or I have a better plan for resolving those frustrations than the one that God himself promotes is to insert ourselves into the role that belongs to God alone. His plan for resolution is his Son, Jesus. It has always been the plan and will always be the plan. He is the unity we seek.

“He himself is our peace,” the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:14, “who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” we read in another of Paul’s letters (Galatians 3:28). The bond we find in Jesus, in other words, supersedes every other distinction in existence: social status, gender, ethnicity.

“For just as each of us has one body with many members,” Paul wrote in Romans 12:4–5, “and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

In Jesus, we find peace.

In Jesus, we find hope.

In Jesus, we find unity.

And in this ultimate coming together, we can come to the world in a posture not of aggression but of acceptance. We can see beyond the issue to the human being standing there, desperately in need of Christ. We can respond not to the superficial vitriol but to the cry of that God–given heart, which is forever restless, Saint Augustine once said, until it rests in Jesus Christ.

“God is for the world, period,” writes Rich Villodas. And yet as believers, “we are often known for what we are against rather than what we are for. . . . Bring up any divisive issue in our world—politics, sexuality, race, immigration, and so on—and what you’ll find are Christians clearly asserting what they are against. But any conversation regarding the nature of God must begin with him being for all.”

It may feel awkward at first—I get that. But we must start somewhere. And one of the best places to begin is to refresh ourselves as Christ’s followers on the truth about the one we’re following— his commission, his character, his cooperation with God’s will and ways. The same oneness he experienced with his Father is what he desires for you and me. “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me,” he prayed. “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:21–23).

As I say, human ingenuity can help us win a few arguments. But if what we’re after is winning souls, which is to say that we hope to live with other believers in such a way that those watching us will be compelled to consider Christ, then God’s way is the better way. Only Jesus can give people hope—hope that heals, hope that sustains, hope that lasts. Only unity with each other, which reflects Jesus’s unity with God, will get our world out of the mess it’s in.

Just before Jesus left his earthly ministry and ascended to heaven to take his seat at the right hand of his Father, he issued a mandate to his followers for how they were to behave in the world. Understandably his disciples were fretful over his departure, wondering how they were supposed to survive without his flesh–and–blood presence, so this set of instructions—we call it the Great Commission—was intended to be their marching orders. It was as if Jesus said, “I am leaving for a time, and this is what you’re to do until I return.”

Here is exactly what he said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20).

It was a fairly straightforward set of commands: Go. Make disciples. Baptize them. Teach them.

Let me tell you how we complicate things. Instead of going, we stay put. Instead of making disciples, we criticize sinners for their sin. Instead of submerging people in the waters of baptism, we submerge them in the cesspool of our discontent. Instead of teaching people everything Jesus has taught us, we spout our half–baked opinions at them online while judging them in Jesus’s name.

Can you picture Jesus shaking his head?

I often can picture that.

When Jesus said that we are to go and make disciples and baptize them and teach them his way, he was implying that we ourselves have already been reached and that we ourselves are already disciples and that we ourselves have already been baptized and that we ourselves have something to say to unbelievers because we are faithfully practicing what we preach. His words presuppose that we are already practicing gentleness and kindness and patience and self–control. He assumed we are already practicing peacemaking, to our topic at hand, so that we can teach the rest of the world how to be people of peace.

But assumptions can sometimes be dicey things, as Jesus’s followers keep proving to him. Rather than ushering in wave upon wave of beautiful, life–giving unity and harmony and peace throughout our world, we sit on the sidelines scrolling Instagram while silently fuming at the leaders of the world, and at the United States government, and at the media, and at local activist groups, and at the neighbors who refuse to control their barking dog. “It’s all their fault!” we mutter to ourselves. “They’re the problem here.”

All the while, I envision Jesus sitting at his Father’s right hand, whispering to God, “Will it ever occur to our followers that they are the solution they’ve been waiting for?”