If you feel there’s tension in the American air you are not alone. A recent poll found that 65% of citizens think the country is more divided than usual. And that’s not just a matter of opinion.

Professor Simon Jackman at the U.S. Studies Centre (based at the University of Sydney) wrote last year that the United States “is a house divided and partisan disagreements run deeper than ever measured. We must reach back to the Depression or the Civil War to find periods of US history where the country has been more divided. Isolationism is at levels unseen in 70 years of scientifically rigorous survey research.”

That’s pretty sobering. Especially with an imminent election cycle that promises to be even more rancorous than the last two, judging by the way things are. But it also presents an opportunity and a challenge to the church. A culture that is tearing apart desperately needs to see the example of a community coming together.

If Christians can live out something of the kind of unity God seeks and desires in His people, we can be both a sign and a place of signs to a world characterized by division.

First, the sign. When Jesus prayed at the Last Supper for His disciples and those who would come after them (that’s us, folks!), He asked that “they will all be one, just as you and I are one . . . so that the world will believe you sent me” (John 17:21, emphasis added).

In other words, only some sort of supernatural power could make it possible for such a ragtag bunch of people to get along as they do. The late Tim Keller once  noted how the countercultural nature of the early church, with people from all ethnic and class backgrounds coming together, was “a radical challenge to the entrenched social structure and divisions of Roman society.”

Then there’s the signs. The Book of Acts records the remarkable growth of the early church, which was born out of the believers’ unity. Repeatedly, Luke speaks of how they were “of one accord” (Acts 1:14; 2:1; 4:46). And what was the result of that? “Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles” (Acts 2:43, emphasis added).

That shouldn’t surprise us. In Psalm 133 we read “how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” The writer describes it as being like oil running down Aaron’s beard (v. 2)—a picture of the priestly anointing—and notes that where such unity is found, God commands a blessing (v. 3).

What was the unity that so characterized the early church? It wasn’t doctrine—they were still working some of that out. It was an undeniably life-changing encounter with the risen Jesus that gave them an unshakeable certainty that their world had been changed forever by the One who had risen from the grave and conquered death and sin.