That They May be One: The Knicks, Babel, and Christian Unity

I am a native New Yorker. So, even though I live in DC, New York (Brooklyn in particular) still has my heart. My sports allegiances are directly tied to this love. The Yankees, Giants and Knicks are my ride-or-dies. In my 57 years of life, I have celebrated multiple World Series championships. I have rejoiced with my city with four Super Bowl victories. In basketball, however, I have known only heartache. The Patrick Ewing years of the 1990s brought a period of great expectation and promise for Knicks fans. The only problem was that it overlapped with the Michael Jordan years. Even in the two-year Jordan gap, the Knicks could not overcome Hakeem Olajuwon. This all changed in June 2026 when the New York Knickerbockers went on a magical run, defeating the San Antonio Spurs to secure their first NBA championship since 1973. I honestly did not believe I would celebrate a Knicks championship in my lifetime.

What is even more remarkable about this victory is the way it united the entire city. Millions of New Yorkers gathered in the streets and in bars across the city to watch the Knicks play. This was my first experience of true FOMO (fear of missing out) since leaving Brooklyn years ago. Oh, how I wanted to be there in person cheering, shouting and celebrating with fellow Knicks fans! What was driving this FOMO? Certainly, a significant part of it had to do with the experience of our team winning. But I did not experience FOMO when I was away from the city for the last Giants Super Bowl win or the last Yankees World Series victory. At root, my disappointment was in missing out on the overwhelming experience of unity that was taking place across the five boroughs. You could feel it exuding from the screen as you watched videos on social media. My family members reported that they have never experienced anything like it. A good friend told me that the city felt like the inverse of 9/11. The horrific and tragic events of 9/11 united the city in grief, mourning, anger, and even fear. The Knicks’ victory united the city in joy, exuberance, and what feels like love.

Unity. How we long for it. What we would give for an experience of it. In the opening verse of Psalm 133 we hear David declare,

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!

Our longing for unity is a deep, soul desire. I want to explore this longing for unity embedded in our soul, take an honest look at the limits of unity we can expect to experience in our lives, and encourage us to hold tightly to the promise of unity that God gives us.

Unity is a state of being. It means to be joined together as a whole. Unity does not imply an essential sameness, especially when applied to human beings. Rather, it resonates most profoundly in us when we have a harmonious experience across deep differences. This is what made the country take notice as they watched New York City come together to celebrate the Knicks. A 23-year-old New Yorker named Ahnaf Hossain created a jingle during the NBA finals that expressed this unity.

“My mayor is still Muslim, my bagel’s Jewish, even the Pope’s on our side. Knicks in five!”

It went viral on social media. He was interviewed on national news morning shows after the Knicks won in five games. What he captured was the fact that it did not matter what your religious background was, every New Yorker was joined at the hip in rooting for the Knicks. The team was a magnetic force pulling the city together.

The longing for unity is a soul desire because as image bearers of God, unity is embedded in our creation. We image a God who is the definition of unity in his embodied life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck puts it well when he writes,

In God, too, there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity. Indeed, this order and harmony is present in him absolutely.^[1]

He rightly points out that the doctrine of the Trinity is of the greatest importance for the doctrine of creation. God is life, blessedness and glory in himself. He does not need the creation.[2] God’s essential unity would be diminished if he needed something or someone outside of himself to create or sustain his unity. He is the pinnacle of loving fellowship. As Dr. John Frame writes,

Only one being can be the standard of perfection, goodness, love, knowledge, truth, and so on. Only one being can be the owner of all things (e.g., Genesis 14:19, 22; Psalm 24:1).^[3]

As God’s image (Genesis 1:26–30), humanity is endowed with a desire to reflect his perfection, goodness, and love in community. This desire is unshakeable despite the disunity that permeates human life. You and I ache and groan for things to be better than they are. The human mind has been able to discover and develop great medical advancements. We put our minds to use through technological development in our attempts to make life better and heal what is broken. This too is an implication of our lives as image bearers. As Creator, God is infinitely creative. He has gifted us with creative genius that in our best moments we put to use in efforts to bring healing and harmony. Yet, as grateful as we should be for this creative genius God has gifted us with, we are compelled to embrace the limits of our ability to create the lasting unity that we long for.

The story of a united humanity lasts two chapters in the biblical narrative. The last verse of Genesis 2 tells us that the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:24). Their nakedness was not simply physical. There was nothing about one that was hidden from the other. There was no need to be guarded emotionally or spiritually. Trust was an inherent reality.

You and I do not know a life of intimate universal trust of other people. In fact, a featured characteristic of someone who grows up in a city like New York (and other major metropolitan cities) is that you learn to withhold trust for an extended period of time. My mother’s side of the family is from Wilmington, NC. During my childhood summers we would visit Wilmington for family reunions. I recall being unnerved by people as I walked anywhere in the city. Person after person would say something like, “Mornin’,” as they passed by. My immediate thought was, “I do not know you, why are you talking to me?” By the end of our vacation week, I learned to say, “Mornin’,” in reply, but I never got used to it. My expectation was that if someone you do not know is speaking to you (or even makes eye contact with you), they wanted something from you or they had bad intentions.

Trust and harmony were featured characteristics of human interaction before the entrance of sin, but we do not know that life as an unhindered reality this side of the fall. Distrust is far more prominently featured among us. Even though harmony and trust were present in full measure prior to our disobedience recorded in Genesis 3, our unity was still limited.

Our unity has always been limited by our humanness. We are creatures, after all. The point is that we are not made to be united with one another apart from God. Our fellowship with God is an essential aspect of our unity with each other. In other words, vertical union is indispensable for lasting horizontal union. The high point of our existence is fellowship with God and one another. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way,

The whole concept of the imago dei…is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him worth…We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and sisters and to respect the dignity and worth of every man.[4]

King rightly connects the imperative for humanity to live together as brothers and sisters with our capacity for fellowship with God. Simply put, we need God. Remove the latter and the former is unsustainable. This is because the second limit on our unity is the presence of sin.

My assertion that the story of a united humanity lasting two chapters in the biblical narrative requires amending. The story of a united sinless humanity lasts two chapters in the biblical narrative. We find humanity united again in Genesis 11. Our togetherness is described in Genesis 11:1 as the whole earth having the same language and speaking the same words. Further, the decision to build a city and tower with its top extending to the heavens is literally putting hands and feet to a joint project of self-exaltation (Genesis 11:4). At the beginning of the Tower of Babel story, there is no hostility and no confusion. The unity and solidarity were genuine. This is humanity living in peaceful and civil coexistence. Isn’t this what we are longing for?

The problem with the Babelites is that they were in solidarity in opposition to the direct command of God. In Genesis 9:1, following the flood, God repeated the command he gave humanity in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.” In Babel, there is no attempt to feign obedience to God’s command.

This is the warp, the dysfunction, the disordering that sin creates within. The sinful human heart drives us to find significance through our own achievements. It fuels our desire to make a name for ourselves apart from God. It feeds our craving for glory and fame.[5]

This is the way sin limits our unity. We want the credit and the glory to accrue to ourselves.

This means that any experience of oneness apart from God is also temporary. Our capacity for division will soon overwhelm our capacity for harmony. The way the 2025–2026 New York Knicks came together as a team, knit by a common goal, enabled to overcome adversity, demonstrating mutual care and support in their triumph, is not likely to be the story of the 2026–2027 team. The odds are that story will belong to another team. Indeed, as of late summer 2026, the prognosticators give both the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs better odds of winning in 2027 than the Knicks.

What we desperately need is a promise of unity that is more permanent and resilient than the temporary harmony we can create through our own efforts. God, in his word, shows us how to live our lives based on the promise of unity as we commit to pursuing unity. The blessing of what the Scriptures present us with is that we are not given a fairytale story about our lives together.

The division and confusion that came because of Babel continues to play out through the Bible. Our disunity is arrested and dealt a fatal blow in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Prior to his betrayal and crucifixion Jesus prays to the Father for our unity,

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20–23)

This is Jesus’s prayer for everyone who believes in him. If you are a Christian, you are included in this prayer. What does he want the Father to do? Make us all one. Three times in successive verses. Verse 21, “that they may all be one, just as you Father are in me, and I in you.” Verse 22, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.” Verse 23, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.”

Jesus is looking toward the future and praying for those would come to believe in him through the ministry of his apostles, and what is chief on his mind? Their unity and love for one another. His prayer is that in his name there would be a reversal of the fragmentation and division and polarization that divides human relationships and communities.

The purpose of Jesus Christ bringing us into the glory of God is our unity. Our unity glorifies God in a deeply divided world. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “the glory you have given me I have given them that they may be one.” Notice a few things here:

First, this is not simply a prayer for mono-cultural or mono-ethnic or mono-linguistic unity in Jesus’s name. John’s audience for this gospel book included Jewish people and Gentiles (non-Jewish people). It was a culturally diverse community. This audience had already heard Jesus say in John 3:16,

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus did not say, “for God so loved only the people of Israel.” John’s readers had also heard Jesus say to the people of Israel in John 10:15-16,

[J]ust as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

It becomes clear, then, that when Jesus is praying in John 17, he is praying for unity in diversity.

Second, to reiterate what we said earlier, Jesus’s prayer is rooted in the fact that people are the only legitimate images of God in the world. Our sin and rebellion against God have made fragmentation our story more than unity. So, if it is going to be possible to accomplish and maintain a life of unity among our differences, God must be the one who does it. He must restore us into the truth of what it means for us to be his image.

Third, just as it is with God, the binding glue in this unity in diversity is love. The bond between the Father and the Son is love. “You loved them even as you loved me” (v. 23). “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). The love that God has within himself is eternal. God’s beautiful, simple love is expressed in perfect agreement between the Father, Son, and Spirit. It is expressed in the way that the Son defers to the Father. We see it in the way that the Father supports and advocates for the Son. We experience it in the way that the Spirit is sent out from the Father and the Son. God is love in eternally existent, mutually glorifying, honoring, and supporting diverse community.

After Christ’s resurrection, God begins undoing the false unity of Babel and restoring the true unity of humanity in Jesus Christ. In John 15:26 Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth. Then, he says to his disciples in John 16:13 that the Spirit of truth would guide them into all the truth. One of the truths the Spirit guided the apostles into is the reunion of humanity accomplished in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first taste of this reunion comes when the Spirit is poured out on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. The coming of the Spirit on Pentecost is the undoing of the confusion wrought by our sinful unity at Babel. When the disciples are filled with the Spirit and begin worshipping God in other tongues, the people gathered “from every nation under heaven” hear this worship in their own language. These people remained Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Egyptians, Libyans, etc. Cultural differences were not eliminated. Confusion was. Along with the elimination of confusion was the creation of loving fellowship across their differences (Acts 2:42–47)

This is the love that Jesus brings us into and calls us to pursue with one another. The apostle Paul, in Colossians 3:11–14, applies this truth to the diverse community of Christians in that city,

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And above all these, put on love. It’s the binding glue of perfection for diverse Christian community, just like it is for God himself. This love is one that overcomes divisions and reconciles people who were contrary to one another, bringing into communion those who have nothing in common except the fact that Jesus gave himself for them. The apostle Paul is exhorting Christians to put on love, living into the unity that Christ purchased for them in his sacrificial death on the cross. We have to be exhorted because living into our unity takes work. It takes having compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness as characteristic features of community.

He prays in Romans 15:5–6,

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is not an understatement to say that a principal emphasis in the New Testament is that the coming of Jesus Christ has brought about the reunion of humanity under his Lordship. Further, Christians are called to demonstrate that reunion in their lives as a testimony to the world that Jesus is the only one with the power to bring us together and keep us together.

What about the fact that we still find significant divisions in the historic and contemporary church. That begs a question. What do you believe the Father thinks of Jesus’s prayer in John 17? Do you imagine that God the Father hears this prayer of God the Son and plans to decline the request? No. Quite the opposite. It is the Father’s delight to give the Son the inheritance of a unified people by the reconciling and redeeming power of the Spirit. So, my encouragement to you is to wade deeply into the waters of pursuing unity in diversity in Jesus’s name. Engage with love and humility the difficult pursuit of intimate communion with people who come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, political positions, economic differences, bound together in supernatural love. It’s God’s delight to show the glory of Jesus Christ and the power of his Spirit in reconciling people across every line of difference.

^[1] Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 331.

[2] Ibid., 332.

^[3] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God, A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002), 624–625.

[4]  Martin Luther King Jr., “The American Dream,” preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, July 4, 1965, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/american-dream-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church

[5] Irwyn L. Ince Jr., The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity and the Church at Its Best (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), 76.