Two weeks ago, I wrote that every problem in our world is ultimately a unity problem, rooted in human sin. God creates harmony and order; sin is disintegration, fragmentation, breakdown, chaos. Thankfully, Jesus came to restore unity and harmony to the entire created order. In His extensive prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed, “Father, please reverse all the effects of the curse in the lives of my people. Bring them together in perfect harmony.” But how?
Jesus went on to pray: “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” (vv22-23). Jesus has made perfect provision for oneness. How? “The glory you have given me I have given them SO THAT they may be one.” He has given His glory, the glory the Father first gave Him, the glory He displayed during His earthly life (cf. Jn 1:14).
God’s glory came down on Mount Sinai when Moses received the Law. From there, it filled the tabernacle and then came to the temple. But then, during Jesus’ earthly life, the glory of God came to rest on a Man, replacing the temple. Now Jesus prays that the glory of God would pass to His followers, indwelling them: “I in them and you in me, THAT they may become perfectly one” (v23).
We can’t indwell each other, but we can indwell God and He indwell us, which allows us to connect to each other. It is this presence of glory in our midst that makes us one. As the church draws its life from the Spirit, it reflects God’s glory, love, and joy. In other words, Christian unity is a supernatural oneness borne of our shared experience of God.
The profound unity Jesus prays for will come about, not by being unity conscious, but by being Christ conscious! It’s about looking away from our longing for unity and instead looking at God. In other words, unity is less a byproduct of discussion and diplomacy and more the result of worship, repentance, and prayer. The degree to which we focus on God together will be the degree to which we find common ground in our lives together.