In John 17:22-23, Jesus prays that His spiritual children, future believers, will be "one". What does that mean? And, why is this important?
I have given them the glory You have given Me.
May they be one as We are one.
23
I am in them and You are in Me.
May they be made completely one,
so the world may know You have sent Me
and have loved them as You have loved Me.
This theme appears more than once in Jesus' prayer. Obviously, this unity of believers was very important to Him.
Just prior to the prayer for unity of believers, Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified (purified) by the Word of God. This indicates that God's revealed truth is found in the Bible and that it should serve to both purify us and unify us.
At its core, true Christian unity must be anchored in God's truth, revealed in Scripture. Herein lies the conundrum. Over the years, believers have rallied around parts of Scripture and used those elements of truth to establish denominations of believers - - - Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, to name some. Some have held so tightly to their denominational identification that they could not find any grounds for unity with other Christian sects. I still remember the family horror, several generations ago, when a Baptist family member chose to marry a (gasp!) Methodist!!
Unity must have at its foundation the true doctrines of the Christian faith, things such as these:
1. Jesus is God and is the only way to know God the Father.
2. Jesus was born of a virgin, His mother, Mary.
3. He lived, died, was buried and was resurrected on the 3rd day, and ever lives to make intercession for us.
4. The Holy Spirit was sent after Jesus' ascension and lives in the heart of every believer.
5. God is all-powerful, ever-present and unchangeable.
6. God is holy and also merciful.
7. The Bible is the Word of God, and is without error.
8. Salvation is by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus, and is not brought about by our human efforts.
9. Christian believers should walk in holiness, diligently seeking to root out sin in their lives on a daily basis.
All of these are major doctrines of the faith, on which most Christians can agree. These (and probably some others that I can't bring to mind early in the morning), are the basis for Christian unity.
If another Christian denomination wants to have fellowship with yours, the measuring stick should be if they adhere to the major doctrines of the faith. It must be a holy union. If that can be established, then we should partner with them to spread the gospel to an unbelieving world.
I was reading on Facebook the other day a post from an acquaintance who attended an "ecumenical" Thanksgiving service. She mentioned that people of all faiths were in attendance, including some faiths which claim to be Christian, but aren't, because they do not profess that Jesus is God. (Scripture is very clear on this. Any belief system that does not confess that Jesus is God is heresy.) My acquaintance was rhapsodizing about how wonderful it was to "worship" with this diverse crowd of "faith people".
Well, let me tell you - - - not everyone was worshipping the same One, True God. That is false unity. Should you continue to sit under preaching that is characterized by doctrinal error or use your spiritual gifts in a congregation where false doctrine abounds? No.
I was, many years ago, a paid soloist in a church. One Sunday morning, the senior pastor preached a sermon claiming that, while the Bible contains the Word of God, there are parts of it which are not the Word of God. I won't go into the specifics here or go off on that line of teaching, but it's a dangerous thing when you start discarding parts of the Bible that you don't like. I asked later in the week to meet with him and talk about this. We met, and he made it clear that I had not misunderstood. I resigned my position. By continuing there, I was supporting heresy.
So, it is a fine line. We can choose to segregate, isolate and alienate ourselves into less effective pockets of believers, holding as tight to our religious convictions as we do to major doctrines: "I won't have fellowship with them because they take communion every Sunday!!", for example. Or, we can band together with folks who do not believe/proclaim the truth or claim Jesus as Lord. Both extremes are wrong. It takes prayerful discernment to avoid each of these traps that Satan sets. If he can get believers off-track in either of these mud pits, he has then effectively tainted or stopped the spread of the gospel.
Now, to the "why" of it all. Why did Jesus pray that His followers would be unified?
1. Because true, pure unity, based on God's Word, shows an unbelieving world a picture of the Triune God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One. They are unified; they are of "one mind".
2. Because the Jews were soon going to realize that salvation through Jesus Christ was not just for the Jews, but that it was for all people groups, and Jesus knew that the Jews, who had been for millennia very unified, would struggle with welcoming into the faith Gentiles, people they had been trained to openly reject.
3. So that the world may believe...
A fractured, arguing Church, distracted by petty disagreements, with church members coming and going from congregation to congregation because a brother or sister did something petty to "offend them" will not be effective in spreading the gospel. Why is it that, in church, some of us expect perfection from our ministers, our elders, our deacons, our Sunday School teachers, our leaders - - - from everyone except ourselves? It is an unrealistic expectation! Rather than submitting to the Holy Spirit on such occasions and searching our own hearts, then behaving toward our spiritual brothers and sisters in a way that would please our Savior, we storm off in a huff, tell everyone who will listen how awful the congregation is "over there" and then go looking for a place where the "grass is greener". And, then we have the absolute GALL to feel spiritually vindicated in the situation. Do we really think that this pleases God?
If you will recall, the original disciples argued often about things like "who would be first in the kingdom of God" - - - petty, carnal arguments - - - yet, they did not leave to follow after another Savior. Some of the other listeners did, but the apostles did not. They illustrated that you can function in a local congregation without agreeing on every little, minute thing; the key is keeping Jesus Christ at the center of our worship, not ourselves.
Do you really think that all of this backbiting and devouring one another paints a picture of godliness to an unbelieving world? When the fallen world that opposes our faith is more unified than we are, then we need to truly examine our hearts and adopt the humility and meekness, forgiveness and restoration which are our birthrights as children of Jesus Christ.
One of the reasons all this nonsense goes on in the American church is because instead of fighting FOR our faith, we fight each other, within our faith communities. You can bet that the Christians in Iraq are not fighting over what the choir sang last Sunday. They are praying to find the supernatural grace to fight for their faith, to the point of death, in many cases.
Oh, my brothers and sisters! Let's not allow Satan to pick us apart, to carve us up as many of us will carve up that Thanksgiving turkey in a couple of days. Let's cling to the foundational truths our Lord gave us, minimize the debatable (that which is open to individual convictions), and focus on loving one another. Only then can we share Jesus Christ's love with an unbelieving world!
Dear Father, please deliver us from evil, from the evil deceptions and traps of the enemy, who seeks to break us up into little warring factions of prideful carnality. Please don't let the spiritual gifts you have given to each of Your children be squelched in such a manner. Please give us the heart and mind of You, Father, the same heart and mind shared by Your Son and the Holy Spirit. May we submit to You, bring our individual desires into conformity with Your will, and in purity, meekness, humility and unity, walk resplendent! In Jesus' name, amen.
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