One God, One People, One Witness
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· 8 viewsThe supernatural life of God's people united in beautiful community is the most powerful witness to the world that Jesus is real.
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Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 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. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
One of my favorite comedians these days is a guy named Kev On Stage. And he’s grown in popularity by being one of those folks who developed his platform online. I’ve probably been following him for a couple of years now when I came across his 1-3 minute monologues on IG and FB. He clearly has roots in the historic Black Church in America because he does some of the best black pastor impersonations you’ll ever see.
Something else that he’s begun to do more recently is get together with five other comedians who are friends of his for a panel discussion titled, Unpopular Opinion. One of the comedians will take a position on a particular subject that is sure to be such an extreme minority position that he or she will be roundly criticized by the other comedians on the panel. A recent Unpopular Position episode was titled, Krispy Kreme is TRASH. The comedian Deazy opened his case by saying,
“My unpopular opinion is that Krispy Kreme has to the worst donut establishment to ever grace the earth. And donuts are the best thing that God has ever graced us with as humans and they have messed it up. They’ll have the HOT sign flashing outside and still give you a cold donut. The icing is not it. It’s very thin and real sugary. Their donuts have a cotton candy vibe. The actual dough itself melts away.”
Rikki interrupted him. She said, “He’s gone far enough. When do we get to make him stop talking?” Another comedian chimed in, “You’re complaining about everything that makes it great! Its sugary frosting. It melts in your mouth.” The indignities and insults went on for a few minutes. Now, I don’t know how you feel about Krispy Kreme donuts, and I respect your opinion whatever your position on the issue. But, what do donuts have to do with our sermon text today? Well, only this.
While they disagree in a comedic way and don’t always come to agreement by the end of their discourse, they find a way to foster mutual respect and understanding. My point is this. When you watch, you know that there’s affection for one another. You have this diverse group of comedians. And I watch because it’s funny. But their unity in affection for one another in their diversity is attractive. It’s a draw. And here’s the deal. There’s so much division and animosity and polarization and contempt in our world that when we see people with deep differences able to express a mutual affection for one another there’s something appealing about it.
That’s ok for comedians and sports teams and the like, but Jesus, in our passage takes this concept to another level. He’s talking about his church through the ages. And what is his expressed desire for the people who claim to follow him? It is that they would be one; that they would be unified. And the unity that is being described is unity in diversity. Such that when people who don’t follow Jesus yet look at the church their response to what they see is, “Jesus must be real!” Jesus’s prayer is that people look at his followers, they will experience a portrait of supernatural love. They will see a love at work that overcomes divisions and reconciles contraries; a love that brings into communion and fellowship people who might have nothing in common except the fact that Jesus gave himself up for them. Let’s look at how this works out in the passage. One God, One People, One Witness.
One God
One God
John 17 is Jesus’s high priestly prayer. He is preparing for betrayal and crucifixion. This chapter ends the section that began in chapter 13.
1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
So chapters 13-17 are Jesus’s farewell discourse, preparing the twelve disciples for his departure. And amazingly, at the end they’re let in on this intimate prayer he offers to the Father. The striking emphasis and insistence is that he and the Father are one.
And John has been setting us up to hear this from Jesus’s own mouth. The first person to testify about Jesus’s divine identity, that he was God, was John himself. He did it in the first three verses of the book,
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Then, those who oppose Jesus testify that they understand Jesus to be claiming equality with God. Back in chapter 5, Jesus was accused by the Jewish leaders of breaking the Sabbath when he healed a sick man. Jesus answered that accusation and said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). And John says this is why those leaders were seeking all the more to kill Jesus, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:18).
Jesus continues to lean in hard on his divinity. He says in chapter 10
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
Now, at the beginning of this prayer in chapter 17,
1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
And when we get to our passage we hear Jesus say in v. 22,
22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
Do you understand what’s going on here? Those disciples had a foundational and fundamental confession of their faith. They’d made this confession for as long as they could remember. It was first given to the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 6:4-5,
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Their great confession of faith that the Lord our God is one was not just a confession that their was one God. It was a confession about the unity of God. That the One God was unity in diversity himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
One People
One People
This understanding of who the one God is, sets the table for us to grasp the one people Jesus is praying for here. In vv. 5-19 of this chapter Jesus is primarily praying for his twelve disciples (minus Judas Iscariot). He even prays for their unity in v. 11,
11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
He shifts the focus of his prayer in v. 20,
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
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. V. 21, “that they may all be one, just as you Father are in me, and I in you.” V. 22, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.” V. 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 apostolic word, and what is chief on his mind? Their unity and love for one another. Three times in these verses he prays that his people would be one, 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. That’s what he means v. 22 when he says, “the glory you have given me I have given them that they may be one.” Please don’t miss a few things here. First, this is not simply a prayer for mono-cultural or mono-ethnic unity in Jesus’s name. John’s audience for this gospel book included Jews and Gentiles. It was a culturally diverse community. They had already heard Jesus say in John 3:16,
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 didn’t say, for God so loved only the people of Israel that he gave his only Son. They had already heard Jesus say to the people of Israel in John 10:15-16,
15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 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.
One, one, one, one, one, unity in diversity. Don’t miss that this is a prayer for unity in diversity. Secondly, don’t miss that this prayer for unity and reconciliation is rooted in what God says about humanity at the very beginning of the Bible,
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
People are the only legitimate image of God in the world. And the God who declared us to be his image is unity in diversity. So we were created to image him as unity in diversity. But our sin and rebellion against him has made fragmentation more of our story than unity. So, if it’s going to be possible to accomplish and maintain, God has got to do it himself. He has to restore us into the truth of what it means for us to be his image. This is what Jesus is praying for.
Third, don’t miss the fact that the binding glue in this unity in diversity is love. Jesus says in v. 23,
23 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.
He concludes his prayer in vv. 24-26,
24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
What is the bond between the Father and the Son? It’s 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 the Son. We experience it in the way that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. God is love in eternally existent, mutually glorifying, honoring, and supporting diverse community.
This is the love that Jesus brings us into and calls us to pursue with one another. The apostle Paul, in Colossians 3, applies this truth to that diverse community of Christians,
11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 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. 14 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. Let me repeat what I said at the beginning of this message, 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.
One Witness
One Witness
The testimony of the one God reconciling us into one diverse people serves as the one witness to the world that Jesus Christ is exactly who he says he is. Jesus lets us in on a primary problem. There’s a bookend emphasis in this chapter. Jesus says in v. 25,
25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
The world does not know you Father. That’s the problem. At the beginning of the chapter he says in v. 3,
3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
How is this world, who does not know God, going to come to know God? What is going to be a primary witness to this world that Jesus is really real? How is the world going to come to know that he is really God? The Bible is full of miracles; miraculous healings, casting out demons, resurrection from the dead. But Jesus leaves all of that out in this passage. He prays for the oneness, the unity of his people as a witness to the world that he’s real! V. 21, “so that the world may believe that you sent me.” V. 23, “so that the world may know that your sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” This unity is the evidence to the world that Jesus is real. The church’s most powerful witness to the world that Jesus is real is not signs and wonders like miraculous healings. The witness is miraculous. The witness is supernatural. It’s the supernatural life of God’s people united in beautiful diverse community.
Listen. To refuse to pursue unity in diversity as a redeemed people is to fundamentally neglect what it means for us to be the image of God. It is to neglect a fundamental aspect of the church’s witness in the world. The world should look at the church in wonder and amazement, asking, “How did that happen? How did those people with such differences come together and commit to staying together in spite of the difficulty?”
Can I tell you something as I wrap this up? What do you think the Father thinks of Jesus’s prayer here? Do you imagine that God the Father hears this prayer of God the Son and declines the request? Oh no. Quite the opposite. It is the Father’s delight to give the Son the inheritance of a unified people by the reconciling 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. Black and white, brown and yellow, and red and blue bound together in supernatural love. It’s God’s delight to show of the glory of Jesus Christ and the power of his Spirit in reconciling people across every line of difference.