A Prayer For Unity

Introduction

Recently, New York Times published an article describing the current state of race in American Evangelicalism titled “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches”

The article captures a lot about the recent slow and steady departure of black folks from predominantly white churches after a promising trend of growth and integration.

This one quote that particularly stood out to me was this one:

“Everything we tried is not working...It’s about to completely break apart.”

Everything we tried IS NOT WORKING…Those are haunting words for me...

UNITY. It’s so elusive....so much wounded history. So many voices on the far edges/fringes dictating the conversation. So many people committed to not giving up one square inch on their opinions, their philosophies, their partisanship. So many voices and so few ears.

If I’m honest brothers, with all of the dissension and all of the times where it seems black voices and white voices have missed one another. I often find myself asking the question “Why Are You Still Here, Brian? God, WHAT ARE YOU DOING”

However, I typically don’t linger very long on the question because I already know the answer.

He’s doing exactly what Jesus, the Son of God prayed for Him to do...

John 17 explains it in clear terms. He’s making us one. And it is not an optional work, it is not a work that you can skip out on because you don’t feel like you’re called to it any more than you can opt out on loving one another because some people are too difficult to love. This work to be one is a work that we must dedicate our lives to because Jesus prayed for it!

Today, I want to look at the final part of this prayer.

With moments remaining before the authorities who’ve been summoned Judas come barging through the garden of Gethsemane to arrest Him, what is last thing on His mind as He prays?

We are! Praying for us!

In particular, He is praying for us to be unified! And that’s a big prayer because UNITY IS ELUSIVE. Whether it’s husband and wife, Jew and Gentile, or black and white, It is always difficult to bring the two into one. So it warrants us paying attention to WHAT Jesus says in this prayer!

Unity’s Foundation

John 17:20–21 ESV

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.

One thing we learn from this prayer is UNITY is forged first IN CHRIST!

We can unify under different creeds and platforms, but that is not the unity Jesus is praying for nor is it unity that will sustain us. The unity where we must all begin is the unity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

BUT our UNITY is also one rooted in relationship…

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

Our oneness is found in our union with Christ and the more committed we are to being found connected to Him the less likely we are to find ourselves divided one from another…

The Apostle Paul highlights our union with Christ in the following way...

Galatians 2:20 ESV

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I don’t think that it is by accident that we hear the Apostle makes this statement RIGHT AFTER he discusses having to correct Peter for his divisive actions. Remember, when he was sitting with the Gentiles and enjoying fellowship but then removed himself when some of His Jewish friends came to town because He was worried that they would think less of Him because He was in fellowship with “uncircumcised swine eaters!”

Paul rebuts him and tells him that he is out of step with the Gospel. Peter in that moment had forgotten what truly unifies them...Not their identity to their Jewish customs and diet but their identity to Christ!

Brothers, too many are captive to their political identities, racial identities, cultural identities, historical identities and division is forged from that captivity.

It doesn’t mean those things can’t have a place in our lives. It means that those things CANNOT be the grounds in which a UNITY rises and falls on...Those things can’t be where we ULTIMATELY find our IDENTITY.

When we bind our identity primarily to all these other things, we lay the ground for disunity and a sort of syncretistic worship. When we bind our identity to Christ, we lay the ground work for unity and true worship.

APPLICATION: What are you bound to right now? What is your conversations filled with? What is your mind and heart filled with? If I were to puncture your heart this morning brothers, what would be the primary blood leaking out? Would I find Fox News, CNN, Republicanism, Democraticism, or would I find the life giving blood of CHRIST!

Unity’s Purpose: Defend the Faith

Pay very close attention to the words Christ is praying in verse 21:

v21 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.

Jesus is not praying for UNITY because it is envogue. Because it is stylish. He prays it because it advances the mission of the Triune God by bringing those who don’t know God into a saving relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ.

We often associate truth with defending the faith, but if we are to believe Jesus what we discover is that the truth WITH LOVE and UNITY is one of the strongest defenses of the Faith that the church possesses.

John 13:34–35 ESV

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Ephesians encourages us to speak the truth IN LOVE

So while our defense of the FAITH should never come apart from TRUTH, it should neither ever come apart from UNITY!

Our commitment to deep unity that moves beyond our social and cultural norms will either bolster our evangelism to the World, if done well or severely constrain our evangelism to the World, if done poorly.

ILLUSTRATION: What testimony have you ever heard that begin with these words, “Man, I just saw how fired up people were on FB! How much they were going at each other throats over Trump and Biden! How many jokes they made about cluelessness of the Presidential nominees and I knew I wanted to hear more about Jesus.”

ILLUSTRATION: On the flip side, how many testimonies have you ever heard that begin with these words, “Man, I was first drawn in by how they loved each other and how they seemed to love me despite what I had done."

OH! How many Gospel doors have been opened with the keys of a UNIFIED LOVE.

Look at verse 23 for another interesting observation

John 17:23 ESV

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.

Pay attention to the words here. We’ve moved from “so that the world may believe that Christ was sent by the Father” to “SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW that the Father sent Christ”. How do we move BELIEVE to KNOW. Now, it’s important to realize that this is something we will not fully realize until Jesus returns, but the implications are ABSOLUTELY worth noting! As we grow closer together, belief moves closer to KNOWLEDGE.

What is interesting about many Christians in America is how committed we are to missions while simultaneously being unusually cavalier about deep abiding UNITY in the church.

Brothers, we can’t be content with “well, we do things differently!”

In his prayer Jesus is saying If we care about the advancement of the Gospel to our blocks, our cities, our country, and our world, we should also care about UNITY because UNITY bolsters our credibility in missions. It is one of the strongest apologetics we have

So, what does such a unity look like?

Unity’s Appearance: Oneness like the Triune Godhead

21 just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us

We won’t ever fully replicate the Unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, but Jesus is praying that our unity reflect that Unity.

Again, though, we must ask the question: What does that look like...

What does that mean? In reviewing the relationship with the Father and Son throughout the Gospel of John, we see this unity reflected in a few ways worth noting:

Unity In Message

John 12:49–50 ESV

49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”

Jesus is unified with the Father in the words that He speaks and we too can be unified in our words by carrying the message of the Gospel. A message that rests in Jesus Christ’s birth, death, resurrection. A message that is embraced by trusting Christ as the Lord and Savior of our lives and turning from sin. A message whose ethic and conduct is summarized in two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Another way that God the Father and Son are united is in purpose...

Unity In Purpose

John 5:19 ESV

19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

The Father and the Son are united in their purpose and mission: The Salvation of the world and the glory of God

This is not only a united purpose for God himself but this should be what our lives are lived for. When our lives are committed to the purpose of seeing God’s purposes fulfilled unity gets easier!

This sounds reasonable enough when said out loud but the problem is that we all are dealing with hearts that are SINFUL and DECEPTIVE and our knowledge is OVERWHELMINGLY CLOUDED. So, it is far easier than most of us care to acknowledge to cosign and attach our own agendas onto God’s.

APPLICATION: In order to stay unified in purpose we have to be honest about our tendency to hang our own ulterior agendas, goals, and purposes up and label them as God’s and we have to be far more humble in acknowledging that sometimes we only know in part and that maybe our brothers and sisters might see His purposes in certain areas clearer than we can.

It is a patient and humble work to allow the Gospel to shape our world rather than allowing our world to shape the Gospel.

Let me say a word about what UNITY IS NOT.

What Unity Is Not: UNIFORMITY/SAMENESS

IT IS NOT SAMENESS. The Triune God is DISTINCTLY HARMONIOUS. They are not the same key, even though they are One God. The Father, Son, and Spirit carry different roles.

Ephesians 1 shows those distinctions...verse 4 we hear that the Father chose us before the foundation of the world. Jesus himself refers to this choosing in the John 17 prayer. “Those you’ve given me”

But Ephesians 1:7 speaks to the role of the Son in redeeming us. It was He who died who took on suffering for us and became our sin offering and in order that we might become the righteousness of God.

And finally, we hear about the Spirit’s role in sealing us, keeping us until the day of Jesus Christ.

United and yet intricately distinct. This is true of us as well. Different tribes, nations, and tongues. God made us that way and is no way looking to change that.

When the Holy Spirit first was poured out on the day of Pentecost and establishing the FIRST NT Church, he could have united us in language but he instead empowered us to hear one another in our own languages . That was a small testimony to a larger reality. Bringing unusual unity while maintaining cultural and ethnic distinctives.

Remember Jesus is praying for the disciples that don’t even exist yet, the disciples to come and where are they coming from? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. These are folks with nothing in common that he is praying MAKE THEM ONE! These are folks with hatred in their hearts for one another that he is praying MAKE THEM ONE! This unity is an unusual and shocking and leaves no doubt that something divine and supernatural is empowering it.

John sees it in Revelation: every nation, tribe, and tongue is visible present around the throne of God. God’s blessing to us is not uniformity. It is the ability by His Spirit to build unusual unity in the midst of globe-spanning diversity!

Which leads us to our final point this morning. Jesus prays for unity but how do we obtain it?

I think the answer is found in verse 22

Unity’s Fuel: How is Our Unity Forged?

22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,

Glory is sometimes described as the weightiness of God. It’s important to understand what it means because Jesus prays that His glory will aid in unifying us... So the question is what does it mean?

Remember Moses words in Exodus 33?

Exodus 33:18-23 (ESV) 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

Here, we see God’s glory is his manifested GOODNESS, so powerful and so strong that Moses was not allowed to take it all in otherwise he would be destroyed.

When we look at the NT, glory is seen as weighty power. For example, when Jesus’ turns water into wine in his first recorded miracle, John describes it as manifestation of His glory. So Jesus could be referring to the power granted to us for unusual unity and how is that power granted to us? By His Spirit!

Remember after His resurrection, as he was preparing to go back to be with God the Father in Heaven, he tells the disciples not to leave Jerusalem until the arrival of the Holy Spirit because He would bring Power.

So Christ could be saying that this glory that will bring unity is manifested in the Spirit that I’m giving them.

But we also see glory in one more way…

Constantly in the Gospels, we hear Jesus refer to his glorification and where does He point to?

Crucifixion/Resurrection! In other words, the unveiling of Jesus’ glory is tied to his most humiliating moments on Earth. It was in the weakness of the Cross that’s Christ’s Glory was on its most prominent display

So the glory of God demonstrated in the complete goodness of God the Father, reflected in the Holy Spirit indwelling all those who are believers, and fortified in Christ’s Gospel is the glory Christ prays for us to walk in and it is this glory that will cause us to live in deep abiding unity!

When we look at the Gospel, we see God who emptied himself of rights and privileges, laying aside His comforts for the good of all. We see God extending grace upon grace to bring us to himself and to unite us with himself. We see Christ constantly overlooking our faults.

This is the glory we’ve been given. The glory to die to ourselves. To not have to destroy our political opponents but to reason as either brothers and sisters in Christ or at a minimum fellow image bearers. To not have a church service where only my style of music is accepted or only Republicans or only Democrats can shout Amen...

Conclusion

What If God Has So Sovereignly allowed this moment to be soooo unbelievably partisan, divisive, and segregated in thought, purpose, opinions, and physical presence (Sunday Worship Gatherings STILL being the most segregated time slots in America)...what if he has so sovereignly appointed this moment in order to make the unusual unity produced in Christianity stand out that much more. To draw such distinct lines that it makes it totally impossible to not see that there is something different about what is going on in the Church of Jesus Christ. That our unity is so rare and so unusual, that the watching world is left with no other conclusion than that God must be at work and the message of the Gospel that united us must be far more powerful than we could have ever imagined!

Maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing because we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is doing something! Jesus prayed for it and like all his other prayers he prayed on this day in John 17. It is GUARANTEED to be ANSWERED by HIS FATHER in a way that will bring eternal glory to His name and eternal Joy to those that call Him Lord and Savior!