Read and pray: “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.’” (John 14:23)
THE PROCESS OF UNITY
John 17 is the Lord’s prayer in which He asks the Father to fulfill all that was spoken in chapters fourteen through sixteen. In chapter fourteen, the Lord spoke about the coming Comforter; in chapter fifteen, He spoke of the vine, showing that our relationship with Him is like the union of the vine and the branches; and in chapter sixteen, He said that the unique and unparalleled factor of this union is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes not only to convict us of sin in order to unite us to the Lord in love, but also to impart to us everything that the Father and the Son have.
John 17:1 begins with “These things Jesus spoke,” where “these things” refers to the content of chapters fourteen to sixteen. After saying what He said in these chapters, the Lord prayed to the Father: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You” (v. 1). The Lord had prophesied that He would be glorified and that the Father would be glorified in Him (12:23; 13:31-32).
In 12:24 He said He would die as a grain of wheat so that the shell of His humanity might be broken and the divine life within Him be dispensed into many people to be expressed through them. Since this divine life is the divine element of God the Father, the Father is glorified in the Son through the glorification of the Son.
The phrase “I come to You” in 17:11 confirms the Lord’s words in chapter fourteen that He was going to the Father and that His going was also His coming. Consequently, the Lord’s prayer in chapter seventeen reveals the meaning of what was said in chapters fourteen to sixteen. The Lord desired that all believers would be one just as the Three of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—are one.
John 14:20-24 says: “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what has happened that You are about to manifest Yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.”
These verses show how unity comes into being. Through His death and resurrection—His going—the Lord entered into God and brought man into God as well, making God the dwelling place of man and man the abode of God. This is how unity came into being.
This unity is the consequence of building, the result of the Lord going to prepare a place. The preparation of a place is the building; and this work of preparation is the work of building, which results in unity.
UNITY IS THROUGH BUILDING
In a physical house all the materials are joined together as one because they have been built. The same applies to the spiritual building. If a brother does not live in the building, it will be difficult for him to be one with the brothers in the church. A stone or a plank needs to go through the process of building to become part of the house.
Ephesians 4:11-13 shows us that God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers as gifts for the perfecting of the saints for the building up of the Body of Christ, until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God. Unity is the result of building and is not merely a matter of having the same viewpoints and opinions. Unity is a matter of being built.
Before the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, the 120 people in the upper room were in one accord. They all continued steadfastly in prayer with one accord (Acts 1:14). Their unity did not arise suddenly. Before praying in one accord, the disciples had already received the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).
This became the factor of their unity, enabling them to pray with one soul. They had also been under the Lord Jesus’ leadership for three and a half years and were taught by Him for forty days after His resurrection (Acts 1:3).
The extent of the building determines the extent of our unity. For example, even if the brothers in the church in Taipei have no opinions to impose or do not argue, we cannot say that this is unity. Genuine unity comes from being built. There might not even be unity among those who serve.
The absence of contention does not necessarily mean we are one. Not arguing is one thing; being one is something else entirely. In order to have unity, we must be built by God. For this reason, we cannot separate ourselves from the church, and we cannot separate ourselves from the brothers with whom we are to be built.
A piece of wood may be good construction material, but if it is not built into the house, it will be useless. It is not enough to be good material. Only when materials are built into the house can genuine unity exist.
Enjoy more: Hymn S-81
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