Does Jesus Want Us All to Be as One?

Tom: We’re continuing with the gospel. We’re in the Gospel of John:17:19And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
See All...: “And for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

Dave, last week we went over 17 and 18: “Sanctify them through they truth. Thy word is truth.” You said this is so important. But for Jesus to say, “I sanctify myself…” What does He mean by that?

Dave: He’s talking to the Father. This is the real Lord’s Prayer. He’s in prayer with His Father—and, well, everything we have is in Christ. “I sanctify myself…” Well, He said, “Father, this is the job you gave me to do. I’ve come into the world to do thy will, and I have sanctified myself to that task.” In other words…

Tom: He set Himself apart for what God wants.

Dave: Right. “I don’t let anything else stand in the way. And why do I do this? That they might be sanctified by the truth.” Christ has come to live His life in those who have opened their hearts to Him, and it is only through Christ, through who He is, and what He has accomplished, that we have anything. So He says, “Father, I am coming to you, and these are in the world.” And on the one hand, you say, “Could He have been anything but sanctified?” When it says “He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin,” that’s not tempted in the sense that He has to struggle to resist the impulse to do some evil. But it’s tested, like you would test gold to prove that it’s pure, and so forth.

But what He wants is that we will be sanctified through the truth. In other words, the truth will have so captured our hearts, it will have changed our minds, changed our thinking….We belong to Jesus and Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” So it is through the truth that we are sanctified—we’re set apart.

You could illustrate it, I guess—somebody’s got two glasses in front of him, and he says, “Well, this one is full of vitamins, and this one over here is full of poison, and I just can’t resist! I know it’s going to kill me, but I keep drinking it, it tastes so good.” But if you knew the truth—if you knew it was going to kill you, you would think you would lay it aside. And it is the truth of God that will keep us. We’ll have our “loins gird about with truth,” fortified, strengthened by the truth, and you have to be irrational not to follow the Lord.

Tom: But being set apart by the truth—that’s a good question that we need to ask ourselves. Is my life—does it demonstrate being set apart? And not just to be different, because there are some people who, without the truth, make themselves different, for what purpose? I don’t know. Just to be unique, I guess. But “set apart through the truth” means that I’m hanging onto something, I’m—I’m seeing something, something is working in my life that’s different, that’s set apart.

Dave: It’s like the old saying, Tom, “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” And there should be.

And then He says, “Neither pray I for these alone”—that is, His disciples, those who have believed on Him, “but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one.” That tells us that this prayer—the Lord’s prayer to His Father for His own—is for us as well. He had us in mind as well.

Tom: Dave, as you know, we spoke about it—actually, it was on our live program not too long ago—I’ve been to observe conferences, ecumenical conferences, those having to do with Evangelicals and Catholics Together. And this is their theme song, that we all may be one. This is…the pope writes about in terms of religious unity throughout the world. That we all may be one.

But somehow, they’re not picking out some important details in this verse.

Dave: As you know, what the pope would actually mean is that they all might become Catholics. They all might become subject to him as the head of the “one true church,” and he makes that very clear. And he can go on and on. There are ecumenical documents, and they have ecumenical dialog, even with Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and so forth. But when you read on, just keep reading, and the pope indicates that the unity is only going to be through the Roman Catholic Church. Everyone must come under that umbrella, okay?

That is not what Christ is talking about. He said, “That they all might be one, as thou, Father, are to me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”

So the oneness that we have is in Christ Jesus. It’s not through some ecumenical dialog. Not through some joint declaration, like the Lutherans and the Catholics signed recently, so we’ll all agree to agree now, and we’ll get this down to a common denominator, and water it down, with as few points as possible.

No, what is this unity? “That they may be one as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee. That they may be one in us.” So, unity is not something that we create. It has happened. Now, how does it happen? Through becoming a child of God, we’re in—this is a family unity Christ is talking about: “as you are, and I, as we’re one, we want them to be one. And that is only to be accomplished as they are in us and we are in them.”

So when He went to the Cross and paid the penalty for our sins, that made it possible for man to be forgiven, and for Christ to live His life in us.

Tom: Dave, verse 20—we could go back to that. The last part of it says, “…but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.” The Word of God is critical here. That’s the content. That’s the criteria for unity, it seems to me.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And it is the unity that is in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It’s an amazing oneness that we don’t understand. This is the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three persons, one God. And we are brought into this family. Tom, I travel all over the world, and it’s amazing. You can tell, pretty much, a Christian. There’s something. There is a unity in the Spirit. You recognize them. It’s not something that we create, that we go about… We are one in Christ, if we’re in Christ, if we’re in the Father, and the Father is dwelling in us through Christ, then we are one. We have that oneness of the Spirit and of the family of God. We don’t have to sit down and hammer out agreements and make compromises and so forth. This is a unity that has been established and we simply are to recognize it and live it.

Tom: Dave, verse 22, in the about a minute and a half that we have left: “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one, even as we are one.”

“The glory that thou gavest me…” Does this have anything to do with…is this a future thing? Or …you just said that when you meet people—sometimes the light of the Lord can reflect through us. Maybe even some of His glory. Not that it’s something we generate, but that He does.

Dave: Second Corinthians 3, Paul says, “We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.” We are becoming more like Christ—we should be. But ultimately, this will be realized when we see Him. John says, 1 John 3: “We will be like him for we shall see him as he is.”

But this unity is, as you just read, “even as we are one—that they may be one even as we are one”— and that is a powerful statement. This unity that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have between them, and this relationship that they have, that is a unity that we are to share. And that is, as we’ve said, it doesn’t come about by agreements. It comes about by receiving Christ.