Christian Unity: A Meditation on John 17, for the Last Sunday in Easter

Sometimes called Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, chapter 17 of John’s Gospel recounts the passionate words of Jesus before He is captured by the temple mob.  He gives thanks to His Father for the disciples given to Him, and then prays for His disciples to be preserved in this dark and dangerous world.  And not just the Twelve (minus Judas, who is already in the act of betraying Jesus unto death, and who will himself commit suicide shortly,) but all who will believe in Him through the testimony of His Disciples.  Calling out a distinction between the world at large and His people, He prays specifically for the household of faith across all time and space, interceding for them.

Amidst Jesus’ plea for His Disciples’ protection and being kept from the evil one, He also prays passionately for their unity.  As He and the Father are one, so He prays that His people would be one in Him, sanctified in the truth of His Word, and bearing witness through their unity to His unity with His Father.  The unity of Jesus’ disciples would be a reflection of Jesus’ unity within the Triune God, and bear powerful testimony to the world that Jesus is the Savior of all mankind.

Unfortunately, as we observe the Christian Church on earth, it appears to be anything but united.  The vast majority of the world’s Christians—1.2 billion Roman Catholics—think they have the answer to unity in their ecclesiastical structure with the Pope who sits supreme over the whole of Christendom.  The 500 million Eastern Orthodox think they have the answer through their ecclesiastical structures, with autonomous yet related national Patriarchs, and the rulings of Councils which reign supreme.  The Churches of the Reformation, several hundred million in all their various stripes and confessions, may have as many answers to Christian unity as they have different fellowships, statements of faith, and regional leaders.  In spite of so many Christian churches’ attempts to foster unity inside their own ranks, they are often found internally fractured.  Who can count the number of different kinds of Lutherans?  Or Methodists?  Or Baptists?  Or Pentecostals/Charismatics?  Who can get all the various orders and rites of Roman Catholicism to ultimately agree, as they fight even today about fundamental doctrines of the family?  Who can settle out all the regional conflicts of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox?

If one tries to observe each of these groups by stepping back, they might appear to be united by their respective beauracracies… but that rarely reflects the reality on the ground.  Person to person, parish to parish, diocese to diocese, denomination to denomination, district to district, division and infighting are rampant.  Finding one particular church body that is not itself internally fractured by sin and controversy, is like looking for needles in haystacks.  The reality is that church beauracracy never creates real unity—it merely substitutes political or institutional unity while masking deeper divides.  And when people within these churches attempt to deal with those deeper underlying issues, the quick retort is often to appeal back to Jesus, especially in John 17, and say something to the effect of, “Jesus wouldn’t want us fighting over this—we need to be united!  Oh, for the sake of our beloved church/synod/denomination/etc., we need to be united!”

Whenever men attempt to create unity in the Church of Christ, they meet with failure.  But this shouldn’t surprise us, because if we pursue Christian unity as a matter of the Law, then we know that our best attempts at keeping such a Law in perfect purity are vain.  We are not perfect in our own individual purity, let alone in the purity of our associations.  Who has achieved perfection in the purity of their families, let alone the congregations of families in a local parish?  The truth is that we cannot create Christian unity.  No matter how we try, whether we use the model of an ecclesiastical Pope who rules like a king, the model of bishops in council ruling like an aristocracy, or the decentralized model of popular democracy which rules on the whims of the ignorant mob, mankind is not capable of bringing unity to Christ’s Church, because man is not capable of bringing unity even within himself.  If the Christian lives a life divided by his own sinful nature battling against the new baptismal nature given to him in Christ, being at one time both sinner and saint, how can the Christian think he is capable of uniting the whole of Christendom?

Into our despair of trying to create the unity which Jesus prays for, we must remember that it is Jesus Himself who sets out to accomplish this great work.  It is Jesus who will, after praying this prayer, sanctify Himself through the passion of His Cross.  It is Jesus who will pour out His Most Precious Blood for the sins of the world, so that all who believe in Him might be saved.  It is Jesus who will descend into the grave, and rise again the third day to demonstrate His victory over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  It is Jesus who will gather His disciples again on that blessed Easter day, forgiving them their sins, and sending them out to forgive the sins of others in His Name.  It is Jesus the Vine, who will graft all believers into Himself by grace through faith, and be the unity that they cannot on their own achieve.  Jesus is Himself our unity, because Jesus is Himself our salvation.  Like all matters of the Law, Jesus accomplishes perfectly what we cannot do, and gives to us the merits of His works by grace.

It is Jesus who tells us how to abide in Him, and then gives the Means to accomplish this great work.  He gives to us His Eternal Word, and the Holy Spirit to create our faith which clings to Him by and through His Word.  It is Jesus who makes us one with Him, and through Himself makes us one with each other, giving to each who will receive Him the faith and repentance by which He pours out unending forgiveness, life, and salvation.  Each person, like a branch grafted into Jesus’ Vine, is fully oriented toward the source of their life and unity, and only through Jesus and His Word then oriented to others.  This is the perfection of unity which Jesus prays for, and then accomplished through His life, death, and resurrection in our stead.

How do we recognize Christian unity?  When we see our brothers and sisters through Jesus and His Word.  It’s not something we create, but something we receive and confess.  Thanks be to God for the blessed unity of all Christ’s people through the Blood of the Lamb, and His Eternal Word which calls all men unto Him.  Amen.