Thy Word is Truth: A Meditation on John 17 for the 7th Sunday in Easter

Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me,

 that they may be one, as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name:

 those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost,

but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world,

that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them,

because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world,

but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

 

John’s 17^th chapter of his Gospel is a remembrance of what some call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer:  a solemn proclamation and intercession of our Savior to His Father before His final journey to Calvary, where He would accomplish the Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the world through His death on the His Cross.  Of significant note in this prayer is the plea that His people would be one, just as He and the Father are One, which would be accomplished in and through His Word.  Just as the Father sent the Incarnate Word into the world, so Jesus would send His disciples into the world with His Word, so that all who would believe in Him and His Word would be sanctified by that Word of Truth.  The unity of Christians is made through that Word, bringing together the whole household of faith in this world and the next, with the Eternal Word of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit—that same Word which the Lord says will never return to Him void of the purpose for which it is sent, and will abide forever even as the world and all that is in it, fades away.

 

Much has been made over the centuries about attempts at Christian unity, with appeals from many quarters for submission to one or another ecclesiastical structure.  Many denominations, traditions, and rites of Christians, some more ancient and others more modern, claim to have the totality of Truth abiding in them, and therefore demand fealty and submission from all other erring Christians.  This way of thinking leads to competition between Christian fellowships, usually with some collection of ecclesiastical bureaucrats hoping to run the largest organization, together with all its collected revenues and resources.  But at least two questions are begged by such an approach, particularly in light of Jesus’ teaching on Christian unity:  first, when did Jesus command His disciples to go and make themselves one?  And second, was Jesus’ prayer to the Father not answered in the affirmative?  Or posited another way, did Jesus fail to accomplish the unity of His people by His own work and Word, therefore leaving this plaintive work for His disciples to accomplish in His stead, since His Father had denied His Son that which He prayed for before His brutal march to Golgotha?

 

When considered through the lens of John 17, bureaucratic attempts at creating Christian unity through human works and ambition are as laughable as they are blasphemous.  There is nothing that Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, fully human and fully divine, has not received from the Father and shared with the Holy Spirit.  There is no division in the Most Holy Trinity, as God can neither be divided in His essential unity nor confused in His divine Persons.  When the Eternal Word of God prayed that His people would be One by His Word, He created what He commanded:  the community of faith in His Word, is and always will be, His Church.  That Church must be by definition One, because it is united by faith in the Word of God alone, in which grace is poured out unto eternal life for everyone who repents and believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And if everyone who is united to Jesus is so by faith in His Word, and then united to each other through Jesus who saves each one by grace through faith, then that united fellowship of believers must also be Holy as they are sanctified in that Word of Truth.  Further, that saving, uniting, and sanctifying Word must also be Universal to all mankind, and thus such a fellowship is also necessarily Catholic—bound together across all human divisions of culture, language, rite, ritual, and custom, just as it is bound together across all time, geography, and space.  Likewise, as that Word is given by Jesus to His disciples to be declared by His Prophets and Apostles, the fellowship created by His Word must also be Apostolic—known, confessed, and transmitted from one generation to the next in the writings of the Holy Scriptures, penned by those same Prophets and Apostles.

 

As the Creed declares, we believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that no one other than Jesus established and maintains by His Word.  We do not confess a church which is an idol of our own making, as if fallen human hands can accomplish what the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, alone brings into existence.  The Christian does not create unity between himself and God anymore than he creates unity between himself and his brother—rather the Word of God creates in the Christian faith to believe unto salvation, binding the individual to the Triune God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, and then through Himself by His Word, binds the individual Christian to all other Christians, creating one people and household of faith.  In our fallen nature, our human works often result in the division of people, with one group in power seeking to subjugate and enslave another so that the strong might satisfy their passions through domination of the weak—but this is not God’s way nor His design.  He has not left so crucial a task as Christian unity in the hands of people who could save neither themselves nor their world, but rather created for His people the unity they could not build for themselves by the virtue and power of His Eternal Word.

 

Take comfort, dear Christian, that your unity with God the Father is accomplished by the Son, sealed with the Holy Spirit through the Word of Truth which He has spoken to you.  You are united with God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, His Word and Spirit working in you the faith to receive His grace, and accomplishing your sanctification so that you might be brought into His Kingdom which knows no end.  So, too, is every Christian, and thus every Christian is united to each other by the same saving grace, the same Savior, and the same Word.  The Church does not create her unity, but confesses, declares, and celebrates it as the work of Her Redeemer King—and so sing all the people of God together, to His glory alone, world without end.  Amen.