John 17:20-23

²⁰"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. ²²I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are One: ²³I in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me."

Up to this point, we have had no definite indication that Jesus meant to include us, rather than just the eleven disciples, as the subjects of His prayer; but He certainly had us in mind too, and now He makes this truth explicit, so that we might derive deep personal comfort from Jesus’ pleas just as the disciples did before us. How amazing it is to think that, when we were still children of wrath, and subjects of a hostile world, Jesus was already interceding for our final salvation! He already knew us by name, that according to the Father’s will we would soon be snatched from darkness and death and brought into the marvelous light of Jesus our Savior!

The gospel would never have spread throughout the world if it had been a mere message, with no power to change lives. But Jesus declares that the world will believe in Him through the unity that believers share with God as a result of believing the message. The power of the message lies in God’s power to transform lives through union with Him by faith. If we as believers do not reflect the love and unity of the Trinity in our love for each other, then how will the world see who Jesus is, and believe that the Father has sent Him? Again unity is immensely important.

Unity is certainly a gift of God. God’s love and inter-Triune unity is the essence of His glory, and a love and unity reflective of God’s is nothing less than the gift of God’s very glory, given to us! As astonishing as this doctrine is, we read it clearly in v22. A Christ-like love for each other, a unity representative of the inter-Triune unity of God, is what we ought to seek – and what we will achieve by the grace of God. The purpose of redemption is to display the glory of the true nature of the triune God – and we have been given the astonishing privilege of showing the divine nature to the unbelieving world. But how will we do this, if we are divided among ourselves? Is Christ divided? Is there no love between the Father, Son, and Spirit? We have been given the very glory of God; God’s Spirit has breathed into us His love and is forming within us the image of Christ. Let us display the love and unity with which we have been blessed. In this way, Jesus will gather the full fruits of His already-finished work.