Father, with You there are places where distinctions exist for good reason & there are other places where You remove distinctions according to Your good will. When it comes to the distinction of being in the world, or being in unity with You, give us the strength & faith to be distinctly Yours & separate from the world. Let us all who are Yours walk in unity with You, with Christ as our only distinctive. Amen.

John 17:1-11
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

⁶ “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. ⁸ For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. ¹¹ And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

John 17 contains Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. It is a confession of deity & unity with the Father & a prayer of concern for unity within the people who would claim to walk in Him. This is a beautiful prayer of concern and it bears the stamp of the mission of Jesus Christ to save the lost for the glory of the Father. This is an evidence of the Trinity, and the relationship that God has with Himself, a direction toward eternity and the heart of God that exists there. There is depth and meaning and purpose in this prayer. There is mystery and wonder and praise in this prayer & I daresay that we cannot comprehend the whole of it.

So why does Jesus pray this mystery & praise out loud? Why does He speak of things that we cannot fully comprehend? Why give us this glimpse into the inner working of the heart of God? Well, whenever Jesus prays out loud, it is for our benefit. Every time.

The Lord’s Prayer? He was giving instruction on how to pray. The prayer over Lazarus at the tomb? Done totally and explicitly for our benefit (Jesus says so) so that we might see and hear what is going on. This prayer in John 17? This is a prayer of unity. And in the next section, Jesus is going to pray over all of us who would walk with Him from that time until He comes back. But before He prays about unity for us & over us, He prays to the Father and exhibits the unity that exists within the Godhead. He gives us an example of what He (God) desires to see within us (the Church) before He even prays about it. He is revealing the type of unity that exists between Himself so that we might catch a glimpse of the unity that should exist between us.

And why? Because God knew, before the church was even founded, that we would be prone to separate off into groups and cliques and teams of our own according to how we liked things, what our viewpoints were and how we would interpret scripture. And He didn’t want those distinctives to drive us apart like a wedge when His intention was that we would be united in Jesus Christ…the One who was praying unity over us to begin with.

Does ‘your’ church take communion every week? Do you worship in song with or without instruments, if yes, which ones do you use? Which are acceptable? What do you wear to church? What is the expectation? Does ‘your’ church family all look like you and live in the same racial/socio-economic bracket as you or not? What does ‘your’ church teach about baptism? The authority of Scripture? The marks of obedience and disciple-making? Do you all like pineapple on your pizza or not? We can draw lines all. day. long.

It is more important that people are brought to Christ so they might be restored to God than it is that I am seen as ‘right.’ We must trust in the truth & unity of the Gospel more than in the systems of man. As someone raised in the Restoration Movement, I have been raised with a few particular sayings:

• We are not the only Christians, but Christians only.
• In matters of doctrine, unity. In matters of opinion, liberty. In all things, love.
• Where the Bible speaks, we speak. Where it is silent, we are silent.

Jesus is praying for unity. We should pray for and actively seek unity.
If this is His heart (and it is) then it should be ours as well.
Do not seek to see what divides, but seek to see what unites.
Jesus also said that the world would know that we were His disciples by the love that we have for one another. Good doctrine is essential, absolutely, all day long, yes.
But we can also be like Priscilla & Acquilla were to Apollos and teach correction in love according to the Scriptures rather than draw a line in the sand and get defensive.Let’s lift up unity in Christ, and live it, as well.

Father, with You there are places where distinctions exist for good reason & there are other places where You remove distinctions according to Your good will. When it comes to the distinction of being in the world, or being in unity with You, give us the strength & faith to be distinctly Yours & separate from the world. Let us all who are Yours walk in unity with You, with Christ as our only distinctive. Amen.