20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”
Jesus has just been praying for his eleven disciples after the Last Supper. Suddenly, Jesus changes the focus of the pray from them to you and me, to every Christian in history who has come to faith by the witness of the first Apostles and passed down to us today. It also includes everyone who will be saved in the future. That means we must listen carefully to what this prayer and how it applies to us. Jesus’ primary appeal to the Father in the following prayer is for the unity of believers.
21 “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
Jesus wants all Christians to be one just as Jesus and the Father are in each other. What does that even mean? How can we be one with each other in the same way that Jesus is one with the Father? Back in John 10:30 Jesus said he and the Father are one. After saying that, the Jews picked up stones to kill him (John 10:31). Since I’m not a Greek expert, I depend on other who can better understand what this means. Before I give you what I believe is the best explanation, I’ll point out some other explanations.
When Jesus says I and the Father are one, it means they are identical. This heresy started in the second century and is still alive today. It is called patripassianism which is a form of modalism claiming that the Father, Son and Holy Spirits are only modes of God. This expresses the idea that God works in different modes.
When Jesus says I and the Father are one, it means they have one purpose or design and plan rather than saying Jesus is God incarnate. Those who hold to this view are not saying Jesus isn’t God, but they are only attributing being one in purpose to this specific verse. This is unfortunate because it fuels the fires of the heresy that Jesus never claimed to be God. Yet a clear reading of the following verses demonstrated that the Jews knew he did indeed to claim to be God.
Albert Barnes in his notes explains the word for “one” is neuter instead of masculine. That expresses the idea of union without explaining what that union is. This raises the possibility expressed in the previous paragraph. But Barnes appeals to the way the Jews understood Jesus to claim to be God, just as I pointed out. He also points out that Jesus didn’t deny their accusation.[1] Even though my Greek is limited, the context of the verses proves Jesus’ claim to be God.
But all this doesn’t answer the question how we can be one with each other as Jesus and the Father are one. Jesus talked about being in each other. The answer can only be found in understanding the nature of God. The Lord declares, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jer 23:24 ESV). This is Yahweh speaking, the memorial name of God. Jesus says God is spirit and that is why he can be all places at all times, omnipresent. If he is everywhere that means he is in Jesus. Jesus’ divine nature being God is also always in all places just as is the Father and the Holy Spirit are.
That doesn’t seem to be any problem but then Jesus says, “that they also may be in us.” That also isn’t a problem considering that God is everywhere, we must be in him but in that same sense, the whole universe is in God. But Jesus is saying much more than that. Paul says that we are in Christ or in him 143 times. What Paul is talking about is what Jesus is saying. It is synonymous with salvation. In other words, we can only be in Jesus and the Father when we are born again. This is a spiritual union with God that is only accomplished when we have been brought into the family of God by the Holy Spirit regenerating our spirits. We become a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17) a creation that can be in God. This is what being born again is.
This is a new identity. Once we were by nature objects of wrath (Eph 2:3), but now, in Christ we are seated with God in Christ (Eph 2:6). Because we have this new nature and are in Christ, we can be one even as Jesus and God are one. But this time, we aren’t one in essence with God because that would make us divine. We are one in purpose and that purpose is to bring glory to God through Jesus. But there is also a spiritual dimension to this unity that is less than being divine. 2 Peter 1:4 describes this as being “partakers of the divine nature.” It is a mystery that we won’t fully understand maybe even in eternity.
When we show unity in purpose, we demonstrate to the world that we are in Christ. We have become a new creation that counts our old lives as rubbish just as Paul expressed (Phil 3:8). This remarkable change is a message to the world that Jesus changes lives and lets the world know that God the Father sent Jesus. It shows that God loves us just as he loves Jesus. Think about that for a while. God the Father loves us just as much as he loves Jesus. If that isn’t motivation to love him back, then we’ve got a problem.
24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
There are some significant truths that Jesus is revealing as he expresses his desire to the Father. The first is that Jesus and God have desires. Sometimes these desires are just that, a desire, a longing. It is a strong feeling of wanting something or for something to happen. For instance, Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (ESV). Yet everywhere in Scripture we find that not everyone will be saved. Yet when Jesus prays for this desire, we can be assured that it isn’t like Jesus’ later prayer where he says, in Matthew 26:42 “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (ESV). He doesn’t want something to happen that isn’t also the Father’s will. So we must always be careful to distinguish between what God desires and what he wills. What he wills always happens.
Over and over in the Book of John we find references to the fact that God choses who will be saved and he gives them to Jesus. In John 6:39 Jesus says, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (ESV). This is not the Father’s desire, it is his will, so we know it will happen. Jesus won’t lose any that the Father gives him. Then again, Jesus says in John 6:45 “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (ESV). Jesus also says that he gives eternal life to all the Father gives him (John 17:2). It is amazing to me how often Jesus repeats this and how many other Scriptures speak of our election and yet some people still insist that we must do something to be saved. No, the Father chooses us, he gives us to Jesus, the Holy Spirit regenerates us (makes us alive while we were dead), and because of this, we want to turn to Jesus and in fact we can’t not turn to him because it is the Father’s will and it is also ours. We aren’t forced and we aren’t robots but we want to be saved. Others would agree up to the last part and then say we have a choice to accept salvation or reject it, thereby making salvation part God’s work and part our work or decision and that destroys the sovereignty of God.
Jesus wants us to see his glory. I can’t wait but I don’t think we really understand what it takes to see his glory.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:67 ESV)
Seeing Jesus’ glory means that we will be tested on this earth. We will suffer many things and then, when we either see Jesus in heaven or when he returns, then we will really see his glory and understand what his glory is. His glory is the same glory as the Father’s because they are both God and of the same essence. Yet when the Son took on flesh, the glory was hidden.
Jesus is essentially reminiscing about the glory he had with the Father before he came to the earth. In speaking of having this glory, he is saying that the glory has always existed. He had it before creation and he had it because the Father loves him. If we really understood this, then we would be even more amazed that the Son would give it up to come to the earth and save us.
25 “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
A lot of people claim to know God. They claim to love God. But they are in the world and are part of the world. So how do we know if someone really knows God? John tells us one way in 1 John 4:20, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (ESV). What this boils down to is looking at a person’s fruit. By their fruit they will be known (Matt 7:16-20). Another way is to look at what they think about Jesus. “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him” (John 5:23 NIV). This eliminates every other religion on the earth because none of them honor Jesus by acknowledging he is God in the flesh.
Then there is the very true statement that Jesus made that no one can know the Father unless Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to us (Matt 11:27). When Jesus makes the Father know to us, we are right back to the issue of election. And to whom does Jesus make the Father known? It is to those he has loved. When we know this love, we then have Jesus in us and as was made clear before, we also have the Father.
