Love to the Uttermost / Expositions of John XIII.-XXI.

by F. B. Meyer

"Yes; ear and hand, and thought and will!
Use all in Thy dear slavery still!
Self's weary liberties I cast
Beneath Thy feet; there keep them fast."

XXII

The Lord's Prayer for His People's Oneness

"That they may all be one. . . . One in us. . . . That they may be one, even as we are one. . . . Perfect in one."—JOHN xvii. 21-23.

Thus our High Priest pleaded, and thus He pleads. In all the power of His endless life, He ever liveth to bear this great petition on His heart: and as the weight of the jewelled breast-plate lay heavy on the heart of the high priests of old, so does it press on Him, as the ages slowly pass by in their never-ceasing progress toward the consummation of all things. Listen to that voice, sweet and full as the distant rush of many waters, as it pleads in the midst of eternity that those which believe in Him may be one.

Nor is it true that this prayer awaits an answer indefinitely future. There seems good reason to believe, as we shall see, that in these words our Lord was making a request, which began to be fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost: and is being fulfilled continually, although the oneness which is being realized is still, like His kingdom, in mystery, and is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Then, as the gauzy mists of time part before the breath of God, the accomplished oneness of the Church shall stand revealed.

I. THE ONENESS OF BELIEVERS IS A SPIRITUAL ONENESS.—Can there be any reasonable doubt of this when our Master asks so clearly that we may be one, as the Father and He are one? The model for Christian unity is evidently the unity between the Father and Son by the Holy Spirit; and since that unity, the unity of the blessed God, is not corporeal, nor physical, nor substantial to the eye of the flesh, may we not infer—nay, are we not compelled to infer—that the oneness of believers is to be after the same fashion, and to consist in so close an identity of nature, so absolute an interfusion of spirit, as that they shall be one in aim, and thought, and life, and spirit, spiritually one with each other, because spiritually one with Him?

The Church of Rome, which has ever travestied in gross material forms the most spiritual conceptions of God, sought to prove herself the true Church by achieving a oneness of her own. It was an outward and visible oneness. In the apostate church every one must utter the same formularies, worship in the same postures, and belong to the same ecclesiastical system. And its leaders did their best to realize their dream. They endeavored to exterminate heresy by fire, and sword, and torture. They spread their network through the world. And just before the dawn of the Reformation they seemed to have succeeded. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe reposed in the monotony of almost universal uniformity, beneath the almost universal supremacy of the Papacy. Rome might indeed have adopted the insolent language of the Assyrian of prophecy: "As one gathereth eggs, so have I gathered all the earth, and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped." And what was the result? What but the deep sleep of spiritual death? And herein lay the most crushing condemnation of the Roman Catholic conception of the unity of the Church.

Many modern notions of Christian unity seem to proceed on the same line. The assent to a certain credal basis, the meeting in great Catholic conventions, the exchange of pulpits—these seem to exhaust the conceptions of large numbers, and to satisfy their ideal. But surely there is a bond of union deeper, holier, more vital and more blessed than any of these, which shyly reveals itself, now and again, in one or more of them, but is independent of all, and when all of them are wanting, still constitutes us one. And what is that bond of union but the possession of a common spiritual life, like that which unites the Father and the Son, and which pervades us also, making us one with each other, because we are already one with God?

You may not care to admit it; you may even be ignorant of the full meaning of this marvellous fact; you may live an exclusive life, never going beyond the walls of some small conventicle, or the barriers of some strict ecclesiastical system; you may bear yourself impatiently and brusquely toward those who differ from you; you may even brand them with your anathema: but if they are one with God, by His gracious indwelling Spirit of Life, and if you are also one with Him, you positively cannot help being one with them. Your creed may differ, or your mode of worship, or your views about the Church; but you cannot be otherwise than one with those who are one with God, in a union which is not material but spiritual.