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.

II. THIS ONENESS ALSO ADMITS OF GREAT VARIETY.–”One, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.”  Now, of course, we all admit the unity of the Godhead.  The first article of the Jew is also the first article of the Christian, that the Lord our God is one God, one in essence, one in purpose, one in action.  The Son does nothing of Himself; the Father does nothing apart from the Son; the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son.  We cannot, as yet, understand this mystery; but with reverence we accept it as the primary basis of our faith.

     But though God is One, there is evidently a variety of function in the ever-blessed Trinity.  The Father decrees, the Son executes.  The Father sends, the Son is sent.  The Father works in Creation, the Son in Redemption and Judgment.  And the functions of both Father and Son differ from those of the Holy Spirit.

     If, then, the unity of the Church is to resemble the unity of the Godhead, according to our Lord’s request, we may expect that it will not be physical, nor mechanical, nor a uniformity; but it will be a variety in unity–a unity of Spirit and purpose, and yet a unity which admits of very diverse functions and operations.  Diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.  Differences of administrations, but the same Lord.  Diversities of operations, but the same God which worketh all in all.

(1) The very conception of unity involves variety.–You take me out into a piece of waste land, and pointing to a heap of bricks say, “There is a unity.”  I at once rebut your assertion; there is uniformity undoubtedly, but not unity.  Unity requires that a variety of different things should be combined to form one structure and carry out one idea.  A collection of bricks is not a unity, but a house is.  A pole is not a unity, but a hop-plant is.  A snow atom is not a unity, but a snow crystal is.  And when our Lord spoke of His disciples as one, He not only expected that there would be varieties amongst
them, in character, mind, and ecclesiastical preference; but by the very choice of His words He meant us to infer that it would be so.  The unity on which He set His heart was not a uniformity.

(2) But with variety there may be the truest unity.–There is variety in the human body–from eyelash to foot, from heart to blood-disc, from brain to quivering nerve-fibre; yet, in all this variety, each one is conscious of an indivisible unity.  There is variety in the tree: the giant arms that wrestle with the storm, the far-spreading roots that moor it to the soil, the myriad leaves in which the wind makes music, the cones or nuts which it flings upon the forest floor; yet for all this it is one.  There is a variety in the Bible: variety of authorship–king, prophet, priest, herdsman, and fisherman, scholar, sage, and saint; variety of style–prose, poetry, psalmody, argument, appeal; variety of age–from the days of Moses to those of John, the beloved apostle, writing amid the persecutions of the empire; yet for all this there is a oneness in the Bible which no mere binding could give.  So with the Church of Christ: there may be, there must be infinite varieties and shades of thought and work.  Some will prefer the methods of Wesley, others the freedom of Congregationalism.  Some will pray most naturally through the venerable words of a Liturgy, others in the deep silence of a Friends’ Meeting.  Some will thrive best beneath the crozier of the Bishop, others in the plain barracks of the Salvation Army; but, notwithstanding all this variety, there may be a deep spiritual unity.  Many folds, but one flock; many regiments, but one army; many stones, but one breast-plate.  “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”