Complete Unity
John • Week 13
In John 17, Jesus prays for the future, global Church. His prayer is for complete unity. And in our culture of division, unity seems so very unlikely. But Adam Barnett reminds us that our unity isn't based on our ideas or methods, but on the transferring of the unity of God, Son, and Spirit into our very midst. Unity is attainable with love as the linchpin.
MESSAGE NOTES
Complete Unity
John | Week 13
August 9, 2020 | Adam Barnett
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John 17:3 NIV
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
1 John 5:11-12 NIV
And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
“The disciples were now entrusted with a new task. This involves inward purification. This purification is the work of the Holy Spirit. The very message which they are to proclaim will exercise its sanctifying effect on them. That message is the continuation of his message; their mission in the world is the extension of his mission.” // Frederick Bruce
John 17:20–23 NIV
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that 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. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Is unity even possible?
John 17:24 NIV
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
John 17:25–26 NIV
Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
“In this unbelieving world...Jesus goes forward. His disciples, soon to be scattered and shaken, would also go forward, infused with the Holy Spirit, united in loyalty, sure of God’s love in Christ, with a gleam of glory in their hearts, and aware of the unfailing presence of the living Christ among them. In them, and upon us as well, the Lord’s own prayer is being constantly fulfilled.” // R. E. White