Prophets and Unity Ps 133; Eph 4:1-6; John 17:1-26
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSG5tETkufY
Introduction
Over the last two weeks I have made some remarks about past Great Awakenings. Great they were, but perfect, in the sense Jesus prayed for in John 17:23, they were not. Most famously at the start of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther from Germany met with Ulrich Zwingli from Switzerland in an attempt to form a consensus, they failed, and there are now more than 30.000 denominations across the world. In the great eighteenth century Evangelical revival in the United Kingdom John Wesley and George Whitefield divided over matters of doctrine and could no longer work together. Disunity has everywhere slowed the progress of the gospel and the discipling of the nations.
Some years ago, I felt very called of the Lord to work on the prayerful unity of the Church in Perth and beyond (show my thick file). I made of point of visiting the pastors of all the larger churches, as well as speaking with many from smaller congregations. Virtually everyone agreed that it was good and right to work together, but in practice few made the commitment. Why is it so hard to live out the sort of unity that Jesus prayed for and how does this relate to the prophetic message?
Seeing Sacrifice
One of the favourite unity texts in scripture is Psalm 133. This is a wonderful psalm that extolls the delightfulness of brothers and sisters “dwelling together in unity” and ends with a marvellous promise, “ For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.” The location of this joyful unity was originally the temple, but for us it is our gathering as a heavenly body around the Lamb of God in the heavenly places (Heb 12:22-24). This is an exciting promise but observing the failure of the people of God to live it out has moved me to look for a deeper dimension to this psalm. I have never heard anyone else teach what I am about to say, but when you hear my interpretation it is incredibly obvious.
At the centre of the psalm these words describe the precious spiritual unity of God’s people. “It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes!” (v.2). The priestly anointing is described in Exodus as holy and exclusive, if anyone else made it for any other purpose than to anoint the high priest the penalty was death (Ex 30:25-38). The oil was a blend but gave off a single beautiful fragrance reminding us of 2 Corinthians 2:14, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” But the real question which no-one seems to ask is, “For what reason was Aaron anointed?”; to offer sacrifice to cover the sins of the people (Heb 5:1). This is ultimately the ministry of Christ, who is uniquely both priest and victim. In other words, the beauty of unity must proceed from the cross. An examination of John 17 will confirm this cross-centred vision of oneness.
Which Glory? Which Oneness?
Whilst John 17 is beloved of all who desire to see the manifest unity of the Church, the scope and intensity of Jesus’ prayer is rarely appreciated. Christ prays, and his prayers are always answered (John 11:41-42), that we may be one “as” he and the Father are one (17:11, 21-22), he states we are not of the world “as” he is not of the world (17:14, 16), he sends us into the world, “as” the Father sent him into the world (17:18), and says his disciples are loved “as” the Father loves the Son (17:23). This means that through Jesus’ intercessions we are included in the eternal unity glory and love of the divine life (2 Pet 1:4). Unbelievable!
Answers to how this can happen flow from what Jesus states at the start of the chapter. ““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 finished 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.” (John 17:1-5). A little later the Lord explains that the glory of which he speaks is the cause of our unity, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17: 22).
Jesus is speaking prophetically of the honour bestowed in him by the Father for having “finished the work” “given” (not simply “assigned”) him on earth. The word translated “finished” appears again in John at the climax of the cross when Jesus cries out triumphantly, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It is the perfecting power of the atoning work to bring “many sins to glory” (Heb 2:10) which is the Father’s gift to the Son and the means by which we become “perfectly one” (John 17:23). For a long time the language of God’s perfection caused me problems. So much so that my doctorate was an (misguided) example of what is called “perfect being” theology. Then one day I had a revelation, based on Matthew 5:43-48, that the Father’s perfection through Jesus is the way in which he loves his enemies (cf. 1 Tim 1:16). This powerful perfection is outworked out in the way God deals with “flesh”.
In John 17 Christ claims he has been “given authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him”. What though is “flesh”? In John 1:14, “flesh” is what the eternal Word of God became in Jesus of Nazareth, in John 3:6 flesh “only gives birth to flesh”, the opposite of “S/spirit”, in John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all/useless.” (John 6:63). Jesus was given power over all flesh through becoming flesh, resisting its tempting lure to self-satisfaction, and most of all, to quote Romans 8:3, by coming “in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3). On the cross the faithful Son of God submitted himself to the full power of our rebellious nature yet remained obedient to the Father. That’s how he attained “authority over all flesh”.
The oneness of God into which Jesus calls us is not some abstract metaphysical substance but the story of the Lamb pinnacled in the cross where the will of the Father, the Son and the Spirit perfectly cohere under the most violent anti-God circumstances. It is vain imagining to think we can get behind the story of Jesus to something more ultimate in God’s original intention for the universe. The only knowable, in the sense of, “that they know you [= know intimately/covenantally cf. Amos 3:2], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3) divine oneness, is that of God for us in his suffering Son.
A key to mystery of the revelation of the glory of God through the humanity of Jesus is expounded earlier in John. After repeatedly using a divine title of himself, “I am he” (John 8:24, 28 cf. Isa 43:10), Jesus describes his perfection submission to the Father (John 8:28-30). The Son of God treats the Father as deserving of eternal glory (cf. John 17:5) by putting him in first place in going to the cross. Even as the Father will magnify Jesus to the position of pre-eminence in the universe by raising him form the dead and lifting him to heaven (Eph 1:20-21; Phil 2:9-11). Jesus totally annihilates the power of our fallen flesh by refusing in the slightest degree to turn away from the way of the cross (Matt 16:21-23; 27:40-44). This is the one glory of God for which the Son had been eternally prepared in the love of the Father (John 17:5; Rev 13:8). The eternal glory of God manifest in the cross has destroyed sin’s self-glorification and proved itself to be the substance of the love and unity of the Trinity. The Son has always thought of the Father before himself, the Father has prioritised the Son and the Spirit honoured them both. No wonder Paul exclaims, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal 6:14). So much for Paul, but what about us, why do we find “maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3) so difficult?
Unity in the Church
Let me pose a few probing questions. After the book of Revelation was circulated across the Roman province of Asia, do you think its 7 churches started praying for each other? Jesus was certainly praying for them! Wherever you go to church, are you used to hearing other local churches, especially of different denominations, prayed for? The rarity of such things makes it so memorable that the pastors in Toowoomba raised money to keep a struggling fellowship in their city going, and how a larger church in Perth helped fund a youth ministry in a smaller local assembly of a different denomination. To illustrate that it is still humanly possible to live out the unity, love and mission characteristic of the one church early in Acts (2:42-47; 4:32-37) let me use a famous example.
Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf set up a Christian community established a community for refugees from religious persecution in Moravia in the 1720’s; Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists and Catholics were all present. And they all argued until the appalled Count visited each of the adults pleading for unity, love and repentance and drew up a covenant calling them to a “brotherly agreement” ‘to seek out and emphasise the points in which they agreed,’ rather than stressing their differences. On 12th May 1727, they all signed this agreement to dedicate their lives to Christ. They gave themselves afresh to God and promised to bury their disputes for ever. Many set aside certain times for continued earnest prayer. Then in August 1727 the community experienced a “baptism of the Holy Spirit” immersing them in forgiving love. The result was a 24/7 prayer meeting that lasted over 100 years that supported the first large scale Protestant missionary movement. Within 2 decades more than 70 missionaries from a community of fewer than 600 went to remote and difficult realms, the Caribbean, North and South America, the Arctic, Africa, and the Far East. The Moravians were the first to send unordained people, the first Protestants to go to slaves, and the first to preach Christ in many countries. The Moravian revival was an answer to the prayers of Jesus for the glory, love and unity of the Godhead to be poured out on the Church. “that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:23).
The Cost of Unity
The Lord started to speak to me in an unusual way two nights ago. Waking at 2:21 a.m. I knew this referred to Psalm 22:1, the cry of dereliction which Christ called out on the cross (Mark 15:34), then he started to give insight into a series of events in my life, until 3:21 a.m. This refers to Acts 3:21, the time of “the restoration of all things” i.e. the completion of God’s Plan to reunify all creation (cf. Matt 19:28; Eph 1:10). The events the Lord took me through, starting from when I was about 4, all had to do with unjust punishment from male authority figures who as “fathers” should have known better. One I can recount was when I raised concern with an Anglican priest in Brisbane about disunity in our local church, he remarked, in a way which simply shocked me, the only time I can recall feeling my stomach dropping, “the disunity is in you”. But let me recount an even more difficult need to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:2) at the Coptic Orthodox monastery at Wadi El Natrun in the desert outside Cairo.
I was standing in front of an extraordinary tenth century work of art known as The Door of Prophecies Door Prophecies composed of seven inlaid wooden panels depicting the ages up to the return of Christ. The sixth era, surely the one we inhabit, is filled with small divided crosses in different forms representing the multitude and disorder of doctrines and beliefs in the Church. The seventh and last panel hints at the very End Times with a single radiating cross filling everything and predicting the final Unity of the Christian faith. Given this background what happened came as a great shock.
I asked an English-speaking monk about the panel and he made a brief comment about the nature of its interpretation, which was very different from what I had read on the internet. Being excited by the possibilities of insight I sensed into what he said I innocently passed some comments to our group about the interpretation of symbolism in the book of Revelation. At which point the monk said something in Arabic to our guide turned his back on us and walked away. When I inquired of our guide what was said I received a very muted response that the monk had made comments about Western ways of thinking. I really felt hurt, rejected, misunderstood, alienated, and treated as a lesser Christian from a lesser part of the church. I could have wallowed there in my pain, but I prayed for the determined strength to follow after this man and to find a way of honouring him before we left the monastery. Anything less than this would have been to deny the victory of the great cross before which I stood. I did follow him and did find a way to honour him and his Church. Then a few days ago the Lord explained something at a level I had never seen before. Following the monk to make peace, I was actually following him (Jesus) on the way to the cross. Submitting in love to a brother or sister fulfils this command, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil 2:3)
Going back to what the Lord was showing me between 2.21 and 3.21 was that all these unjust punishments in my life were ordained within the sovereign wisdom of the Father because prophets need to understand what it is like to be excluded from the oneness/unity of their natural communities. Whether this is the people of Israel or one’s own family of origin. Through many unjust rejections prophets come to understand why unity is such a hard thing to manifest; it’s because the call to walk in the way of the cross is so difficult.
Jesus’ own cross experience on our behalf was the very opposite of the natural love, glory and oneness of the Godhead. It was the opposite of, “maintaining the unity of he Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:2). The disruption and disintegration of the cross was Christ enduring what we all ultimately deserved, to “suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,” (2 Thess 1:9).
Conclusion
A great theologian rightly said that the divisions in the Church are a disaster for the world (Berkouwer). The only way we can sustain the implied spiritual-cultural superiorities that sustain denominations and movements, whether they are called Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Adventist, Pentecostal, organic, house-church, etc. etc., is to not listen to what Jesus is praying today as he keeps interceding for the oneness of his Bride. The only way out of self-centredness is the power of the cross.
Only in Jesus is a true “dying to self” possible so that the eternal glory of God (cf. 1 Pet 1:19-20; Rev 13:7) comes upon us. The apostle John stood near the cross (John 19:26-27) and so commands us, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16 cf. Phil 2:5ff.). Let’s pray that the Spirit move us to follow Jesus on his way to the cross in the service of others. Then we will be baptised into the love, glory and unity for which our Saviour prayed, and died.
“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (Rom 15:5-7)