²¹ “… that they may all be one; even 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 sent Me.”

The most intimate conversation between God the Son and God the Father, when it turns to His followers, centers on Unity. From a human perspective, we can rejoin, “Man, did He ever call that one right!” Of all the things concerning us that He could have prayed, He knew that unity would be the most difficult for His followers to attain. The history of the Church bears testimony to this. Even in the Upper Room, that unity was threatened when the disciples bickered about who was the greatest among them (Luke 22:24).

Our unity as disciples of Christ is to be rooted in the unity of the Father and Son. They worked in perfect harmony. There was no resisting authority of the Father over the Son. No conflict of the wills. To be sure, Jesus wrestled three times when He, prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me…” but each time He concluded, “… yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Mt 26:39-44). The struggle of the human flesh gave way to the divine purpose.

It is not as though Jesus asked three times like Paul did, and God said “No.”. There is nothing in this passage about God refusing His request, because in the end Jesus did not ask that the cup be removed, but with each of the three wrestlings, He won the temptation against self-will and submitted to what He knew was the Father’s will.

In fact, Scripture makes it clear about Jesus’ intent. The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 40:7-8 twice and applies it to Jesus, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart” (Ps 40:7–8, see Hebrews 10:7, 9). Jesus made this clear on a number of occasions in His teaching, that He and the Father “are one.” (John 10:30, 17:11).

Some, however, may insist that Jesus’ will was different than the Father’s, and thus there was disunity – because Jesus said, “not as I will, but as You will.” We respond, how could God convey the real experience of Jesus’ being tempted? Human language is employed to describe the divine-human anomaly of the incarnation, God in the flesh. And nowhere else do we see the tension of God inserting Himself into the human experience than at the point of Jesus’ temptation. The temptation of the flesh toward self-preservation (among other things) was superseded by Jesus’ desire to do the Father’s will. Unity was proved.

Lord, Your unity encourages me that unity among Christians is possible.