²³ I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

“Them” includes us today. Jesus’ prayer in the Upper Room transcends future history, extending to all those who believe the message of Christ as communicated through the apostles (vs. 20). We agree with Andreas Kostenberger, “Jesus’ concern for His followers’ unity is His greatest burden as His earthly mission draws to a close, and it pervades this entire section. Their unity, in turn, is to be rooted in Jesus’ own unity with the Father.” This unity, along with love, are essentials to carrying on the mission of Jesus Christ after He is physically gone.

Today’s church has been caught up in numerical growth strategies, leadership and management principles, and all kinds of “this is how we do it, you should do it this way as well” techniques. It is amazing that Jesus did not leave any of that sort of teaching for His apostles, despite commissioning them to lead the largest and greatest enterprise the world has every known. The core strategy is love and unity. This is how the world will recognize Christ!

So rather than needless redundancy, Jesus emphasizes the need for unity and love repeatedly in this final prayer of the Upper Room. Their unity draws from the unity of the Son with the Father, as described by “You in Me.” In the same way as the Father is “in” the Son, the Son is “in” us. The Father loves us in the same way as the Father loves the Son. We are invited into the very inner circle of the Trinity. There is no greater intimacy with God than this, and we are all invited to enjoy and experience that kind of relationship with Him.

Such unity is essential to our witness in the world. The church has suffered from giving an unclear message because of the in-squabbling of Christians over the centuries. To be sure, sin interferes with the unity Jesus prayed for. Pride, erroneous doctrines and sectarianism have been a plague. This is not to say that error should be ignored or minimized, but we should grieve for the disunity. We need to preach Christ and the truth all the more, the real basis of unity. We must never settle for superficial unity, which ultimately leads to apostasy. We must continue to proclaim Jesus Christ as God and Lord and the absolute need for His sacrificial death on the cross which demonstrates the perfect love of God for us sinners. We can never give way to the sentiments of humanized religions that assume the goodness of humans and the possibility of their being able to reach God on their own merits. God’s grace is based in truth, and that is what speaks of God’s perfect love and that is what brings true unity in Christ.

Lord, I join Jesus in praying for unity in truth and love.