Jesus prays for his believers’ unity.

John 17.20-23.

In his teachings after the Last Supper, Jesus gave his students a new command—to love one another— Jn 13.34 and said his students would be identified by their love for one another. Jn 13.35

Of course, Christians nowadays insist they’re to be identified by their public declarations that they’re Christian. And insist we should take their word for it entirely on their say-so. Doesn’t matter how fleshly they are. Doesn’t matter how much they don’t love one another. If you go to a different church than they do—even in the same denomination!—they don’t know you’re Christian; they won’t take your say-so; if you voted for the other party or have the wrong skin color, they presume your “Christianity” has gotta be somehow irredeemably corrupt. Therefore they don’t have to love you. Not that they follow Jesus’s command anyway, but if you ever call them on it, this is their excuse for ignoring it.

It utterly ignores the spirit of Jesus’s John 17 prayer, in which he straight-up tells the Father he wants those who believe in him to be one. He wants unity among us. He wants us to be so unified, we’re like Jesus and the Father—who are one being. (In three persons, but still, one being.) So unified, so unbreakable, no politician should be able to turn one Christian against another, because we’re one.

Sadly, that doesn’t happen. Partisan Christians regularly violate the unity Jesus wants to see in his followers. So do greedy Christians, horny Christians, and every kind of exceptionalist Christian who figure they get grace, but nobody else does.

We need to fight this tendency in ourselves, and we do it by praying for unity like Jesus does.

John 17.20-23 KWL

20“I ask not only about these students,

but also about believers,

because of their message to me:

21So they all might be one

just as you,¹ Father, are with me,

and I with you.¹

So they might also be with us.

So the world might believe you¹ send me.

22The glory you¹ gave me,

I give them,

so they might be one

just as we are one.

23I with you¹

and you¹ with me,

so they might be perfected as one;

so the world might know you¹ send me

and you¹ love them

just as you¹ love me.”

The reason people doubt Christianity is because we’re so unlike Christ Jesus and his intentions. Too few of us strive to love like he does; too few of us try to love fellow Christians indiscriminately, and use that love to overcome the inevitable disagreements we’ll have from time to time. Skeptics rightly point out if Jesus were living and active among his people, we wouldn’t see anything like the strife and sin and antagonism we see pouring out of the American church. They’re absolutely right. But if we want Jesus to be living and active among us, we gotta follow him. And pray for unity like he does.

Disunity, and proud of it.

In the past half-decade since the COVID-19 pandemic, what we’ve instead seen is more and more disunity in the American church. And I’m not even talking about churches which fight other churches; I don’t know whether more of them are fighting one another than usual. Instead I’m talking about Christians who stopped going to church at all. I do know those numbers have been steadily going up.

There are many reasons why Christians aren’t going to church anymore, and I’ve started writing about some of them. But many of those reasons come down to disunity: They can’t agree with the things their churches teach; they don’t care to switch to another church because they can’t agree with the things those churches teach. And they don’t love their fellow Christians enough to agree to disagree, and go spend time with them regardless. Jesus’s desire for our unity is not their priority. Their own comfort is.

They justify it by condemning the churches for wrongdoing. And okay, fair, the churches have been doing many things wrong. (Since when is that new?) But rather than going about it the right way, and going to the church leadership, or speaking up in church, about the wrongdoing… they just abandoned church, and left ’em to destroy themselves. It’d be one thing if they did speak up, and got pushed out of that church for it, but they didn’t bother. That ain’t love.

Once they’ve figured out how to justify it, they’ll justify it—proudly!—to anyone who asks. “I don’t do church anymore, because the churches are just so [WHATEVER TRESPASS WILL DO]. It’s so much better for my spirit if I just worship alone, with my family, on my own.” Yeah, but it’s not. We can’t obey the command to “love one another” when we’re on our own. Iron can’t sharpen iron Pr 27.17 when we stay away from any other iron. We can’t pray together, learn together, do sacraments together, be the Holy Spirit’s temple together. We violate the creeds which say we believe in the communion of saints: We become heretic. Heresy isn’t better for our spirits!

Striving to be one with fellow Christians, no matter how individual or unique we all are, is better for our spirits. It shows us how to practice God’s love, and really learn who God is through doing so. It teaches us to love people despite their flaws, and shows us people can love and accept us despite our own flaws. It teaches us to bear all things and lift one another up. It shows us how to pray for ’em better.

Jesus’s unity with his Father is part of who he, and the trinity, essentially is. The more we work on our unity with fellow Christians, the better we understand Jesus’s relationship with his Father—so, the better we understand Jesus. The better we can really understand why he prayed this prayer, and why we oughta pray for unity too.