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UNITY

Eric Burr

The verses read will show that I would like to say a word about unity not by taking up conditions among us and proposing remedies for specific things but in relation to the depth of unity of which Jesus speaks in these chapters.

We would all be concerned, I am sure, that there should be unity among the people of God. One of the most sorrowful aspects of the present day is that we are surrounded by believers and yet are unable to work out with them the unity which is in the divine thought. This should be a concern to us and we might be more before the Lord in relation to it. We need our view broad as to what divine interests on the earth are. Mr Darby spoke of his 'old song': our feet in the narrow path but our heart as wide as God's. One may think of that expression in relation to humanity in general, but especially in relation to the people of God, for, as I say we are surrounded by believers with whom sadly at the present time we do not have the experience of oneness. Yet that is the divine thought.

John's presentation of this is not quite the same as Paul's. Paul's unity is according to one body and by the one Spirit, and it is clear from the frequency with which he uses the expression 'one Spirit' that unity amongst the people of God rests in Paul's mind on what is corporate, that is, there is an entity here formed in the power of the Spirit, corporately one, which one can look at and see as a united entity. Hence Paul dwells a great deal on the assembly, an entity which he sees as corresponding to what Jesus said to him when He appeared to him in Acts 9: ''why dost thou persecute me?" (v 4). Paul always had in mind unity as expressed in a corporate entity. That is not to say that he did not have in mind unity as bearing on individuals, but the trend of his thoughts is that there is unity in a corporate entity, which is the church.

John's view of oneness is not expressed in quite the same way. While Jesus speaks in the verses which I read in chapter 10 of "one flock, one shepherd", and while it has been taught that John's 'flock' is very much the same thought as Paul's 'body', it seems to me that John has very much more in mind unity amongst the individuals who form the company. You may well say that that is part and parcel of Paul's view of unity and so it is, but it would exercise us if we looked at things from John's point of view and understood that the unity is of individuals - even the individuals available to us - but countless others who, as Jesus speaks in John's gospel, form a oneness. The distinction may appear to be small, but if things are presented to us as bearing upon us individually, they are calculated to have more effect. There is well developed amongst us absorption in what is collective or corporate, perhaps a little to the expense of what is individual; but unless what is individual is reinforced among us, what is collective will eventually fail. I speak, of course, with no derogation from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, but the work of God here at the present time is found and expressed in individuals who then make up a company. I draw on these scriptures in John because they suggest to me that the idea of oneness of which Jesus speaks has a depth which it requires peculiar power from the Spirit to enter into.

John begins very simply. The doctrinal aspects of the first part of John 10 I for the moment take for granted. We have moved together over many years and there are aspects of the Scripture which are more or less common coin to everybody. It would be generally understood - and the young people as they grow up would understand - that when Jesus speaks in this chapter, He begins with what corresponds to the nation of Israel to whom in particular He had come. As was quoted in the reading, "He came to his own, and his own received him not", John 1: 11. But as Jesus develops what He is saying He speaks of "other sheep which are not of this fold: those also I must bring", implying that there would be those outside the Jewish fold whom He would bring into the flock, "and there shall be one flock, one shepherd". In fact Jesus hardly refers to the flock until He refers to the other sheep as well. In the early part of the chapter He referred to the sheep and the fold, but now He refers to the flock, and that is in the light of the fact that He would have others than those of the Jewish nation. The flock as He thus speaks - "and there shall be one flock, one shepherd" - corresponds with the second chapter of Ephesians in which the middle wall of partition is broken down and there is then a united company presented and available to the Father, especially for the worship of the Father. Here Jesus brings before His disciples that there shall be one flock. That is a thought that should lay hold of us profoundly, but securely, that Jesus is not just speaking of a number of individuals - although He is speaking of individuals - nor quite speaking of a corporate entity, but He is speaking of the collectivity of the individuals whom He is going to secure. His point is that there should be one flock. He does not imply that there had previously been two shepherds and in future there would be one but that there should be one Shepherd over them (that expression comes in the Old Testament in relation to Israel - that there should be one shepherd over them when the sticks are united into one again (see Ezek 37: 24)) - one flock, one Shepherd, and all the sheep, therefore, have the experience, under His guidance and His leading, of being connected with and united to Him. The first thing that Jesus would have us arrive at is that there is one flock and one Shepherd.

I need not speak of how difficult it is and how unsuited to the idea of a flock it would be if that flock were to be divided. It has often been pointed out that John's sheep are not lost and they do not go astray: therefore the flock cannot be looked at otherwise than as complete and held together under the power of one Shepherd. It is to be learned from this too, that it is the Shepherd who holds the flock together. The flock does not hold itself together, although there is power amongst the people of God as having the Spirit, and especially, according to Paul's teaching, to hold themselves together in the power of one Spirit. In John's presentation they are held together by their attachment to the one Shepherd. Jesus thus introduces us all to the idea of unity amongst those who belong to Him.

He goes on in this chapter, however, to speak further about the sheep. The people did not understand what He was saying and He speaks about laying down His life and laying it down of Himself, and the Jews raise their contentious questions; but He goes on to say, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand" (v 28). He goes on to speak about the Father, and it is especially in relation to unity, oneness, in connection with the Father that I would like to speak; and as I speak I seek to explore these scriptures. Things come to us as we speak to the brethren in the presence of the activity of the Spirit of God which deepen our understanding even as we proceed in relation to the scriptures that we may have before us.

He says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them life eternal" - I will not dwell at the present time on what eternal life is - "and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can seize out of the hand of my Father. I and the Father are one". It seems to me that Jesus is leading the disciples - I suppose especially - but leading those who in our own day are in the current of His thoughts, into the vital truth of the unity between Himself and the Father. That is an aspect of unity which, it seems to me, the scriptures in John 17 show that we may be drawn into - unity of the highest level. The sheep are led into eternal life, but they are led into the knowledge of the unity between the Father and the Son. It is something very profound that there was a Man here whom they spoke of as the carpenter - "Is not this the carpenter...?", Mark 6: 3, who cast out demons and was recognised as doing that, but when He spoke about Himself as coming from the Father and bound up with the Father, produced strong reactions against Him as the very thought was rejected that there could be One here as a man who was totally bound up with God Himself, known as the Father. The Lord is leading the sheep in that direction of that knowledge, leading them to understand the integrity of His relationship with the Father Himself and the blessed fulness of the fact that, if He and the Father are one, then Jesus is the perfect expression of what the Father is. There is in that a manifestation of a oneness which we need the Holy Spirit to penetrate into at all, One here in the person of a Man who could speak of Himself as being one with the Father, and God the Father being perfectly presented in Him here in manhood as Jesus.

The question therefore for us is whether we have consciously been led by Jesus Himself as the Good Shepherd into the knowledge of His relationships with the Father so that we may enter into something of the depth of the revelation of God which has come out as a result of the incarnation. These things are very deep, but it may be that the understanding of eternal life is connected with the knowledge of the unity between the Father and the Son in that there is a unity which can never be intruded upon. I do not speak at the present time of the period on the cross when He was forsaken by God, at the end of which He commended His spirit to the Father, because we know the purpose of those particular three hours of His life on earth, but, that apart, there was a Man here who was so bound up with the Father that He could say, "I and the Father are one". And when one of His disciples asks Him in the blessed simplicity of relationships with Himself which comes out in chapter 14 "Lord, shew us the Father and it suffices us" (v 8) He says, "Am I so long a time with you, and thou hast not known me, Philip? He that has seen me has seen the Father" (v 9). There is therefore presented to us in the Person of Jesus and in His teaching, His ministry, and in what He was as manifested amongst His own, that perfect representation of the Father such that, if you looked at Him, you would see the Father. I think that you cannot get a closer experience of unity than that. To have seen Him and know you were seeing Another - the perfect expression of the Father in Jesus - seems to me to be the highest experience of unity that there can be.

The question is whether our own standards of unity reach to that level, or whether we do not characteristically seek to arrive at unity by a process of adjustment of this and that and taking up this and that, rather than approaching it in John's way and seeing that there has been a perfect revelation of unity into which we may be drawn. That seems to me to be the nature of the teaching of Jesus, of His speaking to the Father in chapter 17.

These things, as I say, are profound. How much one wishes - at least I wish for myself - that one could enter more deeply into some of the simpler expressions in the Bible. There are some things which are on the surface readily to be entered into and understood, for instance once you have had the consciousness that you were a sinner ''that Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture", 1 Cor 15: 3. You can understand perhaps that He was buried; the Scriptures tell you that. In 1 Corinthians 15 there is no elaboration of that. "And that He was raised the third day, according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve". Then He appeared to a number, and then, Paul says, "he appeared to me also". You can perhaps understand these things because of the simplicity with which they are presented in the scripture itself. But there are other things presented in very simple language which are the most profound things that have ever been said. "I and the Father are one", has on its surface an extreme simplicity: underneath it has the most profound depths, that God has been revealed in the Person of a Man.

Now Jesus speaking to the Father in John 17 says, "And I am no longer in the world" - that is, He is leaving the world according to chapter 13 and going to the Father - "And I am no longer in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee". Then He says, "Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we". The maintenance of unity amongst the disciples immediately, but amongst ourselves (those who believe on Him through their word) is committed by Jesus to the Father. That is something very blessed. It is not something in John 17 that is arrived at administratively. It is not even something which on the face of the scripture is arrived at by the operations of the Holy Spirit. It is arrived at by the direct care of the Father, that He would keep them in His own name: "Keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we". It would be clear that the objective in the mind of Jesus in this chapter is that His people should be one here as long as they are here. His intention in relation to His own is that there should be unity. But in this verse He commits the maintenance of that unity to the Father. He says, "keep them". The structure of that verse is not altogether easy to understand. If it said, 'Keep them whom thou hast given me in thy name', that would be more easily understood. But "keep them in thy name which thou hast given me" - as if it is the Father's name which has been given to Jesus - is not as easily understood as if the verse was the other way round. Nevertheless Jesus commits the unity of His own to the Father. I find that very blessed because we all have access to the Father. The underlying truth of the verse in Ephesians 2 - "For through him we have both access by one Spirit to the Father" (v 18) - is the unity of the people of God, both Jew and Gentile who have been formed into one body by the power of the Holy Spirit and have access to the Father by the same means. But the Father, in keeping the people that He had given to Jesus, is to keep them all the time that the Lord is absent.

The question for us is how far we apprehend that the Father is watching over us and caring for us and keeping us for that very purpose. We are accustomed to turning to the Father for our support and provision and maintenance, generally being looked after in the circumstances in which we are in the world; and we turn to the Father if we have some special need and know that the Father Himself cares about us. But one aspect of the Father's service is to keep the people that He had given to Jesus in unity. I ask whether we have experienced the Father doing that with us. We can make the most precious truths doctrinal but what is vital and what will matter in the end is the experience of them. Doctrine codifies experience, but what is most important for the maintenance of Christian life is the experience of Christian life: it is not maintained by doctrine. Doctrine can have a certain deadness. It has often been said that it is like the banks of the river, but the river flows on; the banks are still there, the doctrine is still there, but the river flows on. What I would like to be in myself and what I think all the saints would like to be in is the flow of the river, kept, of course, in its right channels by right doctrine, but if meetings are purely about doctrine they can very quickly become intellectual and be exposed to the operations of the mind of man. Have we the experience of the Father keeping us in Christ's name? Have we the experience of the Father keeping us in order that we may be maintained as one? That is one of the principal things which Jesus in this chapter asked the Father to do.

These things suggest to me that there is opportunity for us, if at any time we feel that unity is lacking between you and me, between the saints who make up the local company, between the people of God more widely, to pray to the Father that He would exercise His keeping power amongst us or on me or on you, in order that unity may be maintained. Even in recent times, have our prayers not been more for correctness in administration than for the Father's operations to keep the saints in unity together? Would it not be better to be kept in unity by the Father's working upon me than by administration? I would rather be the subject of the Father's work than of a care meeting. I would rather be kept as the result of the prayers of my brethren in the unity which Jesus speaks of here, they having prayed to the Father for the maintenance of that unity, than by having an extra care meeting or an extra meeting of assembly character - although sometimes they are needed - but kept in the power of unity because someone had prayed to the Father that He would keep them whom He had given to Jesus in His own name that they may be one.

As we go on in the chapter we have, “that they may be one as we". That goes back to what we were speaking about in chapter 10: “that they may be one as we": "I and the Father are one". I wonder how frequent, how rare, is the experience among us of that quality of unity which existed between the Father and the Son in manhood. Is it common? Is it known? Is it known in every locality? Is it known between every brother and brother and sister and sister, between brother and sister in right relationships? Divine standards are maintained in the knowledge of divine Persons and in the maintenance of what that knowledge brings amongst us and brings us into. We speak about being spiritual, and there is the need for much more spirituality in handling relationships among the brethren than is commonly the case. One appreciates how much administration is needed, but it is subsidiary to the maintenance of the texture of Christian life in the Christian company.

Lower down in the chapter Jesus says, "And I do not demand for these only, but also for those who believe on me through their word; that they may be all one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us...", v 20, 21. I would like to understand that better: “that they also may be one in us." I do not think the explanation of those words of Jesus can be arrived at by administration. If there was ministry that would help us into it, few things would be more welcome. But what is it to be "one in us"? One may perhaps refer to the opening of the first epistle to the Thessalonians: “the assembly of Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ", and you have some suggestion there that the Thessalonians would know what it was to be "one in us". It suggests to me the idea of “the bundle of the living", that there is the Father, and Jesus and you and me and the people of God and local companies all bound up with that living bond round them, and all held together “that they also may be one in us."

We have some apprehension, I think, of what it is to be in Christ or in the Lord or in Christ Jesus. We have perhaps less understanding of what it is to be in God the Father. What about "one in us"? That is to say, the bond between the Father and the Son embraces yourself and myself and our local companies and the people of God generally, all bound up together in an unbreakable intimacy and power which is going to be a testimony to the world. Have we sought to maintain unity in other ways? There is no room for opinions in this: there is no room for trying to persuade people to think about unity this way or that way. That may come into Paul's ministry but we are quite justified in looking at the ministry that the Lord has given through one servant as distinct from what He has given through another, united though these ministries will be in the end because they all stem from Christ. But John's presentation is that we are bound up with the Father and the Son in the intimacy in which they are bound together and that is intended to be the bond in which we stand together. We may ask ourselves, is that our experience? We would feel very much more than we often do the departure of anybody from the current experience of those bonds. I am not saying that the bonds would not be there. There must be discipline, but the expression, the feeling, that you could no longer extend the right hand of fellowship to somebody to whom you had once extended it is intended to be very deep in our spirits. They have not lost their place in Christ, they have not lost eternal salvation, but what they have lost is some present experience of this bundle of the living in which there are the Father and the Son and there are the people of God, looked at individually, all bound up in the bundle of the living, ''that they also may be one in us."

I believe this is very deep indeed, that there should be people standing in this bond before the Father, entering into the unity between Himself and His Son and those whom He has given to Him, ''that they also may be one in us." It lifts the idea of unity amongst us far above what we touch in care meetings, necessary though they are. It takes the question of our unity into the level of the service of God, where the unity of the people of God is primarily experienced. One would long for unity of opinion in administrative matters. It is sorrowful that hardly any matter has to arise but there may be nearly as many opinions about it as there are brethren involved in it, but the real idea of Christian unity is found in the service of God, and it is in that that you get the saints being "one in us". If that is touched, the service of God proceeds in a much more living and powerful way, not just in the recitation of things that have been said for years but in something that is springing freshly from the experience of what our relations with divine Persons themselves are.

He says, ''that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." The world will never understand that there are people who are one in the Father and the Son, but what the world can see is the united state of a company, held in the power of divine bonds which are unbreakable. Our experience over many years has been such that the testimony to the world is much more that Christian companies can break up than it is that Christian companies cohere. We should feel the sorrow of that, beloved. The world can mock and says, Well, you people never get on together for five minutes. These things are a condemnation of what may be the assertion of personal opinions over the present power of our bonds with divine Persons.

It says, ''that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one." And if that glory has been given to each, then they cannot but be one. "And the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one." In this chapter there is only one standard of unity and it does not rest on opinion. It rests on our relationships with the beloved Son of the Father and with the Father Himself. And He says, "I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one..." Is that process going on among us? Sorrows come: they come into localities and we feel them. Some such sorrows spring from personal opinions and from personal offence, things like that. Should a believer be offended by what someone else says? Who has ever exhausted forgiving somebody fourhundred-and-ninety times in a day? Have you ever tried it? It is a tragedy that division comes into places on account of opinions and on account of personal offence and things which touch sensibilities which belong to the first man when what Is in the divine mind is that the standard of unity is our bond with the Father and the Son. And they will be "perfected into one".

The service tomorrow morning, if the Lord leaves us here, will be contributory to that perfecting. It will be taking us further into the experience of being "perfected into one". Will the experience of unity with divine Persons be advanced again? That is the prime occasion on which unity amongst the people of God is deepened. Readings may help: care meetings may help: 'assembly meetings' may be necessary, and I do underline that sometimes assembly meetings are necessary. They are not to be shirked: they may be necessary. But the unity and its perfecting takes place, I think, as the Lord manifests Himself amongst His own and draws us to Himself and into the bond between Himself and the Father and we become deepened in these things. "And that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." Think how blessed that is. Is that experienced, beloved? Is that just scripture? Is it just something that we have in print between leather covers? Is that all it is? Or have we the actual experience ourselves, leaving aside the question of testimony to the world, that the Father loves us as He loved Christ? The end of this chapter is "that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them" and there you have the clue to that unity between the Father and the Son and the people of God, all bound up and set out in the reality of relationships into which we are drawn and which are probably too profound for us to describe. They come into the soul, the reality of this experience, that I am bound up with all the people of God because I am bound up with the Father and the Son. What depth there is in that! What fulness! What blessedness! Paul says to the Galatians, "What then was your blessedness?", chap 4: 15. Beloved, could we say what then was our blessedness. Well, last Lord's Day morning we had it, did we not? Tomorrow morning, if we are left here, we shall experience again the reality of our blessedness, to be drawn and held in the power of relationships with the Father and the Son - it is remarkable that the Spirit is not referred to in this chapter - but in relationships with the Father and the Son, and we are drawn to that and held in it and we are beyond doctrine in it. What we are in is the experience of something which we can hardly describe but which we know when we feel it, and by that process we are being "perfected into one."

I venture to urge the brethren to pursue unity with one another and in their localities from this point of view. If you feel there is any element of disunity, ask the Father, get back to the Father, that He would keep you in His name which He had given to Christ that you may be one as He and the Son are one. There is more power of unity in our entreating the Father to hold us in it than there is in our seeking by painful steps to arrive at unity with one another. Unity in this sense comes down from above and enfolds us all because it comes down from where the Son is now with the Father and where everything is in divine rest and in divine perfection.

I have touched on things that are deeper than I myself can speak about, but there is spiritual power in a company which is able to enter more fully, even into what is said, because the Spirit works and suggests things to our minds and things are therefore deepened in us and we can go away from a meeting and perhaps even without deliberately doing it become conscious after a little while that we are pursuing things from a different point of view from which we pursued them before. May the Lord help us!

FRASERBURGH

11 June 1994

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