22 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. 24 Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!
Jesus’ disciples, those that desire to obey all the commands given by Him, that desire to live like Him, have been given a weight to be able to do so. A weight that is heavier than their very self, that can move their deeply rooted character. This weight or glory is the very glory that the Father gave to Jesus. It was the very weight and significance that Jesus had that made Him ONE with God, that characterized Him and spoke of His very essence as God. When His Followers are one, just as the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) are one, the fruit or the outcome is the very significance of God or why He matters.
When His disciples are one, we bare His image (our very purpose for being made - Genesis 1:27) and when anything created accomplishes or works to accomplish its very purpose for being made, it works with utmost fluidity (e.g. a boat sails best on water, a lion lives most wild outside of a cage).Jesus is in us, IF we are His, and so (we cannot forget this point) God is in us! The very creator of EVERYTHING... (I was really excited to talk to Tom Hanks when I ran into him in a crazy, random way where he had to strike up a conversation with me. I was so excited because he basically made Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan.
I was awe struck - but so then, logically, how much more awe struck should I be then with the one who created my very life, my wife, sunsets, Cayuga Lake, laughing, sex, the very idea of a good picnic, etc.). And this Creator of EVERYTHING is in our very selves - IF we are one of whom the Father gave to Jesus. And we know we are His by the fruit of our faith (We will never be saved because of what we have done/our fruit, BUT we will never be saved by fruitless faith). Faith is real when it produces change. But what change and how can we really know we are His?We are given the glory of God for a few very important reasons. First, so we honestly never have to take a class on street evangelism, on apologetics. This is done so we can live our lives as genuinely as possible as we bare witness of God. Jesus gives us His glory so our very lives will proclaim His existence to the world. He does this because it is only by it will we be able to live in any human community as ONE.
When I am hungry, I get cynical, then cranky, and then mad. My whole entire being, it seems, focuses on my need to fill my stomach because I hurt. Stomach pains hurt (And I am sure I have never even felt REAL hunger)! Sometimes I cannot even sleep a whole night because my stomach pains wake me up... When I don’t have clothes on I find clothes to put on. When I am in danger, my full thought is on survival... Basically I immediately and fully take care of my important needs... This is how we are called to act within the Church, in this community or “perfect unity” that Jesus calls those that are His to be in. If we are to be one we should act as though we are one. We are called to love our neighbor as our very self (Mark 12:31 and Leviticus 19:18). When our neighbor is hungry, it should wake us up in the middle of the night. Their pains should be our pain. We should feel it deeply, just as we feel our pains deeply, and we should act to relieve the pain, just as we act to relieve our own. We should act so we don’t have to hurt so bad... This is how we evangelize to the world. In 2009 we are drowning in information - argument, persuasion are around every corner. Apologetics do not work. In my 25 years I have not seen anything good ever coming out of a ‘Top 10 things to say to a ________’. It just does not work. It only puffs up the chest and reinforces the ‘back against the wall’ way of doing church - retreating and making sure to swing the first punch... But it is our very lives that Jesus means for us to speak with in this world. And we see that, especially today, that this is the only way to credibly speak. You cannot pull a fast one when your life is laid out as evidence - when all someone has, lives for, has sacrificed, is, and has worked towards speaks directly on their behalf... If we are honest with ourselves this should sober us up to how grave the situation is for church evangelism. If our lives alone, laid out on its own merit is all we have, our situation is quite hopeless...
But the good news (or in other words the Gospel) is that in this very real way to view reality, we can judge the true character of another, we see the character of Jesus, and that He is definitely for us. Because He gave us His very life (slaughtered it to take our punishment), so He could give our lives weight and purpose, making the hopeless hopeful. He took on the very things that made us weightless, our very guilt that blows us every which way in the never-ending turbulence of this world, and gave us His glory, or in other words, His anchor, that roots us down deep so we can be made unshakable. Only then will we be able to have enough stability in life to be able to reach out to our neighbor and become one with them. Only when we have the weight, glory, significance of God will we be able to do something as incredible as this - to live in community so completely as to be one as God is one, as God is whole... And when we experience this “perfect unity” it is assurance, evidence for our very selves and for others, because when we “experience” it we will know that (1) Jesus was sent by God, which would make His testimony of Himself true, and (2) we will know that the Father loves us as much as He loves Himself (Jesus)...
We love ourselves. We long for our own happiness, comfort and we do everything in our power to get it. It is our own concerns, worries, triumphs, and joys that consume us... Now if this is so for a created (imperfect) being, how much more would it be so for a (perfect) Creator, God. I honestly think I would love myself more if I were better looking, funnier, more athletic, more musical. How much more would this be for a God, who even created every good thing... Now if God were simply for Himself, as we are for ourselves (we hardly, if ever, love others when it is not a benefit, love to ourselves), there would be nothing we could do about it. I mean He is God our Creator! But our God is not for Himself because His very character is community (Genesis 1 “let us make man in our image” - God’s very essence is community, the Trinity - God in 3 persons). And His very character and person came down in Jesus, who lived the perfect life and died as the perfect sacrifice, so as to bring our very selves in community with Him and with each other.
He loved us so much that our hurt was His hurt. And so He sacrificed His very self on a bloody cross so our pain became His pain, our sin became His sin, the death we deserved would became His death, and our deserved separation from the God of Holy, or in other words, infinitely unique and superfluous love and justice would be His separation and isolation on the cross... so that His glory/weight/significance would become our glory/weight/significance, that His perfect standing, or in other words, community with God would become our community with God, so that the very embrace of the Father that He deserved became the very embrace that we receive. If our very purpose is to bare the image of our God, a God in community, won’t He give this to us freely, IF we are those that Jesus speaks of in John 17...When we experience this God-given gift of complete community, we “experience” God’s love, the very love He has for Himself. And this love is not a love that was earned or has grown because of what we have done or will do. This love was there for us even before our universe was created. We have done nothing to earn this! This love is unconditional. No matter what we have done or will do we are loved as much as God loves Himself. If we do not feel this love it is because we are not in this ‘gospel community’ that Jesus speaks of here (according to this prayer of Jesus). It is only when we are in perfect unity with each other do we “experience” the very love of the Father God for His Son Jesus, for ourselves. But if we are honest with ourselves, perfect unity with each other is impossible... AND YET the deepest parts of our selves long to be connected
(random fact - human connection is THE number one deterrent of suicide). Something else is at war within ourselves that will ruin it every time (Paul speaks of this battle in Romans 7). But we should not lose hope even though we know fully well that by our own doing "perfect" community is hopeless (it has been tried over and over again in history and has not worked)... Our only hope is to look to our perfect neighbor, who came down to our level, and broke into our world. Because our situation was so impossible, Jesus came down to feel our pain and then bare it. Because of His communal love for us, He saw us hungry and thirsty for a great number of unfulfilled desires we sought to fill elsewhere outside of Him, or in other words, when we sinned. And so He sacrificed Himself so we could go to Him when we are consumed with the hunger pains that comes from this broken world. In Him we can be satisfied and given weight, given food so we do not collapse due to this hunger, so that we will be able to look towards our own neighbors and extend the same love we received from God to them. We will then fill them up as He filled us up. We will then embrace since He first embraced. Whenever desires for our own comforts become perverted and trump “perfect unity” with each other, we can now look to Him (who first sought us and remains in perfect community with us). And all of this has been made so without us earning it! We were loved completely before we were ever made! (the idea slightly resembles declaring a favorite movie that will come out ten years from now). And so how can we live pridefully when the very thing that we were made for, the only thing that matters, that has weight/glory, that can only really move us towards community, was given to us without our say (even before we had a mouth to say). Our condition was and is completely helpless (and your right, it does feel like it is not fair we are in this place! Why would God make it so??
I think the short answer (with more behind it) is that it is what it is, just as if your head was inside of the closing jaws of a wild lion), but the good news, or in other words, the Gospel is that we were saved and loved more than we could have ever thought was possible. We were given the very significance of God that allows us to live in “perfect” community with each other so that we can “experience” the very love of God, the very love that He has for Himself and that He has for us, even before an action in us was and has been performed (because the Father's love for Jesus was reconciled and redeemed to us on the cross)...And Jesus gives us this glory so that we can be where He is. In these ‘gospel communities’ we are put on a trajectory. In this oneness we look away from ourselves, our pride is slowly peeled away, because that isolates us from the one body of Christ, and love for our neighbor grows because it makes us one with the body of Christ, giving us purpose and affection for God. When His glory is given, it is called regeneration or spiritual rebirth. The Holy, or in other words, infinitely set apart in uniqueness and superfluous Spirit of God moves and reshapes the very deepest parts of your heart, in regeneration, so that you can fulfill your desires of real, deep, and sacrificial community. Our deepest desires are realized and we want to live in and for our very purpose. We can glorify God, showing His weight and significance to others when they see our unnaturally love-filled life for each other. We are shaped and given glory (moved and restructured) in regeneration for communal love...
BUT THEN the Romans 7 fight swings towards your rebellious, prideful, sinful nature, and your glory is drained. Within a 'gospel community', the very love of Christ is extended by another, at this time, you are in “unity” with, and God is given glory by you and those that see your life. Only in and through the love of the God of love is this possible. Only by His power and love are we given enough weight to stand so we can reach out a communal hand to our geographic neighbor. Only by looking to our perfect neighbor, Jesus, will our very pride and selfishness melt and ‘gospel community’ will be made possible. And in this our eternal fate will be decided. Our trajectory, our final destination with Him in unimaginable joy for eternity will be set (Revelation 21). It is then where we will “experience” His full embrace, because it is only then will we be able to live in “perfect unity” without messing it up. Because only then will His complete neighborly love, His perfect united love for Himself will be made one within us once and for all. Since He decided to come down and make us one with Him on earth, our future is set. The wedding supper of the Lamb of God is before us, where God and His people will become one for all time.
But we were not called to just to sit around and wait for our afterlife, wait for Heaven. We are called to live new lives, where we “experience” the very love of God here on earth. We can see God, start living in Heaven, feel and “know” His full embrace as we become "one" with each other. And this is only possible because He first initiated it. Initiated a love that was undeserved and all-satisfying (Psalm 103:2-5).
Our perfect neighbor, our perfect God, came and loved us first, with ALL of our baggage. Since His love for us was complete, even before the world began, we are humbled. Since nothing can snatch us out of His hand (John 10:29-30) we are justified in the presence of a fully just God, even though we have sinned, rebelled, hated, replaced God in the past and will continue to do so in the future. And so how again can this neighborly love exist with a God of Holy love AND Holy justice. Because we have all wronged others, we have all done evil to each other, we have all had our part in DESTROYING community... And the deepest part of ourselves knows that it all has to be accounted for under God, the Creator.
But the Gospel, or in other words, the great news is that the cost was accredited to our God. In perfect community with us He became the curse, He became our evil, on the cross, so we could live in community with a a perfect and Holy God. In this great exchange, He made it possible for us to become one with Him as He has always been with us. This was foreshadowed in the Old Testament when the Israelites set up the tent of God in the desert. And it was fulfilled when He came down to earth as Jesus. And doing so He made possible the trajectory towards a most assured ending in Revelation 21 where God dwells with His people and wipes away tears and sadness forever... Only in Him we are able to live as one with each other. With the glory of His Spirit out-weighing and replacing our selfishness, or in other words, our over-desires that lead us away from Him. In Him we are united to each other because He is most glorious, moving all obstacles out of our way. In Him is it only possible to love someone fully (who has and/or will hurt and offend you), as though they were your very self. This can happen because we are all forgiven, justified in Him. And if we really believe that, believe in His name, His glory will move our pride and we will be able to forgive and love... Only in Him is real community possible.
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