17:22
Now this is an amazing statement, “the glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one”. Now we need to understand this carefully. First, it should be taken alongside the statement that as the Father sent the Son, so Jesus sends us. Then earlier I gave a rough template for understanding “glory” as splendour and significance. And finally we must remember that Christ’s glory involved going to the cross. So bearing all that in mind, we need to appreciate how absolutely important and central the church is to God’s purposes in the world. God has created the church, and He has chosen to work through the church. That also places a responsibility upon us. If we are to have this glory in the right way then we must trust and obey Christ in every way. We must be “in Christ”. If we are anywhere else it will be a disaster, as the church has all too often demonstrated.
17:23
“I in them and you in me”. The unity with Christ is central to all this. Christ wants us to be perfectly one. This unity is not a human unity, but a godly unity, a trinitarian unity. The Trinity demonstrates the unity that God desires for His people. There is a complete and perfect unity of purpose and heart, but this goes together with a distinctiveness of individuals. It is definitely not a bland uniformity, but a uniformity that displays the glory of God.
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