Can the body of Christ really ever be unified? Is coming into unity with each other, believers, churches, denominations and faiths a real possibility? Many think they have it but all they really have is one man leading and everyone else agreeing on the outside yet mumbling on the inside. However, the answer is yes, it is possible, but true unity only comes one way…The power of the Holy Spirit through oneness with Christ Jesus who is One with the Father.
John 17:21-23 is the most noted passage on oneness. “I pray that they will all be one just as You and I are one…as You are in Me and I am in You. And may they be in us so that the world will believe You sent Me. I have given them the glory You gave Me so they may be one as we are one. 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”. Jesus clarifies that He IS IN the Father and those that belong to Him are IN HIM. Through being IN Him we too are IN the Father. All this is through the Holy Spirit who was sent to reveal Jesus to us. John 15 teaches us about the value of abiding in Christ, in His love and in His Word. This abiding is how we become one with Him.
The Apostle Paul says in Colossians 2:1-2 “I want you to know how much I have agonized for you and for the church at Laodicea and for the many other believers who have never met me personally. I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love”. This is the key to oneness with Yahweh and unity in the body…..knit together by strong ties of love. There will never be unity without love for it is because of love Jesus came to bring us into right relationship with the Father and it is because of love that we come together in that unity and oneness with Him.
We were NEVER called to unity with everybody for that would put us in unity with the world and its systems, and John 17:14-16 clearly says Jesus came to separate us from the world. We are called to be one with the body of Christ. We have not experienced true unity in the body as much as we say we have, because unity in the body is not a work of man but of the Holy Spirit. Unity is not everyone getting “on board” with a particular church idea. It is coming into agreement with the heart of the Father in all things and releasing His heart on the earth in our area of influence. So the journey to oneness starts and ends with finding His heart for the things of the earth and being an vessel that heaven can flow through to express that. The absolute end result of unity in the body is for this one thing: that the world may know Jesus came from the Father and that we belong to Him.
Today, God is truly bringing His body into oneness with Himself, but it doesn’t necessarily look like it at the moment. For before oneness with Him comes the separation from the world and that means separation from some of our personal belief systems that are man-made as well as from a worldly church system that has come up with its own definition of unity. #MyGodisYahweh