The Lord now proceeds to plead for those to be brought into faith in Him by apostolic testimony that they too might form a unity according to God and bear witness before the world to His mission of the Son. Verse 11 had contemplated only those disciples who were then surrounding Him in view of special grace and the consequent responsibility which attached to them.
“And not for these only do I ask, but also for those that believe on me through their word, that they may be all one, even as thou, Father, in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me.” (Vers. 20, 21.)
There was to be, as we have seen, an astonishing exhibition of unity in the apostles. But there is another and larger unity here. Those believing on Him through their word are now presented to the. Father, “that they may be all one.” Room is thus left for multitudes of believers, for confessors of His name, Jew or Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free; for those that had hitherto clung tenaciously to legal forms, the substance of which they refused through their unbelief of Him; for those that had been well-nigh as obstinate in cleaving to the dreams of heathenism and its debasing immorality, in utter ignorance of the only true God only known through Him whom He sent. The gospel was about to go forth to every land and in every tongue, as the Holy Ghost bore witness on the day of Pentecost; and the more strikingly on that day, because they as yet were Jews only from Gentile countries as well as Palestine, and the miracle was not the obvious and comparatively easy one of enabling all, home or foreign sons of Israel, to understand the wonderful works of God in the Hebrew tongue, but conversely that they, every man in his own dialect in which they had been born, should hear the disciples speak. God has of old smitten men's pride and divided them into ever so many differing tongues. Grace now rose above judgment, not reducing them all to one lip and the same words, but meeting each where thus scattered. Nor was this all; but the power of the Spirit baptized all the believers into one body, the church. The unity here however, though produced of course by the same Spirit in those who compose that body, is not that which fell to the apostle Paul to set out. Of a spiritual nature it nevertheless displays itself in that which the world can see and appreciate in measure. It is not precisely “one as we,” that is, as the Father and the Sons which verse 11 had predicated of the disciples. As the Father and the Son had but one mind and affection, purpose and way, so was this oneness desired for the apostles in their work and life; and wondrously was it realized in them as we have already noticed. Here the saints at large, those who believe through their word, are in view; and the thing sought is that they should be “all one,” “even as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” —not “as we” but “in us,” in the Father and the Son. It is communion in virtue of the Father made known in the Son, and of the Son the object of the Father's love and delight, into which we are brought by the Holy Ghost. With the Father we share the Son; with the Son we share the Father. Into this blessedness the saints were now for the first time to be introduced, and in such sort that they should be all one, even as the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so they also one in the Father and the Son.
This was to be a testimony to the world, not preaching only, but this oneness so singular, so unprecedented among men, oneness in the joy of divine grace which drew together souls so diverse and by the power of divine objects, motives and affections, those who had been once utterly indifferent or bitterly opposed, hating and hated. What a call for the world to believe that the Father sent the Son! For this and this only, but this adequately, accounted for it, when the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven gave the truth energy in hearts purified by faith. For as flesh tends to scatter by the assertion of its own will, so the Spirit operates to unite in the Father and the Son; and when the world sees the fruits of such gracious and holy power in the oneness of men otherwise alienated, and by nothing so keenly and permanently as their varying religions, what a demonstration that the Father sent the Son! For here at least was no power of the sword, here no pandering to lust, here no inducement of wealth or worldly honor, here no allowance any more of sin than of human righteousness, no pride of philosophy any more than religious show or ritualism. None can deny that as built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets there was constant and unresisting exposure to the world's scorn and violence. Self-sacrificing love reigned, grace we may say through righteousness in devotedness to the name of Jesus; and a heavenly separateness to Him for whom they avowedly waited from heaven. What then accounted for so astonishing a change from all that had previously characterized mankind, not merely among the Gentiles but in Israel even in its most flourishing estate? What did it attest but that the Father sent the Son? What of grace and truth, of perfect and eternal redemption, of near and heavenly relationship, does not this involve?
For if the Father sent the Son, it could not but be for ends impossible otherwise and worthy of the true God revealing Himself in sovereign grace, yea in intimate love, as well as in the light which makes everything manifest. Nor was the Son only to make the truth known and to impart the divine nature, the eternal life, capable of receiving and enjoying it and walking in it by the Spirit of God. There was an incomparably solemn yet blessed work to be wrought to God's glory as well as for man's deep need and everlasting salvation: sin had to be borne in judgment, a propitiation made for our sins so complete that God should be righteous in justifying the believer, and that believers should become God's righteousness in Christ. Thus washed, sanctified, justified, children of God consciously, the Holy Ghost given, they find others in the communion of the same blessing; they are all one, as the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, and brought out as they are of the strongest prejudices into a mutuality of enjoyed blessedness, into oneness in the Father and the Son, what could more powerfully bear witness to the world that the Father sent the Son?