The great truth and privilege of unity appears prominently in the Gospel
of John and in the Epistles of Paul; but it is viewed in a different way by
these two eminent servants of the Lord, by each subordinately to the purpose
which the inspiring Spirit of God had in the work given them respectively to
do. In the writings of both, unity supposes and is based on the Lord's death,
as in the gospel of grace and in the church of God. Without the accomplishment
of redemption as well as the incarnation not one of these things could be.
Every intelligent believer knows what a place the apostle of the Gentiles was
led to assign to the work of the cross, whereby God was glorified, the door
opened to Gentiles no less freely than to Jews, and the mystery of Christ and
the church came into view. But it is no less plain in the Gospel of John, which
only the present paper contemplates, though its main scope undoubtedly is to
set forth Christ's personal glory, and the mission of the Holy Spirit to be
here in His own on His departure to heaven.
Hence in John x. the Lord explains His giving His life, as the Good
Shepherd, for the sheep, in contrast with both the thief and the hireling
(vers. 10 -13). His laying down His life for the sheep He repeats in ver. 15
before He speaks of His other sheep, "not of this fold " (Judaism),
but believers from among the Gentiles, whom also He must bring, as hearing His
voice; "and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd " (ver. 16). Here
is in this Gospel the first explicit announcement of unity for the flock
answering to the one Shepherd. It is due to His glory and His love, to His
person and His work. They are His own sheep. They hear His voice. To Him the
porter opens, as He only is the Shepherd, Who calls them by name and leads them
out. For He disowns the enclosure now condemned, that once had divine sanction;
and when He put forth all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow
Him. He is thus their way, protection, and warrant. A stranger they will not
follow. It is not that they know every snare; but they know His voice (either
in Himself or in whomsoever He speaks), not the voice of strangers. How simple
and secure for him who hears!
Plain and all-important as this was, for it is the introduction of
Christianity, it was a dark proverb when first spoken. "They understood
not what things they were which he spoke to them." So it was when even
before His Galilean ministry He spoke of raising up the temple of His body (ii.
19-22). This the resurrection cleared up much, the coming of the Spirit what
remained. But He adds a new and deeper figure with the utmost solemnity; He was
" the door," not of the fold, not of Israel, but "of the
sheep." All that claimed them before He pronounces thieves and
robbers. Are not all since yet more blasphemously guilty? How awful for
either! For the Father has given all execution of judgment to the Son on Whose
rights they encroach, Whose title they in effect deny, as those that honour Him
honour the Father also. The sheep hear Him, not these pretenders; and He is the
door, so that if anyone enter in (for it is sovereign grace), he shall be
saved, and shall go in and shall go out, and shall find pasture. By Him (not
the law) are salvation, liberty, and food. In contrast with the thief who comes
to steal, kill, and destroy, Christ came that the sheep might have life, yea
abundantly in Himself risen. What can hinder Him and His grace to His own?
Thus He presents Himself as the Good Shepherd, and His
laying down His life for the sheep as its exercise and proof, in contrast with
the hireling, whose own the sheep are not, seeing the wolf's approach, leaving
the sheep, and fleeing; so that the wolf seizes and scatters them. Far from
self He cares to the uttermost for the sheep, and repeats His gracious title
(14), declaring their mutual knowledge according to the knowledge the Father
had of Him and He of the Father, saying again, He lays down His life for the
sheep. This introduces the Gentile sheep, who could not consistently with the
divine ways be brought in, and form with the Jewish ones "one flock,"
till He died, rose, and ascended to heaven. Here however the Lord, though
revealing and reiterating His devotedness in dying for His sheep, speaks with
the authority of His person according to divine counsels. Nor is there a
passage in scripture which more definitely claims the "one flock" for
dependence on Himself, or which excludes more peremptorily the pretensions of
men to appropriate this place of His, the only competent and worthy One, the
centre of all.
Not for a moment is it overlooked that, in restoring Peter from his
distressing fall, He made its completeness evident before chosen witnesses by
charging him to feed His lambs, to shepherd or tend and feed the sheep. Nor again
does one forget that the ascended Christ gave gifts to men, not apostles and
prophets only as the foundation (Eph. ii. iv.), but evangelists, and shepherds
and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, &c. till we all arrive at
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. But He has in no
way abnegated His own relations because He gives and sustains subordinates,
each in his place to serve and do His will as laid down in His word. Nor is any
notion less worthy than to relegate the "one flock, one Shepherd"
only to the future and heaven. It is here that we need to recognise both, as He
recognises them. It is now that the enemy subtly and persistently and
everywhere tempts the saints to give up the truth of the relationship as a
present fact, and the responsibility it involves on us to walk faithfully in
accordance. It is revealed to act on our faith and practice as we are on the
earth. In heaven by-and-by there will be no question, for that which is perfect
will have come.
In chap. xi.51, 52 is the next reference. Here it is the comment of the
Holy Spirit on the words of Caiaphas to the Jewish council, not in parabolic
form like our Lord's in chap. x., but in terms void of figure. " Now this
he said not of himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that
Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he
should also gather together in one the children of God that were scattered
abroad."
More than one weighty truth denied in Christendom we find here unambiguously.
To the cynical sentiment of the wicked high priest God gave a turn of
incomparable grace. Its adoption in apostate unbelief by the Jews in the
politic sense of Caiaphas was the ruin of their place and their nation by the
Romans. By-and-by mercy will prevail according to the oath sworn to Abraham,
glorying over judgment. Jesus died for the nation, not to gather it into the
church as some vainly imagine, nor assuredly to make it an object of
irreversible woe like the Babylon of the seven hills, but to save and bless
Israel as such at the end and for ever, beyond all that was ever tasted at the
beginning under David and Solomon. For He Who died for them will come and reign
over them, an infinitely greater than either (to cite a few decisive proofs,
Isa. iv. 2-6, ix. 7&8, xi.)
But He should die, said the Spirit, for another purpose wholly distinct,
and about to receive its accomplishment in the very near future while He sits
at God's right hand on high. True virtue of His death was then to be shown in
the new and wondrous work of gathering together in one the scattered children
of God. Till Jesus died and went to heaven and sent down the Holy Spirit,
nothing of the kind was known or could exist. In Judaism as established of God
provisionally (and He had no religious dealings of a public nature elsewhere),
no such gathering was thought of. It was an elect nation responsible to be
governed by His law; and they were bound to separation from all other nations. There
He dwelt Who brought them forth from Egypt to this end, Jehovah their Lord.
Now that the Jews rejected Him Who was not Messiah only but God, His
death (their awful sin) became in God's ways the basis of an entirely different
and an incomparably " better thing," the gathering together in one of
God's scattered children. It is the church undoubtedly, but not viewed as
"one body" which was revealed elsewhere. It is family union, in the
closest connexion with life eternal, the special truth prominent throughout the
Gospel and the Epistles of John, the groundwork of communion with the Father
and the Son, as we find explicitly there.
Severance between the Gentile believers and the Jewish was therein
intolerable. Yet before the cross the barrier, it is notorious, subsisted as
God's actual order; and Jesus while yet alive in flesh charged the twelve,
saying, Go not into a way of the nations, enter not into any city of the
Samaritans. Risen from the dead, He expressly bids them disciple all the
nations. For the children of God were to be gathered in virtue of His death
into one, they "one flock," as He "one Shepherd." Fleshly
distinctions, and outward ordinances, vanished away before the infinite
efficacy of that death which blotted out the sins of all believers in the
gospel, and by the grace which united them.
John xv. is not here alleged; because in the teaching of the Vine and
its branches the Lord does not set forth our oneness with Himself, but our need
of dependence continual on Him in order to bear fruit. The necessity of
communion with Him practically is the point, not the privilege of union.
But it is in chap. xvii. where this great truth of family union has its
fullest expression. And no wonder; for it is the Son pouring out His heart's
desires about His own to the Father before His departure. There are three
occasions in our Lord's utterance where oneness is asked for His saints, and
each of these has its own distinctive character.
First, in ver. 11 He says, "Holy Father, keep them in thy name
which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we." It is for those who
then surrounded Him (as is certain from vers. 12, &c.), about to preach,
teach, and act with apostolic authority when, Himself gone on high, the new
work of God had to see the light as the witness of Christ here below. He is not
content with requesting that, as He was taking a new position as the glorified
Man in heavenly glory, in virtue of His person and of His work (1-5), they
might share it as far as could be, both before the Father (6-13) and before the
world (14-21); He asks that in this they might be "one," further
adding " even as we." This goes wonderfully far in His demand on the
Father. And it was wonderfully answered in that unity of mind and purpose, of
word and deed, of heart and service which characterised that holy band. Where
and when was there anything to compare with it at any epoch before or since? It
is the more striking in the twelve; for we heard of their marked differences,
and their mutual jealousies, (alas! how like other saints and other servants of
the Lord in all ages), which the presence of the Lord only checked but in no
way excluded, as the Gospels faithfully tell us. See the same men when the Holy
Spirit was given: how their words and ways by His power only evinced the
activities and affections of the life they had in Christ! "Peter standing
up with the eleven," they were now truly one. If the multitude of those
that believed could be and is said to be of one heart and one soul, and earthly
possessions only gave occasion for love, still more emphatically was it true of
those "God set first in the church."
Secondly, in ver. 20, 21 the Lord makes request "not for these
only, but also for those who believe on him (Christ) through their word."
This enlarges the sphere, and embraces the mass of the saints following, who
received the gospel in the love of the truth. Here therefore, anticipating the
world-wide testimony and its rich results, He says "that they may all be
one, as thou father [art] in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us,
that the world may believe that thou didst send me." It is not at all so
simple and absolute as in the first case, where divine power wrought to secure
an end so all-important. The vast range
of their mission was an astonishing witness to the grace that operated in the
face of every hindrance, but the effect of the power was attenuated ere long
and never so complete. It is the unity of grace, of Christians in the Father
and the Son (" one in us "), rising above obstacles within and
without through the power of what was revealed and of Him Who made the blessing
theirs: to the world, which had known them so different in every way and now beheld them " one," a testimony
far mightier than miracles however striking and numerous. And so it runs,
"that the world may believe that thou didst send me." For this was
what sounded out in every place—that the Father sent the Son as Saviour of the
world, themselves its living example in their measure, all prejudice
notwithstanding.
Thirdly, " the glory which thou hast given me I have given them,
that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they
may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me, and
lovedst them even as thou lovedst me." Here, though the Lord gave the
title then, He looks on to the glory and the glory displayed to the world. It
is oneness in that day, and is a character without alloy, quite answering to
that of the new Jerusalem in Rev. xxi, where the world beholds the glory of the
heavenly city, the Bride or Lambs wife; not the mutuality of grace as now, but
the order of glory, Christ in the glorified saints, and the Father in Christ.
Hence then only will they be “perfected into one;” and then only will the world
“know” that the Father sent the Son. For how else could those who were once
sinners be in heavenly glory but by His Son sent for their salvation? How else,
that the Father loved them even as He loved the Son, but by their manifestation
with Him in glory? It is now a question of the world's "believing;"
in that day the world will "know," because it will see the glory in
which Christ and the church will shine together.
The Bible Treasury, New Series
1 vol 1 page 341