1. "Christianity does not spread by coercion. If it spreads by coercion, it is not Christianity that's spreading. Instead, Christianity spreads through preaching, teaching, speaking, announcing, reasoning, persuading, pleading."

2. "As a man, he prays for unity. As God, he secures our unity."

3. "What greater glory could we ask for than to be loved by God the Father the same way he loves the Son? What greater glory could Jesus give us than to engraft us into his own relationship to the Father?"

4. "Ever since the fall, all the good things we experience in life are glittering fragments of that original vanished glory."

5. "Union with the Father and the Son is the root, and unity with each other is the fruit. Union with the Father and the Son is the source, and unity with each other is the stream that flows from that source."

6. "Christ does not just save individuals, he fashions a people. Just as we saw in the previous point, our unity with each other is fundamentally a gift. It's granted. It's objective, it's given, it's already real."

7. "We all tend to make ourselves the measure of what is good and normal and right. And we often regard deviations from whatever our peculiar norm is as not just being different, but being wrong, being sinful. But very often in the life of the church, somebody else is not wrong. They're just different from you."

8. "There is a way to disagree that doesn't threaten a friendship but actually strengthens it. That's virtually a lost art today but it is an art we desperately need to recover together."

9. "Even if your heads differ, your hearts can be one because they are devoted to the same Savior."

10. "God's love for you has no beginning and will have no end. God's love for you will never be diminished and it can never increase because it's already infinite. God's love for you is your bedrock, your security, your rest, your anchor."

Observation Questions

1. In John 17:20, who does Jesus say he is praying for beyond his immediate disciples, and how does he describe the means by which these future believers will come to faith?

2. According to John 17:21, what is the model or pattern for the unity that Jesus prays his followers will experience?

3. In John 17:22, what does Jesus say he has given to believers, and what is the stated purpose for giving it to them?

4. What phrase does Jesus use in John 17:23 to describe the degree of unity he desires for believers, and what does he say the world will come to know as a result?

5. Looking at John 17:21 and 17:23, what two responses does Jesus pray the world will have when they observe the unity of believers ("that the world may believe" and "that the world may know")?

6. At the end of John 17:23, how does Jesus describe the Father's love for believers in comparison to another relationship?

Interpretation Questions

1. Jesus prays that believers would be one "just as you, Father, are in me and I in you" (v. 21). What does the unity between the Father and Son teach us about the nature and depth of the unity Jesus desires for his church?

2. In verse 22, Jesus says "the glory that you have given me I have given to them." Based on the context of the prayer (especially verses 5 and 24), what is this "glory," and how does sharing in it create unity among believers?

3. Why is faith in Christ presented as a necessary precondition for the kind of unity Jesus prays for? What does this suggest about the limits and boundaries of Christian unity?

4. How does the phrase "I in them and you in me" (v. 23) explain the relationship between a believer's union with God and their unity with other believers? Why is union the root and unity the fruit?

5. Jesus prays that the church's unity will cause the world to "believe" and "know" that the Father sent him (vv. 21, 23). How does the supernatural unity of believers serve as evidence or a sign pointing to the truth of the gospel?

Application Questions

1. The sermon identified four threats to unity: different personalities, other people's sin, your own sin, and differences of opinion. Which of these four do you find most challenging in your relationships within the church, and what specific step could you take this week to address it?

2. Think of a church member who is significantly different from you in age, background, or convictions. How might you intentionally pursue a deeper relationship with that person as a way of living out the unity Jesus prayed for?

3. The sermon emphasized that forbearance and forgiveness are essential for maintaining unity. Is there anyone in your church community against whom you are holding a grudge or harboring ill will? What would it look like to forgive them from the heart this week, even if reconciliation hasn't occurred?

4. How might you expose non-Christian friends, neighbors, or coworkers to the unity of your church community? Consider one practical way you could invite them into your church relationships—whether through hospitality, conversation about your church life, or including them in a gathering.

5. The sermon stated that God loves believers with the same love he has for his own Son (v. 23). How does knowing you are loved this way by the Father change how you view yourself, and how should it change the way you treat fellow believers with whom you disagree?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Ephesians 4:1–6 — This passage expands on the theme of Christian unity, listing the foundational realities (one Lord, one faith, one baptism) that bind believers together and calling them to walk worthy of their calling.

2. 1 John 3:1–3 — John develops the theme of believers being called children of God and anticipates the future glory we will share when we see Christ as he is.

3. Colossians 3:12–17 — Paul instructs believers on how to maintain unity through forbearance, forgiveness, and love, providing practical guidance for the relational challenges addressed in the sermon.

4. Romans 14:1–12 — This passage addresses how believers should handle disputable matters and differences of conviction without passing judgment, directly relating to the sermon's discussion of third-level issues.

5. 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 — Paul uses the metaphor of the body to explain how diverse members are united in Christ, emphasizing that differences are essential to the health and function of the church.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Problem of Division in Our World and Relationships

II. Our Unity Was Secured by Christ (John 17:20-22)

III. Our Unity Is the Fruit of Our Union with the Father and the Son (John 17:21-23)

IV. Four Threats to Unity and How to Respond

V. Our Unity Will Provoke the World (John 17:21, 23)

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Who did you spend Christmas dinner with? For many of us, it was family, at least immediate family, maybe also extended family, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents. Whoever you ate with on Christmas, did you feel united with them?

Holidays are often flashpoints for conflict. Unresolved disputes can ripple beneath the surface. Disagreements over preferences, values, and especially politics can bubble, boil, and eventually erupt. What unites you with or divides you from your family?

Our society feels increasingly divided. Social media seems to have made it much easier, not so much to talk to each other as to shout at each other. The ability to disagree with someone without demonizing them seems to be disappearing. Whether among family or friends, in work or politics, people seem to increasingly lack the ability to treat someone well while thinking they're wrong. In the public sphere, all sorts of new orthodoxies have not only been set up overnight, they've been rigged with explosives.

So the British journalist Douglas Murray has written of the new system of values that increasingly rules the West: A set of tripwires has been laid across the culture. Sometimes a person's foot has unwittingly nicked the tripwire, and they have been blown up. After each resulting detonation, there is some disputation, and then the world moves on, accepting that another victim has been notched up to the odd, apparently improvised value system of our time. Why is our culture weaponizing disagreement?

For those of you who are Christians, How united do you feel when you sit down together with your church at the Lord's Supper?

How unified is that family meal? And where do you experience a greater and closer unity at the family Christmas table or at the Lord's table?

This morning we continue our study in John 14 to 17 with chapter 17, verses 20 to 23. The passage is on page 903 of the Bibles around you. Go ahead and turn there. And if you don't have a Bible, I'd invite you to take that one home with you as a late Christmas gift from us. In our passage we find Jesus in his last few hours with his disciples and he's praying for them.

He's praying for what they will need in order to endure the trial of his death. And especially in our passage, he's praying for what they will need in order to fulfill the mission he gives them that will last until his return. So what do we need in order to fulfill the mission Jesus has given us? Please follow along as I read. John 17:20-23.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that yout have sent Me.

The glory that yout have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and you in Me. That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

In this part of the prayer, Jesus prays twice for the unity of all his followers. But he doesn't just repeat that specific petition.

Throughout these four verses, Jesus basically says the same thing twice with just slight variations. And what he prays for has three basic parts. So the sermon's gonna have three points, all focused on the unity that Jesus prays for. Point number one, our unity was secured by Christ. Our unity was secured by Christ.

And it remains secure in him. We see this in verse 20 and the first part of verse 21 and then again in verse 22. So starting in verse 20 into the beginning of verse 21, Jesus prays for our unity. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they may all be one. Be one.

Here Jesus prays for everyone who will ever believe in him, from the first person to come to faith in him through the apostles' first preaching to the last person who will repent before Jesus's return. And by saying in the present tense, I do not ask for these only, he indicates that what he has already been praying applies to all of us, too, not just his original disciples.

And here in verse 20, Jesus also specifies the means by which others will come to believe through their word. That is through the word of the apostles. Jesus came to accomplish our salvation and he entrusted the task of announcing that salvation to the apostles. Christianity does not spread by coercion. If it spreads by coercion, it is not Christianity that's spreading.

Instead, Christianity spreads through preaching, teaching, speaking, announcing, reasoning, persuading, pleading. Christianity spreads through all of us telling others all that Jesus has done and through God the Holy Spirit making that message effective and granting people faith. Jesus is praying for all those who will believe and he's praying that they may all, that is, that we may all be united. So the unity of Christians is secured by Jesus' prayer. The Father will answer this prayer and he is answering it all the time.

But it's also important to note the logic of Jesus' prayer. Jesus prays that those who believe may be one. The kind of unity he's after is among those who trust in him. Logically speaking, faith comes first. Faith is presupposed.

Faith is the prior condition. Where there is no faith in him, you can't have the unity Jesus is praying for. One very simple application of that in our life as a church is that it means We want to be careful about who we admit into church membership. We as a church only want to be united with those who believe in Christ and whose lives give evidence of that claim. We only can experience the unity Jesus is praying for with those who trust in him and whose lives show it.

Look down at verse 22. The glory that you have given me I have given to them. That they may be one even as we are one. Now, different from in verses 20 and 21, in verse 22, unity is the purpose of an act that Jesus has already accomplished. In verses 20 and 21, he prays for our unity.

And in verse 22, he informs us that he has in fact accomplished this unity. As a man, he prays for unity. As God, he secures our unity. And what is the basis of this unity? It's the glory that we have received from Jesus.

So the question then is, what glory is he talking about? What glory did he receive from the Father and then give to us. In Scripture, glory has two main meanings. Sometimes one meaning is in view, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. On the one hand, glory means beauty, brilliance, radiance.

And on the other hand, glory means that beauty or brilliance or radiance being seen, delighted in, and praised. So on the one hand, God is glorious. On the other hand, we should give him glory. Whether we give him glory or not, he is glorious and we don't take away anything or add to him. And yet these are two sides, two complementary aspects of what glory is.

So what kind of glory is Jesus talking about? To begin to understand verse 22, we need to look back to verse 5, another reference to this glory. Jesus says in verse 5, look up earlier in the prayer, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And similarly, we also need to look ahead of verse 22 to verse 24, so keep going. Look after down at verse 24.

Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Now, even with these other references to glory, there are multiple ways to understand this. There are a couple different ways you could see it that are still kind of fitting with the passage and make theological but I think the best way to understand verse 22 is that he's talking about this same glory, this glory that he has according to verse 5 before the foundation of the world. And then in verse 24 that he was given because the Father loved him before the foundation of the world. So what is this glory? This glory is his eternal divine glory.

Sonship.

Jesus says, this is the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world, this glory that you have given me. Like we've seen so many times in John 17, he's talking about an eternal giving, a giving without beginning or end, a giving that always has been and always will be. But then Jesus says, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them. How can Jesus give us this glory? By bringing us into his relationship to the Father.

Obviously, Jesus doesn't make us God's sons in precisely the sense in which he is God's son. He is God's divine son, the son by nature, the son eternally. He is one with the Father in his very essence. But Jesus makes all who believe in him to be adopted sons, sons brought in, sons by grace. We'll look at this verse in more detail later, but just glance down to the end of verse 23.

Jesus prays that the world will come to know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved.

What greater glory could we ask for than to be loved by God the Father the same way he loves the Son? What greater glory could Jesus give us than to engraft us into his own relationship to the Father? That we would share in this glory is the goal of God's entire plan. Of creation and redemption. God created the whole universe to display his glory.

He created us in his image to reflect his glory and to delight in his glory. He created us to be glory seekers and glory reflectors. God created us to find our satisfaction in seeing his beauty and in reflecting his holiness to the world. But Adam and Eve, the very first human beings, tried to steal glory from God. And so they squandered the glory that was theirs by the gift of God.

Adam and Eve plunged the whole world into ruin, devastation, wreckage. Now we're all alienated from God and subject to his wrath. We can't see his glory and our lives look like anything but glory. Because we've all sinned, what we all deserve from God is the unending punishment that he promises to all those who refuse to repent of sin and trust in Christ. But because God is gracious and merciful, he sent his eternal Son into the world to reveal his glory and to enfold us into a glory that is greater than anything that we can conceive.

As John 1:14 says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. In his death, Jesus bore the penalty that we deserve for scorning and stealing God's glory. And by rising from the dead, Jesus himself entered into unending glory.

As the guarantee that all those who trust in him will share in that same glory. Now he calls all people everywhere to repent and trust in him for salvation, to trust in him to receive this very glory that he is willing to give. If you have never turned from sin and trusted in Christ, trust in him today. Receive this gift of glory.

Ever since the fall, all the good things we experience in life, are glittering fragments of that original vanished glory. In his essay, the Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis well describes the sense of yearning that many of us feel, even if we can't name it, a yearning to be enfolded into glory. Lewis writes, the sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely from this point of view, the promise of glory becomes highly relevant to our deep desire.

For glory means good rapport with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we've been knocking all our lives will open at last. Apparently then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside, of some door which we have always seen from the outside is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits, and also the healing of that old ache.

That glory is what Christ has secured for us. It's what he freely gives us. If you're in Christ, that is your life now, and that will be your life forever and perfectly. That glory that we all share in is the foundation of our unity. By sharing in that glory of sonship together, we're all members of the same family.

We all call on God as the same Father.

As John writes in 1 John 3:1-2, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him, beloved. We are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.

In our next point, we're going to dive deeper into the glory of this new relationship that we have with God. So point two, our unity is the fruit of our union with the Father and the Son. Our unity is the fruit of our union with the Father and the Son. And the Son. We see this again in both halves of the passage in verse 21 and then again in verses 22 and 23.

Start with verse 21.

Again, Jesus prays for our unity here in verse 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.

Here Jesus names the model of our unity. He describes the paradigm of our unity and it is the unity of the Father and the Son. Our unity is patterned on theirs. Now, what does it mean that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father?

It means that the Father and Son share the one undivided divine nature. And as we've seen over and over again in this chapter, that sharing is an eternal giving from the Father to the Son. The Father and Son are one, and yet the Father is the eternal origin of the Son. The Father and the Son are one, one God, and yet they are eternally distinct from and related to one another. The Father is in the Son as his source, and the Son is in the Father as his offspring and perfect image.

So what does Jesus pray in light of his unity with the Father? Again, verse 21, that they also may be in us. This is crucial. The Son is one with the Father and in the Father, and Jesus prays that we too would be in him and in the Father. That is, spiritually united to them.

Jesus isn't opening up the Trinity in the sense that it goes from Trinity to however many people come to believe in Christ. But he is opening up the Trinity in the sense that we are united to him. We are in him and in his father. We share in the life of the Trinity in a manner fitting and suitable to our lives as creatures made in God's image. Jesus prays that we too would be spiritually united to him and to his father.

And it is our union with the Father and the Son that makes us one with each other. We share in their unity, and so we're one with each other. Union with the Father and the Son is the root, and unity with each other is the fruit. Union with the Father and the Son is the source, and unity with each other is the stream that flows from that source. A 440.

Is the technical name for the note A above middle C, just over halfway up the piano's keyboard. It has a frequency of 440 hertz, 440 frequencies per second, and it's the frequency that all instruments are tuned to. Piano, guitar, bass, cello, violin, flute, oboe, you name it. They're all tuned to that same pitch, at least they have been since that was standardized about 90 years ago. By being tuned to that one frequency, all those instruments are tuned to each other.

It's when they're all tuned to one pitch, but they all perfectly match each other. It's only when all those instruments are tuned to that same frequency that they can sound in pristine harmony and all their different frequencies and timbres will enrich and complement one another. Tune them to one and you tune them to each other. Tune them to one and their diversity doesn't conflict but it rings out as depth and texture. Brothers and sisters, our unity with one another comes from God.

It comes from his gift of salvation. It comes from the glory of the sonship that Christ gives us. It comes from God's act of uniting us to himself. It comes from our being included in the Son's own relationship to the Father. It comes from us no longer living in ourselves, but living in the Father and the Son.

And when we're united to him, we are tuned to each other. Jesus continues in a similar vein in verses 22 and 23.

In verse 22 he says that the purpose for which he gave us glory is that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me. He's already said that we're in him. Now what's new here is the phrase I in them. What makes us one is that Christ is in us.

He dwells in us by his Spirit. If you are united to the Father through the Son, if you have Christ dwelling in you, then you are united to his people. Christ does not just save individuals, he fashions a people. Just as we saw in the previous point, our unity with each other is fundamentally a gift. It's granted.

It's objective, it's given, it's already real. Which means that if you trust in Christ, you have a whole new identity. That new identity is not just that you belong to Christ, it's that you belong to his people. It's that you're a member of a new family. You're a stone in a new building.

You're a part of a new body. You're a citizen. Of a new kingdom. Then again, in verse 23, Jesus reiterates the goal of his saving work in our lives: that they may become perfectly one.

Is the Father answering this prayer?

How will the Father answer this prayer? We've already seen that on one level our unity is a given. It's an immediate fruit of our union with Christ. And if you have any real experience of the Christian life, then you have experienced a sweet and supernatural unity with other believers. All true Christians are united in confession, as we've already heard from the reading from Ephesians 4.

There's one Lord, one faith, one baptism. All true believers confess faith in the same triune God, the same incarnate Savior, the same sufficient sacrifice, the same stunning resurrection, the same longed-for return. And all believers are united in experience. We all know by experience the sting of conviction. The peace that comes from faith in Christ, and the marvel of new birth.

All believers are united in prayer. We pray to the same Father in the name of the same Son by the power of the same Spirit. And we pray with the same boldness and confidence and certainty of being answered. We could go on and on about all that we experience as one. And yet, With all that said, as long as we live in this fallen world, as long as we live in these fallen natures, unity remains something we have to work at.

God the Father will answer Jesus' prayer, but one of the means he uses to answer it is our efforts to promote and preserve and repair the unity of our local churches. So to help us in these efforts, I want us to meditate together on four threats to unity in the church and how we should respond to them. Four challenges to unity in the church and how we should address them.

Number one, different personalities.

Different personalities. The more tightly your life is woven into the lives of other church members, the more you will see how different they are from you. Some of those differences might be entertaining or charming. Some of those differences may aggravate.

So don't mistake personality difference for sin. It is a common mistake. Don't mistake extroversion for arrogance or introversion for lovelessness.

When Kristen and I were first married, just about every time she cried, I thought she must have been sinning. Lacking contentment, not trusting God, something must be wrong spiritually. No, no. Turns out that's called emotion.

I've learned a thing or two since then. This dawning realization has grown and grown.

We all tend to make ourselves the measure of what is good and normal and right. And we often regard deviations from whatever our peculiar norm is as not just being different, but being wrong, being sinful. But very often in the life of the church, somebody else is not wrong. They're just different from you. Our unity in the church is not uniformity, but always unity in diversity.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:17, if the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? How often do you form a snap judgment about another church member that is shown to be entirely false after just one or two conversations with them? In dealing with different personalities, the key is forbearance. Assume the best, impute no motives.

Learn to cherish someone's quirks rather than letting them get under your skin. Number two, other people's sin.

Second threat to the unity of the church, other people's sin. How have people in this church wronged you or failed you?

And how have you responded to those wrongs and failures?

How should you respond? Forbear and forgive. The Apostle Paul commands us to do both in Colossians 3:12-13. Put on them as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Now, when one person sins against another, In order for reconciliation to take place, the offender needs to repent and ask forgiveness. But even if the offender doesn't seek reconciliation, you still have an obligation to forgive. Jesus says so explicitly in Mark 11:25. And whenever you stand praying, Forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. This doesn't mean that you always need to take initiative to try to restore the relationship.

That's complex and it involves the other party. But it does mean you need to divest yourself of any grudge or ill will.

It means you need to give up any thought of retribution, of getting back. It means you need to forgive from the heart and entrust the matter to God.

Your own sin.

There's a sense in which every sin threatens or hinders the church's unity. But some sins attack it directly, like envy, envying someone's success or spouse, for example. You cannot be united with someone you envy. Your envy makes you their rival. Their enemy.

Even if that envy never shows itself outwardly, envy turns your heart against its object.

Even if you never do anything to hurt the person you envy, your envy hurts you and it slots a wedge into the unity of the church.

How should you respond to your own sin, especially sins that threaten unity? Repent. Pray for the other person's good. If you want to grow in overcoming envy of someone, seek to serve them. Pray for contentment.

Pray that God will grant you to be more satisfied in him than you could ever be by anything else.

A fourth threat to the unity of the church: difference of opinion or conviction. We're going to camp out here for a minute. Here we need to remember who Jesus is praying for. References throughout the prayer. Verse 6, They have kept your word.

Verse 8, They have come to know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. Verse nine, I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me. Verse 20, for those who will believe in me through their word. So all throughout the prayer, Jesus is praying for those who believe in him, those who have received God's word, those who embrace the truth of who he is and what he came to do. The unity he is praying for is built on the truth.

The unity he is praying for cannot exist without the common confession of that truth. Which means that there are some theological convictions that put their adherence beyond the reach of this unity. That's one of the major issues that John deals with in his letters. The same John who wrote this gospel addresses this issue throughout his letters. He writes in 2 John 7, For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. He's not talking about people who just flat out don't believe in Jesus. He's calling them deceivers because they're professing Christians but they deny the heart of the faith. There are some errors that cut off all possibility of Christian unity because they would destroy the roots.

Of that unity. In contrast, some differences of theological conviction do not threaten the gospel itself. But there are still weighty matters that affect the life of the church and that a church basically has to decide on one way or another in order to get along together. Examples would be: Is baptism for believers only? Or for believers and their infant children too?

Or are only men permitted to serve as elders? Or are women also? Taking into account this second level of theological disagreement, in their book on the conscience, Andy Naselli and J.D. Crowley hopefully sort disagreements among Christians into three levels, three tiers. First level issues are central and essential to Christianity.

Denying a first level doctrine like the Trinity or the deity of Christ calls your profession of faith into question. That's what 2 John is talking about, those first level issues. Second level issues create reasonable boundaries between Christians, such as different denominations and local churches. Where disagreements on areas like baptism and church government persists and can't be reconciled, different local churches and denominations rightly and necessarily follow. But then there's third level issues that are more disputable matters, often called matters of indifference or matters of conscience.

These issues aren't necessarily unimportant, they can have practical consequences, but members of the same church should be able to disagree on these issues and still have close fellowship with each other. Let's camp out on the third level. For a minute. Here at CHBC, our first and second level issues are all spelled out in our statement of faith. It's one of the great virtues of a statement of faith.

Anything that isn't either stated or implied in our statement of faith is by definition a third level issue. You can disagree and be a member in good standing. You should be able to disagree and maintain unity with other members. The statement of faith actually in that way is a tool for a genuine and generous kind of liberty and freedom and diversity. We're saying there are matters that we actually can disagree about and still be united as members together.

More theological examples of those third level issues would include spiritual gifts and the question of the millennium and Christ's return. More practical examples would include convictions about alcohol, or the Sabbath, or a multitude of political issues that no man can number.

You can disagree about all that and more and still sit down at the Lord's Supper together as one body in Christ.

So when you disagree with another church member, ask yourself: What level does this disagreement fall into?

The vast majority of the time, we're in level three. Now, that doesn't mean you can't talk about it. That doesn't even mean you can't seek to persuade another church member of your view. But it does mean that despite the disagreement, you should be able to be members of the same church and live like it.

Are you a net force for unity or disunity?

If you're a member of CHBC, is this church more unified or less unified because you belong to it? What can you do to preserve and promote unity? Especially when there's disagreement. For one thing, be humble. You don't know everything and some of what you know is wrong.

None of our consciences perfectly map onto God's will. All of our inner sense of what's right and wrong is out of alignment somewhere. We're too strict here, we think that something is wrong that's actually right or we're too loose here, we think that something is right that's actually wrong. None of us have a flawless knowledge of God. And even if all that we knew about God was perfectly true, none of us can ever or will ever know all there is to know about God.

We all have more to learn.

When you handle disagreement with a church member, Do you care more about the person than the issue or more about the issue than the person? God is the source and standard of truth. God is the one who grants knowledge of the truth. And God is the one who in the end will vindicate his truth. The final success of God's truth does not depend on you persuading your intellectual opponent of their error.

There is a way to disagree that doesn't threaten a friendship but actually strengthens it. That's virtually a lost art today but it is an art we desperately need to recover together. How can a disagreement actually strengthen your bond with another believer? That's not hypothetical, by the way. I've experienced that in my own life and there are wonderful stories of members of this church for whom that's been true.

How can your disagreement with another Christian actually deepen your love for each other? By showing that your love for them comes from the Christ you have in common. And by showing that the Christ you have in common means more to you than whatever would drive you apart. Even if your heads differ, your hearts can be one because they are devoted to the same Savior. Our unity is the fruit of our union with the Father and the Son.

So nourish that union and cultivate its fruits.

Point three, much more briefly, our unity will provoke the world. Just to review, our unity was secured by Christ, our unity is the fruit of our union with the Father and the Son. Point three, our unity will provoke the world. We see this in verses 21 and 23, the second half of each.

In verse 21, Jesus says that he is praying for all of us, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. And then again in verse 23, Jesus prays that we may become perfectly one. So that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Jesus is saying that the Church's unity will provoke the world's faith. He's saying that the unity the world sees in us will point them to the source of that unity, the Father's loving gift. Of the Son. Now, Jesus is not saying that anybody is going to come to faith without hearing the gospel, nor is he saying that unity is some kind of magic force field that will guarantee the salvation of anyone who comes into sufficiently close contact with a sufficiently unified church. Instead, he's saying that our unity is a sign, it's a pointer to its divine origin.

Origin. Jesus uses this very same phrase in John 11:42 when he prays for Lazarus, I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me. Jesus' prayer at that time didn't guarantee that everybody present believed, but his prayer and the thing he did that he was praying about, namely raise Lazarus from the dead, Those were signs. They were pointers to his divine identity. So the church's unity is a sign of the gospel.

When the unity of a local church defies natural explanation, it points to a supernatural explanation. A church in a very secular city in Canada, pastored by a friend of mine, hosted a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. A local man who works as a television producer attended that party and then he commented to the pastor, this is the most unique Christmas party I've ever been to. In my line of work, the events I attend are solely to network and engage in one-upmanship. But the people at your church are different.

I don't see the same spirit of competition. Everyone here seems to be on the same level regardless of how much money they make.

And so the pastor told him that the reason for this is called grace.

If you're here today and you're not a Christian, you're very welcome here. We're glad you're here. I wonder, what do you think of the division that you see in the world around you? Are you troubled by it? Are you troubled by division you observe sort of out there in the world?

Are you troubled by division? That you experience in your own life, what would you say that division is caused by? And can you think of anything that would address that division by pulling it up by its roots? That would take care of the problem altogether?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, for our unity to provoke the world, we first need to be united. And then we need to show others that unity. If you're a member of CHBC, how united to this body are you? How close are your relationships? How well do you know anyone in the church who is significantly different from you in age or ethnicity or political convictions?

Do you have any close relationships where a non-Christian might look at you and go, why are those people friends?

What members are you friends with that you almost certainly wouldn't be were it not for your common faith in Christ? By God's grace, I think the kind of compelling unity that Jesus is praying for here genuinely does characterize our life as a congregation. So then the question is, how can you expose non-Christian neighbors, friends, coworkers, relatives, to the attractive witness of this local church. One suggestion is talk to them about your life in the church. Talk to them about ways you're learning from the good example of other believers.

Talk to them about ways you're involved with other members in caring for each other. Give them a window into the life of the church. You can also mix up your circles of friendship and hospitality. If you're hosting a birthday party, you can invite both church members and non-Christian neighbors. If you're planning a day trip on a Saturday, pull in a couple of church members and a couple of colleagues from work.

Your non-Christian colleagues might find the conversation deeper and more transparent than what they're used to. And then they might wonder why our unity will provoke the world.

Did you notice what Jesus prays that the world will come to know in verse 23, right at the end?

So that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Loved them even as you loved me. That should be one of the most shocking sentences in Scripture. How can God love you? How can God love me in the same way he loves his own eternal, perfect, radiant Son?

If you're a Christian, God loves you in the same way and to the same extent that he loves his own son. God's love for you has no beginning and will have no end. God's love for you will never be diminished and it can never increase because it's already infinite. God's love for you is your bedrock, your security, your rest. Your anchor.

Our unity reveals God's love because God's love is the source of our unity. God the Father sent the Son into the world because he loved us. He united us with himself, making us one with each other because he loved us. What will help you forbear with people who annoy you and forgive people who sin against you? Knowing that the Father loves you as he loves his own son.

What will enable you to love others you disagree with, knowing that the Father loves you as he loves his own son? How can you live out a unity with other believers that provokes the world to wonder. You can only live out that unity by loving others as God in Christ has loved you. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love.

We pray that we would love each other as you have loved us. We pray that our unity would commend the gospel to this neighborhood, this city, to our families and friends, to our colleagues.

Father, we pray that we would be one as your Son is in you and you are in him. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.