◄ What Does John 17:23 Mean? ►

I am in them, and you are in me. May they be completely one, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me.

John 17:23(ISV)

Verse of the Day

Throughout His earthly life, the Lord Jesus was demonstrating to His disciples that He was fully God yet fully Man. He was the eternal Word Who was fully Deity that had been made flesh by being conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of Mary. He was the one who would suffer and die on a cruel Roman cross. He was the one that was physically thirsty by the well in Samaria and yet He could cry, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life."

And throughout His life, the Lord Jesus sought to demonstrate that He and the Father were ONE - one in nature - one in Spirit - one in unity with each other - one God in three Persons. He only did what He heard from the Father,for He was one with the Father: "I and my Father are ONE," He said. One in their eternal goodness, one in their eternal attributes, one in their eternal unity, one in their indescribable love. He lived His life in submission to the Father and He walked throughout His life in the power of the Spirit, just as we should live in Him.

A human body had been prepared and the eternal Son of the Father was conceived in the womb of His human mother by the power of the Holy Spirit. And throughout His life, His human body was the temple in which His Father resided, and the Lord Jesus lived and moved and had His being in the Father so that He could truly say: "You Father are in Me and I am in You."

But those that are to become His own children are to be equally one with Him. Just as He is one with the Father, we are to be one IN Christ. We are born of the Holy Spirit and made one with Him, for we are a new creature in Christ. And as the shadow of the Cross loomed every closer, Jesus prayed that all those who were to one day become part of His Body would be one with Him and one with each other: "May they be completely one, just as we are one."

Just as Christ's life witnessed of His oneness and unity with the Father, so His prayer for you and me is that our lives are to be one with Him and in unity with each other "so that the world may know that You sent Me and that You have loved them as you loved Me."

My Prayer

Loving Father, unite Your children in the bond of love and fellowship with Yourself so that those that are Your children may abide in You and You in us. May we be true witnesses to the world of Your so great salvation. In Jesus' name I pray, AMEN.