UNITING THE BODY OF CHRIST
for A DIVIDED WORLD

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On His final night before going to the cross, Jesus prayed a prayer recorded for us in John 17. He taught His followers to love one another like He had loved them, and if it was easy for us to pull that off, He wouldn’t have needed to pray it. Never has someone been more motivated to see the cross change the world than at that moment. So He prayed for our:

Unity

Far from uniformity, the unity Jesus envisions harmonizes all the beautiful differences of denomination, ethnicity, generation, geography (and more) within His Body. Jesus holds truth and unity together, so that we can only pursue one through the other. And our unity with one another is achieved only through abiding in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He prayed:

“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.”

—John 17:22-23

Jesus’ Surprising Strategy

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 strategically reveals both what unity should look like and how to achieve it. Furthermore, the degree to which we align ourselves with Jesus’ prayer is the degree to which our communities will come to know who Jesus is and how much God loves them—the two crucial truths that change lives in every generation.

The John 17 mission is for every follower of Jesus. What’s your part today?