Mutual Indwelling

Jesus explicitly prays for His followers to be one, just as He and the Father are one. This is the basis for the likemindedness that we find frequently commended in the pages of the New Testament.

But too often we just glide over this, thinking that the unity we are to have is a mere superficial unity, some kind of head-nodding agreement. What does He actually say? He wants us all to be one—”as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (v. 21).

Notice that the Father and the Son are not one in the sense of standing side by side. Jesus says that the Father is in Him, and that He is in the Father. He goes on to pray that all believers would be one in the Father and the Son, in the same way.

Theologians call this perichoresis. The Father is not the Son, but the Father indwells the Son completely. The Son is not the Father, but the Son indwells the Father completely. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son, but the Spirit indwells them completely. In short, in the Trinity, we have mutual indwelling, completely and exhaustively.

And then Jesus prays that we would be included in it.

But we don’t start by stuffing our heads with a bunch of Trinitarian jargon. We think we love God because He never asks to borrow anything. We have trouble with our neighbor, whom we have seen, because he likes to borrow stuff all the time. We demonstrate that we are “getting” this by how we approach our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Now what happens when we live this way, in true community, imitating the triune life, and participating in it. Does this make us an ingrown sect? Not at all. Jesus says that the cultivation of true community is this way is profoundly evangelistic—”that the world may believe that thou has sent me” (v. 21).