Did you know Jesus prayed for you?
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word” – John 17:20
Did you know that Jesus prayed for you? And that his prayer for you, as part of Crossway Church, is wildly specific? On Sunday, November 16, we’ll be covering John 17:20-23, the verses that zero in on all of us who have followed the original disciples by believing their testimony.
Jesus prays that all who believe in the testimony of the apostles—that is, the Bible—would not only be unified with him and the Father, but with one another. Why? For the sake of our mission to be his witnesses to a world that desperately needs reconciliation. On Sunday, we’ll be focused on our relationships with one another and what Jesus’ prayer means for Crossway Church. But I’d like to use this post to think about the bigger picture.
Jesus wants unity for the whole church across history and around the world, not simply unity within each local church congregation. Crossway Church is one outpost of the entire church established by Christ, and our understanding of our union and continuity with the great cloud of witnesses over the last two millennia matters. As evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer puts it, “The local church is fit for purpose only insofar as it is aware that it belongs to the universal (that is, catholic) church.”
Don’t let the word “catholic” trip you up. The Catholic (big C, as in Roman Catholic) Church, happens to be one strand in the history of Christianity that unfortunately attempted to wrestle power away from other churches by adopting the word “catholic” (small c) as their own. The word itself comes from the Greek word καθολικός, meaning “concerning the whole or entire.” When we say in The Apostles Creed that we believe in “the holy catholic church” we mean we believe in our unity with all the other Christians who came before us and who live around the world.
Jesus prays for our unity “so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23). This unity, according to him, is critical to the church’s mission.
The New Testament speaks frequently of the need to preserve sound doctrine (Romans 16:17-18; Ephesians 4:11-14; 1 Timothy 1:3-4; 1 Timothy 4:6; Titus 1:9; Titus 2:1), and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The assembly of the writings that became the New Testament sought to do exactly that. So did the councils that happened in the first 300 years of the church, which brought representatives from every church together to ensure that the truth concerning Jesus Christ did not get corrupted or undermined. The early creeds sought to summarize the truth of Scripture in a way that ensured unity and guarded doctrine.
Consider for a moment how you came to faith in Jesus Christ. Likely, it did not happen because you picked up your Bible one day and started reading, but because someone who understood the Bible and the good news it proclaimed came alongside you and taught you what it meant. After all, most of us initially find ourselves in the same dilemma as the Ethiopian wrestling with Scripture who, when asked by Philip if he understood it, exclaimed, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:31).
The faithful follower of Jesus who helped you see him clearly stands in union with the person who first showed them, all the way back to the first disciples. His or her unity with all those Christians who came before them is an answer to Jesus’ prayer. How do you know? Because you, too, came to know how much God loves you on account of Jesus. What amazing grace!
Does that mean every church in every period of history maintained this unity of Christ in guarding sound doctrine? Sadly, no. And that’s why this unity across time and space still matters. For example, the Council of Nicea gathered to affirm that Jesus is fully God and eternally existing as the Son, not merely the first being God created. The heresy that Jesus was merely a creature like us was promoted by a pastor named Arius. But the vast majority of the gathered churches agreed that’s not what the Bible teaches. Sadly, the Arian heresy still persists today in the teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our unity with the historic church over the right interpretation of Scripture matters because it guards sound doctrine. Not just then, but now.
Similarly, the Protestant Reformation never sought to establish a new church but to reform the existing church, calling it to repentance from doctrinal error and back into unity. To quote a letter John Calvin wrote to a Roman Catholic official in 1539, “Our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours… all we have attempted has been to renew the ancient form of the Church.” As Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten summarizes so well: “The Reformers made their protest against Rome on behalf of the whole church, out of love and loyalty to the truly catholic church. The Reformation was a movement of protest for the sake of the one church.”
My prayer for Crossway mirrors Jesus’ prayer: That we will press into not only one another but into our heritage within the universal church of all the saints who have come before us and all of our brothers and sisters around the world in unity over the good news of Jesus Christ. When we display such unity, the world cannot help but take notice. Jesus himself says so.