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Scripture Reading: John 17:2, 6, 11b, 14-23; Matt. 18:19; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 2:2b; Eph. 4:4-6; 1 Cor. 4:17b; 7:17b; 11:16; 14:34a; Rev. 2:7a, 11a, 17a, 29; 3:6, 13, 22; 1:20
I. The aspiration of the Lord’s desire becoming His specific prayer:
А. Before going to the cross.
B. Praying to the Father.
C. Earnestly desiring that all His believers be one:
1. One in the Father’s name and life — John 17:2, 6, 11b:
а. The Father being the source, and the Father’s name indicating the Father Himself (the person) as the source.
b. The Father’s life with His nature as the element of oneness in the person of the Father.
2. One in the reality of the sanctifying word — vv. 14-21:
а. The word of God having God Himself as reality.
b. God’s word of reality sanctifying us from the mixed world unto Himself.
3. One in the glory that expresses divinity — vv. 22-23:
а. The Father’s glory indicating the divine life with the divine nature, expressing divinity in splendor.
b. The splendid expression of divinity delivering us from ourselves.
II. The practice of oneness:
А. The one accord and the oneness in mind, in the church life — Matt. 18:19; Acts 1:14.
B. Speaking the same thing, being attuned in the same mind and in the same opinion — 1 Cor. 1:10.
C. Thinking the same thing, having the same love, being joined in soul — Phil. 2:2b.
D. Based on the attribute of the oneness of the church — Eph. 4:4-6.
E. According to the apostles’ teaching — 1 Cor. 4:17b; 7:17b; 11:16; 14:34a.
F. According to the same words that the Spirit spoke to the churches — Rev. 2:7a, 11a, 17a, 29; 3:6, 13, 22.
G. Indicating that the seven churches as the seven golden lampstands are completely identical — Rev. 1:20.
Prayer: We worship You for Your word. Because of Your presence, we are full of faith that You are working here. Lord, we confess our weakness, smallness, and even uselessness. We need Your mercy. Your mercy is our trust. Lord, cleanse us fully. We need Your cleansing within and without. Thank You for Your cleansing blood and for Your anointing oil. Lord, speak to each one of us. Give each one of us a word, a word that You want us to have tonight. Lord, we thank and praise You for the blood, the anointing, and the sanctifying word. O Lord Jesus, open all of us up from deep within, and may we open up to You. Lord, may there be nothing whatsoever hidden or veiled within us, and may we not shrink back and hide from Your face. We do wish to see You face to face. May Your countenance, which is Your lovely face, become our help. Lord, we have followed You for years. Your presence has always been with us. Now we need Your presence with us even more. Touch the deepest part of our being. Lord, You are our Head. We worship You here. We want to know You more, and we want to know more concerning Your organic Body. We also want to know ourselves and all the members more thoroughly so that we can enter into the consciousness of Your Body and maintain a proper relationship not only with You but also with all the members in Your Body. Lord, we can never forget Your evil enemy. You know that he is following us. Where You work, he is also busy. Lord, we pray that You would bind him. We also bind him in Your victorious name. We believe that whatsoever we bind here has been bound by You in heaven. Lord, bind Your enemy. You have promised that You will put him under our feet. May this word be fulfilled among us tonight. Clear out everything in us that has the poison and the bite of the serpent so that he can be trampled out of us. Lord, release Your word so that all of us would receive Your boundless supply. Visit us once again so that we would have more of Your glory within and would express more of Your magnificence without. Amen.
About a year has passed since I was last here. I am so happy to see the brothers again. I wish to have some further intimate and thorough fellowship with all of you. After reading all the verses and the outline of this message, I believe that you should have some impression that what I am sharing with you is of two points: one is the oneness, and the other is the one accord. The oneness may seem high and far away in the heavens. But the one accord is very near and is even right here. It describes the condition within us. The term one accord speaks of something related to our mind.
According to the examples in the New Testament, oneness is very objective. It seems far away in heaven and hard to attain. But the one accord is very subjective; it speaks directly of our condition. For this reason we can say that the one accord is the oneness in practice. The oneness without the one accord is only something on paper and has no reality to it. If we only speak of oneness without speaking about the one accord, we may have only some high and great doctrines. They may be good, but they are not practical. However, if we add the one accord to the oneness, we are “pulling the oneness down close to us,” like pulling a kite down from the sky. This will bring the oneness right to where we are. If we have the one accord, we will have the oneness among us in practice. Hence, we must first talk about the oneness, and then the practice of oneness, which is the one accord.
For quite a long time I have been bothered as I considered our situation. Not only among those outside of us but even among us the oneness and the one accord have suffered a great loss. The oneness has been neglected, and the one accord has been set aside. This has been our overall condition. For this reason I have been constantly burdened within and have always wanted to come back to see all of you. I feel that our present need is to see the oneness, to emphasize it, and to dive into the significance of the oneness in an intensified way. At the same time we should fellowship about the oneness in a serious way. In particular, we must arrive at the one accord. Without the one accord there is no oneness. At most, there is the talk about oneness; there is no practicality of this oneness.
For this reason we have to thoroughly see the oneness spoken of in the Bible. The world talks about oneness also. As long as there is an organization, there is talk about oneness. A family wants to be one. A school wants to be one. In an institution or an army people talk about oneness. Even in a community or a little club, the same is true. What then is the difference between the oneness spoken of in the Bible and the oneness the world talks about? The oneness the Bible talks about is very different from the oneness the world talks about. It is even different from the oneness we may be used to talking about. The term oneness is the same for these different peoples, but its nature and ingredient are different. This is like the example of a ring; a platinum ring is of one nature, a gold ring is of another nature, and a brass ring is yet of another nature. The shape may be quite similar, but their natures are absolutely different. We can say that the oneness we talked about in the past did not touch the intrinsic nature of the oneness spoken of in the Bible.
Now let us look at the oneness for which the Lord Jesus prayed in John 17. The most important thing is the nature of this oneness. When one buys a suit or an appliance, the most important thing to consider is the substance, for the value depends first on the substance. This chapter is the Lord Jesus’ prayer to the Father, but what is covered concerns His believers. If we study this prayer carefully, it is easy to see that it speaks mainly of glory and also of oneness. But what is glory? What is oneness? Should glory come first, or should oneness come first? This is difficult to determine. I want to explain to you what I comprehend in simple terms so that you may understand.
Verse 1 says, “These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” This is the main subject of the Lord Jesus’ prayer. According to what follows, this glory is the oneness. Where there is glory, there is oneness. On the other hand, where there is oneness, there is glory. Without glory, there is no oneness. In order to have glory, there must be the oneness. Glory and oneness are consequences of each other. The subject of the prayer is glory, but its real content is oneness. In this chapter of the Lord Jesus’ prayer, oneness is mentioned three times. In other words, there are three levels of oneness, and each of these levels is related to the Father.
The first time oneness is mentioned, it is related to the Father’s name and the Father’s life — the eternal life (vv. 2, 6, 11b). Hence, this oneness is in the Father’s name and in His life. This is the first level. When oneness is mentioned the second time, it is related to the Father’s word (vv. 14-21). When the Father’s word with the Father’s reality is applied to us, it produces an effect, which is to sanctify us from the Satan-ensnared world and to separate us unto God. This is the second level of the oneness, the oneness in the Father’s word, that is, in the Father’s reality. When oneness is mentioned the third time, it is related to the Father’s glory (vv. 22-23). In the Father’s glory we are one. This is the third level of the oneness. When these three levels of oneness are fulfilled, the Lord Jesus’ prayer for the oneness of the believers is accomplished.
Now we need to properly consider these three levels of oneness. The first level of oneness is the oneness of all the believers in the Father’s name and life. What is the meaning of the Father’s name? The Father’s name denotes the person of the Father, who is the Father Himself. The Father is the source of life. The oneness of the believers originates from the Father Himself (the person), who is the source of life. Since the first level of the oneness that the Lord desires originates from the Father as the source, there is no need for our own person. We are not the source. Only the Father is the source. Hence, we should not live by our human life. We should live by the Father’s divine life. Only the Father’s life is the source. Hence, basically speaking, we have to see that the oneness of the believers for which the Lord Jesus prayed is with the Father as the source rather than with man as the source.
Furthermore, this oneness is in the Father’s life. The Father denotes the source, and the Father’s life denotes the element. The Father’s life is the element for oneness. Hence, the oneness that we pursue after is the oneness of life, which is of the Father as the source. This oneness has the Father as the source and His life as the element. This sounds simple, but its requirements are stringent. Everything of what we are and do must be terminated. In this way, regardless how many thousands and millions of saints there are, if there is only one source with only one inward essence, there will surely be oneness. Hence, this oneness is not according to what most Christians would consider. It is not a oneness of people clustering together and convinced by one another to have the same thought and opinion. This is a muddy oneness. It is not a golden oneness. The oneness the Lord wants is one in which we have the same source and the same life, taking the Father as the source and living by His life. When the Father’s life with His nature becomes the element of oneness in us, we will spontaneously be one.
The second level of oneness is the oneness of all the believers in the reality of the Father’s sanctifying word. The Lord has given us the Father’s name and His eternal life. But He did not ask us to leave the world. How then should we live in the world? For this purpose He has given us the Father’s word. The Father’s word has God Himself as the reality. God as the reality is in His word. Without God’s word, we cannot touch God’s reality. Today God is in His word. This word contains the reality of God, which is God Himself. God Himself as this reality has a special function, which is to sanctify us. Those of us who read God’s Word frequently have this experience. Whether or not we understand the Bible, as long as we read a little of God’s Word in the morning and consider this Word a little during the day, we are sanctified.
One saint confessed that his mind was not sharp and that he tended to forget about the things he read in the Bible. Brother Watchman Nee comforted him by saying that it was all right to forget what one had read in the Bible. He illustrated by saying that when a person takes a bamboo basket to the river to wash the rice in the basket, he drops the basket in and out of the water many times. Although no water is left in the basket, the basket itself and the rice in it are all washed clean. Many times we exert great effort in memorizing the words of the Bible, only to find that after a few days we remember nothing; everything seems to be gone. But in fact, when we read the Lord’s Word again and again, all the worldly matters in us are removed, and we are cleansed and sanctified. God’s word brings in God’s reality, and in us it produces a special effect, which is to sanctify us and to deliver us from this mixed world so that we may be separated unto God.
The world is very mixed. But God’s word of reality sanctifies us and makes us pure. The result of this purity is holiness. Anything that is separated is pure. The more a person is in the word of God, the purer he becomes. A man who is not in God’s word but is in the world is complicated and impure. He may not be very literate, yet he can still be very complicated within. However, if we have God’s word within, this word with God’s reality will do a sanctifying work within us to separate us unto God, thus making us pure. God is on the side of purity, and Satan as the prince of the world is on the side of complication. Satan is the prince of the mixed-up world, but our God is the God of purity. The word of reality sanctifies us and delivers us from the mixed-up world, turning us back to the purity in God. In this way we are one.
Hence, the Father’s name is the source of our oneness, the Father’s life is the element of our oneness, and the Father’s sanctifying word is the means of our oneness, bringing us to the sphere of oneness. Because of the Father, not only is our source one and our nature one, but where we are also becomes one.
Lastly, the third level of the oneness is the oneness of all the believers in the expression of the divine glory. In John 17:22 the Lord Jesus said to the Father, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one.” According to the revelation of the Bible and in comparison with our experience, glory here refers to the Father’s life with His nature to express His divine virtue. Hence, the glory of God is the expression of God. Glory is not a sudden kind of beam that shines on us and surrounds us from without. Rather, it is the Father’s divine life with the divine nature, expressing a kind of divine radiance and splendor. This divine, splendid expression delivers us from ourselves and makes us fully one.
The first level of the oneness is in the Father’s name and life, delivering us from the natural realm. The second level of the oneness is in the reality of the Father’s sanctifying word, delivering us from the world. Now the third level of the oneness is in the Father’s glory, delivering us from ourselves and causing us to become fully one in the Triune God. We have to realize that this oneness is the Body of Christ; it is the real and practical church. The church is the oneness lived out of the believers in the Triune God. This oneness has God as the source and His life as the essence, in which the radiance and splendor in divinity are fully expressed through God’s life and nature in a sanctified realm. This is the practical church life. This is also the building. It is something we ought to treasure and pursue.
Now we should all be clear that the oneness of the Lord’s believers is not as we imagined. It is not a oneness arrived at by dropping our opinions and agreeing mutually with one another. The genuine oneness of the church is a oneness in which we have the Father Himself as the source, the Father’s life as the nature, and the Father’s sanctifying reality as the realm, which enables us to live in purity, being unrelated to the world, and which expresses the divine radiance and splendor through God’s life with His nature. This oneness is the Body of Christ; it is also the building God is after.
Now we will consider the practice of oneness. Oneness is practiced through the one accord. The Lord Jesus taught the disciples in Matthew 18:19, saying, “If two of you are in harmony on earth concerning any matter for which they ask, it will be done for them from My Father who is in the heavens.” The word harmony here, in the original language, means to be in a musical harmony; this is the practice of oneness. By the time of Acts 1, there were one hundred twenty people praying steadfastly in one accord (vv. 14-15a). All of them had one mind, which was to receive power from on high and to testify of the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Lord, whom they loved and followed. For this they were in one mind and were thus in one accord.
In the Epistles, through the conditions manifested in the various local churches, the Lord shows us further what the one accord is. First Corinthians 1:10 says that we have to speak the same thing and to be attuned in the same mind and in the same opinion. How can we speak the same thing and have the same mind and the same opinion? The whole book of 1 Corinthians shows us that this same speaking is Christ, and the same mind and same opinion are also Christ. In our daily life, if we take Christ as our center and everything, what we speak, think, and understand will all be Christ. This is the one accord, which is the practice of oneness. Some among the Corinthian believers said they were of Paul. Others said they were of Apollos. Still others said that they were of Cephas. Then some were smart enough to say that they were of Christ. They were of four things. In other words, there were four minds and four speakings with four results, which end in division. The oneness is gone, the Body of Christ is lost, and the building is no more. Hence, 1 Corinthians 1:10 deals with this matter so that we would be captured by the Lord and that there would no longer be Paul or Apollos or Cephas but only Christ. Everyone would be thinking about Christ and speaking about Christ, having Christ as his view, Christ as his way of speaking, and Christ as his opinion and judgment. Everything would be Christ. This Christ has become the life-giving Spirit in His resurrection (15:45b) and has become our enjoyment within. The practice of our oneness depends on Him. When we speak Him, consider Him, enjoy Him, and express Him, we will be harmonious and one.
Furthermore, Philippians 2:2 says, “Think the same thing, having the same love, joined in soul, thinking the one thing.” What is it to think the same thing? And what is it to think the one thing? After reading through the whole book of Philippians, and especially after reading through chapter 3, we can see that this refers to the subjective knowledge and experience of Christ. Only Christ is the centrality and universality of our whole being. Everything else makes our mind different and causes disunity. For this reason we should focus our thoughts on the precious knowledge and experience of Christ. Furthermore, we need to have the same love. Our love toward the saints should not be classified into categories. Otherwise, our love will create problems, and there will be no way to have the genuine one accord.
From Ephesians 4:4-6 we can see that our practice of oneness is based upon the attribute of the oneness of the church: one Spirit, one Lord, one God, one Body, one faith, one baptism, and one hope. By this we can see that oneness is the attribute of the church. Based upon this attribute of the oneness of the church, we can be in one accord and can practice the oneness. Moreover, the practice of this oneness is according to the apostles’ teaching (1 Cor. 4:17b; 7:17b; 11:16; 14:34a). The apostles taught the same thing to all the saints in all the places and in all the churches. At the same time, the practice of this oneness is also according to the same speaking of the Spirit to the churches (Rev. 2:7, 11a, 17a, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). The seven epistles to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 are words spoken to all the churches. He who has an ear, let him hear. Each epistle was written to all the churches. All the churches have the same Bible, and everyone is practicing oneness according to the same speaking. Finally, the practice of oneness indicates that the seven churches as the seven lampstands are completely identical (1:20). The churches are God’s golden lampstands. Although they are distinct and self-contained, they are completely identical in nature, shape, function, and expression.
All who are sitting here today are elders and co-workers. We must be in one accord to maintain the oneness Christ seeks. Since we are bearing the responsibility of the church, we should see the way for the church to receive grace and blessing. We must all realize that the blessing and grace of God can only come upon a situation of one accord. This situation is the practice of oneness. In the Old Testament, Psalm 133 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is / For brothers to dwell in unity! / It is like the fine oil upon the head / That ran down upon the beard, / Upon Aaron’s beard, / That ran down upon the hem of his garments; / Like the dew of Hermon / That came down upon the mountains of Zion. / For there Jehovah commanded the blessing: / Life forever.” God will only grace and bless the one accord, that is, the practice of oneness.
Finally, I would say that if we only listen to these words without practicing them, they are but doctrines. The practice of oneness touches our mind, our love, and our speaking. Unconsciously, we have all violated the practice of oneness. Many times our mind is like an unreined wild horse, free from any restraint. Our love is not regulated. Our words are light and loose. All these damage the oneness of the believers and are factors for losing the Lord’s blessing. Today we are all living in the church and the Lord’s Body. We are also bearing the testimony for the Lord’s recovery. But it is very easy for our mind to be distracted and for our love to become unhealthy. Perhaps we do not speak evil words of reviling, but our speaking may be loose, and our opinions may be plentiful. Spontaneously, we bring many problems to the church and spread division among the saints.
Hence, we have to be on the alert. If we would first consider and think a little before we speak and would ask if it is Christ or not, there would be no problem. If we love the saints, we should ask ourselves if our love has different classes, degrees, or depths, and we should be adjusted by the Lord accordingly. The same is true with our speaking. We should speak only if our speaking is Christ; otherwise, we should not speak. I have a heavy burden within me. We all want the church here to receive grace and blessing. But do not forget Psalm 133. The commanded blessing of the Lord, which is life forever, is upon the brethren dwelling together in oneness. It is like the ointment that flows through the whole body and like the dew that descends on Zion. Now we have seen that the oneness of the believers prayed for by the Lord is neither a oneness like the world speaks of nor a oneness according to what we formerly understood. Rather, it is a perfected oneness by all of us being in the Father’s name and life, in His word of reality, and in His divinely expressed glory. Only by this is there the blessing of God. Of course, we should labor and work for the Lord, but if our situation is not in oneness and if we do not practice the one accord, I am afraid that our result will not be abundant. Therefore, in order for us to receive God’s blessing, we must practice the oneness, and the way to practice the oneness is by the one accord.
