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Scripture Reading: John 17:1, 21-23; Rev. 1:11-12; Eph. 4:13
The proper church, as the testimony of Jesus, testifies that Jesus is unique. In our home, in our locality, in our country, and in the universe, there is only one Jesus. John 3:29 says, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” According to God’s divine ordination, one husband has one wife. It is wrong for a husband to have more than one wife. Polygamy is not only sinful but ugly. A bridegroom and a bride are a figure, a picture, showing that in the entire universe, according to God’s economy, there is only one Christ and one church. On the last night that the Lord Jesus was on this earth, He gave His final message, a long speaking of three chapters, John 14 through 16. These chapters are deep, living, rich, practical, and real. After this message the Lord Jesus turned to the Father and prayed (ch. 17).
The Lord’s prayer was first for the Son to be glorified that the Father may be glorified (vv. 1-5). For many years most of us have not understood this chapter. Almost all Christian readers of the New Testament realize that John 17 is a record of the Lord’s departing prayer to the Father for the oneness of His believers. This is right but only in a shallow sense. We need to consider where this oneness is and how it can be realized practically. Whenever we practice the genuine oneness, the Son is glorified that the Father may be glorified in the Son. The church life is the glorification of the Son; for the Son to be glorified there is the need of a proper church life (Eph. 3:21; 1 Tim. 3:15-16). In the Bible glory means God’s expression. We may illustrate this with electricity. Even though electricity has been installed in a building, no one is able to see it. When we switch on the lights, however, the electricity is seen. The shining of the lights is the “glorification” of the electricity. In the same way, Jesus Christ is a mystery, and it seems that no one can see Him. However, this Christ is expressed in the churches. Just as we know that there is electricity in a building by the shining of the lights, we know that Jesus is here by His “glowing” in the saints. Before His death the Lord Jesus prayed, “Glorify Your Son” (John 17:1). The intention, goal, and aim of this prayer were that the Father would build up the church for Christ. In this sense, glorify Your Son means “build up the church for Your Son.” Practically speaking, the Lord’s prayer in John 17 is a prayer for the church. The term church is not there in black and white letters, but it is there in actuality, reality, and practicality.
Just as electricity cannot be expressed without the shining of the lamps, the Son of God cannot be glorified without the church. When the Lord Jesus prayed, “Glorify Your Son,” He was asking the Father to bring the church into being so that Christ may be expressed, that is, glorified, in His Body. In this way the Father is also glorified in the Son, because the Father is in the Son (14:10-11). If the Son is concealed, no one can know the Father, but when the Son is expressed, the Father is also expressed in the Son’s expression. It is as if the Lord was praying, “Glorify Your Son in the church so that the Son may glorify You in His glorification.” We also need to pray for the Son’s glorification, His expression, in the proper church life today. When Christ the Son is expressed, the Father is expressed in the expression of the Son. We all need to see that the Lord’s prayer to the Father in John 17 is a prayer, practically speaking, for the church life. Without the church life, how else can the Son be glorified? The Lord’s prayer was fulfilled in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, when the Father through the Spirit raised up three thousand people and brought the church into being. It was at this time that the Son began to be glorified in the church, and in the glorification of the Son the Father was also glorified.
For the Son’s glorification in the church life, there is the need for the genuine oneness of all the Son’s believers. This is why at a certain point the Lord Jesus turned His prayer to the oneness (John 17:6-24). If there is no oneness among the believers, there is no church life, and if there is no church life, there is no practical way for the Son to be glorified. The practical key for the Son to be glorified is the oneness of all the believers. This realization allows us to enter into the depths of the Lord’s prayer in John 17. Practically speaking, it is a prayer for the church, and the church depends upon the oneness. The oneness is the crucial and basic item needed for the practice of the church life. The Lord Jesus foresaw this need, so He prayed ahead of time concerning this. On the one hand, the Lord’s prayer for the churches was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, but on the other hand, from that time to the present generation, division has been a problem in the church. The subtle enemy, Satan, knows that as long as the oneness is damaged, there cannot be a proper church life and the Son cannot be glorified in the church. Today we must realize that for the recovery of the proper church life, the first thing that must be recovered is the oneness among the believers.
My mother’s grandfather on her mother’s side was a Southern Baptist in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and my mother also was baptized as a Southern Baptist, although she was not saved. Then I was born as a fourth-generation Southern Baptist. When I grew up, though, I made the decision to turn from my family’s Baptist tradition to be a Chinese Presbyterian. However, I was still not saved. One day when I was nineteen, we heard an announcement that an evangelist, a twenty-five-year-old woman, was coming to our town to preach the gospel. According to the news, a thousand people were coming to listen to this young woman. I was stirred by this, and I wanted to see this preacher. I thank God for His sovereignty that one afternoon I went to hear her. Her message was on how Satan robs and usurps God’s people, just as Pharaoh did. The preaching was powerful, and after only a short time I was fully captured. I was an ambitious young man, endeavoring to finish my studies, but I was caught on that afternoon. I told God, “Even if You give me the whole world and make me a king, I would say, ‘Thank You, but I do not want this.’ I do not want to be usurped by Satan anymore. I want to go along with Jesus.”
After this, I realized that the Chinese Presbyterian Church had nothing for me. I was hungry, and I wanted spiritual food. I loved the Bible very much. It was so sweet to me, like honey on the honeycomb. However, no one was able to present the Bible to me in a proper way. They did not know it in the way of life. They knew the Bible only according to its stories, but when I was young, my mother had taught me all the stories already. When she told me how Joseph was sold to Pharaoh, I shed tears, but now having been saved, I had received a new life, and the new life needed some new food. It was by this kind of seeking that I came in contact with the Brethren Assembly. They were famous for knowing the Bible, and this captured me. Therefore, I turned from the Chinese Presbyterians to the Brethren. I was fully satisfied there for a period of time. I sat there taking notes on the typology, dispensations, and prophecies, such as the ten horns, ten toes, four beasts, and seventy weeks (Rev. 13:1; Dan. 2:41-42; 7:3; 9:24). I heard over one hundred messages on the seventy weeks in Daniel 9. I was so happy because I came to know the Bible according to its prophecies, types, figures, and all the crucial portions of Daniel, Revelation, and Matthew. I continued in this way for seven years.
However, one day in August of 1931, as I was walking on the street, the Spirit within me checked with me, saying, “You have so much knowledge of the Bible, but look at how dead you are.” That alarmed me very much. I stopped walking, looked to the heavens, and said, “Yes, I am so dead!” I wanted to shout, but I was afraid of offending people on the street. At that time I did not yet know how to call on the name of the Lord, so I waited until the next morning to go to a mountain not very far from my home. When I got to the top, I burst out and called, “O Lord!” and I wept and prayed. On that day I turned from the Brethren Assembly to life. Day after day for a long period of time I prayed to the Lord. In the following year, 1932, the Lord sent Brother Watchman Nee to my hometown, having been invited by the Chinese Presbyterian Church through me. That was the first time we met each other. After he came, he stayed in my home, and we had fellowship together. This was the first time I had met a man with the presence of Jesus and the flavor of the church life.
On the same day he left, a brother came to me late in the evening for fellowship, and we began to practice the church life in my hometown. I did not know anything about the proper church life. I had never been in a proper meeting of the church, and we did not even have a hymnal. Only we two, this one brother and I, came together on a Tuesday to begin to practice the church life, but on the second Lord’s Day afterward, there were eleven young men coming together to partake of the Lord’s table. Some sisters also insisted on coming, but we did not have the space for them because we had begun the Lord’s table in my mother’s living room. After being with the traditional American Southern Baptists, the formal Chinese Presbyterians, and the British Brethren Assembly, I turned to life, and in life the Lord turned me to the church. From that day in July of 1932 up to the present, which is now forty-three years, I have never had a regret or the thought to have another turn. There is nowhere left to turn. The next move will not be a turn; it will simply be a step into the New Jerusalem.
From that day we began to realize that the genuine church life depends inwardly on our honest and pure heart with a seeking spirit and outwardly on the oneness. The eleven of us who began to have the church life had come out of eight different denominations. Now we were in the heavens, praying, praising, and testifying mainly of our oneness. At that time, the Baptists were for baptism by immersion, the Presbyterians were for sprinkling, and the two were fighting with each other. However, at our Lord’s table we praised the Lord for our oneness. We rejoiced over John 17 and said, “Lord Jesus, we are here as the fulfillment of Your prayer.” Still, there were only eleven of us. The leaders in the denominations said, “Forget about these young men. They are merely boys at play.” Nevertheless, from that day the church life became prevailing and stirred up the situation. This illustrates that in order to have the proper church life, the first requirement is the oneness.
The genuine oneness cannot be merely in doctrinal teachings. The more we are for doctrinal teachings, the more we will be divided. Neither is the oneness in our practices. Even today we do not know the best way to come together to meet and worship. We are not decided on the right way to sit, call on the name of the Lord, or pray-read, or whether to shout or be silent. We do not want to have a set way, because even the best things can cause a division if they are a set way. In the past, the Body of Christ has been fully divided both by doctrines and by rituals and practices. Therefore, from the beginning of the church life, we realized that we must beware of these two things. How then can we be one? We can see the way in the Lord’s prayer in John 17. Verse 21 says, “That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that You have sent Me.” The genuine oneness is the oneness in the Triune God—the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father—according to Their divine life and nature. We, the believers, are one not in doctrine or in practices but in the divine life and nature.
In Revelation 1:11 and 12 there are seven golden lampstands, one in each of seven localities. In typology, gold signifies God’s divine nature. This means that all the believers in a locality are one in the golden nature of God. Each of us has a certain amount of the one divine nature, and we are one in this golden nature. However, if we come together to discuss the rapture, the tribulation, foot-washing, or head covering, we may quickly be divided. Even after a little doctrinal discussion we may lose the oneness. We can debate whether the bread on the Lord’s table should be leavened or unleavened or presented whole or in portions, whether the cup should have grape juice or wine, or whether there should be one cup or many. Some may ask how we have our meetings, who calls the first hymn, or whether or not we have a presiding pastor. The questions are endless. If we care for these things, we will soon be divided into many separate meetings. There is no way for the Lord Jesus to be glorified in such a circumstance. We need to declare that the Lord Jesus is the Head, the pure Word of God is the “shoulders,” the divine nature is within us, and all the doctrines and practices are under our feet. In this way we will have the proper church life, the Son will be glorified, and the Father will be glorified in the Son’s glorification. We cannot have the genuine oneness unless we are in the divine nature.
The Lord said, “That they also may be in Us” (John 17:21). Genuine oneness is in the Triune God who is dispensed into the believers. We should not care for mere doctrinal teachings. All the fundamental doctrines are good, but if we stand for doctrines, we will be divided. It is impossible to have the proper, genuine oneness through mere doctrines. Some may say, “If we do not care for doctrine, how can we keep the Christian faith?” However, the Christian faith is not a matter of foot-washing, head covering, or baptism. Some say that a head covering must be black, and others say that it must be white. Some say that it must be long, but others say that since it is only a symbol, it can be small. There is argument after argument. Even those who practice baptism by immersion debate concerning how many times we should immerse someone. Some say that we need to immerse a person three times—once in the name of the Father, a second time in the name of the Son, and a third time in the name of the Holy Spirit; otherwise, the immersion is not effective. Some also argue whether we should immerse in salt water or fresh water, in the sea, a river, a well, or in purified water, in a bathtub or in a swimming pool. Similarly, believers hold different opinions about the rapture. Some say that it will be before the tribulation, some say after the tribulation, and some say during the tribulation. All these considerations are not items of our Christian faith, and we should drop these kinds of arguments.
The proper Christian faith is first that the Bible is God’s divine Word, divinely inspired by God, word by word. This is the first item of the faith, and if anyone does not believe this, he is short of the faith. Second, our faith is that our God is triune—one God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We do not have the mentality or expression to explain this, but the Bible tells us that it is so. We must believe that our God is such a God. He is not three Gods but one unique God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Third, God the Son one day became flesh to be a man by the name of Jesus and lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross and died for our sins. He was buried for three days, and He resurrected physically and spiritually. Today the resurrected Lord as our Savior is in the heavens, and He is also within us (10, Rom. 8:34). This is the most important item of our Christian faith. Fourth, we are sinners. Without believing in the Lord Jesus, we will perish, but by our believing in the Lord Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and we have a new birth with the divine life; that is, we are regenerated. Then one day we will all be with our Lord for eternity. Moreover, all these believing persons, while they are on this earth, should come together to worship God in a corporate way as the church. These are all items of the Christian faith. No one can drop any one of these items; we must keep them all.
All other matters are simply different kinds of doctrines. Some are good, and some are not good. Some are fundamental, and some are not, but Romans 14 says that in order to have the proper church life, we need to receive every kind of genuine Christian, regardless of the doctrine or concept he holds. Some have different opinions and doctrines about food; some eat only vegetables, but others feel that everything is good for eating. Some say that every day is the same, but others believe that we should keep certain days as holy. These are examples of different doctrines and practices. In order to keep the oneness, we need to transcend all these things. However, if anyone does not believe that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, he is not a Christian brother; he is in the principle of an antichrist (1 John 2:18, 22). Someone else may believe that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God but that we are not saved by believing in Him; it is likely that such a person is also not saved. If someone simply believes that the Holy Bible is the divine Word; that God is unique and triune; that the Lord Jesus as the Son of God became a man, died on the cross for our sins, resurrected from the dead to be our Savior, and is in the heavens and within us; that if we believe in Him, our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life; and that we all need to come together as the church, then we should not make an issue of his beliefs about the rapture, foot-washing, or head covering. Jesus prayed, “That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” Our oneness is in the divine life and nature, not in anything else, and our oneness even is the divine life and nature. Therefore, when we fellowship, we should not ask one another about every manner of doctrine. We should forget about those things and simply praise the Lord that we are all brothers. We have one Father, one Lord, and one life, and we are one Body and one church in our locality. This is good enough.
John 17:22 says, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one.” As we have pointed out, glory is the expression of God. Jesus seemed to be saying, “Father, You have given Me the life, the right, and the position to be Your Son in order to express You. Now I have given this glory to all My believers. They also have Your divine life and nature and the right and position to express You.” This means that we are one in the divine expression. We are here not expressing a certain doctrine. We are here glorifying, expressing, God the Father. We do not stand for baptism, the presbytery, or even justification by faith. We receive justification by faith, and we practice baptism and the presbytery, but we are not standing for any of these. We are standing only for God. Our glory is not justification by faith, baptism by immersion, or the presbytery; our glory is God Himself. We have the Son’s glory, and in this glory, this glorious expression of God the Father, we are one. God is unique, His expression is unique, and His glory is unique. Therefore, we are unique in His expression. On the contrary, if we are for the presbytery, the charismatic gifts, baptism, or justification by faith, we are divided. We must all be for one unique expression, which is the glory of God the Father. In this way we are one.
Verse 23 continues, “I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one.” To be perfected into one is a matter of the growth in life. We may stand as one, but many of us are short of growth. This means that we are one but not yet perfected into one. Someone may say, “I care for the church life, but I am not happy with that certain brother.” To feel this way indicates that we are not perfected. We are short of growth, and we need to grow. Ephesians 4:13 says, “Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The way to arrive at the practical oneness is by the growth unto maturity. Even though we are in the church life, we may still murmur (Phil. 2:14). However, in the New Jerusalem there will no longer be any murmuring, because at that time John 17:23 will be fully answered and fulfilled. We need to be one, we must have the one goal to express God the Father, and we must have the growth so that we may be perfected into one. We have the divine nature for our oneness, the glorious goal of our oneness, and growth unto maturity for the perfection of our oneness. This is what we need, not a certain doctrine or practice.
Today we all have the divine nature within us, we have the one goal to glorify God, and we are all growing in life. Therefore, if we hear a young one, new one, or weak one complaining or murmuring, we should not be bothered. In a family, some little ones are still in diapers. We are not bothered by them. We simply clean them up, change their diaper, and let them grow. Every mother has the full assurance that after a few years the little ones will be out of diapers. God’s family is a nursery with many little ones. This is wonderful, and we like to see this. We should not despise the little ones. The church is a family, not an army or a school. In a school all the students should be a certain age, but the church is an all-inclusive family. Likewise, we should not despise the older generation. We need the “grandfathers,” and we must love them. They have more experience, and they can give good advice. We need to honor, respect, and praise the Lord for the older generation. It would be good to see many generations in the church.
A family is not a fighting army. However, the church must still be vigilant. To this end, we need the young people to fight the battle, just as a nation needs young soldiers for its defense. We need to respect the old ones, but we also need to raise up the young ones. Otherwise, we can have no peace. This is why 1 John 2:12-14 speaks of fathers, young men, and little children. This is the proper, all-inclusive church life. If we practice the church life in this way, there will be no divisions among us.
All the above is according to John’s mending ministry for the practice of the church life. Paul’s writings contain many teachings, although, strictly speaking, he was not for those things. John, however, does not speak in the same way. He brings us back to God Himself, as in John 17:21: “That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” He brings us back to the Triune God as our life and nature, our goal, and our growth in life. Today we have the proper church life. Now we must all be one to practice the church.
