Bible Text: John 17:20-21 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. John 17:20-21

It has been more than a third of a century since I heard John Noble speak. I was a teenager at the time. Noble told of his years in a Soviet prison, the hardship, the bitter cold of Siberia, the deprivation and loneliness; but what most impressed me was Noble’s telling how in that situation, individuals who would have nothing to do with each other in civilian life—say, Baptists and Catholics—began to meet together and talk, and pray.

Their imprisonment brought them together, and a common enemy reminded them of a common faith inside which goes far beyond the label on the outside. Persecution has a way of doing that, of breaking down the barriers which separate us.

The Gospel of John—unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are biographical—focuses on the events which take place on twenty-one days in the life of Jesus Christ. One of the most vivid of those is the scene of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. First, Gethsemane was not a kind of park where little children played, but an olive grove where a wine-press squeezed the sweet juice from the grapes. It was a place of solitude where Jesus and the disciples could come and pray without interruption.

In the prayer which is recorded in John 17, Jesus focuses on the Church, His body. Listen to what Jesus said: “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.” Then He said, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” Jesus then prayed that they might be one, even as He and the Father were one.

From this, are we to infer that all denominations are wrong, that we should forget the differences which are recognized historically? Not necessarily, but I do know one thing. In China, today, there are essentially no denominations—only churches. Yes, they differ from each other. No, they don’t all agree, individually or collectively.

Who is my brother? That question is totally valid and tremendously important. Brothers and sisters have a common parentage. In the household of faith, this means we are born again of the Spirit of God, recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord and the Savior of the world. We know that by grace through faith we have received the gift of eternal life and that it is by the grace of God that we came to Christ and were adopted into His family.

Strange yet true is the fact that when the fires of persecution burn, no matter where they are, the shackles which have tied us to our backgrounds—and, yes, churches—are consumed, and we find a freedom to laugh, to cry, to pray, to rejoice, to praise the Almighty which we have never before known.

When Charles Blair was flying over Scotland as a young man, he looked out the window of the plane and noticed that the stone dykes which had separated the fields of Scottish farmers for centuries seemed to be missing. Stopping a flight attendant, he asked what had happened to them.

Smiling, she pointed out that it was harvest time and the crops of the farmers had overgrown the dykes, which were still there. It is harvest time in our old world, time to reach out to those who need a Savior, and time to embrace those who are brothers and sisters and demonstrate that we are His children by how we love each other.

Resource reading: John 17 (today read this in a different version).