Jesus has just prayed for himself, and then for his disciples, and now he prays to the Father for his next favorite group of people: all who would later believe in him. The church has traditionally imagined Jesus mentally panning through every future person that would ever belong to him. That would mean in this moment, Jesus lovingly thought of the thief on the cross, and Saint Augustine, and Bob the random medieval peasant, and your great-granddaughter, and even you in particular—and prayed for us all.
What exactly was his prayer for us? It might be surprising. He didn’t pray that we would stay righteous, or that God would protect us from suffering, or that a lot of us would go to Heaven. He prayed for our unity. He yearned for the church, around the world and across all time, to be one in purpose and love and zeal and mission, just like he and the Father are one. And in fact every other good thing he could have prayed for is in a way wrapped up in the unity of the church!
Sometimes this unity may feel out of reach. People just keep getting on our nerves. But our unity is to be grounded in the unity of God. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one! God the Father and God the Son are always on the same page in purpose, love, zeal, and mission, because in fact God is one. And we the church are to join in with that same unity. So we are to love one another powerfully. We are to exhort one another toward truth in essential matters, and act gently and charitably around inessential matters. We are to treat faithful Christians of every kind as brothers and sisters. And we are to praise and glorify the Lord with one harmonious voice.
Strive for that unity! That is the most powerful way that the world will come to know that Jesus is Lord: by seeing the Lord’s entire global church accomplishing unity, as one body being the center of an otherworldly kind of love. This is our fundamental mission. I firmly believe that if the church could truly be one as Christ desired, the light of the gospel would shine across every corner of the globe, to the utmost glory of the Father.
