Each Prayer Here Is to Show the World Christian Unity is God’s Purpose for the Universe

“9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” (Eph 1:9-10 NivUS)

God is a spirit, God is all-holy, and God is love. So God’s purpose for the universe is to create the kind of godly, holy, and loving, spiritual children for Himself that He wants to spend eternity with, children who are ever learning from Him how to be more like Him, ever loving Him back for His eternal, underserved love and mercy to them, which makes them all equal children of His, in God’s eyes, all credited as being equal to one another in the righteousness of Christ, Himself, and children who are ever loving one another and ever having mercy on one another of God’s eternal children, each and every one of their siblings, the same as God the Father loves and has mercy on them all.

We believers in Jesus are those eternal children of God, our Father in Heaven, and we will all eventually learn all truth which God wants us to know in Jesus. It may well take us an eternity of following His Spirit to lead us there, but the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, which is all in Jesus, if we start following and learning from Him now in this life as we receive Him in our hearts to lead us.

God gets us started now, on this earth, to begin that eternal life of following Him here, when we first know the eternal love and mercy that our Father in Heaven has given us by sending His Son, Jesus, to show us, in Jesus, what God’s Spirit of eternal love and mercy looks like when that Spirit lives in a man.

If we know that Jesus of Nazareth is that man sent by the Father, that man in whom the fullness of the Godhead was willing to come to earth and live a perfect life, to willingly let evil men kill Him unjustly, just so He could take the punishment we deserve for our sins by paying for our sins with His own blood on this earth, then we begin to know what kind of love and mercy God in Heaven is.

If we know who that man, Jesus, was on earth and is now, then we know by looking at Jesus when He was here on earth, that God in heaven is the same kind of love and mercy He sent to the earth in Jesus to be our one Savior, Christ, and Redeemer, and we have faith in that story, that fame, that glorious name of Jesus for what He did for us all. That is our faith in the name of Jesus, the faith we have, that simply by us believing in His name that way, He undeservedly gives His same Spirit to live in each and every one of us.

That is our faith in the name of Jesus, faith in all He was, all He did here, and all He is now, that His name gives us the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness of our sins we could never earn for ourselves.

In that name of Jesus, God gives His love and mercy to us believers as much as we love all believers as Jesus self-sacrificially loved both us and the world; and in that name God gives His love to the world through us believers who are one, as Jesus and the Father are one, if we love all our unbelieving neighbors and enemies in the world as we love ourselves; and in that name God gives to us limitless mercy with as much forgiveness as we give to all who sin against us.

So by that faith of ours in that kind of holiness, mercy, and unbounded love to us, which are all key to knowing who that Spirit is, in Jesus, we know what kind of amazing gospel, good news, that faith means for the rest of our lives here on earth: that as long as we choose to follow and remain in Him, with ever-repentant hearts seeking to be ever more like Him, repenting now of all the sins we know, and repenting in the future as fast as God shows us our sins, we are now undeservedly already credited by God to have the perfect, sinless holiness Jesus had, so we can continually have the gospel, good news, joy in our lives every day of knowing God lives in our own hearts now, knowing God continually approves of how we ever seek to please Him by obeying His loving guidance here in our own hearts, and we know God always gives to us, undeservedly, the gift of the very inheritance that Jesus earned for us to live in, starting now on earth, and eternally together with God as one in Jesus in heaven.

That’s how we know, and can be certain no matter what happens in this life, that we have eternal salvation and protection in this life starting now in the name of Jesus. And we have every right, even the command of Jesus, to proceed based on that confidence in our salvation, to teach to every member of our own Christian faith group, every doctrinal determination and every application of every command Jesus ever gave us, as we in our own Christian faith group or denomination see best to worship our Lord.

The only problem with that every-doctrine-we-hold approach comes about if we stress it all to be so essential in order to exclude from those whom we consider to be children of God in Christ, the repentant, mutually loving believers who exist in other, Christian faith groups and Christian denominations, not in our own. If we stress the whole of all our group’s doctrine above the simple gospel, good news of what Jesus has done for us all to get His Spirit into all of us in the first place, and to give us faith in His name for repentance and forgiveness of sins, then the world hears all those different denominational and Christian faith group distinctives, and can’t sort them out.

That’s fine food for the mature Christians to share in love and edification with one another who are already believers in Christ, both within each Christian faith group as well as with other believers outside, and always only in mutual edification that is evident to the hearers and is seen by the world to be motivated only by our love. There is certainly no love of God to be found in public arguments that serve nothing but our own selfish pride over a gift of knowledge of the truth of God’s word which was never our own idea in the first place, if it is true, but is only ever a gift from God in understanding the Bible scripture.

But instead of secondary doctrinal disputes, Jesus says what the world needs to know first is that the Triune God really did send Jesus here, as stated in the doctrine of Christ which all Christian faith groups already all hold the same as one, in the gospel, good news of what He did to pay for all our sins with His blood.

Jesus told all us believers that based on our one faith in His name for repentance and forgiveness of sins, our faith to know we receive as much mercy as we forgive all who sin against us, then the Holy Spirit would lead all us repentant, mutually loving believers, in every Christian faith group and denomination to be one in several ways:
One in understanding the words of Jesus, Himself, as shown in the Bible, so we can unite in Jesus, because the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, and Jesus is all Truth,

One in knowing we receive Jesus to pray with us when we receive the littlest one among us who only believes in the name of Jesus (which is simply belief for the gift of repentance and forgiveness of sins as we forgive all who sin against us),

One in knowing we receive whatever we pray for because we are one in His name, both in our own hearts, and in the hearts of all others we receive with us as one in His name, in other Christian faith groups and denominations, so we don’t leave out a single, little believer,

One in receiving complete protection from all evil in order to make us all one in Jesus’ name,

One in having complete joy knowing we all are one together in His same Spirit living in us all, joy in His continual presence in us and with us,

One in receiving the glory Jesus gave us, the glory God gave Jesus, to glorify the Father in the name of the Son,

And Jesus said that all of those various, above listed parts of that glory of oneness is what we receive when we all become completely one, as Jesus and the Father are one, which Jesus specifically told us is in the one Spirit of the One, Good Shepherd.

By looking to Jesus on earth, we know that that Spirit living in a man looks like the One, Good Shepherd, as Jesus said He and the Father are one, in the One, Good Shepherd, who is willing to lay down His life in this world in order to help the Father in Heaven gather into one, eternal flock, starting here on earth, all of the Father’s sheep. And Jesus says we believers can all recognize as children of the Father those who are the Father’s sheep, because they will all hear and come to the voice of Jesus, calling us all to repent and believe the good news, which good news is the fact that the Father sent Jesus here for that purpose, so we can trade our sins for His holiness, and live now and forever in the inheritance of Jesus.

It is in that purpose of God for our oneness in the Spirit of the One, Good Shepherd that we now obey God in His first commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love one another believers with our lives laid down spiritually to serve all the other believers in every Christian denomination and faith group, to help make us all one in God’s flock, which love for all believers is what Jesus says is the new commandment of Jesus, and is now part of the first commandment, to love God with all we have and are.

And it is in that way of our obedience to Jesus in the fulfillment of the first commandment of God, in which we love God and every one of our brothers and sisters in Jesus in the way the Father shows us He has loved us all in Jesus, that God now shows His own glory to the world.

God shows to the world His own glory in the name of the Son, Jesus, because, when we become one in Jesus that way by obeying the first commandment, we are also, as a necessary result promised by Jesus, thus obeying the second commandment of God as Jesus ordered that second command also to be fulfilled by us: that we must love all others in the world, including all sinners, all unbelievers, and even our enemies, as much as we love ourselves, loving them enough to show them what we wanted to know when we were still, like them, unrepentant sinners and enemies of God.

We have to do love to the unbelieving world of our neighbors and enemies, doing to them what we would have them do in love to us in their place! Which is let God show the world the glory Jesus said He already gave us believers in the name of Jesus, to glorify the Father in the Son, by giving us whatever we ask for in the name of Jesus.

In that Christian unity in the one Spirit, of the One, Good Shepherd, we show the world that we know Jesus promised us that God will make the world now to know the gospel, good news: that God sent Jesus to pay for our sins with His blood, and give us His own holiness and inheritance to live in, now and forever.

When the world sees God’s glory in our oneness in that One, Good Shepherd, the world knows that God is now giving that holiness and inheritance of Jesus to anyone in the world who wants the opportunity to repent and believe the good news of what He gives to us all. And for all us believers to become completely one in that Spirit, as Jesus and the Father are one, we simply welcome into this oneness in Jesus the least believer among us, who simply believes in Jesus for repentance and forgiveness of sins, so that the world knows we all welcome anyone in the world who wants it, to live together with us in that self-sacrificial love, and in that credited holiness in the Spirit of Jesus, all sharing fully and equally, together as one, in the inheritance of all God’s children in Christ.

That belief of ours for how we love Jesus back by obeying the things that please God most, gives us even more assurance we get what we pray for. Those two commands are the very first and second most important commands of God, so we obey them both the way Jesus said He fulfilled those commands with His own, two commands: first for us to have self-sacrificial love of all repentant, mutually loving believers, in every Christian faith group and denomination; and second, for us to do the kind of love to our enemies and unbelievers that we would want them to do to us in their place.

That is our obedience to those two commands that are most important to God and please Him the most, and is how we love God back in the way He says we can best love Him back by our obedience, so it is how we know we have God’s own promise that He will give us everything we pray for in the name of Jesus, the Son, in order to glorify the Father in the Son, in whose name we ask, as Jesus and the Father are one, in One, Good Shepherd, in whom we are now all one, in gathering all repentant, mutually loving believers into God’s one flock, starting now and bearing fruit of the Spirit that lasts forever in Jesus.

“9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” (Eph 1:9-10 NivUS)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tim Warlick,