The True Oneness

“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art IN me, and I IN thee, that they also may be one IN us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (Jn. 17:20-23). “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; [which] the world cannot receive, because it seeth [it] not, neither knoweth [it]: but ye know [it]; for [it] dwelleth with you, and shall be IN you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you… If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him… But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things” (Jn. 14:15-20,23,26). “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). “Now the Lord IS that SPIRIT” (II Cor. 3:17). “For by one SPIRIT are we all baptized INTO one body [of Christ]” (I Cor. 12:13; Eph. 4:4,5). “And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:4,5). “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting… And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1,2,4). “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (I Cor. 1:10).

There it is my friend, nothing but pure continuity of scripture showing us what the ‘oneness’ of God is all about. According to Jesus we are to be one the same way that Jesus and his Father are one. That oneness comes about by us being in him and him in us, even as he is in the Father and the Father is in him. That is what Jesus plainly said in the above quoted passages. In fact Jesus and the apostle Paul just as plainly stated that this oneness comes about only by us being baptized with his Spirit, as his first followers were on the day of Pentecost. So it is the Spirit that makes us one with the Father and the Son, and that is how both the Father and the Son “take up [their] abode in [anyone].” The finishing touch on this oneness, and the key element, is that we subject ourselves to the Spirit after receiving it, and be taught the truth by the “Spirit of truth” (Jn. 16:13). These things are plainly stated and set forth as such by all of the above quoted scriptures. For you and I to be one in the same manner that the Father and the Son are one, is to say that we are in one mind and one spirit through the divine love and truth that is taught by the Spirit, as I Cor. 1:10 admonished us above (Acts 4:32; Rom. 15:6; II Cor. 12:18). What this means is that the Father and the Son are two separate persons with two separate bodies, and they are in one mind and one spirit by means of having the same divine, holy “Spirit of life” indwelling them both (Rom. 8:2). Jesus was also in agreement with this: “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (Jn. 5:26). It is that same life, or Spirit, that Jesus came to provide for us, in order to fulfill all of the above scriptures quoted in this article: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10). There is not one person operating in three offices, neither are there three persons forming one God. Neither of those mindsets fit anything that we have read from the scriptures here, and we could never be ‘one’ with one another according to either of those erroneous mindsets. We are separate persons, and we can only be ‘one’ by having the same divine life and Spirit, and being taught by that same Spirit into the one “mind OF the Spirit" (Rom. 8:27; I Cor. 2:16; Philip. 2:5; I Pet. 4:1). And that is the truth of the oneness of the Father and the Son. Amen.