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NASB | John 17:11 "I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 17:11 "I am no longer in the world; yet they are still in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are. |
Bible Question: The Lord Jesus asked of our Father that we may be One just as Father and Son are one. What is this unity that we should read into, especially in our world of diversity. Is unity possible? Christianity is quite exclusive in that it emphasises Jesus is the only way, the only truth and only life. How will others see us? Closed minded, suffocating especially when we do not share a lot of practises. |
Bible Answer: Hello Joyce, My personal view on this is that if others want to view us as close minded, that's their problem. Our faith must testify that there is no other way to the Father but by Jesus. If we compromise that, we would be lying to anyone we speak to. The unity that we need to have is revealed in Phil 2:2 "Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one ACCORD, of one mind". Meaning that we need to work together so that there are no divisions in understanding within the church. Now granted. This day and age there are so many denominations of Christianity, never mind other religions, it is confusing. How can we be on one accord given this situation? The baptists do not believe in speaking in tongues. Other churches use tongues as their sole doctrine. Some believe that once you give your life to Christ, you are automatically going to heaven. Others believe you must earn eternal life through works. Who is right? My honest belief is that if you are using the Holy Spirit to interperet Gods Word and you are humble to receive what is written, we all should be on one accord. Since God is not the author of confusion (1 corin 14:33). However that is not so, which tells me that we have allowed our pride and other various things distort our understandings of Gods holy Word. So how can we deal with this? In reading John 3:1-8, it tells us that we must be BORN AGAIN to enter the kingdom of heaven. It doesn't say to be baptist, charismatic, pentecostal, etc. It says BORN AGAIN. To me, that means that you must change your life to become that new creature with your HEART sold out to serving God. So what I do is I try to look into the heart of the individual. Is their heart one that loves God and believes that Jesus is His son and died for our sins? Are they trying with all their spirit to serve the Lord? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then I will receive them as my brother or sister and let God make the judgement on their soul's place in eternity. We need to use WISDOM in dealing with each others differences. Without wisdom, we will not be able to look past things that do not matter. As far as other people belonging to other religions are concerned, my view is this: Jesus said in John 6:44 "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me DRAW him: and I will raise him up at the last day." So if God is not drawing or calling someone, you cannot witness to them. Also in John 10, it talks about how Christ's sheep know His voice. If someone is being called of God and they are one of His, then when they hear the Word of God, they will recognize it as truth and follow it without question. If they are not one of God's sheep, we can preach the Word to them all day and it won't do any good. Remember that there were people who did not receive Jesus' words as truth. Now if there were people that Jesus Himself couldn't reach, what makes us think that everyone we talk to should believe our words as truth? Fact is, not everyone is called of God. And that's the bottom line. Hope that clears stuff up. Let me know. Yours in Christ, Sal |