The Divine Dance of Unity

"What is your calling?"

When well-meaning church members asked me this question as a new believer, I didn't understand what they really meant. In my innocence and naivety, I didn't realize they were essentially asking whether I wanted to serve in the nursery or the kitchen—the main options available for women in that fundamentalist church.

But when they asked about my calling, I thought they meant what I believed Jesus had called me to. And my answer always made them look at me like I was one of those weird people: "The unification of the body of Christ."

It was implied that there wasn’t a position in the church for that. No position in the church for unity.

Think about that for a moment.

A Fire in My Belly

Even as I was saying those words, I realized how audacious they sounded. Look how divided the body of Christ is across the planet! This was clearly a God-sized thing. I had no idea what it meant or what it looked like. I just felt this fire in my belly about it.

When you get those kinds of reactions from people, you learn to keep certain things between you and the Lord. But over the years, He began to unpack something incredible for me—something that would become the foundation of everything I now understand about relationships, marriage, and the Kingdom of God.

It all started with John 17.

The Night Before Everything Changed

As a brand-new believer at 35, I was reading the Bible for the very first time. I'd turn the pages each night not knowing what would happen next—What's going to happen to Abraham? It was all completely fresh to me.

When I reached John 17, everything in me came alive. I somehow knew this was the answer. This chapter contains Jesus's longest recorded prayer, spoken the night before His execution. When someone's about to leave this earth and they know it, their words carry heightened significance.

This isn't the Lord's Prayer that He taught the disciples—that was a model for us. This was His prayer, His own heart cry to the Father on our behalf. If this represents Jesus's deepest concerns, it must be incredibly important.

The Heart of Jesus's Prayer

In this high priestly prayer, Jesus reveals something that stops me in my tracks every time I read it:

"I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me." (John 17:20-21 NASB)

Jesus wasn't just praying for the disciples in that upper room. He was praying for you and me—for all who would believe because of their testimony. And His request was singular: that we would be one.

But notice the kind of oneness He's describing. Not the superficial unity we often settle for, where we just try to get along and avoid conflict. Jesus is talking about the same kind of unity that exists between the Father and the Son—the deep, intimate, mutual indwelling that theologians call perichoresis.

The Divine Dance

Perichoresis is a beautiful concept describing how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect unity while maintaining their distinct persons. It's often called the "divine dance"—a continuous movement of mutual love, honor, and submission among the Trinity.

There's no hierarchy in the Trinity, no "chain of command." Instead, there's a beautiful circulation of love where each person delights in the others, submits to the others, and lifts up the others. The Father glorifies the Son; the Son glorifies the Father; the Spirit glorifies both while being glorified by them.

This is the model Jesus gives us for human unity. Not a pyramid where someone has to be on top, but a circle where love flows in all directions.

The Glory Connection

But here's what really gets me: Jesus connects our unity directly to glory. He says, "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one" (John 17:22 NASB).

In biblical terms, glory isn't just about ethereal worship experiences. Glory (kavod in Hebrew) carries the idea of weight, substance, power—the manifest presence and nature of God. When we bring someone glory, we're acknowledging their magnificence, recognizing who they truly are.

Jesus is saying that for us to experience true unity, we must first receive His glory—we must understand who we are in Him. We are children of the Lion of Judah, which makes us lions. We bear His image. We carry His nature.

When I truly understand that I am God's beloved daughter, carrying His glory and reflecting His nature, something shifts in how I see others. They're not competitors or threats—they're fellow image-bearers, equally beloved, equally glorious.

The Purpose of Unity

But this unity isn't just about making us feel good or creating harmony in our churches. Jesus gives us the ultimate purpose: "so that the world may believe that You sent Me" (John 17:21 NASB).

Our unity is the world's evidence that Jesus is who He claimed to be. When people see believers loving across racial lines, honoring each other across gender lines, serving together across denominational lines—when they see the impossible unity that only God could create—they're witnessing proof of the Gospel.

A Prophetic Picture

Recently, someone shared a powerful vision with me that captures this perfectly. She saw two groups of people in the body of Christ playing tug-of-war, fighting over who was right. Between them was a flag, and beneath that flag was a deep well of living water.

As they tugged back and forth, the flag just moved from side to side. People who needed that living water couldn't reach it because of all the fighting and division.

Then Jesus stepped in, grabbed the center of the rope, and pulled it up. When He did, all the sides came together around the well. The competition ended. The fighting stopped. And suddenly, people could reach the living water they desperately needed.

That's John 17 in action. That's the unity Jesus prayed for—not uniformity where everyone thinks exactly alike, but a coming together around Him that allows the world to encounter the living God.

The Invitation

Jesus's prayer in John 17 isn't just a nice theological concept—it's an invitation into the same kind of relationship He has with the Father. We're invited into the divine dance, the perichoresis of the Trinity.

This changes everything about how we approach relationships, resolve conflicts, and build community. Instead of asking "Who's right?" we ask "How can we find God's wisdom together?" Instead of competing for position, we look for ways to lift each other up. Instead of defending our turf, we create space for others to flourish.

The call to unity isn't a call to compromise our convictions or water down our beliefs. It's a call to hold our convictions with the same spirit of love and humility that characterizes the Trinity. It's learning to disagree with honor, to correct with gentleness, and to pursue truth together rather than defending it alone.

As I write this, I can feel that same fire in my belly that I felt as a new believer. The unification of the body of Christ isn't just my personal calling—it's the heart cry of Jesus Himself. And He's given us both the model and the means to see it happen.

The divine dance awaits. The question is: Will we join in?

Blessings,
Susan 😊