"It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of your fellowship with your fellow Christians. You need their love. You need their discipline. They need yours.
The gospel was preached to you not primarily in order that you may be delivered from the torments of hell, but that you might be brought into simultaneous fellowship with God and with your brothers and sisters. Such, at least, is the teachings of 1 John 1:3-4. Such also was the burden of Christ's high priestly prayer in John 17.
The approach of death makes some men look into the future. Hours before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus was pleading for the church of future ages. His vision encompassed you and me and situations in which we, as Christians, find ourselves.
Curiously, he made only one request. He made other requests for the apostles; but when he addressed himself to the church of the future, his requests were limited to one (John 17:20-23). He prayed only that we might be united, united not organizationally but in heart, 'I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me' (John 17:23).
The fact that he made only one request for the church of the future indicates the importance of what he asked for. Yet as we look at the nature of his request, we wonder why unity of spirit, important as it may be, should merit such exclusive attention. Had he prayed, for example, that the church might constantly be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, it would make more sense to us. A zealous church, a church faithful to death, a militant church, a church that could confound its foes: all these we could have understood. But a church in which the members enjoyed harmony and closeness in Christ among themselves, how important really is it?
He gives us a repeated clue to the puzzle. 'That the world may believe' is the phrase he uses in verse 21. For the church was to be left on earth for that purpose: that the world might believe. Power in testimony is evidently not something that the church can possess as a sort of separate package; it cannot exist alone. The church that convinces men that there is a God in heaven is a church that manifests what only a heavenly God can do, that is, to unite human beings in heavenly love. Wherever the sign of loving unity exists, the world will be convinced. Miracles of healing, large mass rallies, powerful preaching, superb organization all may have their place. But there is nothing on earth which convinces men about heaven or that awakens their craving for it like the discovery of Christian brothers who love one another." pgs 148-150
- John White
from: http://www.amazon.com/Fight-Practical-Handbook-Christian-Living/dp/0877847770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362115682&sr=1-1&keywords=the+fight+john+white
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