Christ prays for the unity of His Church

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one; as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that You have sent Me. 

John 17:20, 21

Beloved, Christ prays for the unity of His Church, that all saints who have gone to heaven in days gone by, that all saints who live now, that all who ever live may be brought into the unity of the one life in Him. I fear we do not attach enough importance to the power of Christ’s prayer. We think of Joshua fighting in the valley, but we forget our Moses with hands outstretched upon the hill. We are looking at the wheels of the machine—to go back to our old figure—and we are thinking that this wheel, and that, and the other, needs more oil, or not working exactly to its point. Ah, but let us never forget the engine, that mysterious motive force which is hidden and concealed, upon which the action of the whole depends. Christ’s prayer for His people is the great motive force by which the Spirit of God is sent to us, and the whole Church is kept filled with life; and the whole of that force is tending to this one thing—to unity; it is removing everything which keeps us from being one, it is working with all its divine omnipotence to bring us into a visible unity when Christ shall stand in the latter days upon the earth. Beloved, let us have hope for sinners yet unconverted; Christ is praying for them! Let us have hope for the entire body of the faithful; Christ is praying for their unity, and what He prays for must be effected. He never pleads in vain. He prays that the Church may be one, and it is one; He prays that they may be perfect and complete, and it shall be amidst eternal hallelujahs.

Unity in Christ, Sermon 668 - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Photo credit: By RICHARD OUTRAM from Wales (Through the trees....  Uploaded by PDTillman) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons