In John 17, Jesus prays, “Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, [I ask] that they also may be in us … I in them … that they may become perfectly one” (vv. 21, 23). Jesus is praying that we might become in practice what we already are in reality. We are called to become one because we are already one in Christ. “For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Dietrich Bonhoeffer captures this mystery in his book Life Together when he writes, “Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”
