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Joh_17:20-21. In His prayer for the disciples for their preservation and sanctification (Joh_17:11-19), Jesus now also includes all who (comp. Rom_10:14) shall believe on Him ( πιστευόντων , regarding the future as present) through the apostles’ word ( διὰ τοῦ κηρύγματος αὐτῶν , Euth. Zigabenus). The purpose for which He also includes these: that all (all my believing ones, the apostles and the others) may be one (ethically, in likeness of disposition, of endeavour, of love, etc., on the ground of faith, comp. Eph_4:3 ff.; Rom_15:5-6; Act_4:32).
This ethical unity of all believers, to be specifically Christian,[198] must correspond as to its original type ( καθώς ) to the reciprocal fellowship between the Father and the Son (according to which the Father lives and moves in the Son, and the Son in the Father, comp. Joh_10:38, Joh_14:10-11, Joh_15:5), the object of which, in reference to believers collectively, is, that in them also the Father and the, Son may be the element in which they (in virtue of the unio mystica brought about through the Spirit, 1Jn_1:3; 1Jn_4:13; 1Pe_1:4) live and move ( ἵνα κ . αὐτοὶ ἐν ἡμῖν ὦσιν ).
This ethical unity of all believers in the fellowship with the Father and the Son, however (comp. Joh_13:35), shall serve to the unbelieving world as an actual proof and ground of conviction that Christ, the grand central point and support of this unity, is none other than the sent of God. “That is the fruit which must follow through and from such unity, namely, that Christ’s word shall further break forth and be received in the world as God’s word, wherein stands an almighty, divine, unconquerable power and eternal treasure of all grace and blessedness,” Luther, in opposition to which, Calvin gets into confusion by introducing the doctrine of predestination, making of πιστεύειν a reluctant agnoscere; so also Scholten. Thus the third ἵνα is subordinated to the first, as introducing its further aim; the second, however, because containing the definition of the aim of καθὼς , κ . τ . λ ., is related to the first explicatively.
[198] “Non vult concordiam coetus humani, ut est concors civitas Spartana contra Athenienses,” Melanchthon.