ONENESS IN THE DIVINE GLORY
In verse 22 the Lord said that the glory which the Father had given Him He had given to His believers "that they may be one even as We are one." Glory is the expression of God. This expression has been given to the Son. The Father has given the Son the glory to express Him in the divine life. Now this glory has been given to us by the Son so that we may be one even as the Father and the Son are one. This oneness is the oneness in the divine glory for the corporate expression of God.
PERFECTED INTO ONE
In verse 23 the Lord continues, "I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one." Here we see the mingling of the processed God with the believers. The words I, them, and You refer respectively to Christ, the believers, and the Father. The Son is in the believers, and the Father is in the Son. This is the mingling of the Triune God with the believers. As a result of such a mingling, we may be perfected into one.
Perhaps you are wondering what it means to be perfected into one. On the day we believed in Christ, we came into this oneness. However, we still have problems with our natural man, our natural constitution, and our natural disposition. But the more we experience Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the more all these natural elements are reduced. As they are reduced through our experience of the Triune God, we are perfected into one.
We all need to be impressed with the fact that the oneness revealed in the Bible is not a matter of adding the believers together to form a harmonious unit. Such a concept of oneness is natural and superficial. Once again we say that oneness is the mingling of the processed Triune God with the believers. Having seen this oneness as it is unfolded in John 17 and Ephesians 4, let us now consider Psalm 133.
TWO ASPECTS OF ONENESS
This psalm is so profound that it is difficult to speak about it. Verse 1 says, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in oneness!" Notice that the psalmist uses two adjectives to describe brethren dwelling together in oneness. He says that this is good and pleasant. The reason two adjectives are used is that in the following verses the dwelling together in oneness is likened to two things: to the precious ointment on the head of Aaron and to the dew of Hermon on the mountains of Zion. These two adjectives point to two aspects of oneness. The oneness is good and pleasant: good as the precious ointment and pleasant as the descending dew.
Of these aspects, the first—Aaron—is a person, and the second—Zion—is a place. Have you ever seen that the church has these two aspects? On the one hand, the church is a person; on the other hand, the church is a place. As a person, the church includes the Head with the Body. As a place, the church is the dwelling place of God. Elsewhere in the Bible we see that the church is the Bride, the new man, and the warrior. These, however, are aspects of the church as a person. Actually the church has just two main aspects: the aspect of a person and the aspect of a dwelling place. Related to these two aspects of the church are the ointment and the dew.
(The Genuine Ground of Oneness, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)
