What Does Jesus Mean by "I and the Father are One?"

Jesus uses language to express the closest possible unity with the Father. He is the Word from the beginning through whom God created all things. By this unity, He makes God known.

Jesus says, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). What does he mean?

Traditionally, Christians took Jesus to mean that he and the Father had the closest possible unity. In other words, Jesus makes the claim that he and the Father are one divine reality. Yet today, some biblical scholars reject this point of view.

A Modern Challenge to Traditional Understanding

For example, Dan McClellan, a scholar of the bible and religion, denies that Jesus's statement in John 10:30 affirms consubstantiality with the Father. He points to John 17 as evidence because this passage has "Jesus praying three different times that his followers become one with him just like he is one with the Father."

McClellan also sees John 10:34–36 as evidence that Jesus is not the same reality as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here, Jesus shows how Scripture can call others "gods," and therefore it shouldn't be wrong for Jesus to "make yourself God" (John 10:33).

McClellan finds it implausible that the Trinity doctrine from the fourth century could be found in the New Testament. They are two different time periods, and the wording of homousia conceptually differs from Jesus's statement that "I and the Father are one."

The Problem with This Interpretation

But this interpretation makes the mistake that David Yeago pointed to in his 1994 article “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma.” McClellan has not adequately distinguished concepts from judgments. I argue that John, in his Gospel book uses the conceptual language available to him to affirm the closest possible unity between the Father and the Son while distinguishing them through their names (Father, Word).

To begin with, let's examine John 17 itself because it does not say explicitly what McClellan claims it does.

Four Statements on Being One in John 17

• John 17:11 "that they may be one, even as we are one" (context: keep them in Father's name)

• John 17:21 "that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us" (context: future believers)

• John 17:22 "that they may be one even as we are one" (context: Son gives glory to believers, the same glory the Father gave to him)

• John 17:23 "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one" (Christ being in believers makes them one; connected to Father in Son; compare John 14:9: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father")

Notice that in each case, Jesus affirms that believers may be one as Father and Son are one. That is, believers have a oneness that compares to the oneness of the Father and Son. Don Carson comments, “[our oneness] is analogous to the oneness Jesus enjoys with his Father” (John 568).

None of the texts say they (believers) and us (Father and Son) are one. Put another way, the text does not say that believers are one with Father and Son in the same way that Jesus says in John 10:30 when he says, "I and the Father are one."

Augustine on John 17

In his 110th tractate on John, Augustine carefully points out this distinction between our unity and God’s unity:

"Careful attention must be paid here to the fact that the Lord didn't say, 'That we all may be one,' but rather That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you (the implication being that we are one, which is said more openly later), because he had also said previously about the disciples who were with him, That they may be one as we also are. Hence the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father in such a way that they are one, because they are of one substance, while we can indeed be in them, although we can't be one with them, because we and they aren't of one substance, inasmuch as the Son, with the Father, is God."

Augustine's point is that John distinguishes the oneness of believers amongst themselves and the oneness of Father and Son. The unity of the Father and Son parallels how we are united.

Augustine also points out how John 17:21 speaks of believers being "in us," Father and Son, but then 17:23 switches the language to: "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one." For Augustine, the first claim shows the unity of Father and Son (“us”), while the second points to Christ in the person of the Mediator. Hence, "they may become perfectly one" refers to reconciliation by Christ the Mediator.

Augustine in "On the Trinity"

In his justly famous De Trinitate, Augustine traces the logic of John 17:20–21 by arguing the following points (§4.9):

• God and Christ share one will and nature

• Humans share one nature but not one will due to "conflicting inclinations, desires, and uncleannesses of sin"

• Believers also share one nature with Christ who is Mediator according to his humanity. They do not yet share his will, however

• Believers by being in Christ may unite in will and so become one by being fused together by a bond of love

• And thus, Jesus says, "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity"

In his argument, Augustine first establishes that Christ said we (believers) are unum (one thing), not one person (unus), even though we are unus with Christ due to our mystical union with the church:

"He did not say: 'I and they are one [unum],' although inasmuch as He is the head of the Church and the Church is His body, He could not only say: 'I and they are one [unum], but also one person [unus],' because the head and the body are the one Christ."

Next Augustine notes how humans share the same nature but not the same will unless they become one in Christ. Thus, believers unite around Christ's will, which is identical to the Father's because Father and Son are consubstantial:

"But when He reveals that His own Godhead is consubstantial with the Father (for which reason He also says in another place: 'I and the Father are one') then it is rather His will that His own in their own kind, that is to say, in the consubstantial equality of the same nature, should be one, but in Him."

Christ makes believers one in him because:

"they could not be one in themselves, since they were separated from one another by conflicting inclinations, desires, and uncleannesses of sin. They are, therefore, purified through the Mediator, in order that they may be one in Him, and indeed not only through the same nature in which all mortal men become equal to the angels, but also by the same will working together most harmoniously towards the same blessedness, and fused together in some way by the fire of charity into one spirit."

Christ purifies believers in his role as Mediator. Christ makes believers one in him who pursue "the same blessedness" by a fusion of charity or will. He continues:

"For that is the meaning of what is said: 'That they may be one, even as we are one.' That is to say, as the Father and Son are one, not only in the equality of substance but also in will, so they, too, may be one, between whom and God the Son is the Mediator, not only because they are of the same nature, but also because they are of the same society of love. Then He reveals this truth itself, that He is the Mediator through whom we are reconciled to God in the following words: 'I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity.'"

In other words, believers have one nature but not one will. But by being in Christ, they become one not only in nature but also by having “the same society of love.” That is how they become “perfected in unity.”

Understanding John 10:30 in Context

With that background in mind, we can better understand John 10:30. There, Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." And a little later, he says, "the Father is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10:38). Like John 17, John 10 thus speaks of oneness and mutual indwelling.

Jesus claims that the Father is specially in him because he does "the works of my Father" (John 10:37). In fuller context:

"If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10:37–38).

Jesus elsewhere makes the same connection regarding his mutual indwelling (John 14:9–10). There, he points to the way in which the Father is in him, and he in the Father:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

Carson comments, “The Father is actually in the Son, so much so that we can be told that it is the Father who is performing the Son’s works (14:10); yet the Son is in the Father, not only in dependence upon and obedience to him, but his agent in creation (1:2–3) and his wholly concurring Son in the redemption and preservation of those the Father has given him (e.g. 6:37–40; 17:6, 19)” (John, 568).

Based on the above passages, the following conclusions can be made:

· Jesus says, “I and the Father” are one but does not say “believers and I/us are one”

· The oneness that the Father and Son share traces back to John 1 in which the Word was with God from the beginning and the one through whom the Father created all things. Their oneness places them on the side of Creator, not creation.

· Thus, the oneness of Father and Son uses language to affirm the closest possible relation possible with the conceptual language available to John: The Word from the beginning is with and is the creator God, the Creator of heaven and earth from Genesis 1.

· The mutual indwelling of Father and Son thus differs from how believers are “in us” and Christ is in them from John 17. John 17 never states that believers and God are one in the same way that Jesus claims oneness with the Father. The mutual indwelling seems best explained by John 17:23 in which Christ the Incarnate Word indwells believers, and the Father in Christ as the Mediator, so that by seeing (or believing) in Christ, we can know the Father (John 14:9).

Put simply, believers are not one with the Father in the exact way the Word is; believers become one together; by indwelling Christ in their unity, believers are purified by a bond of love and common will towards glory; and knowing God the Father through Christ indwelling us.

“I and the Father are one”

When Jesus says, "I and the Father are one" in John 10:30, he uses the concepts available to him to indicate the closest possible relation between Father and Son. Already, we know that the Son is the Word from the Father through whom all things came into being (John 1:3, 10). We know that Father and Son both have life in themselves (John 5:26). And more besides.

Thus, the judgment that John makes about the Son is that he is the Creator who was "in the beginning" who becomes "flesh" in time (John 1:1, 14). As the Creator God of Israel, he is one with the Father (John 10:30). And as Mediator made flesh, he is less than the Father (John 14:28).

The judgments made here approximate the judgments made at Nicaea that the Father and the Son have the closest possible relationship (expressed by the language of homoousia, the best concept available at that time).

When Jesus speaks about our unity in John 17, he unites those divided by sin by a unity of will or bond of love by our indwelling him. And in this indwelling, we come to know the Father who is in Christ. This is the purpose of the Incarnation as John 1:18 notes: "the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."

God the Word became flesh so that we could see the Father in him (John 14:9). Thus, as Christ indwells us, we come to know the Father (John 17:23). And this is how believers are "in us" (John 17:21), the consubstantial Father and Son.

Note: since this article is long already, ­I plan to write a follow-up on John 10:37–38 and Jesus’s use of Psalm 82.