The Father and I are One

Today’s (4/9/07) Sunday Reading are just the following four short but powerful lines from John, Chapter 10, verses 27-30:

Jesus said:
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”

Now there’s a lot to discuss in these short lines but I just want to focus on the key line that is the main issue through the whole chapter; “The Father and I are one.” These words literally prompt his critics to attempt to stone him for blasphemy.

Was Jesus into self-aggrandizement when he said “the Father and I are one” and later in the same Chapter, “the Father is in me and I am in the Father”? In other words did Jesus literally mean himself, the man, Jesus of Nazareth when he uses the personal pronouns “I” and “me” or did he mean something more? I suggest that he meant something more than his temporary, human self when he says these truths. He is referring to his divine self. His eternal, immortal soul which is the true child of God. Jesus is holy, a word derived from whole (which implies two selves), meaning He fully united his spiritual self and human self. He perfectly expressed his divinity through his human self while on this earth.

Why didn’t Jesus use more precise language to explain this idea? He did. He was using the language of his faith. His use of the personal pronouns I and me is related to the language used by God at the burning bush in response to Moses’ question of who should I say you are and God replies “I am who am” and “tell them I AM sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). The use of personal pronouns corresponds to the idea of individual divinity.

The important point of this is that you also have a divine self and in fact you are the divine self who is expressing itself in this world. In this Chapter of John when accused of making himself a God Jesus answered “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”?”. In other words Jesus was teaching us that we are also divine.

Critics and unthinking people will incorrectly assume that I am suggesting that we are God. We are not the One, transcendent God who created and sustains heaven and earth. We are the immanent god, a figurative child of God, who is simply seeking to express divinity on this earth. We are similar in kind but not in degree to God. Just as a thimble full of the ocean is similar in kind to the entire ocean but in no way can it sustain the whole planet as the ocean does.

Our divine self is but a spark of the eternal flame. And, although the spark leaves the flame, it is forever “of it” and it can never be otherwise. In this sense the spark and flame are one just as you and the Father are one.

For further exploration of this idea please see the next article; “When Two Become One“