Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me (John 17:20–23).
We come now to deal with a petition which our Lord has already offered on behalf of his disciples as it is recorded in the eleventh verse of this chapter: ‘And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.’ In our analysis of this chapter1 we have pointed out that it can be divided into three main sections: the first from verses 1 to 5, in which our Lord prays for himself; the second from verses 6 to 19, where he prays particularly and more especially for his immediate followers, the disciples that are around and about him; and then the third from verse 20 to the end, where he prays not only for them but for all who throughout the centuries, until the end of time, shall believe on him.
We spent most of our time on that section which runs from verses 6 to 19, and we showed that our Lord gives certain reasons why he prays for his disciples. We then went on to study the petitions that he offered on their behalf. There were three main petitions. The first was that they might be kept from the evil one, from the evil that is in the world, but supremely from the evil one himself: our Lord is going to heaven and he is leaving them in an antagonistic world, and they are opposed by this powerful, subtle enemy, so he prays his Father to keep them from the evil one. Then, as a continuation of that petition, he prays the petition which we have been considering very fully for several chapters: ‘Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.’ The way to be kept from the evil one is, of course, to be sanctified; it is God alone who sanctifies, and he does it through the truth, in the way that we have seen.
So now we come to the third and last of these petitions, and it is in this petition that our Lord prays that his people and his followers might be one, even as he and his Father are one. And what we really have in verses 20-23 is an elaboration of that particular petition. He talks to them, as it were, about that petition which he has already offered, and now he repeats it, and repeats it more than once. He elaborates his reasons for doing so, and explains what he means by it. Clearly we are face to face here with a very important principle in connection with our Christian life, and it is essential that we should consider it.
It is a principle which is of particular interest at this present hour, because I suppose that if there is one thing that characterises the life of the church and of Christian people more than anything else in this particular generation, it is the interest in what is called ‘ecumenicity’. We are constantly reading about it and conferences and meetings are being held almost without intermission, with respect to it. An interest in it began about 1910, but it has been particularly to the forefront during the last twenty years. What we are generally told can be summarised like this: the greatest scandal in the world is a disunited church, and this scandal must be removed; it must also be removed because it is the greatest hindrance to evangelism. It is the multiplicity of denominations that constitutes one of the greatest hindrances to men and women who are outside the church believing the gospel. If we could only get rid of these denominations and have one great world, or ‘super’, church, then people would be ready to listen to the gospel and probably to accept it. Further, this movement for church unity – this movement of ecumenicity – is ‘the greatest movement and manifestation of the Holy Spirit since the Day of Pentecost’. That is a summary of what many people are saying.
In the light of all this, we obviously must give some consideration to this subject. But our method of doing so is rather different from that which, speaking generally, characterises the life of the church at the present time; for you notice at once, that there are certain things that are characteristic of all this modern interest and talk about ecumenicity. The people concerned are very fond of quoting John 17, it seems to be the chapter on which they base everything, but what interests me is that they invariably seem to speak of this chapter as if there were nothing in it at all except this plea for unity. Well, I think that the time we have spent with this chapter is proof positive that that, at any rate, is completely wrong! There is no richer chapter in the whole Bible than John 17 and we have done some thirteen studies on the first five verses only.2
How little we hear about the work which the Father had given the Son to do, about the people whom he had given to him, and so on. Instead, the impression is given that John 17 has only one message in it, and that is this great question of unity.
In other words, we see the terrible danger of isolating a text, extracting it from its context, and forgetting the need to have a balanced view of Scripture and to grasp what we may call the wholeness and the unity of the scriptural teaching. Because if you read this chapter thoroughly, and study it as it should be studied, you will see that this whole question of unity is not something that our Lord deals with on its own; it is a part of the entire outlook, and of this whole petition that he offers for his followers. It is not a doctrine that is to be found in isolation. And we have said the same thing about the doctrine of sanctification also. For that is our trouble; we constantly regard the truth of God as if it were a number of propositions, instead of realising the truth as a whole, seeing that each particular part belongs to the whole, and that if it is to be grasped truly, and in proportion, it must be taken in its context. We must arrive at our particular point only after we have followed the scriptural method, and the scriptural pattern.
My suggestion, then, as we approach this subject of unity, is that we can only begin to understand it if we are perfectly clear in our minds as to what constitutes a Christian. Our Lord says that in verses 6 to 8 of this chapter, and we spent some time considering the subject. The modern idea seems to be that it does not matter about the definition; if people call themselves Christians, that is all that matters. But our Lord takes care to define who a Christian is, and to show how Christians are utterly different from the world. In the same way, he has also dealt with this vital subject of our sanctification. I cannot see, as I study this chapter, that one can ever say that it does not matter very much what people believe, or how they live or behave, so long as they call themselves Christians. According to our Lord, we use this designation of a Christian wrongly. Christians are those who have been sanctified by the Father – and nobody else – and you see the relevance of this in the modern situation. Surely we must all agree that not all who use the name Christian can, in the light of this chapter, be called Christians; it is not that we sit in judgement on others, but we do face the word of God and seek to be guided by it.
So it seems to me that the most convenient thing to do is to extract the principles which are clearly indicated here by what our Lord says. The first is that we must be clear as to the nature of this unity about which he is speaking. You notice that every time he mentions it, he does so in a particular way: ‘Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are’ (v. 11). Then he goes on in verse 20: ‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’ – and again he repeats it – ‘And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.’ And then he is not content even with that: ‘I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.’
It is to me almost incomprehensible that people can quote this seventeenth chapter of John on unity, while at the same time they seem to forget and ignore entirely what our Lord is always so careful to repeat and elaborate every time he mentions the subject of unity. Such people are thinking in terms of external unity, a mechanical, organisational unity, while all the time our Lord is teaching what we must describe as an inner and mystical unity. The unity that he is concerned about is the unity of life and the unity of spirit. He makes that very plain by the analogy he draws between Christian unity and the unity in the Godhead, an analogy which he is always careful to keep in the forefront. In other words, if we are to understand the character of this unity about which our Lord is concerned, we must realise that there are certain indications of mystical unity which are very clearly given in the Scriptures. Now let me say at once that this is a very high and difficult subject. I believe that, in the last analysis, it is the most abstruse subject in the entire realm of revelation, because we are, of necessity, considering the Almighty God himself. But our Lord compels us to do this, because he always considers the unity which is to characterise his people as being analogous to this other mystical, eternal unity.
Four types of unity are dealt with in the Scriptures. The first is the unity between the three Persons of the blessed Holy Trinity – ‘I in them, and thou in me’; ‘My Father and I are One’ – that inscrutable eternal unity which exists and subsists between them. Of course, let me repeat, we are dealing with something that patently is entirely beyond human understanding. We say, ‘How can three be one and one be three at the same time?’ And the answer is that we cannot understand it. The Scripture tells us that the blessed God is three Persons, and yet that the three are one, one eternal substance, three Persons and yet not three Gods but one God. There is only one true and living God, but that one eternal God exists as three separate and distinct Persons, and yet there is this perfect, marvellous, wonderful, mystic unity. That is the kind of unity about which our Lord is speaking.
The second kind of unity of which we read in the Bible is the union of the two natures in the one Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the great theme of the New Testament. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ, perfect God, perfect Man, truly God, truly Man, and yet he is not two Persons. It is rank heresy to think of him as such because he is one Person, but in that one Person there are these two natures, not at all mixed, not at all fused or intermingled: they are there, but they are quite distinct. Yet they are not separate, because there is a unity between them, and it is a perfect union, the mystical unity of the two natures in the one Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is another mystical unity and it is analogous, obviously, to the union that exists between the three Persons of the blessed Holy Trinity.
Now the next unity that our Lord speaks of is the union of his people with himself. He deals with that at great length in chapters 14 to 16 of John’s Gospel, but we find it in many other places also, and the apostles deal with it in their epistles: ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ (Col 1:27); ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal 2:20). There it is in particular, but the whole body of Christian people is in Christ. We read in Ephesians 4, about the wonderful body, Christ being the head, and we all members of the body; it is the mystical union which is between Christ and the church which Paul expresses in Ephesians 5 in terms of the illustration of the union between the bridegroom and the bride.
And the last, of course, is the one with which we are dealing here; the union of Christian people among themselves and with one another, and the point I would emphasise is that our Lord always, everywhere, teaches that this is to be thought of in terms analogous to the others which I have already mentioned. When we come to this, we must not forget the others; we must not suddenly become external, mechanical or organisational in our ideas and concepts. The unity which he prays for, for his people, is the unity which is analogous to that of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – this mystical union between the blessed Persons – and to the unity between Christ and the church. Now this can never be emphasised too frequently. It is a spiritual unity, ‘the unity of the Spirit’, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:3, and the same thing that he elaborates in 1 Corinthians 12.
It is the only unity that the New Testament knows, and it is the only unity in which it is at all interested. So we must get right out of the realm of the mechanical and external and organisational, and we must say that whatever this unity is, it is similar to that wonderful union which is between Christ and his followers: ‘... that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us’ (v. 21). Then he elaborates it again: ‘even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one’ (vv. 22, 23). There is no gap, there is to be no interval, it is all in a series, and that is the nature of the unity about which he is concerned. The only other point I should like to make about the character of this unity is that our Lord is not praying anywhere in this chapter that this union may come to be; what he prays here is that this union, that is already in existence, may be kept, may be continued, and may be preserved by his Father.
That, then, is the nature of the unity, so we now move on to our second point: what are the conditions of this union? What is it that makes and produces it? Those are vital questions, especially in the light of the modern discussion on unity, and the answer given here is perfectly clear. It is in the twentieth verse: ‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.’ What, then, is going to preserve this unity? ‘Well,’ says our Lord in effect, ‘it is the word, which these followers of mine are going to preach after I am gone; and as the result of the preaching of this word people are going to be converted and come into the church.’ In verses 16 and 17 he says that it is like this: ‘They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.’ And then he prays not for them alone, but also for all others, ‘who shall believe on me through their word’. The same thing, of course, has already been said in verse 11, and we saw, when we considered in detail our Lord’s phrase ‘through thine own name’, that it meant that the Lord Jesus Christ has revealed his Father’s name to those people who belong to him, but not to the world.3 The world does not understand it, but these people do, and what makes us really the people of God is that through the word we have understood the meaning of the name of the Lord.
So we are back again to this same question of the word; indeed, we might argue that the one thing that produces unity is what our Lord tells them in verses 6 to 9: ‘I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine.’ That is the character of these people: ‘I pray for them, I pray not for the world ...’ the world does not believe these things.
Now surely this ought to be abundantly clear to us. What makes these people, and what makes the greatest unity of these people, is this word, this message of God which has been given to them, first by the Lord himself, and subsequently by his apostles and disciples – that is the basis of the unity. We can translate that into modern terms and put it like this: what makes the greatest unity is the common faith, what we believe, what we have received together, and what nobody else has received. That is the unity which our Lord is concerned about in this chapter; it is all entirely dependent upon this particular word, and it is only as men and women are agreed about this word and accept it and subscribe to the same faith and to the same common salvation, that there can be any conceivable unity among them; any other unity is of no value whatsoever.
But he also puts that in a slightly different form. The word, after all, creates the unity by bringing us into a particular relationship to him – that is the message of verse 22: ‘And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.’ He says that it is because he has given them this glory that they are one, even as he and the Father are one. He speaks also of this glory which the Father has given to him: ‘The glory which thou gavest me I have given them.’ What, then, is this glory? Obviously it cannot be the eternal glory of the Son of God, because that is not a glory which has been given him by the Father, it is a glory which he has always shared with the Father from all eternity. It must, therefore, be some kind of glory that the Father gave to the Son while he was here in this life and in this world, and a glory which, in turn, he is able to impart unto his own followers. And what is that? I suggest to you that there is only one adequate answer to that question, and that is this special relationship to God which becomes ours through the work and the operation of the Holy Spirit. While our Lord was here in this world and when he had taken upon himself human nature, when he had decided to live life in this world as a man and in the likeness of sinful flesh, the Father gave him this glory, this union with himself, this intimate relationship, this knowledge of the Father, so that he would always depend upon his Father and be always receiving grace and glory from him. And that is what, he here tells us, he has also given to his followers.
If you want that in detail, go back to chapters 14 to 16 and read there his teaching about the work and the operation of the Holy Spirit. He is going to send them the Spirit, and the effect of that will be that he will dwell in them. They will be in him, he will be in them, and they will not feel that they are orphans because they will have an intimacy with him such as they have never had before; that is the glory which he gives. It is, in other words, as I have shown earlier, our being united to him and his being in us – we in him and he in us – and thus we are able to receive of his grace and of his glory, and grace for grace. Now what I am emphasising is that all this is obviously impossible apart from the word. It is the word that teaches this, it is the word that mediates this to us, so that all who really are to receive this, receive it through and by means of the word, and that, I suggest to you, is the only union and unity which is dealt with in this chapter, the only unity in which our Lord is interested.
Let me put it like this: a mere coalition of organisations or denominations has in reality nothing whatsoever to do with this unity. Indeed, it may even be a danger. The unity that our Lord is concerned about is a unity which is spiritual. It consists of a unity of spirits, and it is a unity, therefore, which is based solidly upon the truth. It is based upon the whole doctrine – regeneration and the rebirth, the receiving of the Holy Spirit – and obviously the doctrine must be dependent ultimately upon the Person of our Lord and upon his work. It is a unity of people who have become spiritual and who have been born again: we are made one with one another, because we first of all are united to Christ and made one with him, and, through him, one with God.
Therefore, to argue that the one thing that matters is some sort of organisational or external unity is not only to fall short of this conception, it is even to do something which is highly dangerous. If a man comes to me and says, ‘It does not matter what you believe as long as you call yourself a Christian,’ I reply, ‘No, that is impossible.’ And I must ask that man certain questions and get his answers. What is his view of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is the Lord Jesus Christ just a man to him? There are many people in this world who call themselves Christians, yet who, alas, regard the Lord Jesus Christ as nothing but a man. Well, all I can say to that is that I have no fellowship with such people. I have no unity with them for they take from the very foundation and basis of my faith, and my whole position and standing. What do these people believe about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ? What is their view of his death? Is it just a tragedy; is it just the death of a passive resister; is it the death of someone who was not understood by his contemporaries? Is it a murderous death or is it a substitutionary death? Is it the Son of God dying because that is the only way whereby my sins may be forgiven, and therefore the essential preliminary to my becoming a child of God, and a partaker of the divine nature? If it is essential, and the other man says it is not, how can it be possible for there to be unity between us? And the same is true with all these other cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.
Now there is no unity unless we stand on this – one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There is only one Lord Jesus Christ, and I must be clear about his Person and about his work. There is only one faith (I do not mean here my faith in him, but the faith about him), the faith that the apostles preached. They preached that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of God, that he died for our sins and that he was made a substitute for us. That is their faith, the word that they preached, and it was as the result of hearing and believing this word that the people became members of the church, and one with others who were in the church before them.
So you see that these things are vital; this is the unity that was to be found in the early church; it is the unity that is found at all times of true reformation and revival; and, thank God, it is the unity that is in existence at the present time, in spite of the multiplicity of denominations and organisations. There is nothing, I sometimes think, in the realm of Christian life and experience, which is quite as wonderful as the demonstration of this unity. Is it not a fact, my friends, that we who are Christians recognise one another the moment we meet? It is the greatest privilege in my life as the minister of a church that as I stand in the vestry to meet the people coming in to see me, often people whom I have never seen in my life before, that I at once recognise them. I know them. I know that they are brothers and sisters of mine. I do not know where they come from – they come from all parts of the world – and yet at once I know them, and I feel that I have known them for years. Why? Because it is the unity of the Spirit.
I can go even further – and let me put it quite simply and bluntly—I have some interesting experiences in that room in this very connection. Some people come in to me and they say, ‘I am glad to meet you, I come from India (or Australia, America, or some other country), and I am a good Congregationalism; or others come and say, ‘I am a good Methodist’, or ‘I am a Baptist’, and immediately I feel there is no union. But others come, and they do not tell me whether they are Baptist, or Methodist or Congregationalism they just come in and say, ‘What a wonderful Lord we have! Thank God this is the same gospel here as in my home country, and my home town!’ And immediately I am one with them. We are related, we are in the same family, there is a fundamental union of Spirit. I feel that I have known them all my life, and that if I were to meet them again in the future, I would never be more close to them than at that first moment. That is the unity our Lord talks about; it is not an external matter, nor a matter of denomination or organisation.
Let me go further. If you were to abolish all these denominations, you still would not create unity, because these people who come and say they are good Congregationalists, or good Baptists, and so on, would still be the same sort of people, and by doing away with these distinctions you would not change them. If they came to see you, they would still not be able to talk about this wonderful Lord, they still would not be able to exchange spiritual experiences, because they would be essentially the same people. To think of unity in these external terms is to depart from the glory of our Lord’s petition, this unity of faith and belief, this unity of spirit, which is the result of believing the truth and of being made one with the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore one with one another.
If that is true, then, let us move on to my third proposition and consider briefly the things that hinder or break the unity. First of all, you can do that in the matter of the faith; there is nothing that so breaks the unity as a deviation from any part of the word of God. We believe the whole word of God, and to leave out certain parts of it immediately breaks the unity. ‘Ah,’ they say, ‘you must not be particular, the thing is for you who call yourselves Christians to pray together.’ But is it not rather important that we should all be praying in the same relationship? How can I pray in unity and in fellowship with a man who may tell me he can go direct to God without the Lord Jesus Christ at all? There are many people who say things like that. They do not see that the only way to enter into the holiest of all is by the blood of Jesus, and not only do they not mention the blood, they do not mention Jesus either. They say, ‘You can start listening and talking to God just as you are.’ But I say that I have only one way of entering into the holy, eternal Presence, and that is by the blood that was shed for me. Without it I cannot approach God, I dare not approach him. So I cannot respond to these sentimental appeals to start praying together because I must know the basis of my prayer and be certain that I really am accepted of God.
But there is another way – the opposite, in a sense, to that last one – which defeats fellowship and unity; it is this: addition to the word and demanding things that are not demanded in the word. That is why I have no fellowship with the Roman Catholics. Up to a point I am with them, but then they put in their plus – I must believe certain things about the Virgin Mary, etc. But I do not believe these things and I say that to do so is to deny the gospel of the glorious liberty of the children of God. Thank God, there are people even among the Roman Catholics with whom I can have fellowship, but they are those who do not hold to the whole Catholic teaching; they believe in the centralities, and they leave out the additions.
But let me go one step further. We can break the unity in this matter of faith by exalting things to the first position which should be in the second or third place. There are certain great doctrines about which there never has been unity in the Christian church and I take it there never will be, but I would not separate from any brother or sister on matters like that. If I am not certain, I am prepared to be charitable; I stand for certainties, not for things that are doubtful or uncertain. ‘In things essential, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity.’
In the same way, the unity can be broken because of the way we live and conduct ourselves. A person’s self-assertion always upsets fellowship, so if my spirit is wrong I am making fellowship impossible, and, as I have already said, exalting matters that are secondary. Take, for instance, the church at Corinth. The thing that divided the church was their emphasis on personalities: some of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Cephas. They were worshipping men, arguing about which was the best preacher of the three, getting excited, and forgetting the message because of the men. And if we do that, we are upsetting the unity and fellowship, we are bringing in something that causes a barrier – and that is schism.
And yet another way in which we can break up the unity is in boasting of spiritual gifts. If we single out a spiritual gift and say that it is absolutely essential for everyone, we are breaking the fellowship, because if you read 1 Corinthians 12, you will find that the Holy Spirit dispenses these gifts to different people as he wills. But we must all have the Spirit and manifest him in our lives. So in practice we can break the unity by failing to demonstrate the faith. Any member of the church who falls into grievous sin is also breaking the unity; immediately that happens, there is a break, so failure in conduct and behaviour can do it too.
My last word you can work out for yourselves – it is in many ways the glory of it all. What is the function and purpose of the union? Our Lord answers this question: ‘That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’ (v. 21). But he adds another answer in the twenty-third verse, and this is one of the most glorious things in the realm of Scripture. Have you ever seen that when you have read this chapter? Why is this union of ours so important? It does not say that if we all become one, then the whole world will believe on Christ – that is patently contradicted in Scripture. But what it does say is this, ‘That they may be made perfect in one’ – not that the world may believe on me, but – ‘that the world may know that thou hast sent me’, which is a very different thing. To me, it seems almost childish to be told that if only you were to do away with your denominations then the world would suddenly believe in Christ and everybody would be converted. What a pathetic valuation! You could have one great world church, and there would still be unbelievers, as there are now. The world did not believe when the Son of God was here and speaking with his own lips. No, he does not pray for them, he prays that the world may know that God has sent him. In other words, our unity manifests that we are not merely men, but that God has done something to us in Christ, that we are what we are because the Son of God has come into the world and has borne our sins and given us a rebirth, and has sent his Holy Spirit into us – the unity is to manifest that.
And the second thing our unity is to manifest is that God loves us in exactly the same way as he loved Christ. I ask again if we are able to realise that? Do you know that God in heaven at this moment loves you in exactly the same way as he loved his only begotten Son? We know his love for the Son; remember that he loves you in exactly the same way, and you and I are to live in fellowship in order to demonstrate that. Both all together and individually we are to demonstrate that we are the special subjects of God’s love. Whatever happens to us, whatever our circumstances, we are to be demonstrators of the love of God. God loved his Son, and though it led him to be persecuted and tempted, though it led him to be scourged, though it led him to be crucified, God still went on loving him, and the Son showed he was still being loved by the way he lived and died. And you and I are to live and die in that way, and the world will look at us and say, ‘What are these people? Look at them in their suffering and in their agony. What enables them to be like this?’ And the answer is, ‘It is the love which God has towards them. They know his love, they are feeding on it and they are being sustained by it.’
That is why we are to be one; we are to demonstrate these things. The early church did it, that is how it impressed the ancient world. Those people, even when they were thrown to the lions in the arena, were still praising Christ and his love. That is the unity our Lord is interested in. That is the unity that shakes the world. It is not a matter of numbers or great organisations, or one mammoth church. This has nothing to do with numbers; it is a unity of the Spirit; just a handful of men living with Christ led to three thousand converts on the Day of Pentecost, and it is always like that. What we need is not a big church, it is a pure church; it is a holy church, it is a truly Christian church. So for myself, I am not interested in any talk or any appeals which put mechanical, external, or organisational unity above the unity of the Spirit, the unity of faith, and the unity which is based on sanctification. That is the unity for which our Lord prays; the unity which you and I are meant to exemplify in our individual lives, and in our corporate lives together as members of the church; that we may be one, as God and Christ are one, in that mystic, spiritual, glorious, perfect unity.
1 See Volume 1, Saved in Eternity (Crossway Books, 1988).
2 Volume 1, Saved in Eternity (Crossway Books, 1988).
3 See Volume 2, Safe in the World (Crossway Books, 1988).