You may be asking, what is 17:23? Well, it’s from John 17:23, where Jesus prays to the Father, ” … I in them, you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

On a side note, I, Dave, was asked to name our ministry for some legal purposes, and this was the best I could come up with in the couple of hours of notice I had … it just so happened to be a verse engraved on a board in my office. What was actually carved in my office was 17:22-24, but I thought that might have been too much. But 17:23 encapsulates the nature of God, his heart, his mission, and how we’re invited to participate.

Sadly, this passage is often misunderstood and misused to justify some kind of “ecumenical unity,” but in reality, it’s about so much more than that. We find that Jesus is praying that the Father would give to those who believe in his word the glory that he had with his Father since before the foundation of the world so that believers would “be one even as we are one.” A glory defined by love (John 17:24) and a oneness defined by mutual indwelling.

That is, God is love: The Father loving the Son, and the Son responding in love for the Father, and the Spirit is the love and union of the Two. Here Jesus prays that we may have and experience this glorious love—i.e. “eternal life” is “knowing the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (John 17:3).” Simply, Jesus has restored and invited us to participate in God’s glorious love by the Spirit. A loved motivated and defined by John 13 & 17. 

In this reality, we find unity, agreement, the bond of peace, and aligned hearts!

Also, it is here that Jesus reveals a spiritual formation and evangelism mostly missed or misapplied. It is by the love we have for one another that is the first and primary “tool” of evangelism or the spreading of God’s goodness. It is the Ephesians 4 concept of building each other up into Christ by love that drives all spiritual formation. In other words, spiritual formation and life transformation are shaped by John 13 & 17. 

Again these passages are rarely central or the cornerstone commitments in a given theological perspective. And yet these are central to understanding and enjoying God and the reality he has saved us to. The question, “why is it missed?” has inspired my ambitions both in my academic pursuits and pastoral desire for others to taste and see God’s goodness. And, therefore for me, history has a pivotal role in spiritual formation and pastoral care. 

Now you may have noticed the honeycomb as a picture for this blog and maybe curious how this fits in this far. Well, it serves as an invitation to us to enjoy the sweetness of God love’s and his diffusive nature. But it also serves as a reminder to me of the historical roots of the perspective offered here, which I refer to as Trinitarian Affective Theology. 

See, John Eaton (1575-1631) printed a sermon series that invites others to warm themselves by the fiery coals of God’s love by the elevation of free-grace in a time when the grace promoted simply wasn’t free. He entitled the sermons, The Honey-Combe of Free Justification by Christ Alone.  

Eaton wanted the title Honey-combe to serve as a metaphor for his idea of how to communicate his views on the freeness of grace.  Procuring the sweet taste of free-grace commences with “sweet, powerful, forceable Scriptures, as the flowers containing the honey.”  Next the “bees of the Lord’s garden”—the “learned Writer’s”—who “have by faith, sucked and gathered out of the said flowers of Scriptures” and with each “Orthodox and Protestant author” making his own “cellulam” of honey. From this “coherence” of testimony from Scripture and the authorities Eaton built a whole Honey-combe of Free Justification.  

Like Eaton, I intend to join the “bees of the Lord’s garden” in order to communicate the sweet taste of God’s goodness. I’ll do this by exploring the big questions of life: Who is God? How do we relate to him? What is sin? What is grace? And how does this all work out in our lives? By looking to Scripture and those worker-bees that have gone before us, I believe we’ll encounter the steadfast love and faithfulness of our Triune God. 

I’m confident these efforts will help us respond to the God who is love and is one in love. Whose love spilled over into creation where the very purpose of humanity was to be in relationship with God through the Spirit.  

This is the sweet honeycomb of God’s goodness!