One and...

           I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)

          When the going gets tough, it helps to remember. First, we should remember that we have eternal life. We’re all nearsighted. We can see what’s an inch from our noses pretty well, but that splash of light at the other end of the examining room, the one with the dark blur in the center of the top? Yeah, we know the dark blur is an E (for eternity, in this case.) We know it because it’s always an E, but we can’t see it. It’s always been an E before, so we have faith that it’s still an E.

          That eternal life was given to us by Jesus, and in this passage, Jesus is telling the Father that He has give it to us, and what the result will be: they will never perish. Are we going to say that Jesus was lying to the Father? Or that He was deluding Himself?

          The second thing Jesus tells the Father is that no one will snatch them out of His hand. Later, He says that they are in His Father’s hand as well. Imagine the Father and the Son standing with the Son’s hands cupped around us, and the Father’s hands cupped around the Son’s. To take them, someone would have to force first the Father’s hands open, then the Son’s.

          Does this mean I understand what is going on with those who professed to be Christians for a time and turn away for some reason?  I’m not sure they’re really so easily clumped into a unified whole. But what it does tell us is that we don’t have to worry about Jesus losing us. We also don’t need to worry about Jesus saying, “I pick this one” and the Father saying, “No.” The unity of the Father and the Son may be a mystery in one sense, but on this matter, it is easy to understand it this far… that both the Father and the Son are firmly agreed on who is theirs, and firmly set on protecting those who are theirs.