A Ramble About "One Thing"

I was reading in 1 John 5:7-8 yesterday in the Greek, and something stood out to me. First of all, these verses don’t read the same in every Greek text. Over half of verse seven and part of verse eight are cut out in pretty much every version of the text based on the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. They occur in the Textus Receptus, and in the Latin Vulgate (though arguably not as literally rendered from the Greek as the rest of the Vulgate). Some translations acknowledge their existence by either putting them in brackets, or placing the missing parts in footnotes. Verse seven is of particular interest.

With the rest of the verse it literally reads, “Because there are three who testify in heaven, the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit, and these Three are one thing.”

The word for “one” in Greek, like most adjectives, comes in three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter depending on the noun or nouns it is describing. If the noun or nouns are masculine, the adjective will be masculine, if the noun is feminine or neuter, the adjective will match the gender. What caught my attention this time with this reading is that, while the nouns are masculine (with the exception of “pneuma” which is neuter), the word for “one” is neuter, referring, not to a person (proper names referring to people never take neuter adjectives), so to speak, but to a genderless object. The reasonable, and trinitarian, conclusion is that John is referring to God’s substance as opposed to His persons. The three persons, or hypostases, of God existing as one substance or “ousia.” Thus rather than understanding this verse as “these Three are one person” it should be understood as “these Three are one thing.”

Okay. Clear as mud? Good, let’s move on to the next passage where this same statement is made.

In the Gospel of John 10:30, Jesus tells those listening to and arguing with Him that, “I and the Father are one thing.” Again, the same gender and construction. Not “I and the Father are one person,” but “I and the Father are one thing.” In several other passages Jesus says without qualification that His teaching was not his own, but was given to Him by the One who sent Him. He says that nothing of what He said was His own, but was given to Him by the Father, and that He could do nothing from Himself. He says in John 14:10 that it was the Father remaining within Him that did the works. The picture developed in the Gospel of John of Jesus’ relationship with the Father is that it was the Father speaking, doing, and acting through Jesus to the point that if you had seen and heard Jesus, then it was no different from seeing and hearing the Father. Jesus’ submission to the Father was absolute to where you saw nothing but the Father from Him.

Now let’s go to the Gospel of John 17:20-24 where we next see this same usage of “one,” where Jesus prays for us, “And I don’t ask about these alone, but also about those who will believe through their word in Me, so that they everyone might be ‘one thing’ just as You Father in Me and I in You so that they also might be ‘one thing’ in Us so that the world would believe that You sent Me, and I, the glory which You had given Me, have given to them so that they might be ‘one thing’ just as We are ‘one thing’; I in them and You in Me so that they might be having been completed into ‘one thing’ and so that the world would know that You sent Me and loved them just as You loved Me. Father, those whom You have given Me I wish that where I am those would also be with Me so that they might view the glory of mine which you gave Me because You loved Me before the founding of the world.” (Emphasis mine)

Jesus’ prayer for those who believed and would believe in Him, all of us who believe in Him, is that we would be “one thing” with each other as well as with the Father and the Son just as He was “one thing” with the Father. The Father “one thing” with Him, and He “one thing” with each on of us who would also be “one thing” with each other. Just as Jesus remained in the Father, and the Father in Him, so He instructed us to remain in Him and He in us (John 15:4-7). Just as it was the Father you saw when you saw Jesus, so also it must be Jesus people see when they look at us both individually and collectively, and thus the Father. The Father in Jesus and Jesus in us, and thus the Father through us by way of our union with Jesus.

The practice of Christianity is total submission to Jesus Christ remaining in us that the life of Jesus might be expressed through us, not our words but His, not our actions but His. The goal of Christian practice is so that “if you have seen me, you have seen Jesus” because “I and Jesus are one thing” just as Jesus said, “I and the Father are one thing.” Not “one person” but “one thing.” This, above all else, is what is most important in Christian faith and practice, not happiness, not prosperity, not health; and anything which gets in the way of it must be removed and expunged from the Christian’s life.

The ultimate goal of the Christian life is to be “one thing,” and “one thing” only.