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How are Jesus and the Father one?
John 14:9-28
Jesus claimed, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (v. 9). He was saying that he spoke and acted for God because he was in God and God was in him (vv. 10-11; 17:20-23). He proclaimed that the Father and Son equally possess all the attributes of deity. In other words, Jesus was claiming to be God in the flesh.
Yet, Jesus also made several distinctions between himself and his Father. First, his mission as the Son was to bring glory to the Father (v. 13). Second, he had come into this world because the Father had sent him (v.24). Finally, once his mission was complete he was going to the Father (v.28). Jesus also made distinctions between himself, his Father, and the Holy Spirit (v. 16, 25; 16:7-15).
Jesus' statement that the Father and he are one is as mysterious from our perspective as the Biblical teaching of the Trinity. Yet, because the Bible teaches the unity of God and the deity of Christ, we must exercise faith to believe that what Jesus taught is true. How exactly God's one divine nature is a unity of three distinct but not separate persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, cannot be fully explained by human logic or reason.
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