And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
These words come from a prayer Jesus prayed the night before he was arrested and crucified, sometimes called the "High Priestly Prayer" — the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Bible. In it, he intercedes not just for his disciples but for all future believers. Jesus says he has shared with his followers the same "glory" — the divine honor and radiant presence — that God the Father gave him. The stated purpose is striking: not to make his followers powerful or famous, but so that they would be unified the same way Jesus and the Father are unified. This is a vision of oneness grounded not in agreement or effort, but in a shared divine life flowing between them.
Jesus, on your hardest night you prayed for us to be one. I confess I haven't always honored that prayer with the weight it deserves. Show me where division has taken root in me — and give me the courage to see your glory in the people I struggle to be unified with. Amen.
On the night before his execution — with a betrayer at the table, the arrest hours away, the cross waiting — Jesus prayed. Not for escape. Not even primarily for himself. He prayed for the people who would come after, and he asked for one specific thing: that they would be one. He said he was giving them the very glory God gave him as the means of making that unity possible. Not a strategy. Not a shared statement of beliefs. Glory, given away on his last free night. Look at the church in any century, including this one — fractured, arguing, dividing over theology and politics and worship styles and old wounds. This verse doesn't pretend that's not real. But it says the raw material for unity has already been deposited in us. The question isn't whether it's available — it's whether we're willing to see it in each other. The next time you're at odds with another believer over something that feels enormous, try this: what if they are carrying the same glory you are? Not to erase the disagreement, but to change the posture you bring to it.
Jesus says he gave his followers "the glory" God gave him. What do you think that glory actually is, and what does it mean in practice for ordinary people to carry something like that?
Where in your life do you experience the most friction with other Christians? How does it feel to read that on his last night, Jesus prayed specifically for unity among people like you and them?
Is the kind of deep unity Jesus describes here — the same oneness he shares with God the Father — actually achievable among human beings? What would need to change for it to become more visible in the church?
If you genuinely believed that another person — even someone you strongly disagree with — carried the same divine glory Jesus describes, how would that change the way you speak to or about them?
Is there someone in your faith community from whom you have drifted or become estranged? What is one step, however small, you could take toward that person this week?
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18
At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
John 14:20
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.
John 17:11
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Romans 8:30
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Colossians 1:27
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Romans 8:29
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.
John 17:21
I have given to them the glory and honor which You have given Me, that they may be one, just as We are one;
AMP
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
ESV
'The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
NASB
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:
NIV
And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:
NKJV
“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one.
NLT
The same glory you gave me, I gave them, So they'll be as unified and together as we are—
MSG