Is God Waiting to See our Oneness before Jesus Returns?

This post will draw no conclusions, but will simply briefly raise a question: is the Church acting in oneness one of the conditions that must be met before the Lord returns?

            This question arises from two independent lines of scriptures. First, in Matthew 24:14 (NASB), Jesus stated that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” Thus, it appears that the preaching of the gospel to the entire world, “as a testimony to all the nations” is a precondition to the return of Christ to establish his visible kingdom. However, the preaching of the gospel to the world as a testimony to them clearly involves more than just seeing that everyone has the opportunity to hear an impersonal radio broadcast or read an impersonal tract. It must mean, at least, that they have been able to observe some personal witness of the effectiveness of the gospel. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Jesus to pray this prayer:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:20-24 (NIV)

From this, it appears that the testimony to the gospel to which Matthew 24:14 was referring was not so much our individual efforts at “witnessing” or the media outreach of our Christian organizations so much as our oneness made visible to the world. It is from our visible oneness that the world is able to see the glory of God and infer that God the Father really sent His Son to earth. This suggests that the full manifestation of our oneness as the Body of Christ may be a critical event which must precede Christ’s physical return.

            Second, in Ephesians 5:26-27 (NASB), we are told that Christ gave Himself for the Church, His Bride, in order to sanctify and cleanse it that he “that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” It would be reasonable, at least, to infer that a bride that has no spot or wrinkle is also an intact bride—a bride not missing any body parts. It seems patently absurd to suppose that Christ gave himself to purchase and set apart a Bride that is crippled, which is missing a hand or a foot or an eye. Yet we would have to suppose this to posit that Christ is returning for a divided Church, a Body in which some body parts refuse to work with others.

            But, even leaving aside the bridal metaphor, other scriptures similarly suggest that Christ is returning to an intact Church. For example, in Titus 2:13-14, immediately after stating that “we” (plural) should live righteously in the present world while looking for the blessed hope of Christ’s appearing, Paul states that Christ gave Himself to redeem “us” (plural) from all iniquity, “and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” Thus, God’s purpose is to purify “us” (plural) into “a people for his own possession” (singular). Similarly, 1 John 3:2 affirms that “we” are now the sons of God, and that, though we do not know what we will become, we know that, when Jesus appears, “we” will be like Him. He is changing us, so that when we see Him, we will see that He has made us like Him. “We” are the ones who will see Jesus’ likeness in “us;” the apparent focus here is not individual, but collective. The intended effect of this on the individual believer is then stated in verse 3: “all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure..” The hope, the assurance, that the Church together will ultimately be seen to bear Christ’s likeness should motivate us individually to be pure.

            These scriptures seem to suggest that the manifestation of oneness in the Church may be one of the conditions that must be satisfied before Jesus returns. However, I am also aware that there are other scriptures that suggest that God has already sovereignly set a firm date for His Son’s return that is completely independent of anything we have done, are doing or ever can do. So, in this post, I state no conclusions. I merely raise this question for my readers’ consideration:

Is God waiting for the Church to come together?

[Note: This post is a rewrite, using modern English scripture translations, of a book chapter I published 14 years ago: Chapter 6 from Ian Johnson & Lauston Stephens, Our Oneness in Christ, obviously used with permission.]