---
title: John 17:23
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-17-23/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/john-17-23.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: John 17:23
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# John 17:23

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> I in them and You in Me—that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "I in union with them and you in union with me, in order that they may be perfected into one, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them just as you loved me."

## JW Usage

A standard Watchtower answer to John 10:30. If believers are to be one as the Father and Son are one, then that oneness must be unity of purpose rather than of essence — because Christians obviously do not share one being. The verse is used to reduce every claim of Father-Son unity to agreement.

## Protestant Usage

The objection has real force and should be granted before it is answered. Jesus does pray that believers be one as he and the Father are one, and believers plainly do not share a single essence. The answer is that the comparison is about the pattern, not the degree. Jesus says "just as" of many things that hold at different levels — as the Father sent me, I sent them (17:18), and nobody concludes the apostles were sent from eternity. Then look at the language he uses for the divine side. "I in union with them and you in union with me." Elsewhere: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (14:10-11). That is mutual indwelling — each fully in the other, not merely agreeing with the other. Believers are brought into that relationship; they do not constitute it. This is where the perichoresis point helps, without the word. The three persons are not a committee coordinating three wills. They share one undivided will, exercised personally by each — which is why they cannot disagree, there being nothing to disagree about. That is a different thing from unanimity among separate agents. Compare John 17:18, John 16:15, John 4:23.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Perichoresis — Three Persons Sharing One Will, Not Three](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/trinity-perichoresis-one-will.md) — Mutual indwelling, not a committee of gods [Deity of Christ]