22 It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem. 23 It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in Solomon’s porch. 24 The Jews therefore came around him and said to him, “How long will you hold us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you don’t believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me. 26 But you don’t believe, because you are not of my sheep, as I told you. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

John 10:22-30 - World English Bible

During the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah), the religious leaders asked Jesus if he were the Messiah. He communicated his identity clearly through his "signs," but they didn't believe. And that was the point of this passage; belief was a calling from God, not a deduction from evidence. While many of the leaders might have agreed with Jesus in principle, they did not place their faith in HIM. Their skepticism cut them off from a relationship with the Christ and the result of that relationship: eternal life. But the Lord took his relationship with the Father to the next step. He not only did the works of the Father, he was one with the Father and, implicitly, shared that unity with his followers (through the Spirit). Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology call the unity between God and humanity "deifying grace" (Union with God does not mean our identity becomes synonymous with God, or is lost in a greater reality, like the Buddhist notion of "Nirvana", but in the sense that God reaches down, destroys the barriers between and gives us intimacy with him.)

How have experienced union with God?