JOHN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jesus Prays For Himself

John chapter 17 is often referred to as the “high priestly prayer of Christ,” or as the “true Lord’s Prayer.” Let us read it together.

John 17:1-26 HCSB:
 1 Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said: Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You,
2 for You gave Him authority over all flesh; so He may give eternal life to all You have given Him.
3 This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ.
4 I have glorified You on the earth by completing the work You gave Me to do.
5 Now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with that glory I had with You before the world existed.
6 I have revealed Your name to the men You gave Me from the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
7 Now they know that all things You have given to Me are from You,
8 because the words that You gave Me, I have given them. They have received them and have known for certain that I came from You. They have believed that You sent Me.
9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world but for those You have given Me, because they are Yours.
10 All My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I have been glorified in them.
11 I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by Your name that You have given Me, so that they may be one as We are one.
12 While I was with them, I was protecting them by Your name that You have given Me. I guarded them and not one of them is lost, except the son of destruction, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled.
13 Now I am coming to You, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have My joy completed in them.
14 I have given them Your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world.
15 I am not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one.
16 They are not of the world, as I am not of the world.
17 Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
19 I sanctify Myself for them, so they also may be sanctified by the truth.
20 I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message.
21 May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me.
22 I have given them the glory You have given Me. May they be one as We are one.
23 I am in them and You are in Me. May they be made completely one, so the world may know You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me.
24 Father, I desire those You have given Me to be with Me where I am. Then they will see My glory, which You have given Me because You loved Me before the world’s foundation.
25 Righteous Father! The world has not known You. However, I have known You, and these have known that You sent Me.
26 I made Your name known to them and will make it known, so the love You have loved Me with may be in them and I may be in them.

“In conversation with Professor S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, the Rev. George W. Hervey asked this question:
‘Professor Morse, when you were making your experiments yonder in your room in the university, did you ever come to a stand, not knowing what to do next?’
‘Oh, yes, more than once.’
‘And at such times what did you do next?’
‘I may answer you in confidence, sir,’ said the professor, ‘but it is a matter of which the public knows nothing. I prayed for more light.’
‘And the light generally came?’
‘Yes, and may I tell you that when flattering honors come to me from America and Europe on account of the invention which bears my name, I never felt I deserved them. I had made a valuable application of electricity, not because I was superior to other men, but solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must reveal it to someone, and was pleased to reveal it to me.’
In view of these facts, it is not surprising that the inventor’s first message was, ‘What hath God wrought!’”
                                                                      —Moody Monthly [fn]

“There is an old Jewish legend which says that, after God had created the world, He called the angels to Him and asked them what they thought of it; and one of them said, ‘One thing is lacking: the sound of praise to the Creator.’ So God created music, and it was heard in the whisper of the wind, and in the song of the birds; and to man also was given the gift of song. And all down the ages this gift of song has indeed proved a blessing to multitudes of souls.”[fn]

There are two things we must learn early as followers of Christ. First, we need to learn to whom we are to give all the glory, as Professor Morse did in our illustration. Secondly, we also must come to feel in our hearts that nothing can stop us from giving glory to God. True faith glorifies the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit thereby giving all the glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Let us now go back to the first three verses of John chapter seventeen and plunge ourselves into the wonder of God’s Word.

John 17:1-3 HCSB:
1 Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said: Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You,
2 for You gave Him authority over all flesh; so He may give eternal life to all You have given Him.
3 This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ.

Does it strike you as strange that God Himself in the form of the Son needed to pray? We must remember that Christ took on human form with its finite limitations when He came to earth. So if Christ, the God-Man, found it necessary to pray, how much more you and I need to be constantly in prayer. Note here that Christ is first praying for Himself. Before you and I begin to pray for others, we need to pray for ourselves. That is not a selfish me-first attitude, but rather an absolute necessity in developing, maintaining, and expanding our relationship with God. We see here the beginning of Jesus’ personal prayer to His Father.

Verse one sets the time of the prayer as being after Jesus had spoken “these things.” The words referred to here are those things which Jesus spoke to His disciples in chapters 13 through 16. He had taught His disciples how to love one another. Jesus had predicted Peter’s denial of Him after Jesus’ arrest. Jesus had taught them that He was the only way to the Father and salvation. He taught them about the Holy Spirit, about being connected to Him like a vine is to a branch. Jesus warned them that they would be hated by the world, and then He taught them how to pray in His name. These are just a few of the many things Jesus taught them.

But then Jesus stops directing His words to the disciples and begins speaking to His Father, but we can see that His purpose in speaking to the Father is for the benefit of the disciples as well as for you and me. This is often referred to as “the Lord's Prayer,” that is the prayer that the Lord Jesus prays to the Father. The prayer in the Sermon on the Mount is not really the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). It is the prayer that Jesus taught to His disciples. When Jesus tells them to begin with "Our Father," in the “Disciples’ Prayer” it is a reference that all believers may use. However, when Jesus calls God "Father," it is in a different sense, although He allows believers to use the same reference for Father as He uses. This reference is to the Father of Jesus Christ with whom all believers have a similar status as Jesus because they are one with Him. True believers are Jesus’ brothers and sisters, and thus share a common Father as sons and daughters of Almighty God. All of them are in the same family with the same Father. Do you know what that makes you if you are a Christ follower? It makes you royalty because you are a son or daughter of the King of the universe.

Jesus’ prayer begins, "Father, the hour has come." What hour? The hour that had been set long before the world was even created. As Jesus speaks these words, the clock is about to strike the hour that was predetermined before the foundation of the world. Do you remember what Jesus said to His mother as He began His ministry at the wedding at Cana?

John 2:3-4 HCSB:
3 When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother told Him, “They don’t have any wine.”
4 “What has this concern of yours to do with Me, woman?” Jesus asked. “My hour has not yet come.”

You see there was a carefully calculated window in time that God had prepared for Jesus to be glorified and that time was now very close. Now the hour had come, the hour when Jesus would pay for your sins and mine. It is the hour when the entire world will see the love of God proven by what He is willing to do for all humanity. He will take all our sins upon Himself in the bodily form of Jesus and that sin will cause His death. His death will thereby be payment for all the sins of anyone who believes in that sacrifice He made for us. If someone refuses to accept Christ’s substitutionary death for their sin, they will have to suffer both physical and spiritual death and pay the penalty for their own sin. You see sin required a perfect sacrifice, a sacrifice by someone who was sinless. The only person in all of history who was sinless was Jesus, who was God personified. People cannot save themselves, because all people from the time of Adam have committed sin. Jesus, therefore, was and is the only hope for humanity. If you do not want to believe in what He did for you, well then you are on your own and there is no way you can obtain salvation on your own. By the way, there is also no priest, pastor, pope, rabbi, imam, or any other guru who can provide salvation. Without Jesus as your Savior your eternity will be spent in Hell.

But Jesus knew that He would need the help of the Father to go through crucifixion, death, and resurrection. So He asked the Father for help. That is what Jesus means at the end of verse 1 when He prays, “Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You.” “Glorify” here means not merely strength to endure the Cross, but also the ability to glorify the Father by enduring the cross, and by His death, resurrection, and ascension.[fn]

Now this is very important to understand! To “glorify” someone means to do something that brings honor and praise to that person. So Jesus is first asking the Father to reveal Jesus to the disciples as One deserving praise and glory. Jesus would accomplish this by rising from the dead thereby showing the people that He is one with God. In that way Jesus will glorify God by showing Him to be continually worthy of praise, honor, and worship. In other words, it might sound something like this in today’s sound bite world:

“Father God, let everyone see that You are in Me and that we are One in the same person. Release Your power in Me so that I might endure with dignity My death on the cross and then rise again as Your scriptures have predicted. In this way everyone will know that You are the One who sent Me and that You have the power to overcome death and sin. When they know these things they will think back to the things I have taught them, and many will believe.”

Although the disciples did not understand why Jesus would have to die when He first told them about His coming suffering, His death was the key that would open the door to eternal life in Heaven that had been locked since Adam and Eve first sinned by disobeying God. God's eternal plan could only be set in motion by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Even though Jesus had told them clearly that He was going up to Jerusalem where He would meet His death, they did not understand exactly what He meant. Let us go over to Luke 22 for a reminder of what Jesus had told them.

Luke 22:20-22 NLT:
 20 After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.
21 “But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me.
22 For it has been determined that the Son of Man must die. But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him.”

Then in Mark 9:32 NLT we read:

 32 They didn’t understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant.

Not only did they not understand what Jesus was talking about, they objected to what they did not know. If that statement sounds ridiculous to you, you are right. It is ridiculous. How can you object to something you do not understand? Just look back to what Peter said in Matthew.

Matthew 16:21-22 NLT:
21 From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead.
22 But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!”

The disciples simply did not know why Jesus’ death was necessary until He came back from the grave, after His life had been restored in a new kind of body which was designed to last for eternity. Jesus, of course, is not confined to a physical body, but He took the form of this resurrected body to show us what we will be like after our physical bodies die and when all believers are changed to possess these new incredible indestructible bodies which we will take into eternity. When we die now we cannot be certain exactly what form we will take but we do know we will be with Christ in some form because Christ told one of the criminals who was crucified with Him that, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). So this criminal was saved because of his faith and therefore Jesus could promise him that before the day was out he would be in Heaven. So do not despair about lying in the ground for hundreds of years before the general resurrection. All believers will go to Heaven the moment they die. It will be very much like blinking. One moment you are here on earth, you blink, and the next thing you know you are in Heaven.

After His resurrection, the disciples finally realized Jesus’ purpose for coming. He not only came to teach the Gospel to them but more importantly, He came to be the perfect sacrifice for sin by dying on the cross in our place. He was willing to pinch hit for us when He knew that we would strike out and be cast into utter darkness. He knew He could hit that home run in our place and He did it so that we could receive all the glory that goes with salvation and eternal life. If it were not for Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins, we would all go to Hell. No one and we mean no one can be good enough to save themselves. Jesus provided for us to have our relationship with God restored.

2 Corinthians 5:18-21 NLT:
18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.
19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

Acts 2:22-24 NLT:
 22 “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know.
23 But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him.
24 But God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood before a large crowd and announced that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead according to the prearranged plan of God. Then we hear the same theme repeated in:

Acts 4:27-30 NLT:
27 “In fact, this has happened here in this very city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed.
28 But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will.
29 And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word.
30 Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

This prearranged plan for Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of mankind had been determined by God from the very beginning, and the Old Testament prophets repeated it to the people in almost every generation.

Acts 3:17-18 NLT:
 17 “Friends, I realize that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance.
18 But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah—that he must suffer these things.

Listen now to what God said to Satan after he had tempted Adam and Eve to sin.

Genesis 3:14-15 MSG:
 14 God told the serpent: "Because you've done this, you're cursed, cursed beyond all cattle and wild animals, Cursed to slink on your belly and eat dirt all your life.
15 I'm declaring war between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He'll wound your head, you'll wound his heel."

And here is Isaiah’s description of Christ and His ministry, several hundred years before He actually came to earth.

Isaiah 53:1-12 MSG:
 1 Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?
2 The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look.
3 He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
4 But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures.
5 But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed.
6 We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on him, on him.
7 He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence.
8 Justice miscarried, and he was led off— and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
9 They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a rich man’s grave, Even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true.
 10 Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.
11 Out of that terrible travail of soul, he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant, will make many "righteous ones," as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
12 Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly— the best of everything, the highest honors— Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many, he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

After Christ’s resurrection, Peter called on people for a response.

1 Peter 1:17-21 MSG:
 17 You call out to God for help and he helps—he's a good Father that way. But don't forget, he's also a responsible Father, and won't let you get by with sloppy living. Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.
18 It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in.
19 He paid with Christ's sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb.
20 And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you.
21 It's because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

In verse 2 of John 17, Jesus says that the Father has given Him authority over all flesh. Then if we turn over to Matthew’s Gospel we see this.

Matthew 28:18-20 NLT:
18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

In other words, Jesus could make everyone do as He commanded if He wanted to do so. But what would salvation mean to a person who was forced into it? A person would be little less than a robot that is programmed to do something that someone else wants them to do, rather than what they choose to do out of love and trust and a willingness to serve.

The last part of John 17, verse 2, suggests to many scholars that God has determined which people will be saved and which will not be saved. We do not intend to take this time to point out why we believe those folks are wrong. We have already done that previously. I believe God desires for everyone to be saved (2 Peter 3:9) and consequently has provided many with the opportunity to hear the truth and accept it.

Romans 10:8-21 NLT:
 8 In fact, it says, “The message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart.” And that message is the very message about faith that we preach:
9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.
11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”
12 Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him.
13 For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?
15 And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!”
16 But not everyone welcomes the Good News, for Isaiah the prophet said, “Lord, who has believed our message?”
17 So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.
18 But I ask, have the people of Israel actually heard the message? Yes, they have: “The message has gone throughout the earth, and the words to all the world.”
19 But I ask, did the people of Israel really understand? Yes, they did, for even in the time of Moses, God said, “I will rouse your jealousy through people who are not even a nation. I will provoke your anger through the foolish Gentiles.”
20 And later Isaiah spoke boldly for God, saying, “I was found by people who were not looking for me. I showed myself to those who were not asking for me.”
21 But regarding Israel, God said, “All day long I opened my arms to them, but they were disobedient and rebellious.”

Do not worry about God not giving everyone an opportunity to hear the Gospel message. Verse 18 says that the message went out to the entire world and that is good enough for me. As a matter of fact, if you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, do not worry about how fair God is to allow others to hear the Gospel. You had better focus on yourself because you are hearing the Gospel right now, and if you reject it you will suffer the consequences. So that is where your focus should be right now. God gives eternal life to all who hear the call and respond by believing the message in their hearts. They come to Christ of their own free will.

In John 17:3 the message is simply that eternal life is given to a person who truly knows God and Jesus Christ. Eternal life has been promised to those who believe in and follow the commands of God Almighty. Do you know Jesus Christ? Let us look at a quote from Charles Spurgeon, a truly gifted and devoted man of God: "It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee. It is Christ. It is not thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument. It is Christ's blood and merit." Now faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God. What does the Word of God say? The Gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. Those are the facts. Our knowledge of the facts and our response to that knowledge is faith. Faith is trusting Christ as our own Savior.[fn]

To know Christ as Savior means to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. When we grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ through the study of the Bible, we come to a place of peace and confidence. Anyone not experiencing that confidence from their salvation and being joined to Jesus is either not truly saved or has not spent much time in the Scripture since becoming a Christian. To have eternal life is to know the one and only God and His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the reason that the study of the Word of God is so important. Many people who claim to be Christians never get to know their Bible and consequently they never get to know God or Jesus. Therefore, they are never confident that they have been saved. How do you feel about your salvation?

 

Unsearchable Riches Are
Yours For The Taking

“In one of Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman’s meetings a man arose to give the following remarkable testimony: ‘I got off at the Pennsylvania depot as a tramp, and for a year I begged on the streets for a living. One day I touched a man on the shoulder and said, Mister, please give me a dime.’

“‘As soon as I saw his face, I recognized my father. Father, don’t you know me?’ I asked. Throwing his arms around me, he cried, ‘I have found you; all I have is yours.’ ‘Men, think of it, that I, a tramp, stood begging my father for ten cents, when for eighteen years he had been looking for me to give me all he was worth!’

“So the heavenly Father is waiting for you. Why not receive the unsearchable riches in Christ now (if you have not done so already)?” [fn] [fn]

The salvation plan of God was formed in eternity past, before the beginning of time. people had not yet been created but God knew they would rebel against Him.[fn] So He decided to provide a way for people to be saved.  Even way back then the Son of God agreed to go to the earth as a Man so that He could provide the necessary payment for sin, and thereby restore the relationship of the sinful person to God by providing forgiveness to all those who would believe and accept Jesus as their Savior. This would then allow them to have eternal life in Heaven. The plan itself was guaranteed by the promise of God as Paul explains in Titus 1:1-2 NAS:

1 Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness,
2 in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago (from before time began).[fn]

Salvation gives us the hope of eternal life.

Do you remember John 17:3? “This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ.” So what do we have here?

According to the promise of God, salvation (the forgiveness of our sins and reconciliation with God) brings eternal life in Heaven. Eternal life is the result of a knowledge of the saving grace that comes from trust and obedience toward God and Jesus Christ.

TRUST and OBEDIENCE = SALVATION = ETERNAL LIFE

 

The phrase "long ages ago" literally means, "before time began," indicating that salvation has always been part of God's sovereign plan. In eternity past, He made a promise to save those whom He had chosen; the fulfillment of which is absolutely certain since "it is impossible for God to lie.”[fn] “But to whom was that promise made, since there was no one around but God before time began?”[fn]

2 Timothy 1:9 NLT:
 9 For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.

The triune God made a promise to Himself, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say to one another within the godhead or Trinity. Therefore, being very, very, very good cannot save a sinner, as some people believe. A sinner is saved because he/she followed the built-in instincts of every human being to find out as much as they can about God, and through that knowledge made a decision to trust in God’s promises, one of which is that Jesus was sent to them because He is the only way their sin can be forgiven.

Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT:
8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

When the Father, in eternity past, decided to redeem sinners, He did so with the intent of transforming their physical bodies to be like His Son’s  (Philippians 3:20-21).

1 John 3:2 NLT:
2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.

In other words, when we die we will go to Heaven and initially we will have some form of body. But in the end times when the Church is raptured every believer will be given a physical body just like the one Christ was given when God raised Him from the dead. Because they will be like Christ in their glorified state, the redeemed will forever be a tribute to the Son, Jesus, reflecting His perfect goodness and proclaiming His eternal greatness.[fn]

John 17:4-12 HCSB:
4 I have glorified You on the earth by completing the work You gave Me to do.
5 Now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with that glory I had with You before the world existed.
6 I have revealed Your name to the men You gave Me from the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
7 Now they know that all things You have given to Me are from You,
8 because the words that You gave Me, I have given them. They have received them and have known for certain that I came from You. They have believed that You sent Me.
9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world but for those You have given Me, because they are Yours.
10 All My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I have been glorified in them.
11 I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by Your name that You have given Me, so that they may be one as We are one.
12 While I was with them, I was protecting them by Your name that You have given Me. I guarded them and not one of them is lost, except the son of destruction, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled.

Now just as God loves Jesus and wants Him to receive glory, Jesus’ focus is directed to honoring and glorifying God by His sacrifice because of His love of the Father.

Thus when Jesus asked the Father to “glorify Him,” He was asking that God’s eternal plan for saving sinners be enacted exactly as God had planned it. If you look through the prayer in John 17 carefully, you will see that this is the only request that Jesus made for Himself. All He wanted was that God would permit Him to be used in death to fulfill His Father’s plan exactly as it had been designed. Thereby, through His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, the people would recognize that to do those things He must have been sent by God, thereby deserving glory and honor forever. The fact that Jesus shares the Father's glory confirms His deity, since God will not give His glory to another (Isaiah 42:8; 48:11).[fn]

Through this prayer, Jesus is telling the Father that He is ready, willing, and able to take the steps necessary to fulfill the promise God had made to Him in eternity past. But Jesus was not merely seeking His own glory. His perfectly righteous request was that by His sacrifice the Son might glorify the Father.

Can you imagine it? The God of creation, the CEO, so to speak, of the universe, sacrificed His precious Son to satisfy His judgment against the most vile of sinners. What would that tell people about the righteousness and holiness of God? Only a God who loved beyond any human understanding could make such a sacrifice. The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus have demonstrated God’s grace, mercy, love, and righteousness in a most powerful way. God was truly glorified after these events, as was Jesus. God should also be glorified when He can point to all the believers that have received salvation and eternal life because of His Son’s death.

In his prayer Jesus speaks of what was and what will be from an eternal perspective. In both cases the Father is the source of everything, and Jesus is in a manner of speaking God's agent. Jesus gave life to all creation, and now it is time for Him to give eternal life to those within that creation that are given Him by God. As with the Son, so too with the disciples; the Father is their source for all things.[fn] He gives them to the Son, and the Son gives them eternal life.

As we read earlier from Ephesians 2, all of this is by God’s grace. Both God’s will and the individual’s freedom to choose have been emphasized throughout this Gospel, but there is never any doubt that it all depends on God’s grace. Yet, there is an inevitable tragedy that goes along with the mercy of God; it is offered to all, but received by only a few.

John 17:4-5 NAS:
4 "I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 "Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Do you see the theme? God glorifies Jesus and Jesus glorifies God. Isn’t that great?

As His prayer indicates, Jesus was fully aware that, like everything else, the next few hours of time had been determined since eternity past and would have an incalculable effect regarding eternity future.[fn]

Jesus’ prayer for Himself in John 17:4-5 was based on His finished work (4:34) which included His obedience to death. “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8 NAS). Jesus is asking God to return Him to His position of glory with the Father, which He held before His incarnation, and which was dependent upon His finished work on the cross.

John 17:6 NAS:
6 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.

The small number of disciples was given by the Father to the Son (verses 2, 9, 24). They had been separated out of the world (verse 14) by the selection of the Father as a gift to Jesus (6:37).

With the words, “They have kept Your Word” (verse 6), Jesus praised His disciples for responding to the message of God through Him. Their faith in Jesus was a trust in His being One with the Father (17:8). This faith in Jesus was evidenced in their obedience to His words because they believed that God sent Him. (16:27).

Now as we listen in on this prayer of Jesus for His disciples, maybe we should reflect on something. As Jesus is praying for the disciples, He is also looking down through the centuries to His future followers (see verse 20). It might do us well to ask ourselves if this prayer has been answered in our lives. Have we, and do we, keep His Word? Can Christ say of us, “He/she has kept Your Word”?

John 17:7-10 NAS:
7 "Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You;
8 for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.
9 "I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours;
10 and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.

Christ’s prayer in John 17:6-19 was specifically for the eleven apostles at that time. It does, however, apply to all believers who followed them and who read these verses today. Jesus requests two things in particular for these eleven apostles in His prayer to the Father. He asks that God “protect them” in verse 11 and that He “sanctify them,” which means to make them holy, in verse 17. Jesus prayed this for them because they belonged to God. Look at verse 9. To whom do they belong? They belong to God who has ownership of them by creation and election (“they are Yours”). Jesus’ words, “All My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine” makes it clear that Jesus is equal with the Father.

In Old Testament times God dwelt among the people and showed them His glory, the Shekinah glory through the pillar of fire and the cloud. When Jesus came to earth, God displayed His glory through the Son, as we saw in John 1:14 NAS:

14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Then Jesus’ apostles glorified Him, John 17:10 NAS: “I have been glorified in them.”

Then in John 17:11 NAS we read:
11 "And I am no more in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.

Jesus, knowing that He would soon be returning to the Father in Heaven and leaving His disciples in the world, was entrusting them to pick up where He had left off in presenting God’s plan of redemption to the world and in planting the Church. He therefore prayed for their protection.

The hatred that the world felt for Jesus would now be directed toward the apostles and later on toward many others who followed Jesus. Jesus called on His Father to protect them under this persecution because He knew the power of God’s name and that God’s name could overcome anything that might come against these apostles Jesus loved. Proverbs 18:10 makes this promise: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe” (NAS).

Now pay careful attention here because this is very important. Jesus prayed that God would protect His apostles so that all believers could be unified as one body, He also prayed that this unity would be patterned after the unity that Jesus had with the Father. We will see this later in verses 21 and 22.

John 17:12 NAS:
12 "While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.

As the Good Shepherd, Jesus took care of the flock entrusted to Him by the Father. But Judas was an exception. He is here called “the son of perdition.” Judas was never a sheep and his true character was finally made clear as we are told in John 13:11 and 1 John 2:19. He was willing to betray Jesus for money.[fn] Having prayed to the Father to protect the disciples, Jesus declared that He had protected them (verse 12). It is as if He was handing back the task to God.[fn]

Jesus gave His disciples the revelation of the Father’s name (John 17:6). The Old Testament Jew knew his God as “Jehovah,” the great “I AM” (Exodus 3:11–14). Jesus took this sacred name “I AM” and made it meaningful to His disciples. He said such things as: “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35); “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12); “I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11). In other words, Jesus used the Father’s name to show His apostles that God was everything they needed.

Jesus also taught His disciples that God, the great “I AM“, was their Heavenly Father. In His messages to the Jews, Jesus made it clear that the Father had sent Him, that He was equal to the Father, and that His words and works came from the Father. It was a clear claim to be Deity, but initially they had difficulty believing Him.

In the Bible, “name” refers to “nature,” because names so often were given to reveal something special about the nature of the person bearing the name. Jacob was a schemer, and his name comes from a Hebrew root that means “to take by the heel,” which meansto trip up, to deceive (Genesis 25:26). The name Isaac means “laughter” (Genesis 21:6) because he brought joy to Abraham and Sarah. Even the name Jesus reveals that He is the Savior (Matthew 1:21).[fn]

“I have manifested your name” in verse 6 means “I have revealed the nature of God.” According to John 1:18 NLT: “No one has ever seen God. But the one and only Son is himself God and is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.” It was one of Jesus’ tasks to reveal the Father to the Jews.[fn] Jesus was not about to reveal the glory of God to the disciples in one sitting. They could not have taken it all in according to John 16:12 NLT: “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now.”

Gradually, by the things that Jesus said and did, He spoon fed the disciples, teaching them about the nature of God. Furthermore, all believers are the Father’s gift to His Son. The disciples had belonged to the Father by creation and by covenant (they were Jews), but now they belonged to the Son, and because they belonged to Him, they were precious in His sight. How He watches over all of us and even now prays for us. Whenever you feel as though the Lord has forgotten you, or that His love seems far away, read Romans 8:28–39 and rejoice![fn]

Warren Wiersbe has written:

“God has provided the divine resources for us to glorify Him and be faithful. We have His Word (John 17:7–8), and His Word reveals to us all that we have in Jesus Christ. The Word gives us faith and assurance. We have the Son of God interceding for us.[fn] Since the Father always answers the prayers of His Son as we learn in John 11:41–42, this intercessory ministry helps to keep us safe and secure.

“We also have the fellowship of the Church: “’That they may be one, as we are’ (John 17:11). The New Testament knows nothing of isolated believers; wherever you find saints, you find them in fellowship. Why? Because God’s people need each other. Jesus opened His Upper Room message by washing the disciples’ feet and teaching them to minister to one another. In the hours that would follow, these men (including confident Peter!) would discover how weak they were and how much they needed each other’s encouragement.”[fn]

The believer, then, is secure in Christ for many reasons: the very nature of God, the nature of salvation, the glory of God, and the continuing ministry of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Coming back to the issue of Judas then one might ask, was he secure? How did he fall? Why did Jesus not keep him safe? For the simple reason that Judas was never one of Christ’s own. Jesus faithfully kept all that the Father gave to Him, but Judas had never been given to Him by the Father. Judas was not a believer (John 6:64–71).[fn]

Judas is not an example of a believer who “lost his salvation.” He is an example of an unbeliever who pretended to have salvation but was finally exposed as a fraud. Jesus keeps all whom the Father gives to Him (John 10:26–30). [fn]

In this prayer it is as if the Lord Jesus is handing in His final report to the Father. He has not died on the Cross yet; but, as far as God is concerned, He speaks of things which are not as if they are. Future tense for God is just as accurate as past tense. Our Lord Jesus is going to the Cross to die and then will rise again. On the Cross, He said, "It is finished" (John 19:30). That means our redemption was finished. He has done everything that was necessary. We can put a period there. We cannot add a thing to His finished work. Therefore, the Gospel of salvation is not what God is asking you to do, but what God is telling you that He has already done for you. It is your response to that which saves you.[fn]

Now we cannot leave these verses without saying something about the doctrine of election, which we have dealt with earlier. But we really do like the comments made by J. Vernon McGee on the subject:

“I don't know as much about election as maybe I should know. I've read Hodge, Calvin, Thornwall, Shedd, and Strong on the subject, and they don't seem to know much more about it. The reason we know so little about election is because it is God's side, and there are a lot of things that God knows that we don't know.

“It is a wonderful thing to be able to listen to this prayer and to know that Jesus is at God's right hand talking to the Father about us. The Lord Jesus has talked to the Father about you today, if you are one of His.

“There is a mystical relationship between the Lord Jesus and His own. They belong to the Father and were given to Jesus Christ. I can't fathom its meaning. What a wonderful relationship!

“The Lord had given them the Words of the Father. That is important. He had not given them property or money or an automobile, but the Words of the Father. Jesus testifies here that these disciples believed that He came from the Father. They knew who He was. They did not understand His purpose and certainly not His death and resurrection, but they had made tremendous advances during the three years they had been with Him. They knew He had come from God, and they believed that God had sent Him.

“He prays for two wonderful things. He prays for us to be kept. You will be kept because you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and because your Savior is praying for you.

“His other request is that we should be one. He prays for the unity of believers. He's not praying for an ecumenical movement or that we all join the same denomination. There has been much wrong teaching about this. First of all, He prays to the Father that His own might be one. Notice that He isn't praying to us or to some church authority; He is praying to the Father. And He prays that we should be one "as we are"; that is, as the Father and the Son are one. The Father has answered every prayer of His Son, and He has answered this one. The Holy Spirit takes all true believers and baptizes them into the body of Christ, identifies them in the body of Christ. The disgrace of it all is that down here the believers are pretty well divided. But there is only one true church, and every believer in Jesus Christ is a member of that church. It is called the body of Christ.

“I wish you could have met me when I graduated from seminary. I was a smart boy then and I even had the answer to election and free will. But I have a little more sense than I had then, and I realize that we simply do not understand it.”[fn]

We do not have to understand or be able to explain everything about God. We only have to trust and obey. He has given us enough proof of who He is. If a person cannot accept the Bible as God’s truth with all the evidence it provides, there is simply no hope for that person. But the converse is also true. If a person accepts the biblical truth about God and Jesus Christ and the salvation they have provided, all the riches of Heaven become theirs. What a glorious God!

 

The Disciples In The World
John 17:13-21

13 "But now I come to You (God)[fn]; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.
14 "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
15 "I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.
16 "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
17 "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
18 "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
19 "For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
20 "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

A news release appeared not too long ago announcing that the World Council of Churches had suggested that leading scholars of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam be appointed to the teaching staffs of Christian universities and colleges, and that an appeal be made to Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic universities to develop programs in Christian studies to be taught by professors from Christian universities and colleges. Their reasoning for suggesting such action was based on the council’s belief that divine truth is so rich and many-sided that only small amounts of truth are found in each faith. Therefore, it was their conclusion that if an individual became knowledgeable in all the world’s belief systems, they would then discover more truth about God.

This was the kind of world that Jesus’ apostles would find themselves in and Jesus wanted them to be protected from that kind of foolish false teaching. So He prayed to His Father for their protection as they served Him while in the world. And guess what? That is the same kind of world we live in today and we need the same protection the apostles needed. We are glad we can be confident that Jesus is still praying to the Father to protect His servants as they serve Him in this world. So let us take a closer look at exactly what Jesus was asking for the apostles who would soon be without Jesus’ physical presence.

John 17:13 NAS:
13 "But now I come to You (God)[fn]; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.

The world keeps looking for happiness, seeking it in all the wrong places. But happiness is fleeting. What people really crave, but do not always realize it, is joy. Joy comes from deep down and is more lasting than superficial happiness.

Jesus begins this section by revealing just how much He loves not only His apostles but also all those who in the future will come to faith as a result of their teaching which will be guided by the Holy Spirit representing both God the Father and Christ. Jesus came so that our lives might be filled with the same kind of joy He had in being one with the Father. I would imagine that after Jesus rose from His grave the apostles began putting two and two together and they realized the meaning of many of the things Jesus told them during their time together which they had not previously understood. They undoubtedly felt joy in knowing that Jesus had conquered death, overcome Satan, and brought eternal life to all believers. And I believe that Jesus felt joy in knowing that He had provided those things for people who would have otherwise been lost and condemned to an eternal Hell. That, by the way, is another truth which the world refuses to acknowledge. They do not want to accept the fact that there is a Hell, and so they do not. Such people are going to be in for the biggest shock of their lives one second after they die.

John 17:14 NAS:
14 "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

The Word of God creates many problems for people who want to do things their own way. In fact, we would go so far as to say that the Bible is counterculture. What do you think the reaction of the television and studio audience might be if you were to be a guest on The Tonight Show and when asked a question by Jay Leno, you pulled out your Bible and read from chapter one of Isaiah in response? How about if you did the same thing in an interview with Barbara Walters on The View? Or perhaps you appeared before a congressional committee investigating same-sex-marriage and out came your Bible once again? You would be ridiculed, insulted, and possibly even threatened with physical violence.

Just a few days ago, the news showed the picture of a van that is driving around the country. The humanists are sponsoring it. The sign on the van reads: “Why believe in a god? Why not be good for goodness sake?” My response is that without God, there is no goodness.

You see it runs counter to the culture you live in to imply that there is a God and that He is in control of everything that occurs in this world. It is counter to the culture to suggest that a person cannot provide for his or her own salvation and eternal life in Heaven. People do not want salvation to be a gift. They want it to be based on something they can do to earn it. They do not want to be indebted or have to depend on someone like Christ to provide it for them. The world would rather try to solve the global warming problem and determine how man was created and evolved rather than depend on God to have done it all. The real problem with the world, however, is that the most serious form of pollution exists in the heart.

As believers follow and share Jesus Christ together, all the things they once held to be of value before their faith in Christ, and all those things they believed they needed in order for people to respect them, no longer control them.

1 John 2:15-17 NAS:
15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

The faith and trust shown in the Lord by a believer makes the values held by the world to be nothing more than garbage.

Philippians 3:7-9 NLT:
 7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.
8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ
9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

Therefore the world hates it when the pure Word of God exposes the world’s foolish values.

John 3:20-21 NLT:
20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.
21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

Now moving back to John, we continue with:

John 17:15 NAS:
15 "I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.

God’s plan was not to remove the apostles from danger and opposition (take them out of the world) but to preserve them in the midst of conflict. Though Jesus would soon be taken out of the world, His followers are to remain in it. Like Daniel in Babylon (Daniel 1-2; 4-6) and the saints in Caesar’s household (Philippians 4:22), God intends for His followers to be witnesses to truth in the midst of satanic lies. Believers are in the world to teach God’s truth. Satan, the evil one (Matthew 5:37; 1 John 5:19), as head of the world system, seeks to do everything possible to destroy believers (cf. Revelation 2:10; 12:10) but God’s plan will win out. Christians must not take themselves out of the world but remain in meaningful contact with it, trusting in God’s protection while they speak of the truth that God has taught them.[fn]

God receives glory by keeping you and me in the world. One day He will take all of His living faithful out of the world when He raptures the Church. At just the right time, God will take these people up to Heaven within the blink of an eye, bringing glory to Himself. But for the time being, God receives glory by keeping you and me in the world as His ambassadors, teachers, and preachers until the day we die and He calls us home to be with Him. Even now, however, many believers look forward to being free from the cares of this world and being with Christ in Heaven. Such a desire is more intense during times of persecution when believers are being imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. We cannot speak for you, but as for us, we look forward to the rapture when we will all be taken home to be with Jesus. Listen to what Paul said:[fn]

Philippians 1:20-24 NLT:
20 For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die.
21 For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better.
22 But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better.
23 I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me.
24 But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live.

The apostles needed to be protected from the influence of evil as they witnessed. Otherwise their witness would have ceased to be pure. The reference in the last part of John 17:15 is to the evil one himself who would be against Christ’s followers. (Matthew 6:13; 1 Peter 5:8).

It is important to emphasize here that Jesus does not pray that we should be taken out of the world. God gets glory by keeping you and me in the world today. We think of the Rapture as wonderful, and it will be. We think of the Rapture as bringing glory to God, and it will. But let us understand one thing: God gets glory by keeping you and me in the world. God gets the glory to the degree that you and I obey Him and let Him shine out through us.

Would it not be wonderful if we could really learn this lesson? We cry and whimper because things are hard down here. Sure they are. Jesus said they would be hard, "but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). He also said in this same verse that in Him we can have peace.

We can get pretty weary of this world at times can we not? And the thought of being in Heaven with Jesus without a care or worry is rather appealing. However in John 17:15, Jesus prays that we should not be taken out of the world, but that we should be kept from the evil one, Satan. We ask you to stop and think about that for just a moment. Think about how tough life can be at times. Then think of how life might be if Jesus were not praying continuously to His Father that we be protected from the evil one. We have no way of knowing exactly how much despair we have been spared because of Jesus’ prayers for us.[fn] That very knowledge can bring joy to our hearts.

John 17:16 NAS:
"They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

As saved followers of Jesus, the disciples no longer lived their lives according to the lifestyles of the world that focused on evil, even though they lived in that world.

There is an old gospel song that we never hear anymore, which must have been inspired in part by this verse. It starts out,

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through;
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.”[fn]

Truly, our values, lifestyle, and citizenship should be more compatible with Heaven than with the secular culture around us. Yet, we must remember that we still exist in this culture so that we can witness to it and show God’s glory in it.

John 17:17 NAS:
17 "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.

Just as Jesus did not belong to the satanic world system (“I am not of it,” verse 14), so believers do not. They belong to the heavenly kingdom (Colossians 1:13) because of their new births (John 3:3). Jesus had prayed for protection for His disciples (17:11). Now another request for them was for their sanctification. Sanctify means “set apart for special use.” A believer is to be separated from the world’s sin, its values, and its goals.
The way to do this is by knowing God’s truth, the truth is told to us by the Word, which is both personal and propositional. As the message about Jesus was heard, believed, and understood, the disciples’ hearts and minds were captured. This change in their thinking resulted in changes in their living. The same is true of believers today. As they put God’s Word into practice in their lives, they are sanctified, set apart for God, and changed in their living in order to honor God (cf. 15:3). God’s message set the apostles apart from the world so that they would do His will, not Satan’s.

We can serve Jesus only if we come to understand our Bibles from cover to cover, and then cooperate with the Holy Spirit to make the necessary changes in our lives. Then and only then can we live in accord with what the Bible teaches and commands.

John 17:18-19 NAS:
 18 "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
19 "For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

Jesus is the model for every believer. He was in the world but He was not of the world (verses 14b, 16b). He was sent into the world on a mission by His Father. So believers are sent into the world on a mission by the Son. And that mission is to make the Father known (cf. 20:21). Each Christian should view himself as a missionary whose task is to communicate God’s truth to others. The purpose of the death of Christ is to dedicate or separate believers to God and His program.

We have been sent out into the world to tell others about the truth we know regarding Jesus Christ. He sets Himself apart to be identified with us, and we ought to be identified with Him in this world.

To be sent into the world by Christ as the Father sent him is the highest privilege that anyone can be given.

John 17:20-21 NAS:
 20 "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

Jesus also had you and me in mind when He prayed this prayer. So that even today, a couple thousand years later, we can be confident that He is praying before the Father for you and me.  

This prayer was answered by the formation of the Church. Believers have the ability to be one with fellow believers as well as with Christ because the Church was created to be one body. Believers are one in Christ, for the Church is one body with Christ as its head. The minute any sinner trusts Christ they become part of the body of Christ. If believers would make that union obvious to the world, the world would be more impressed with Christ. Too often the world sees believers hating each other, which may well be one of the reasons they will not accept Christ.[fn]

“That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us” (verse 21).The indwelling Spirit of the Father and the Son is the one perfect bond of union. It unites all believers among themselves. Then this unity goes even higher and unites us with the Father and the Son.

Certainly, you have at some point met someone for the first time, perhaps a Christian from another country or culture. But you immediately sensed a kinship, a oneness with that person. The Holy Spirit within you and the Holy Spirit within the other person binds you together. It unites you. That is an illustration of the principle in this verse. Unfortunately, this union is not readily apparent among Christ followers. The multiplicity of denominations and nit picking about certain practices or lesser points of doctrine that so frequently occurs does not show God’s glory to the world.

Admittedly, the divided Church is in many ways a scandal. The cure, however, is not a single worldwide church. Jesus was not praying for the unity of a single worldwide Church. Instead, He was praying for a unity of love, a unity of obedience to God and His Word, and a united commitment to His will.

All believers belong to the one body of Christ (1 Corinthians. 12:13) and their spiritual unity is to be made evident in the way they live. The unity Christ desires for His church is the same kind of unity the Son has with the Father. The Father did His works through the Son and the Son always did what pleased the Father (John 5:30; 8:29). This spiritual unity is to be patterned in the Church. Without union with Jesus and the Father (“they . . . in Us”), Christians can do nothing (John 15:5). The goal of Christians’ lives should be to do the Father’s will.

What is God talking to you about today? Is there friction between yourself and another Christian? If so, then it is important to go to that person and work things out. Do you find yourself critical of how other believers worship? If it is not an essential doctrinal issue then we are to acknowledge that different Christians may worship in different ways but it is the same God they are serving (1 Corinthians 12:4-6; Philippians 1:18).

If we would all be obedient and do things God’s way, that joy and unity that Christ prayed to the Father for us would be so obvious and magnificent that it would be overwhelming. We would probably see a huge turning to Christ in this world. Let us each examine our life and, with the Holy Spirit’s help, live as God calls us to live.

 

The Meaning Of True Unity
John 17:22-23

Let us read the last few verses of Christ’s High Priestly prayer in John 17.

John 17:22-26 NAS:
22 "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
24 "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
25 "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;
26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

As Christ closes His High Priestly prayer, we find Him emphasizing two themes: Unity and Glory. Over the years, people have made attempts to bring unity among the many factions of the Christian Church. For instance, after Vatican I and Vatican II, tremendous changes were seen in the Roman Catholic Church towards “religious union” with Protestants especially. Excessive reverence or awe for the Virgin Mary was soft-pedaled, the title “heretics” which had been used for Protestants was changed to “separated brethren,” the Mass was liberalized and the Bible was even taught from the pulpit in some Catholic churches.

Pope John XXIII said: “There burns in my heart the intention of working and suffering to hasten the hour when for all men the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper will have reached its fulfillment, ‘That they may all be one! ’”

Pope Paul VI at the Second Vatican Counsel in 1963 said:

“If we are in any way to blame for that separation, we humbly beg God’s forgiveness and ask pardon too of our brethren who feel themselves to have been injured by us. For our part, we willingly forgive the injuries which the Catholic Church has suffered, and forget the grief endured during the long series of dissensions and separations.”[fn]

The reality is that after all these attempts at bringing Christians together, there is as much if not more separation than at any other time in history. We could probably spend hours describing to you the reason that so-called Christians have created hundreds of different religious denominations over the centuries, but that would not accomplish what we should be understanding when we read these last verses in John chapter seventeen. What we as Christians living in the twenty-first century need to learn here is what Christ desired for His followers and why He prayed to the Father for them to have it.

It might be very difficult for many Christians to understand just what it was that Jesus was asking His Father to do in John 17:22-26, and it is oh so important that we do understand it!

Let us read Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 NAS:

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,
21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Just how do we get filled up with all the fullness of God that is spoken of in verse 19? Through the power of the Holy Spirit. Verse 19 resonates with Ephesians 5:18, which reads in part “be filled (keep on being filled) with the Holy Spirit.” Then verse 20 refers to the “power that works within us.” What power is that? The power of the Holy Spirit.

Now look at Colossians 2:9-10 NAS:

9 For in Him (Jesus)[fn] all the fullness of Deity dwellsin bodily form,
10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

The fullness of God is found in Jesus Christ, and in Christ believers are made complete. How does this happen? Well, if all the fullness of God is in Jesus Christ and we are joined with Christ by faith in His death, which paid the price for our sins (Ephesians 3:17), then the fullness of God indwells the believer in the form of the Holy Spirit who comes to live within us the moment we accept Christ as our Savior.

Now if that is not enough information to make your self-esteem soar like a rocket, read 2 Peter 1:3-4 NLT:

3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.
4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you believe He paid the price for your sins, and if you consider Him Lord of your life by striving to obey all He commands, then you share with Him in His divine nature. What exactly does that mean? We think this definition of “nature” best describes what it means to be one with Christ and God: “In contrast to mankind’s weak and corruptible nature God is everything that transcends mankind’s limitations, allowing Him to function with supernatural perfection.”[fn] So according to the promise of God, “These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires”  (2 Peter 1:4).

God has promised you that you will share in these supernatural characteristics. If that does not give you a shot of adrenalin to carry you through the tough times, then you are simply not leaning on God’s promises. The future of all believers, no matter how bad your current circumstances, is simply glorious and will continue that way throughout eternity!

As we saw earlier, Jesus is not only praying for His eleven apostles but for all believers from that time forward, which of course would include you and me today.

Jesus’ reason for making these requests of the Father is so that all of His followers, whether they be the eleven apostles He has been mentoring or all those believers who will come after them, may be one. “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one” (John 17:21 NLT). The purpose for their being one is so that the world will believe and know that God sent His Son in human flesh to prove His love for all those who would believe and obey (John 17:23). So, the unity of believers was to be a witness to the world that the Savior had come. That gives even sadder meaning to all the dissension among Christians. Satan uses that dissension to hinder the proclamation of the Gospel. Verse 23 of John 17 suggests that the unity of believers would show the world that God loved them and sent His Son, Jesus Christ, so that they would be saved, united, and glorified.

Jesus then asks that all believers would be with Him in Heaven (John 17:24). Jesus had identified His followers back in verse 20 as those who will believe in Him through the teaching of these apostles. In fact Jesus had told Peter in Matthew 16:18 that He would build the His Church on the teaching of these eleven apostles. Paul confirms this in Ephesians 2:19-20 when he is speaking to Gentiles:

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household,
20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone. (NAS)

This is probably the reason that the apostle John writes in Revelation 21:14: “And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (NAS).Remember that Matthias joined the group to replace Judas Iscariot. The Church was built on the teaching of the apostles, therefore the apostles were the foundation for the Church of Christ according to the plan of God. Most importantly, the apostles are the chief witnesses for proclaiming the truth about God and Jesus to the rest of the world, as we see in John 15:27: “And you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry” (NLT).

Jesus' prayer then applies to all believers from that time forward. He prays that God would provide for all their needs and love them just as He had loved Jesus, guiding them and growing them in faith, trust, and righteousness as they teach others what they received from Jesus. Jesus says that this group of apostles there in the room with Him would be the foundation of one unified humanity. Now we hope you get the full impact of this next verse.

John 17:22-23 NAS:
22 "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

The word glory is used of men to describe their wealth, splendor, or reputation (though in the last sense the Greek word, doxa, is often translated ‘honor’). The most important concept is that of the glory of Yahweh. The Hebrew language had several words for God. “Yahweh,” or “Jehovah,” was the most holy, the most special, of the names of God. Jews felt this name was so special that they would not speak it, and when scribes were copying the name in the Scripture, they would get up and wash their hands before writing this name for God. Yahweh represents the revelation of God’s being, nature, and presence to mankind in all His beauty of being and character.[fn] Jesus shares in this glory as the eternal Son and the second person of the Godhead or the Trinity  (John 17:5, 24). He has now given this glory first to His apostles, and then to the disciples that follow them. In part, this refers to His revelation of the Father, which He has made known to His apostles. This promise makes them aware that they will be sharing with God in God's own eternal life. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

While He was here on earth Jesus lived in oneness with the Father by being always responsive to the Father’s will.[fn] By being responsive to Christ’s will, we live in oneness with Him. It is this uniquely personal relationship that Christ prays we will experience with Him.

Jesus was asking the Father for all of this for all believers so that they might share in the divine oneness. In other words, be filled with the Spirit of God. Oh the wonder of it all. Are you a believer? Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how much you are loved by the Creator of the world, the King of the universe? Do you know you are His adopted son or daughter and will be given all the privileges of being in the royal family?

Jesus spoke of a oneness among all believers (“that all of them may be one,” John 17:21) and then He connected that oneness with a combined indwelling of the Father and the Son. Verse 22 has this indwelling as the model for the relationship among believers: “that they may be one, just as We are one.” The word translated just as (kathos) can refer to what created the relationship as well as to the relationship itself. Both of these meanings are applicable here, for the combined indwelling of the Father and the Son is both the reason that all may be one as well as the example for this kind of oneness. This becomes clearer when Jesus adds, “just as you and I are one” (John 17:22). The oneness for all believers is to be found in the relationship between the Father and Son. The oneness of the Father and the Son is both the cause of and the model for the believers' unity.[fn]

Oneness is made possible because of faith: believers’ faith in the Son places them “in Christ” and also brings “Christ in them” (“Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Colossians 1:27). The believers are in the Son because of their faith and the Son is in them because of that same faith (John 14:20; John 15:4-5). Also, the believers are in the Son, who is in the Father (John 14:20; Colossians 3:3). We see too that the Father is in the Son, who is in the believers (John 17:23). The believers’ direct contact in both cases is the Son. Jesus is the visible manifestation of the godhead. No one can see the Father or the Holy Spirit. But when Christ was on earth, people did see Him. So therefore Jesus is the visible connection between us and God the Father. Believers, therefore, do have a connectedness to God, but it comes through the Son, for no one comes to the Father except through the Son (John 14:6). So the oneness of the Son with the Father is a very special relationship (John 1:14, John 1:18), because Jesus shares in the deity of the Father. But through the Son believers have a bond to the Father and share in His eternal life.[fn]

This oneness must also refer to the oneness that is present throughout the life of the Church as the Church makes "every effort to keep the unity of the Holy Spirit through the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3). This bond, if lived with a commitment of obedience and love for the Holy Spirit of God which lives in every believer, will become quite evident to the world. So this is a spiritual oneness that comes from God, and which God wants the world to recognize so that they will be able to see the good relationship that exists among those who follow Christ.[fn] The first step of this journey for the Church is to know which members are saved and which are not. There are a lot of people in every church that consider themselves Christians because they go to church every Sunday, but who have never made a declaration of faith in Christ’s atoning work in their lives. Without such a commitment they are not saved and do not have the Holy Spirit living within them. Therefore they are neither able to feel this kind of oneness nor to demonstrate it to anyone else. It is therefore one of the very first requirements for a pastor to have a sit-down with everyone in the church individually and ask them if they are truly saved. If they are not he/she must pray diligently for that individual and do whatever God shows him/her to do to bring that person into the family of God. Remember, your church cannot fulfill its mission with pretend believers. And if anyone hearing or reading these words knows they do not have this kind of saving faith, then tell your pastor. If he/she is truly a servant of God, he/she will rejoice with you in that admission and will be happy to guide you into true faith and conversion.

Jesus says the purpose of this oneness is “that the world may believe that you sent me”  (John 17:21). Jesus knew that His small band of apostles had the kind of faith we have been talking about because of what He said in His prayer back in verses 7 and 8:

7 "Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You;
8 for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed (knew)[fn] that You sent Me.

To believe that the Father sent Jesus is to believe that the Father is everything that Jesus has told them about the Father. It is to believe that the only way they can have a saving relationship with the Father is through Jesus. They must first believe in Jesus’ death on the cross for their sins before God will by His grace grant them salvation and everlasting life in Heaven.

Because knowing this must be parallel with believing, Jesus does not refer to some mere intellectual recognition of the fact that the Father sent the Son, but rather to the knowledge that brings eternal life, John 17:3 NAS:[fn]

3 "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Jesus therefore (in verse 18) launches His apostles’ ministry in much the same way that He was sent to them by the Father, to bring the message of salvation to the unsaved: "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”

The purpose of their lives together, living the oneness in love that we have been discussing, was to both deliver the message of God and Christ to unbelievers, and at the same time demonstrate to others what it is like to live life according to such truth.

Now here is the part that simply knocks us off our feet. The love that God the Father has for Jesus is the same love He has for believers. In fact that love applies to the whole world according to possibly the best known Bible verse in the world, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (NAS)

God loves believers in the same way He loves Jesus. But we have no doubt that He loves the unsaved in much the same way because first He sent His one and only Son to die for them, and secondly that is the assignment that was given to the apostles whom Jesus taught personally. For "God is love,” according to 1 John 4.

1 John 4:7-21 NAS:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

Believers are to receive this love, internalize it, and allow their own human transformation to provide living proof of God's ability to take one’s sinful lifestyle and transform it to match the characteristics of Jesus Christ who is a living, God-in-the-flesh example of God’s mercy, grace, truth, and love.

Imagine that the next time you’re watching your favorite television show and they break for a commercial, that instead of seeing an advertisement telling you what the latest electronic toy is, which you do not really need, there is instead an advertisement inviting people to join in this oneness with God and other believers. Imagine that the commercial was so tastefully done that it was evident to people that the church is a place where there is the kind of welcome awaiting them that one might experience when returning home for Christmas. As one walks through the door, instead of a finding a lukewarm atmosphere, they are warmly welcomed by a community of disciples as if they were family that had been away for a long time. Imagine that this church was filled with true believers who are filled with God’s love that comes directly from the Holy Spirit living within them.

That is the picture that outsiders should be getting from the church and other contacts they may have with individual Christians. How do you think you and your church are doing in that regard?

The actual lack of unity among Christians throughout history, both between groups of Christians and between individual Christians, can cause a believer to be depressed. It can also cause Christ to be held up to contempt by the world. Jesus' prayer here shows that there can be no oneness apart from Him, yet Christians disagree on who Jesus is and how one is to relate to Him. Oneness clearly must come from God and is not something people of goodwill can manufacture. Oneness cannot be produced by individuals who want to “be good just for goodness sake,” as has been suggested by a group of atheists. Oneness is a gift of God’s grace, which can only come to a person or group sharing in the divine glory (John 17:22) and name (John 17:26) of God.

Oneness can only come through being born from above, hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd and accepting the witness of the Holy Spirit, thereby sharing the glory of the Father with all unbelievers that touch their lives.[fn]

Let us in our churches purpose today to show this oneness and unity to the community around us.

 

 

Future Glory Is Coming To All Believers
John 17:24-26

24 "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
25 "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;
26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

The theme in Jesus’ prayer recorded in this chapter is faith leading to unity, which leads others to faith. In other words, faith in the promises of God that at this time were brought to them by Jesus would lead to a common unity of faith that would bind them together as brothers and sisters sharing the same Father (God) and the same Brother (Jesus). They share this unity by each having the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within them for the purpose of bringing glory to God. Glory is yet another aspect of the unity theme that has been emphasized throughout this high priestly prayer that Jesus is praying to His Father. Jesus prays to the Father that the apostles He has been given by the Father will learn these lessons concerning faith and unity and glory. To be able to see the glory of God in Christ will create the kind of unity being discussed here. And that unity when shown to the world will make the world aware of the glory of God as well.[fn] How do you think the Church is doing in reflecting the glory of God to the world through perfect love and unity within the Church?

We have already looked at the passage on love in 1 John 4, but we would like to review it again from the New Living Translation with some additional comments added to the text for clarity. This will therefore be a paraphrase-commentary regarding the text from 1 John 4:9-19 NLT:

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. God loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Since God loved us that much, He must certainly want us to love each other in the same way because He is the perfect example that we should follow. So we should love each other in the same way that God loved Jesus and in the same way that Jesus loved us.

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other as God loved Jesus and Jesus loved us, we will show the world what it is like to live in harmony with one another, expressing selfless love for each other.

Because God and Christ live in us in the form of the Holy Spirit, we are capable of showing the world what the love of God is like, and when they see the peace and harmony it brings, they too will want to have the Holy Spirit of God living within them so they may enjoy that same peace and harmony. And there is only one way to get that and that is through faith in the work which the Son, Jesus, has done by paying the price for the sin of anyone who is willing to repent of that sin and accept Christ as their personal Savior. That is, they accept Him as the one and only way of having their sins forgiven so they might have eternal life in Heaven. God lives in us, and His love is brought to full expression in us.

Now as has been said, when a person accepts Christ as his/her personal Savior, God then sends His Holy Spirit to live within them. The Spirit is proof of our faith and that we live in God and He lives in us. This concept is impossible for anyone to understand fully because it includes a relationship where the Triune God is involved in a relationship with each believer. It simply means that if you have accepted Christ as Savior you have become one with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and He has become one with you.

That means that you now have all the power and resources of God living within you and available to you to accomplish anything within His will. All you need do is ask for it.

Furthermore the apostles had seen with their own eyes and can now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

They saw Him crucified and then they saw Him come alive again after three days. They have witnessed the miracle of the resurrection with their own eyes and have recorded what they have seen so that future generations may also know this truth.

All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them and they live in God. Because God sent His Son to die for our sins we know how much God loves us, and we can with confidence put our trust in that love. God is the perfect example of how to love perfectly, and all who have God’s Holy Spirit living within them have the potential to love as God loves.

As we allow the Holy Spirit of God within us to direct our lives, our love grows more perfect. Because we know that kind of love we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face God with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world knowing that the perfect love He allows us to experience is a love that has no fear, because the love of God drives away all fear. If we are afraid for any reason, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced God’s perfect love that comes through Christ. We can only love each other with that same kind of love because he loved us first and showed us how we could express that love to others. When we do that, others can feel the sincerity and genuineness of that love and will then seek their own forgiveness having witnessed what it has done in the lives of others who have already made that commitment.

Christians may belong to different fellowships, but they all belong to the same God and Savior and to each other.

“When Wycliffe translator Doug Meland and his wife moved into a village of Brazil’s Fulnio Indians, he was referred to simply as ‘the white man.’ The term was by no means complimentary, since other white men had exploited them, burned their homes, and robbed them of their lands.

“But after the Melands learned the Fulnio language and began to help the people with medicine and in other ways, they began calling Doug ‘the respectable white man.’

“When the Melands began adapting the customs of the people, the Fulnio gave them greater acceptance and spoke of Doug as ‘the white Indian.’

“Then one day, as Doug was washing the dirty, bloodcaked foot of an injured Fulnio boy, he overheard a bystander say to another: ‘Whoever heard of a white man washing an Indian’s foot before? Certainly this man is from God!’ From that day on, whenever Doug would go into an Indian home, it would be announced ‘Here comes the man God sent us.’”[fn]

This is what God wants the world to see in every individual Christian and in every Christian Church. It is that kind of love shown in unity with one another that makes evident to the world what those who believe in God can be like, and therefore their lives bring glory to the God of Heaven.

The disciples had often displayed a spirit that would not be considered one of perfect love. It had been more a spirit of selfishness, competition, and disunity; and this must have broken Jesus’ heart. We do not doubt that His heart has been broken over and over again when He looks at the condition of the Church today. The Puritan preacher Thomas Brooks wrote: “Discord and division become no Christian. For wolves to worry the lambs is no wonder, but for one lamb to worry another, this is unnatural and monstrous.”[fn] To put that in the language of today, we might say:

“Arguing and bickering among Christians makes them look foolish as well as holding Christ up to ridicule by the world. For a ravenous wolf to frighten a lamb can be expected, but for one lamb to frighten another is simply foolish and self-destructive.”

We have seen in John 17:22 that we already have God’s glory within us:  "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one.” Paul also wrote in Romans 8:29:  “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (NLT). Then John confirms in John 17:24 that we will behold the glory of Christ in Heaven, that same glory we have been promised we will possess:

"Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

As we grow in faith and obedience to God, the glory within us begins to grow and to reveal itself in what we say and do and the way we say and do it. People do not see us and glorify us; they see God and glorify Him.[fn] Remember unity comes as the result of the Holy Spirit living within us and our turning over our will to God so that the Holy Spirit might accomplish God’s will through us. It is through this unity expressed in love for one another that the world comes to see and believe the truth of the Gospel.

Matthew 5:16 NAS:
"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NAS:
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

So the Holy Spirit working and living in you shows God’s glory to the world. We also see in this passage from 1 Corinthians 6 that our individual bodies are a temple of God. Yes, that skin and bones you live inside of can also glorify God. You ask, “how?” When you live a clean, obedient life in the midst of this self-centered and pleasure-seeking society, that life shines out to other people. If you are one who has not lived a clean life in the past, when people see how the Holy Spirit changes you and your life becomes clean, God is glorified. Note, however, that verse 20 points out that you need to make the decision to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this matter.

One of the things that most impresses the world is a community of Christians or a church where believers love each other in the way we have discussed and live together in harmony. It is this kind of expression of faith through action that God wants in the world. What a testimony it is to the world when we as believers can disagree on minor matters but still be one in Christ.

John 17:21 NAS:
21 That they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

The lost world cannot see God, but they can see Christians. What they see in those Christians is what they will believe about God. If they see love and unity, they will believe that God is love. If they see hatred and division, they will reject the message of the Gospel. Jesus has assured us that some will believe because of our witness (John 17:20), but we must make sure that our witness is true and loving. Some Christians behave more like prosecuting attorneys and judges instead of faithful witnesses, and this only turns unbelieving sinners away from Christ and His message of salvation.[fn]

John 17:24 NAS:
"Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

Jesus knew for certain that He would be returning to Heaven so He spoke as if it was in the present tense. For believers to participate in the love of God that is in Christ can only result eventually in sharing the presence of Christ.[fn] All believers will be with Jesus after they die because they are one with Him.

The phrase in verse 24, “that they may see” (hina theôrôsin) might better be translated “that they may keep on beholding.” It refers to the endless joy of seeing Jesus “as he is” in Heaven(1 John 3:2).[fn] Imagine arriving in Heaven and seeing Jesus in all His resurrection glory and knowing that one day you will share with Him in that same kind of glory. We wish we could give you more details about that but we cannot. It must be enough for you to know that here in this high priestly prayer to His Father, Jesus is insuring that if you are a believer, you are guaranteed eternal life in Heaven and you will share in the same kind of resurrection glory that Jesus has.

Philippians 3:20-21 NLT:
20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.
21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

The Father always answers Jesus’ prayers so you can be assured He will answer this one as well. If you know Jesus as your Savior, you will one day see and experience His glory in Heaven.

1 John 3:1-2 NLT:
 1 See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.
2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.

In John 14:3 Jesus told why He wanted His disciples to be with Him in Heaven: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also." In John 12:26 Jesus promised, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also." That seems to make it pretty clear that all believers are going to be with Jesus in Heaven for eternity.

John 17:11 NAS:
"I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.”

Jesus also prayed to the Father that His disciples might see the glory which God had given Him. Do you know what the most wonderful thing about Heaven is going to be? Enjoying the perfect love and fellowship of Christ and other saints forever.

Now listen to the glorious future that you have in store for you if you are a believer.

1 Corinthians 15:35-58 NLT:
 35 But someone may ask, “How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?”
36 What a foolish question! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first.
37 And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a bare seed of wheat or whatever you are planting.
38 Then God gives it the new body he wants it to have. A different plant grows from each kind of seed.
39 Similarly there are different kinds of flesh—one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
40 There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies.
41 The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory.
42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever.
43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.
44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
45 The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit.
46 What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later.
47 Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven.
48 Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man.
49 Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man.
50 What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever.
51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!
52 It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed.
53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.
54 Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
56 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.
57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

Believers also receive Christ's glory through His indwelling of them through the Holy Spirit. In that way, they share in His glory because He is one with them, but that is not the kind of glory that is spoken of here. This glory is the kind that will be just like the glory of Christ they will one day see in Heaven.

Now for the concluding two verses of this prayer, John 17:25-26 NAS:

25 "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;
26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Jesus makes clear here the importance of truth and love in the Church. Believers know God’s name, which reveals His nature, and even share in that divine nature. Jesus makes it clear that truth and love must go together (see Ephesians 4:15). It has well been said that truth without love is brutality, but love without truth is hypocrisy. The mind grows by taking in truth, but the heart grows by giving love. Knowledge alone can lead to pride (1 Corinthians 8:1), and love alone can lead to wrong decisions (see Philippians 1:9–10). Christian love must not be blind![fn]

It is not difficult to see the priorities Jesus had for His ministry as we read this prayer. First and foremost was the desire to bring glory to God. He was further devoted to the righteousness and holiness of God’s chosen people, the Jews; the unity of the Church; and teaching the Gospel message to a world of people in need of salvation for their sins. We would be well advised to follow His example. Sometimes even the most dedicated of believers loses sight of the fact that they are still living in a sinful body and that they will one day stand before God to give an account of their lives.

Romans 14:10-12 NAS:
10 But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.
11 For it is written, "AS I LIVE, SAYS THE LORD, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL GIVE PRAISE TO GOD."
12 So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.
Now we are aware that some people do not think these verses apply to Christians. However, Paul uses several words here that show us they do indeed apply to Christians. First, he talks about “your brother,” a term which he uses to describe fellow believers. Also he says, “each one of us,” including himself as well as the believers to whom he is writing in the group that will have to give accounts of themselves to God.

In all the sermons today that seek to emphasize the positive elements of Christianity, and there are many, there is a strong reluctance among preachers to bring up accountability issues. Christians are accountable for how they live and what they do. How will it be for you when you have to stand before Christ and explain why you lived your life as you did and why you did or said certain things? Ask yourself, “Will I be able to say as Jesus did in John 17:4: ‘I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.’”

Because of God’s love, mercy, and grace, if you are a believer you have already been glorified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (John 17:22). This guarantees that you are going to Heaven. You will never lose your salvation. It also gives you the power to live a life that is pleasing to Christ.

John 15:5 HCSB:
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me.

Christ by His Spirit takes up permanent residence within all that believe in Him; they are "one Spirit." Christ has now concluded His prayer for the apostles and His Church throughout all ages. In this prayer Christ has provided us with everything that we will ever need. Are you getting the benefit of that provision?

Isaiah

John

Romans

1 Peter


© Ron Teed - Used by permission. All rights Reserved.