The Prayer Chapter
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
The seventeenth chapter of John contains the prayer which Christ spoke just as He entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and went from there to the Cross. As He prayed, therefore, He was knowingly approaching the great travail toward which He had steadily moved from before the foundation of the world. He knew all the time the anguish of His Calvary sufferings, and yet as the hour came nearer and nearer, the depth of the meaning of His sorrows must have gripped Him the more.
To us the remarkable thing in the prayer which Christ prayed lies in the fact that only once He mentioned His Calvary sufferings, and that only in a figure "the hour is come." Even as He mentioned the fact that the hour of His travail had come, He turned away from the bitterness of the cup He was about to drink and said, "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee."
1. We have before us a new vision of the Cross. When men speak of Calvary, or of Golgotha, they think of shame, ignominy, and disgrace. Golgotha was a place of dead men's bones, of skulls; but Jesus Christ came and touched it, and it was immediately illumined with glory.
Around the throne in Heaven when ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands ascribe unto the Lamb power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing, they ascribe it unto the Lamb that was slain. Jesus Christ had all of this in view when He said that the time for the Father to glorify the Son had come.
2. We have before us a new vision of how the Son glorified the Father. Christ said. "Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may also glorify Thee." The Son was glorified by His Cross, and the Son through His Cross glorified the Father. The Cross demonstrated God's love to a lost world; it demonstrated His grace and mercy in giving Christ as an atonement for sin, thus the Father is praised because of the ministry of His Son.
There is just one other thing we wish to show, and that is our third step.
3. We have before us, in the vision of the Cross, the method through which Christ Jesus imparts eternal life. In John 17:2 Christ prayed, saying, "As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him." What a wonderful vision of Calvary! The Cross to us is the covenant of God, in Christ, through which eternal life is given.
Peter and John said, concerning the healing of the blind man, that it was through Christ, namely, by faith in His Name, that the man had been made well. Then it was said, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
Thus, as Christ faced His Calvary work, He said that God had given Him power over all flesh to give eternal life to all who believed. If anyone tries to get to Heaven apart from the Cross, he will utterly fail. Lite eternal is in the hands of Christ alone, and it is given by Him only to those whom the Father has given to Him.
4. We have here Christ's definition of eternal life. He says in John 17:3, "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Only those who have known the power of Calvary have eternal life, that is, life with the Father, and with the Son. The saints will exist in eternal life with God and with His Son, the Lord Jesus.
I. A FINISHED TASK (John 17:4)
We are speaking of Christ's last prayer. As He prayed, He reviewed His past earth-life, saying, "I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."
1. Let us take the first expression: "I have glorified Thee on the earth." The Lord Jesus in this is our example. He glorified, not Himself, but the Father. He sought, not His own, but the Father's. Have we not heard that this is the whole of man? "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." He who lives for himself, lives to lose everything which he obtains. He who lives for God and for His glory lives with rich rewards in view.
From this hour, let us seek to say what the Apostle Paul said: "For to me to live is Christ." Let everything that we are praise the Lord. Let everything we do give Him honor. Let everything we say render thanks and glory unto our God.
2. Let us take the second expression. "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." According to this, Christ recognized the fact that He came to earth on a specific task. He came to do that which He was told to do. Do not each one of us have a special task which is given to us to fulfill? God has said to everyone "his work."
The Lord Jesus, up to the moment of this prayer, had finished everything which God had given Him to do. Not one word had been left unspoken; not one deed had been left undone. He had wrought, not only the will of God, but the whole will of God. No greater ambition can come into any believer's heart than to follow his Master in finishing the work to which he, the servant, is called.
II. A GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION (John 17:5)
Our verse reads this way: "And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was."
1. He who glorified the Father was now about to be glorified. Is this not always true with those who are the servants of God? If we give Him glory, honor, power, and dominion, He will likewise give unto us His glory. He will cause us to shine forever, even as the stars shine in the firmament of God; He will cause us to be clothed with all the radiant beauty and power and might which awaits all of those who faithfully follow Him.
2. He who glorified the Father was about to return unto the glory which He had with Christ before the world was. He had come forth from God, and now He was to return to God. It is true that Christ had an added glory, because of His Calvary work. We read of how He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
Then, the Bible says, "Whereby God hath also highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name which is above every name." However, Christ was not deified because He became a man. When He became a man He put off, temporarily, the magnificent glory which crowned Him with the Father. He laid it aside, and humbled Himself. Now, as He was ready to return to God, He was to return to that same glory which He had left. That glory was a glory which had been His with the Father before the world was.
All of that glory is the believer's inheritance. He has given His glory unto us. So it is, He wants us to be with Him that we may behold and possess His glory.
III. THE MANIFESTED NAME (John 17:6)
We come now to a statement in the prayer of Christ which is altogether beautiful. He said, "I have manifested Thy Name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy Word."
1. We have Christ set forth here as the manifestation of the Father. He said, "I have manifested Thy Name." The names of God, however, are, in each case, expressions of the character of God, and it was this character which Christ manifested.
The Jehovah titles, each in their turn, are ascribed to Christ because they belong to the Father. Christ is Jehovah-Ropheca, "the Lord that healeth," because the Father is Jehovah-Ropheca.
Christ is Jehovah-Jireh, "the Lord will provide," because the Father is the Provider. Christ is Jehovah-Shalom, "the Lord our peace," because the Father is the Giver of peace. Thus we could go on.
Jesus said to Philip just before He prayed this prayer, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" We stop only to ask if each one of us has sought to manifest the names of our God.
2. We have the saints set before us as having been given to Christ by the Father. We have no doubt whatsoever that in this verse the reference is to the fact that all those whose names were in the Lamb's Book of Life, were given unto the Son by the Father from before the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ did not go to the Cross on a guess; He went knowing exactly who, and how many would be saved. God does not force any of us to believe, but God did know whether we would believe, and whom He foreknew, them He also did predestinate.
IV. THE WORDS WHICH HE GAVE (John 17:8)
Let us consider next, one of the gracious ministrations of Christ. Our verse says, "I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me."
1. The words which Christ spoke were the words which the Father gave unto Him months before the time of this prayer. How many there are who imagine that God speaks one way and Christ another; that God loves one way, and Christ another. One poor woman in the hour of her sorrow said to me, "Don't talk to me about God. Talk to me about Christ I think He loves me." But Christ and the Father are one. Their words are one. Their will is one. Their works are one. What we want to consider, however, is a practical application.
Do we also speak the words of the Father? We are told to preach the preaching which He gives us. The Bible condemns the prophets who speak dreams or words out of their own heads. May our words always be His.
2. Those to whom Christ spoke received the Father's word and believed in Him. The Lord said, "They have received Him." Next, He said, "They have believed that Thou didst send Me." It is right to receive the words which Christ speaks as the very words of God, to believe that they are truth, inerrant, dependable, and altogether trustworthy.
Jesus Christ did not enter the world as other men have entered it. We come because we are born, and brought into the world through natural generation; Jesus Christ came forth from the Father. He spoke many times as having come from the Father.
V. A CIRCUMSCRIBED PRAYER (John 17:9)
When the Lord Jesus Christ approached Calvary, He carried in His arms all those whom the Father had given Him. As one ponders the seventeenth chapter of John, he is struck with the number of times that Christ said, those "whom Thou hast given Me." Not only that, but He spoke of them under other descriptive terms. Certainly, He thought of each one of us. He prayed for each one of us.
1. He prayed for those who believed on Him at the time of His death. His disciples were among this number. They were very dear to Him. He could look into the faces of the eleven (Judas had gone out), and He could say unto them, "I have prayed for you whom the Father hath given Me." Of many others of those early days He could say the same words. He could, however, speak of many more than they. He said, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their Word." Thus, He took you and me in the arms of His prayer, and carried us with Him as He went to the Cross, Let us note, also, some of the things for which He prayed.
2. What He prayed for those who believed. He prayed the Father to keep them through His own Name, to keep them from the wicked one, to keep them from the powers of the world, and from evil. He prayed that they all might be one, even as He and the Father were One. He prayed that they might be sanctified through the Truth, that they might be set apart wholly unto Him. The same Christ who prayed the prayer in the upper room is now praying in the upper Heavens; on high, at the right hand of the Father, He is interceding for us.
VI. CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE WORLD (John 17:9; John 17:21; John 17:23)
The believer is given to Christ out of the world. He is not of the world. He is hated by the world. He is sent into the world with a testimony. All of these things were Divinely set forth in Christ's prayer. What, then, was the attitude of Christ toward the world? That is, toward the people who were outside the circle of His own, and who had not believed upon Him?
1. Christ said, "I pray not for the world." There is no doubt but that the Father and the Son love the world, but the world of the unregenerate are not loved, as He loved His own. There is as much difference in the Father's love for the saint, and for the sinner, as there is between light and darkness.
Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father is not the world's Intercessor; He is there as the representative of His own, those who have been washed in His Blood, and who have been saved by His power. "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." No one dares for a moment to imagine that the unsaved have privileges along with the saved. The unsaved will pass into eternal darkness and despair, and the saved into the realms of light and life forevermore.
2. Christ said, "That the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." In John 17:8 the Lord Jesus Christ said of His own, "They have believed that Thou hast sent Me." In John 17:21, He said that through us, who had believed, He wanted the world to be led to believe. This is all akin to the great commission, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."
3. Christ said, "That the world may know that Thou hast sent Me." Here is the responsibility of sainthood. We should walk so near to the heart of the Father, and be so perfectly one with Him, and with one another, that the world may know how God has loved us, and has sent us into His service.
VII. THE SUPREME GIFT OF THE SON TO THE SAINTS (John 17:22; John 17:24)
1. In John 17:22 we have two distinct glories: one is the glory of union with God, and the other the glory of union with one another. It was of this that Christ said, "And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one."
We hesitate and ponder over the marvelous thought that saints should have as intimate a union with all saints, as the Father has with the Son. Yet, this is that for which Christ prayed. This unity of believers Satan has sought to wreck ever since the day of Pentecost. In the early days of the Church there were schisms which were tending toward divisions. Today saints are divided under innumerable names and groups, many of which are antagonistic one toward the other.
This division among saints is a great stumbling block to the world. When there is perfect oneness among believers, then it is that the world knows that we are of God. Not only, however, does God give us the glory of being one with each other, but He gives us that supreme g"lory of being one with Him. The believer is indissolubly joined and linked in one life with the Father and with the Son. This is the glory of sainthood.
2. We have a second glory in John 17:24. This is the glory which Christ had with the Father before the world was, the glory which He left when He came to earth. Jesus Christ said, relative to this glory, "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."
How wonderful it will be, to be forever with the Lord, to behold His face, and to see His glory! Not only the glory of His Person, but the glory of His environment. When we think of His face as shining brighter than the sun, and His raiment bright and glistening in His earth transfiguration, what will it be in Heaven itself when we behold His glory, and the glory of His environment, which is reflected in all the beauty of Heaven itself?
AN ILLUSTRATION
We stood recently on Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, Tenn., and looked down on the city far below. We also stood a; while back on Lookout Mountain and saw alone the city nestling in the valley, but also the winding of the river as it coursed its way mid the hills. It was beautiful beyond words.
What, however, will it be when we see the New Jerusalem with its river of the Water of Life, clustered on either side by the fruit trees which bear twelve manner of fruits?
How the City which lies foursquare, the City of pearly gates, of great walls of precious stones, of golden streets, with all of it illuminated by the light and glory of His face how the City will glitter and glow with dazzling glory! All of this awaits us over there.