John 17

Jesus is heading toward the cross. He has told His disciples as much as they can bear about what He is doing, and about what is coming soon for Him and for them. Now He lifts up His eyes to heaven, and He prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” Jesus has revealed to His disciples, and even to those who would not abide in His Word, that He has come from the Father, and that He is going to the Father. The pathway back to heaven will be through the cross. There have been times when His enemies wanted to arrest Him and to kill, but His time had not yet come. Now the time has come. He asks the Father to glorify Him, so that He might glorify the Father. Through the great events of the cross and the resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth will obey the Father to the fullest extent possible, and He will give eternal life to all those given to Him by the Father. All of this will be supremely great and supremely revealed.

This eternal life that we have been given begins now. Even now we can know the Father and the Son. We can glorify the Lord in the life He has prepared for us here on earth. But this cannot be everything. There must be more. The Old Testament prophets insisted that there was more to come. Jesus taught about a better life to come, a life of the richest happiness and blessedness. That life requires our entrance into glory, and ultimately, our own glorification in body and soul. For Jesus, His glorification is a return to a glory that He set aside for a time in order to work our salvation. For us, it is a new experience of glory that we have only just begun to taste.

The life of sacrifice for the Son of God began before the cross. He gave Himself to His disciples in His life before He gave Himself to them in His death. It cost Jesus something to manifest God’s Name through His person and works to the disciples that the Father had given to Him. He came from above, and lived here below. He was a Teacher who cared about the people that He taught. He faithfully brought them the message, and He patiently demonstrated who He was before their eyes, even performing great signs before the world. He did what needed to be done in order to prepare them for the ultimate sign of the Kingdom in His own resurrection. He would soon be glorified in them as the message would go forth everywhere.

Jesus would be going to the Father, but these disciples would remain, except for the one who is called here the son of destruction, Judas, who would betray Him. The Lord prays for these disciples, that the Father would keep them in the Name that He had been given, that they would be one in the Name of Jesus the Christ. He sought the fullness of joy for them, a joy that comes from being in Him. They would remain in the world for the job that had been reserved for them according to the decree of God. They would be guardians and teachers of their Master’s Word. To do their job, they needed to remain in the world and to face the world’s hatred, because this great Word needed to be brought to the world. They needed to be set apart for the Word, for the truth, and this is what Jesus asks the Father to do. Jesus would be set apart on the cross, and these disciples would be set apart for the preaching of Christ crucified.

Having asked the Father to bless the eleven, Jesus asks God to bless us. His prayer was not only for the remaining disciples who would have such an important foundational ministry in the New Testament church. He explicitly prays for all those who would believe in Him through their word. The message of the faithful ambassadors of Christ has not changed throughout the centuries. It is a settled Word that was delivered once for all time, for all generations to come.

Jesus prays that we would be one, one in Him, one in the truth of the Word that He had taught His disciples, one in the presentation of that truth to the world over the years that would follow, one in the Father and in the Son. All of this oneness was for the purpose that the world would receive this settled Word of Jesus Christ, so that people would believe and find life in Him.

The task that Christ gave to us in proclaiming Him, His cross, His resurrection, His kingdom, is a heavenly task, a glorious task. Our destiny is a heavenly destiny and a glorious destiny. We have a taste of that glory and a glimpse of that glory as we go forth with the precious gospel of Jesus Christ, regardless of how the world may react to that Word in one place and time or another. If we suffer for the Word and seem to have little fruit, the privilege is still ours. It is a glorious gift that we have been given to suffer for the Name. And we know that we are in the Father and the Son, and that we are loved by the Father and the Son.

Nonetheless the fellowship and communion that we enjoy with Jesus now in the gospel is not enough for the Son of God. He desires that we would be with Him where He is going, and that we would have the joy of beholding Him in His glory, that those who suffer with Him below, would be glorified with Him above. The whole of Adam’s world will not have that privilege, but we who know God, and who know that He sent Jesus Christ to be our atoning sacrifice, we will know His Name now and forever, and we will have His love in us, because He will be in us.

All these things Jesus stated before the Father in this great prayer. All of these requests of the Son of God have surely been granted. They can be received by us as certain promises.