John 17:1-5This is Jesus declaring His and the Father’s purpose. His purpose was to bring glory to the Father by the authority He has to give eternal life to all those that the Father has given Him. We, as the Church with a capital “C”, are a love gift of the Father to the Son.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
This is what eternal life looks like … knowledge of the one true God and Jesus Christ. This is “knowing” as you know your immediate family and the word can sometimes be even be used in Scripture for “knowing in a biblical sense.” Remember that knowing in salvation moves through 1) knowing the facts, 2) knowing the facts are true, 3) knowing Christ in a fiduciary sense.
As I mentioned last time, the fiduciary acts on the behalf of the principle. The principle is a person in need and the principle must place confidence, faith, and trust in the fiduciary. His infinite holiness and perfection make your rebellion and treason worthy of eternal punishment. You are wholly unable to remove yourself from this situation by your own works. You can’t remedy your past sins and you’re current obedience is flawed. To think your works are good enough to get you into heaven is simply one more sinful offence against God.
We are baptized as a testimony that we have accepted Him as our fiduciary and that we passed through the wrath of God in Christ and the debt is paid by our Savior. In old Roman law (first and second century) the Fiducia Pledge was a pledge with possession. In the first century AD, if you made a Fiducia Pledge then your property was transferred to the fiduciary. It was not just held as a lien or security. The ownership moved from the principal to the fiduciary. Then the fiduciary could do with it whatever the fiduciary wanted to do with it.
In the same way, when we accept Christ as our savior then our lives are transferred to His ownership. We as the principal might object to what He does with our life but the transfer of our lives to Him is our salvation. In the first century, they debtor only did this when they had no other means of handling a debt. The Christian, by the grace of God, realizes that they have no other means of handling the debt and they accept Jesus as Lord of their lives.
Galatians 2:20-21We are saved by grace through the works of our Savior who was God incarnate. That is God in a human body who was eternally begotten of the Father. He had no beginning and now is glorified in the presence of God the Father with the glory that He had with the Father before the world existed.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
John 17:6-8Here Jesus continues in prayer describing His ministry of manifesting or representing God fully and accurately to those the Father, through the Holy Spirit, gives to Him. While the world was rejecting Him as the Christ, the disciples were accepting Him as Christ. They (and now we) recognize that Jesus was speaking the Father’s words, that He was divine, and that He was sent by the Father.
“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.
As we rest in Him then we recognize His words, His person, and His mission as being divine. While Jesus was fully human in His incarnation that didn’t take subtract from His divinity in anyway. He has two complete natures without mixture, confusion, or separation.
John 17:9-12Not only are you a love gift of the Father to the Son (for God’s reasons and for no reason found in you) but you are also kept from falling away by the power of God. Our security in salvation is based in God and not in our own ability or righteousness. We will not outgrow our need for a shepherd.
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
John 17:13-19These verses get at the heart of why it is so important to read and digest Scripture. The Word gives joy. The Word separates us from the world. The Word sanctifies us with the truth. That is we are set apart for God’s purposes and work by the accurate understanding and ministry of the Word. It is only because of Christ’s consecration as our savior that we can enter into this living relationship with truth.
But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
We often think of the joy and forget the road to get there. Jesus’ words are so that we can have His joy fulfilled in ourselves but part of the process is confronting sin in our lives. So it isn’t always a field of daisies if we have unrepentant sin that the Holy Spirit is pressing in upon. We are sent.
John 17:20-23Here Jesus explicitly prays for us. We are a love gift of the Father to the Son, we are kept by the power of the Father, and here we see the Holy Spirit as the glory that the Father gave the Son making us one as the Father and the Son are one. The Holy Spirit is given to make us one and that oneness is to be a testimony to the world. Our unity is to be produced by the Holy Spirit and not to simply be a persona we adopt.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just 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 have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
John 17:24-26I find it very comforting to have Jesus’ prayer for us. That He wants to have me with Him in heaven. I can wish for heaven and doubt that I’ll get there but I can’t doubt the efficacy of His prayer. I know God hears Him and therefore I know that I’ll see His glory someday.
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
The final words are words that build the Church. Jesus knows the Father and has revealed Him and will continue to reveal Him so the active love of God will be in us along with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
John 18:1-3Jesus finished this prayer apparently in the upper room after revealing new meaning in Passover with the Lord’s Supper. Then they went out and went across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane someplace on the Mount of Olives. The name means “oil press” and we know that this is where Jesus prayed that night. We know the agony of bearing our sins began to weigh upon Him at this place. Oil press seems an appropriate title for the place. The exact location is not known but the approximate location is.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron Valley, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
Judas was not with Jesus and the disciples at this point but he knew where Jesus liked to pray so he knew where to look. We also know that he tried to make this look like he was not the one betraying Jesus by greeting him with a kiss. Jesus did not draw back from the work of our salvation.
John says it in wonder again …
John 18:4-6As I mentioned in an earlier lesson, the Greek phrase ego emmi is translated “I am” but is also a claim of deity pointing back to the burning bush. God has being in Himself and in Exodus 3:14 takes the name “I am” for Himself. We are created beings and depend on God every moment for our continued existence. God is not created and can’t stop existing. That is because He has being as part of His immutable nature. As the deliverer of the Children of Israel who were captive in Egypt, God revealed Himself as the great “I am”. Here also Jesus as our deliverer from bondage reveals His divinity. The force of that revelation caused the soldiers to fall to the ground.
Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
Next week we’ll look at the following verses but in verse 12 we see that they bound Jesus. I don’t think there was ever in the history of mankind so pointless an act as binding the hands of Jesus. He offered up His life willingly and it had to be so. He went with these men because it was time to lay down His life for us. It wasn’t a moment too soon or a moment too late. Only He could redeem us. If He had not willingly given his life for the sheep then all the armies of the earth couldn’t have bound Him or even survived the attempt.
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