149. A Prayer Of Our Savior.

A Prayer Of Our Savior. The Prayer as recorded.—John 17:1-26. This prayer has been the foundation of the church of God from the creation of the world, is now, and ever will be, to the consummation of all things. Through all the instructions of our Savior to his apostles, he addressed them as the Incarnate Son of God, but when he comes to the mercy-seat in prayer, he comes as a man imploring of his Father. He asks of God to glorify his Son, to restore him that place in heaven which he had with the Father before the world was. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” This prayer was not only made for the eleven apostles, but included the seventy disciples, and the whole church of God, the whole body of believers, no matter what their name or station, rank or office, among all generations of men. Lift up your hearts, ye poor and forsaken ones. If ye have been born again, the Father hath given you to the Savior. This prayer is yours—your hope, your comfort, your consolation, your all. Our Savior by it consecrates himself as the great atoning sacrifice for lost and ruined man; he tells us the world will hate those that love him, because they are not of the world, and prays that the Father may sanctify them by his truth—his word is truth. By the “son of perdition,” is meant Judas, the betrayer of his Lord and Master. The Savior’s words, in the few concluding verses, should encourage unity among Christians, take away every wall of partition that now separates the church of God, and should make all true believers one in Christ Jesus. In the language of another, we would say here, “The religious professions and opinions of some have too much of mere machinery in their composition. If every wheel, pivot, chain, spring, cog, or pinion, be not exactly in its place, or move not precisely according to a favorite and prescribed system, the whole is rejected as unworthy of regard. Ye who are so warmly striving for your rights as churchmen, and churchwomen, in vain do you try to narrow the limits of these world-covering words of the Savior’s prayer; ye may not, ye cannot, ye dare not, when ye read and ponder over them.

Christ loves us all; in the language of scripture, “The Lord knoweth them that are his,” his seal is upon all those who name the name of Christ and depart from iniquity; we are all one in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, on earth, and will all be gathered into one fold, under one Shepherd, in heaven.