John 15

Chapter 15. The Parting PrayerJohn 17Perhaps on the brink of the Kidron, or possibly even within the temple courts, before they finally withdrew, these last words of love were spoken. Wherever His human feet may have stood last, His Spirit was on the threshold of heaven as He uttered these sentences, standing as the divine High Priest on the very borders of the inner sanctuary, hard by the veil that was just about to be torn in two, by His dying agony. Christ’s Prayer As It Respects Himself (John 17:1-5)

1. The Crisis Hour “Father, the time has come” (John 17:1). It was the hour of the world’s destiny, the Father’s glory, and His own consummated work; not only was His work done, but it was all done on time. Each moment had been filled with the Father’s perfect will, and now there was nothing to do but to die. Oh! that we might all follow Him, not only in the faithfulness, but in the timeliness of His finished life.
2. The Finished Work “For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him…. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:2, John 17:4). He recalls His mighty commission to give eternal life to His people through the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and acknowledges publicly the complete resources which the Father has supplied for this mighty task. You have given Him authority over all people that He might thus administer the great work of salvation. What an unfolding of the purpose and glory of redemption, Christ its mighty administrator, the whole human family its beneficiaries. His own people His especial objects, and eternal life its glorious aim. And this eternal life is not a definite future existence, but is a relation of intimacy and love with God. It is God Himself through Jesus Christ revealed in the soul. This mighty task, He declares, He has fully accomplished. He has revealed the Father, He has made known His Word and stood among men as His Representative and Expression. He has so done this as to glorify His Father on the earth. Not only has He fulfilled His work, but He has fulfilled it for the glory of God. What a pattern to all His followers—a finished task, and God supremely glorified. Oh! that it may be ours to echo it.
3. The Last Request “Glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began…. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:5, John 17:1). He asks that He may be glorified and raised up from the depths of shame and sorrow to which He is about to stoop. He asks back again, as His right, the glory which, for a little while He had voluntarily laid aside—the glory He had with the Father before the world was. He asks still more the joy of His Father’s heavenly fellowship. “With you” (John 17:5)—it is the cry of the lonely heart to be again upon the Father’s bosom. How poorly can we understand that loneliness and that love of His great heart. He had said a little before, “If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father” (John 14:28). But, even then, He did not ask for Himself; still, His true heart turns instinctively to His Father’s glory, and He hallows even this holy prayer by the added request, “that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). Christs Prayer with Respect to His Immediate Disciples (John 17:6-19)
4. He commends them to His Father and He tells Him: a. That they have been given Him by the Father Himself (John 17:6). b. That they have kept His word. c. That they have received the messages of the Son, knowing surely that He came from God and believing in Him with all their hearts. And in Him they have also recognized the Father, and “know that everything you have given me comes from you” (John 17:7).
5. He pleads for them on the ground that they are already His Father’s and also His own, and that His glory is linked with their blessing. “They are yours…. all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them” (John 17:9-10).
6. He refers to His own care and keeping of them hitherto, and commits them from His hands, as He is now about to leave them to His Father’s keeping, telling Him chat they are all safe, except the one who has wrecked himself, as the Scriptures had already predicted, the wicked son of perdition. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. (John 17:11-12)
7. He refers to their lonely, bereaved and perilous situation, left in the world without Him, and hated by the world for His sake. “The world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:14).
8. He speaks of His desire for them that they may have His joy fulfilled in themselves.
9. He prays for their preservation in the world and from the evil one (John 17:15). He would not have them withdrawn from the world by death, for the world needs them, and they need to finish their work; but He does ask that while remaining in the world they may be preserved from evil or from the evil one and all his malignant power both upon their souls and bodies.
10. He asks for their sanctification, including their separation from the world (John 17:16) and their purification and dedication to God, through the truth.
11. He claims for them the same service as He Himself has done, and sets them apart in His Father’s presence, to represent Him and finish His work, with the same authority which the Father hath given to Him. “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
12. He solemnly consecrates Himself to them for their sanctification, service and complete salvation, and lays Himself with them in His death as a living sacrifice upon the altar of His Father’s will; so that their sanctification does not depend upon their own personal strength and resources, but is pledged by His own love to them, and His own life in them. We think of our consecration as we lay ourselves upon the altar. Let us rather think of that other Sacrifice who lies down beside us, and becomes by His own consecration with us, the strength and the security of our sanctity and service. “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:19). Christ’s Prayer As It Respects Believers Throughout the Whole Christian Age (John 17:20-24) From the little band that are kneeling close to Him, His vision expands until He sees the whole circle of His redeemed, each one of us personally; then He adds this all-comprehensive prayer, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). The simple condition which includes us in His prayer, is that we “will believe in [Him] through their message.” If we can meet this, the Master’s prayer has been offered for us, and will surely be fulfilled if we will let it. And this prayer not only looks forward to the words which follow, but back also to the words which he has just expressed for the 11 disciples. Three things He asks for them in the coming ages, and one bequest He bestows upon them. First, their unity with each other: “that all of them may be one” (John 17:21). Second, their union with Him: “Just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us” (John 17:21). And, third, the perfecting of each one of them in their personal life, and of the whole body in the one complete Church the Bride of the Lamb: “May they be brought to complete unity” (John 17:23). This is also the apostle’s prayer, as he echoes the Master’s thought: “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). This complete unity, He tells the Father, is to be the great evidence through which the world will believe that the Father has sent Him, and will know that He has loved them even as Himself. Christian unity must have its deeper root in divine union, and Christian perfection can come only through such union between the soul and God. There is no self-perfection, but as God has revealed and ministered to each one of us, and together, so united us in Him, we shall be “made perfect in one” (John 17:23). Perfection here includes, not only the completeness and maturity of individual character, but also of the Church, as a collective body, at the coming of the Lord. There is still a deeper, sweeter thought lying in the bosom of His precious words and not yet expressed in this analysis. The issue of this divine union with the Father and the Son shall be that the soul thus linked with God shall enter into the same love which the Father has toward the Son. If Jesus be truly formed in us, the Father will love us in Jesus and as Jesus Himself. These are the two sublime heights in this prayer, so far as we are concerned—the love of Jesus and the love of the Father revealed in us through our union with God. From this great thought naturally follows the remaining prayer (John 17:22), which contains His last bequests to His beloved followers. At the table He had bequeathed to them His peace, and now He adds to it His glory, too. All the riches, all the splendor of the infinite and everlasting wealth of His throne and His glory, He shares with them; empties Himself of all but love, and finds His sole inheritance in them and in His Father. “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:22). And as though to complete even the very form of a will, and claim for them, by every right of His Sonship, this glorious consummation, He adds, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24). Christ’s Prayer As It Respects His Father (John 17:25-26) The closing thoughts and words have reference to the highest of all thoughts and themes.
13. The Father and the World Apart from Christ, the world has no God. Man’s conceptions of the Father are all distorted and false. Jesus alone has revealed Him. “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). The altars of false religion are dedicated “to an unknown God” (Acts 17:23). “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Nothing is more pathetic than the groping of lofty minds in every age to find out God. Yes, it is true as Christ said, “The world does not know [the Father]” (John 17:25).
14. The Father and the Son “They know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them” (John 17:25-26). Jesus is the revelation of God to the world and to the believer, and only as we receive Him can we know God and enter into union with Him through Jesus Christ. When we receive His Son, we at once pass into direct and personal acquaintance with the Father. This was the very purpose of His coming, to “bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18), and one with Him, we become one with the Father also.
15. The Father and the Believer Receiving Christ and through Him united to God, there comes to us the stupendous blessing expressed in these words: “that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26). We become the objects of the very same love which the Father has for His Son. We are recognized as part of Him even as the bride is taken into her husband’s family and loved even as her husband. This is, indeed, the mystery of mysteries: that we are permitted to share the intimate and exclusive affection of the eternal Father toward His only begotten Son. He loves us now, not for ourselves, nor in proportion to our personal claims upon His affection, but precisely as He loves Jesus Christ, with infinite complacency and unlimited measure. The secret of all this is expressed in the last three words in this sublime prayer, “I in them” (John 17:26). This is the mystery hid from ages, and at last made known to the saints, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), “I in them.” This explains why God can love us even as He loves His Son, for to the Father we are accepted and counted as sharing His peculiar sonship—“we are like him” (1 John 4:17). Even the Master’s prayer cannot go higher or deeper than this. The curtain falls upon these parting words, and henceforth their echoes keep forever sounding through the ages as the very voices of the ministry of His intercession within the veil and the acknowledgment forever of our high place of unity and fellowship with Him as we, in His name, may come, and come boldly, to the throne of grace. So near, so very near to God, More near I cannot be; For in the Person of His Son I am as near as He. So dear, so very dear to God, More dear I cannot be; The love wherewith He loves His Son, That love He bears to me.