John 17

John 17:1-26

Section 7.(John 17:1-26.)The Melchizedek Priest: His work anticipatively completed. His discourse with them is ended, and He turns now to the Father, to put into His hand these poor and presently to be scattered sheep, of whom He is going to show Himself, in the very hour of their scattering, more than ever the good Shepherd. It is the Melchizedek, or Royal, Priest however, to whom we are privileged to listen in His intercession for His people, the work being anticipated as done, that puts Him in the place. We have seen this character attaching to much that He says, in all this part of John, as very largely to the doctrine of the Gospel as a whole. In this closing portion, we have seen Him at the commencement in the place of Advocate, or rather what connects with this, and which involves the same position as the Risen and Ascended Man in which we find Him here. So it is said, -“knowing that the Father had put all things into His hands;” -that is really His Kingship: He is Lord of all. There is, of course, a special form of His Kingdom which He takes for a special purpose, when as Son of man He brings the earth from its disorder back to God. Into man’s hand it was put at the beginning, and by man’s fall it was corrupted and ruined. By man’s hand that ruin must be repaired: and thus that Kingdom is the Kingdom of the Son of man: but He is King already before this comes, sitting on the Father’s throne, and we are “translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.” The Melchizedek Priesthood is supposed by some to contemplate simply the millennial kingdom; -that is, in its exercise; but the bread and wine of our Melchizedek should lead us into a wider application of the type. Indeed, as a type, -in which way alone we must view the application made of Gen 14:1-24, -the whole action and the circumstances speak more distinctly of our blessing as Christians than they do of any other. For Sodom is not judged, and Abraham with his typical heavenly calling we may claim without hesitation as our representative: “Abram the Hebrew,” (the “passenger,”) -passing through a world by which he will not be enriched, “from a thread even to a shoe-latchet.” No doubt, there is a right application to millennial times: and the Lord will be seen and will act in that character in relation to Israel and the earth. This is quite true: while it is clear that the argument of the epistle to the Hebrews shows us Christ after the order of Melchizedek now, though the type in relation to the “shadow of heavenly things” in the tabernacle brings before us necessarily the type of Aaron. The relation to what we have in Hebrews is clear in the position taken by the Lord in the prayer He utters. We see Him in the first place with authority given Him over all flesh; then, as not praying for the world: that is, “separate from sinners.” Lastly, He is shown as “higher than the heavens,” -in the glory given Him, to which (though a glory always His own) it is as Man He goes back. The mingling of blessing and prayer is quite characteristic. The Royal (and more than royal) Priest is manifest throughout.

1. The Lord’s heart is free; He is no longer hindered by the unbelief of those about Him, nor occupied with them, but for them with God. He speaks as the Son of the Father, who has fulfilled the mission upon which He came, and is going back, to take the place belonging to Him, -to the glory which He had before; yet still as Man, to take it from His Father’s hand, and to carry through in power what He had begun in suffering. He speaks in the consciousness and communion of the coequal Son, yet in entire devotion to the Father’s glory: -“Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee.” Authority over all flesh is His; but it is His Father’s gift, as His people are. He has ability to sustain what requires no less than divine power, and He gives eternal life, -a divine gift; but the power He uses is in obedience, and everywhere the mystery of His Person manifests itself in His utterances. He is God Himself, in the creature’s place to make good the failure of the creature, and by His condescending love to win him from his ruinous path of self-will back to Himself. Who could henceforth refuse a path in which he saw before him the Son of God, -“Leader and Finisher of faith” in its whole course? But it was His also to give to them eternal life, -a nature to receive and delight in the revelation made. For “this,” He says, “is eternal life, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” This is not a definition absolutely of eternal life, but how it is known and realized, now that Christ is come. The Lord’s words necessarily look on, not back; to make them rule out the possibility of eternal life in an Old Testament saint, because he could not say, “Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent,” would be a very unwarranted deduction.
2. (1) Marked out by these characters, as He tells us distinctly His disciples were, (for He had made known to them the Father’s Name, and they had received His words, and knew surely that He had come out from the Father,) He now presents them to the Father. As the Priest with God, He is the Intercessor for His own, and not for the world, -“separate from sinners,” as we read in Hebrews. The priest supposes established relationship with those for whom he stands before God, although with Israel under the law all was but a shadow of the true. Our Priest goes into heaven in the value of an offering once offered, never to be repeated, by which He has “perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” “The only true God,” whom Israel knew in contrast with the false gods of the heathen, was nevertheless, as such, in His innermost reality unknown. And this the veil of the sanctuary shutting men out from Him declared. Even by Moses His Face could not be seen. Thus the Lord speaks of “Thy Name which Thou hast given Me.” It was His work to declare that Name; and He declares it as a name of relationship to Himself. The Son speaks of the Father: yet God had been spoken of as such before. Nay, He had, as we know, proclaimed Himself a Father to Israel; and we have heard the Jews boldly venturing upon it: “We be not born of fornication,” they had said to Jesus Himself; “we have one Father, even God.” But they were pushed into saying so: if you had asked them for the Name of Israel’s God, you would have heard of Jehovah, or the Lord Almighty, but it is not likely that the Father" would have leaped to any body’s lips.

Alas, Israel was no child by nature to such a Father; and God could be no right Father to such a child. On the lips of the Divine Son, sent in servant-form into the world for man’s necessity, how different does it become! It is an eternal relationship, not one of time. It is not relation contracted for a purpose, however blessed may be the purpose. It belongs to His eternity. Love has in Him an Object worthy of itself. Could it be imagined away without a loss so great as to be disastrous? Think, then, of this, the Son of His bosom, here in the world, a world which He created, at His own personal cost to put away the evil, and bring those who had wandered from Him back to God! This as the manifestation to men of Him who could give His Son for such a purpose, and to be the Head of a new creation built up out of the old, the assurance to it of fullest and abiding blessing! Thus has He manifested to us the Father’s Name; but He has done more even than this, -He has given us a place with Him as children, in the value of a life communicated to us, as those of whom thus He, taking as Man the First-born place among them, is not ashamed! No wonder, therefore, that the authority given Him over all flesh should be for this as the fundamental and decisive exercise of it, to give eternal life to as many as are given to Him; thus of necessity separated from the world which has rejected Him. How dear are they to Him as the Father’s gift! how dear as those of whom His grace can say, forgetting all that could be pleaded, however rightly, against them, They have kept Thy word!" He has taken fullest care that they should know, in all that He can speak of as His own, the Father as the Source of all. For He has given them but the words given Him, and in receiving them they know Him as the One come out from Him -the Sent One of God. Here then are those with regard to whom He prays: the Father’s own, the fruit of the Father’s mission of the Son; those given Him of the Father and still the Father’s; even as in the perfect communion of that relationship all things are. In these also, the fruit of His own work, He is glorified. (2) Now He was no longer to be in the world, but they would be left in it, without that gracious, all-sufficient companionship which they had been enjoying. He commits them, therefore, to the care of that Divine Father, under whose guidance and government the children of God still walk (1 Peter 1:17); He abiding as the Lord who directs their service (Ephesians 4:5-6; 1 Corinthians 12:5). For all things are in His hands, to work out in power, as has been said, what He has in suffering laid the foundation for; but the relation of the Father to the children is as plainly to be recognized. He prays, therefore, to the Holy Father, to keep them in the power of that Name which He has manifested to them. The power of it would be to keep them near to Him: for the sanctuary of His Presence is the only refuge from self and sin. At a distance from the Light, evil and good become soon merged and indistinguishable. With Christ the atmosphere in which He lived was God, and into it He brought all others: -“While I was with them, I kept them in Thy Name, which Thou hast given Me.” Alas. there was one who was repelled by it: “I have guarded them, and not one of them has perished but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” He was going to God, but would leave them, not in sorrow, but in joy. “The joy of the Lord is strength;” and He had spoken to them as He had, that they might have that joy which had been His own, in the midst of a scene of sorrow such as the world would all the more be; for in proportion as they had their joy in God, would it be realized how far it was away from Him, and it would hate them as not of it. The light would bring its shadows, and they would be identified with Himself in sorrow and in joy alike. Yet He did not pray that they should be taken out of the world: the wilderness would have for them its harvests, to be reaped through all eternity. How Israel’s feast of tabernacles tells of that! He prayed only that they might be kept out of the evil in it. From the world itself He had entirely separated His own; they belonged to it, in the appointment of God and in the nature He had given them (inconsistent as they might be with this) no more than did He Himself. (3) The truth was to be the means of sanctification to them, -“Thy truth,” He says, that is, the truth as characterized by that revelation of the Father of which He has been speaking. Now, sending them into the world, as He was doing, the open glory of heaven into which He had introduced them was to be henceforth characterized by a new Object in it, -a Man, set apart there to God (as “sanctified” means), -sanctified by Himself, as none other ever was, to be for Him His image in human form (2 Corinthians 4:4). Divine glory shining out in the face of Jesus. We have here another instance of the foundation of Paul’s doctrine being in this Gospel. The “gospel of the glory of Christ” was that by which the apostle of the Gentiles was turned to God, and this was the light in which he henceforth walked. Christ in glory was the power over him, the joy within him. Here was his eye fixed; here was the goal of his course, which in his ardor was a race. The passion of his soul was to “win Christ, and to be found in Him.” And he states but his experimental knowledge of the Lord’s words here when he says that “Christ is made unto us wisdom from God, even . . . sanctification” (1 Corinthians 1:30). The Object before him detached him from the world, and drew him heavenward.

It absorbed and inspired him. Generalizing his experience, he affirms for Christians at large the result as he had realized it: “We all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face,” -it is the Lord’s face that is “open,” or without a veil, -“are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). This is an inspired comment upon the words before us in the Gospel. We shall find them developed for us by the apostle in various ways, which at present we shall not attempt to follow. Every Christian heart should know for itself this central glory of the gospel, in which God and Man meet, and meet for ever; in which Christ gone in to God, with His work achieved, our Forerunner, invites us to abide where He abides. Who shall deny Him what His soul has wrought for? -or refuse to go in out of the night, where there is no night more? Where this light falls, it is glory: “from glory to glory,” says the apostle. The least degree is that; and where it shines it brightens to the endless day. “That they may be sanctified in truth,” says the Lord; and the touch of these rays is the dispelling of all illusion. What is the world? it ignored, insulted, crucified Him! -a world in which He could serve, but not reign! and yet even the life here is lifted into glory, when we can say, “The life which I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” And here the Lord explicitly assures us of our interest in all this: “Neither pray I regarding these alone, but also regarding those believing on Me through their word; that they may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” This is a unity of practical life, oneness of heart and mind, such as subsists between the Father and the Son: a unity which the world is to be able to as to be led by it to faith. It is not, of course, that the world as a whole will believe, but men of the world have been at all times wrought upon by it. It is not the Church that is meant, -in John we have not this; although, no doubt, every breach of Church unity has begun as a breach in the practical life. The life has its character from the truth entered into; and “one in Us” shows it to be a life of fellowship with the Father and the Son. How glorious such a witness! What a testimony to Him who can work it in such as we are! 3. The prayer now passes into blessing pronounced, -the expression of His will with regard to His own, and in which He goes beyond the time of His absence to that in which His glory will be openly revealed. The change is suited to this, and to the Melchizedek character as well; though we have no reason to limit this to the time of open manifestation. The glory given us we shall be seen in together when the Lord appears, and it will be the glory in which He will appear as Son of man. Then the world therefore will know, -it will be no question of faith any longer, but of sight, -that Jesus was sent of the Father. In that day He will come “in His own glory, and that of His Father, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26). But it is not said, “in the glory of His saints,” although they have glory; and the reason is here apparent, that it is in His glory they will come. His is the glory which they reflect, and so the Lord says, in them," and the apostle, that “He cometh to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe, . . . in that day” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). The glory will be seen to be His, but they will share it; and being thus “perfected into one,” -in a unity of glory such as shall be worthy of Him, the world shall know, He says. “that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me.” Words these are indeed, which none but Himself would have dared to use; but we stand before God in the value of what He is: grace finding in this way its ability to manifest itself so as to bring out all the depths of His nature. He is going in the ages to come “to show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). Need we say of anything, it is too great to show forth this? But there is a glory His which is greater than that in which He is to be seen with His people, and which can only be seen in His own eternal dwelling-place; therefore He desires that we may be with Him, to behold it there. It is glory which as Man He enters, and in that sense “given” glory, and yet as the recognition of the love which was eternally His. Thus it is Divine glory, as far as the creature can be strengthened to behold it. There are necessary limits here, -limits which forbid even our defining them further. And the whole of what we have here is of a nature which requires rather prayer than study to apprehend it. We must be where He is, to realize the vision. The Lord appeals now to the “Righteous Father,” as One who, in the midst of a world “alienated from the knowledge of Him,” has known Him; and He links His disciples, spite of their feebleness, with Himself, as those who at least have known Him as sent of the Father. To them He had made known His Name, and would go on to make it known; for (they and we) must here be learners still. The love of the Father to the Son is, as we have seen, part of that manifestation and so this becomes an inward realization in the soul; and He, the Object of the Father’s love, in whom therefore the Divine nature in its glory revealed itself, -He becomes in them the necessary Object also, and the One in whom fellowship with God is henceforth found.