The Lord’s Prayer: Glory for Jesus, Holiness for Disciples, Unity for the Church
John 17:1-26
5/24/15
(Material in blue font not delivered during sermon)
Jesus prays.
Let that simple statement sink in for a moment. The sinless Son of God prays. The four Gospels refer to Jesus praying many times.[1] But only a handful of times do we get to know what exactly Jesus said to his Father when he prayed.[2]John 17 contains the longest such prayer. That Jesus prayed shows us how like us he really was—needy, dependent on his Father—but what Jesus prayed calls us to be like him more than we are.
This prayer contains 612 English words,[3] 486 Greek words. It takes about 3 minutes to read aloud. Yet we could spend our entire lives mining the treasures from it. At the same time, there is a simplicity to the prayer. You’ll find an outline in your bulletins;[4] I’d like you to take a look at it for a moment. The prayer can be divided simply into three sections, as Jesus prays for three different groups. The first five verses have Jesus praying for himself; in verses 6-19, we read of Jesus praying for his disciples, primarily focusing on the eleven men who were with him that night; and in verses 20-26, he prays for the future church, all those who will believe in him because of the ministry that the eleven apostles will begin after Jesus departs.
Within these three sections, Jesus makes seven specific requests.[5] Now, truly, we could count them differently; most students of Scripture count six requests; the first time I worked through the passage, I counted eight requests. But, at the end, I finally settled in my own mind that there are seven requests or petitions,[6] and I’d like to focus on them this morning. What does Jesus request from the Father? It’s interesting to see how much repetition there is in this prayer, and it’s interesting to see how much Jesus says that is not strictly making requests. He’s really just speaking to his Father, and in the course of his talk he makes seven specific requests.
Let me say a brief word about what to call this prayer. I have entitled this sermon “The Lord’s Prayer,” which probably reminds you of a different prayer recorded in Scripture. We often refer to the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount as “The Lord’s Prayer.” However, I personally prefer to think of it as “The Disciples’ Prayer,” since it is a prayer that he taught his disciples to pray, and is not a prayer he himself would have prayed. But, it is interesting to see that there are some significant similarities between this prayer in John 17 and the prayer taught in the Sermon on the Mount, both in content and in structure. For example, the disciples’ prayer, as recorded in Matthew 6, is made up of seven requests, and I count seven requests in Jesus’ prayer in John 17. We won’t go into comparing the contents of the two prayers, but some of the connections will be obvious.[7]
Now, you may have a heading in your Bible or you may have heard this prayer referred to as Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer.” There are three reasons from the prayer itself that this is a good title. First, it was the function of the High Priest to intercede with God for the people of Israel, and so Jesus intercedes for his people.[8] Second, two elements of the famous high priestly prayer of Aaron, the original High Priest of Israel, come out in Jesus’ prayer. Num. 6:24-26 contains the words of a blessing that Aaron the High Priest was to pray for the people of Israel: Yahweh bless you and keep you; Yahweh make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Jesus prays that the Father will keep the disciples in verses 11 and 15 of John 17.[9]
Also, Num. 6:27 adds this statement, about the purpose of that prayer: So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them. Jesus will ask the Father to keep the disciples in his name, which is the name God gave to Jesus. We’ll talk more about that in a moment. The third reason High Priestly Prayer is an appropriate title for Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is the sacrificial language that is used in verse 19; Jesus says he sanctifies or consecrates himself for the sake of his disciples; the High Priest in the Old Testament must sanctify himself for his duties.[10] We’ll see that Jesus actually intends something more by his self-sanctification, but the least we can say is that Jesus does pray as a true High Priest would pray.
So, let’s explore what our great High Priest prayed on this occasion, just a few hours before he would offer himself up as a sacrificial offering for sin. First, we hear him praying for himself, requesting glory. Look at verses 1-2: 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. Looking upward toward God in heaven is the normal prayer posture for Jews. It physically reminds us that God is above, in the heavens.
Jesus mentions that the hour has come, the hour that he has been anticipating throughout this Gospel, the hour of his death on the cross. Since the time has now come for him to offer himself as a sacrifice, he asks the Father to glorify him. It is appropriate for Jesus to ask this, as we’ll see in a few verses, because Jesus has eternally shared the glory of God. So, even now, in this lowest of all moments of his human life, when he faces the shame of a public crucifixion, he asks that the Father would glorify him. He’s asking that the Father would enable him to finish the mission, to accomplish the work the Father sent him to do, so that the Father would then receive glory and credit. “Mission accomplished” is the stamp Jesus wants to see across his life, and that will bring glory to the Father.
He requests this because the Father gave the Son authority over all flesh. This is a fascinating statement. We recall that other passages in the New Testament reveal that the Son of God was involved in creating the universe and, thus, in creating humanity. As creator, the Father granted a certain kind of universal authority to his Son. Jesus is referring to something that happened before creation;[11] the Father granted the Son a special kind of universal authority over all flesh. Because he has authority over all flesh, over every human being who ever has existed or ever will exist, Jesus says, the purpose of this authority was that he would give eternal life to all whom the Father has given him. This statement takes us from the beginning of creation to the beginning of a new creation. The Father gave authority to the Son as co-creator in order that he might oversee and sustain all human life in this world, but the purpose of that authority was to be exercised on behalf of some within creation, to give them eternal life as part of a new creation.[12]
Here, we are introduced to a reality that will be repeatedly pointed out by Jesus in this prayer. He speaks of “all whom you have given him.” Thus, Jesus knows of a group of people throughout history that comprise a unique gift that the Father is presenting to Jesus. The Father gives this gift of people to the Son, so that the Son will then give to them eternal life. We’ll come back to this idea and explore it further in just a moment.
Jesus offers a summary definition of eternal life in verse 3: And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. True life, life that never ends, life that extends happily beyond death and goes on forever, is all about knowing God and knowing Jesus. You can’t know God if you don’t know Jesus. This knowledge is not primarily an intellectual thing; it includes understanding who God is, but it also includes aligning your choices in such a way that you acknowledge the only true God; and, it also includes a real intimacy that is experienced as all of life is shared between God and us. Thus, knowing God, knowing Jesus, having eternal life, includes trusting Jesus Christ as the one God has sent to save sinners and obeying him, following him wherever he leads.[13] It is knowing personally the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Being in a personal relationship with this God, being in a personal relationship with Jesus, necessarily changes you, and it necessarily lasts forever, because God lives forever and he will not allow those who know him to cease experiencing life with him.[14]
Look now at verses 4-5: 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. Jesus speaks as though he’s already died and risen from the dead. The betrayal has begun, the ball is rolling, and it is certain that within the next few hours, Jesus will be laid in a tomb, utterly silent, with no life in his body. Jesus repeats his first request for glory, but he specifies the kind of glory he is talking about. The unique glory that was shared between Father and Son for all eternity, before creation, before the Son took on flesh and became a human, indeed, before there were any humans. Jesus is asking to return to experiencing that kind of glory but now with a human body![15] Amazing!
In verse 6, Jesus turns his attention to his disciples, the eleven men walking with him, who are undoubtedly listening to Jesus’ prayer. He has one primary concern for them—their holiness—but he unpacks this in terms of both protection and also obedience. Look at verses 6-8: 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.
What name has Jesus revealed? The name of God. What is that name? Yahweh. But, didn’t they know the name Yahweh from the Old Testament? Didn’t Yahweh himself reveal his name to Moses back in Exodus 3? Doesn’t that name, Yahweh, appear some 6,000 times in the Old Testament Scriptures? What is Jesus talking about here? The prophet Isaiah announced a time that would come when Yahweh would rescue the Jews from their exile and restore them to faithfulness. Isa. 52:6 says, Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am. That’s translating the Hebrew into English pretty well. The Greek Old Testament has it a little differently; we could translate the Greek of Isa. 52:6 into English like this: Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is “I Am” who speaks.[16] In John’s Gospel, haven’t we seen some strange occasions when Jesus said the phrase “I am” all by itself, referring to himself, and the people around him reacted strongly? Remember John 8:58-59: Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. Apparently, the Jewish leaders heard Jesus claiming the name of God for himself by using that phrase “I am” like that.
John’s Gospel is all about how Jesus makes God known. John 1:18 set us up for this in the Prologue of the Gospel: No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. That was Jesus’ mission, to make God known in a unique way, in a way much deeper than was possible during the Old Testament period. So, when Jesus says to the Father, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world,” he is saying that he has done what the Father sent him to do. He is saying that he has shown these people who God is by showing his character, his name, in his words and his actions.
Now, we come to explore this reference to people given to the Son by the Father. Jesus specifies here that these are people the Father gave to him from “out of the world.” And he adds that these people belonged to God before, and now God has given them as a gift to the Son.[17] This is both really important to understand and also really difficult to accept. Let’s see if we can picture what Jesus is describing. The word “world” in John’s Gospel is a very important word. It can be used in one of three different ways. On just a couple of occasions, it refers to the created universe, the world as created by God. Most often, however, it is used to refer to the world as it is now, fallen and broken. But, even then, John uses it in two different ways. Sometimes, it seems that he refers to the world as what I’ll call “the Rebel Base.” It is the Rebel Kingdom; the world, under the rule of Satan, is a kingdom that opposes God and God’s people. So, the word “world” can refer to the realm of Satan.
But, often, the word “world” refers to people. It is a reference to the citizens of this Rebel Kingdom. “World” can refer to the Rebel Base itself, as a place, but most often it refers to the rebels themselves. John 3:16 seems to use the word this way; For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the rebel population, for God so loved his enemies, that he gave his only Son. Love for rebels and the whole rebel kingdom moved God to send his Son to give eternal life to some of those rebels. Whoever believes in him, out of the world, out of the Rebel Kingdom, will experience eternal life.
Thus, Jesus in John 17 depicts the kingdom of rebels containing some rebels who belong to God already. From the theology of the whole Bible, I think we can simplify this discussion and refer to them as the chosen ones, rebels that God freely chose to give as a gift to the Son. We can fill out the picture a bit if we remember Jesus’ words in John 6:37: All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. So, before creation, knowing that humanity would rebel and become a kingdom of rebels ruled by the rebel Satan, the Father chose some of the rebels that he would give as a gift to his Son as human history unfolds. If the Father had not done this, no one would be saved; every human being on the face of the planet would remain a rebel against God.[18]
Now, Jesus is focusing initially here on the eleven men listening to him. They are the ones the Father has given him out of the world. Jesus says that they have kept God’s word, which is remarkable when we think of how the disciples are described throughout the Gospels. They never seem to understand Jesus, and their twisted motives are often revealed. However, they have stuck around! They are still clinging to Jesus, even though they don’t yet understand him fully. Jesus does acknowledge what little they do know about Jesus now; they do realize that the Father has sent Jesus and everything Jesus says and does comes ultimately from the Father.[19]
Look at verses 9-10: 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. With the understanding of the world as the Rebel Kingdom, I think we can see why Jesus is not praying for it. Jesus cannot pray for rebels as long as they remain rebels. D. A. Carson writes these sobering words: “To pray for the world, the created moral order in active rebellion against God, would be blasphemous; there is no hope for the world.”[20] But, didn’t we just read in John 3:16 that God’s love for the world is what moved him to send his Son? Yes, God loves the Rebel Kingdom and all the individual rebels in it. But...in order for rebels to know God, in order for rebels to receive his special love, they must cease being rebels. Thus, Carson goes on to add, “There is hope only for some who now constitute the world but who will cease to be the world and will join those of whom Jesus says for they are yours.”[21] We might wonder why Jesus wouldn’t pray that the world ceases its rebellion. Why wouldn’t Jesus ask the Father to change the world? In a certain subtle sense, Jesus is, in fact, asking for that very thing, but we need to hang onto this refusal of Jesus to pray for the world. It helps us recognize that the rebellious world will continue in its rebellion until the end of human history, when, at last, Jesus will finally bring into complete existence the new creation, which he begins with these eleven men, after his death and resurrection.