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We take a closer look at Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John 17 and see his great concern and care for them, as he is about to go to the Father. He asks that they would be protected and sanctified in the truth. He prays this also for those who would later hear the word through his disciples.
13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 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. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 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.
This transcript has been automatically generated
John chapter 17, starting at verse 13. And this is part of a prayer that Jesus is praying to his Father.
Verse 13: 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. 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 have sent me and love them even as you loved me. Let us pray.
Gracious God and loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for every good gift that you give to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the gift of this moment to share together, and we pray that in your mercy you would bring your word to our hearts in the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. That we might see your Son, love him, and serve him gladly until he comes.
Amen. Well, you know, of course, that John’s Gospel opens wonderfully and dramatically, and in a way that is full of tension and promise and expectation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and and the Word was God. John omits the story of the baby Jesus in a stable and instead summarises the stunning truth of the Incarnation in what we might reverently call an unforgettable epigram: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And John adds in his prologue, we have seen his glory, Glory as of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So as you open the Gospel and begin to read the Gospel of John, we’re informed from the opening verses that Jesus is God and yet is distinct from God the Father. God has come among us as one of us in the person of Jesus and makes known what no human has ever known before, the fullness of God’s glory. And then in John 17, from which our reading came this, this evening, we are inestimably and almost incomprehensibly privileged to overhear Jesus’ prayer to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the very climax of his mission. And he says, Father, the hour has come.
Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.
In John’s Gospel, glory always has to do with Jesus making known who God is and what he is like. Glory is always about revealing the truth about God. And as Jesus approaches the hour of his crucifixion, he prays, as I am brought low in the cross, lift me up to your right hand. As I am stripped and laid naked on the beams, clothe me with royal robes and crown me King of all. In the shame and injustice of the cross, make known to the world your love and mercy.
For the world. And then Jesus prays for his 11 disciples, Judas having gone out from them. Those you gave me out of the world, verse 6 says. And then he prays in verse 20, for those who will become disciples through the ministry of the apostles. I pray for those who will believe in me through their word.
And in this little section of the prayer that we’re looking at tonight, Jesus asks 3 things for those who believe in him: joy, holiness, unity. Verse 13, that the fullness of his joy should be in them. Verse 19, that they may be truly sanctified. Verse 23, that they should be brought to complete unity. And in each case, the means by which God brings about what Jesus prays for is His Word.
So firstly, protected by joy in the Word. In verses 13 to 16, Jesus prays for the 11 disciples, that his Father would protect them in the world. Verse 15, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. And he says in verse 13 that he prays these things, that they may have my joy fulfilled in them. He prays in this way that they may have the fullness of his joy in them.
Now remember that this is the night of Jesus’ arrest and trial, the night before his death on the cross, and John lets us in on this poignant and powerful moment of Jesus in closest communion and communication with his Father, and what is on his heart at this moment the joy of his disciples.
How are they to have the fullness of joy fulfilled within them when he is no longer with them?
Verse 13 says, I speak these things.
Jesus’ words. These things I speak, he says. Not just the things that he’s praying for them, but surely all that he has spoken to them on this night of nights. Verse 14 says, I have given them your word. And we can easily bring to mind some of what Jesus has said to them on this night.
Chapter 13, unless I wash you, you have no part of me.
A new command I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Or chapter 14, do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me.
I will not leave you as orphans.
I will ask the Father, he will give you another, the Spirit of Truth.
Chapter 15, I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.
If you keep my commands, you’ll remain in my love. If the world hates you, remember, I it hated me first.
Chapter 16, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he’ll guide you into all the truth. In the world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
Jesus has said these things to His disciples, so that they may have His joy fulfilled in them, the full measure of His joy in them. And what joy there is in the words of Jesus. And He wants them to have joy in fullness in His words, because verse 14 says, the world has hated them, even as it hated Him. Rejection by the world is not to steal away the joy of Jesus’ disciples. It will threaten to do so when they see Him hanging naked on a cross, but when He has risen and ascended, they will be filled with joy.
And though this was a prayer for the 11, God has preserved it for us all. Joy in Jesus is not a function of how successful or respected or comfortable we are in the world. Joy in Jesus is not a function of health and wealth and security. Recently, I had the great privilege of spending a week visiting 3 dioceses in the northeastern rural area of Tanzania. And again and again, I encountered people whose means were limited, whose circumstances were modest, whose opportunities were circumscribed by conditions that were beyond their control, but whose joy was full, whose hospitality was generous, whose hope was undiminished.
And it was both deeply humbling and a rebuke to my spiritual poverty, and it was beautiful.
Fullness of joy in the truth and grace and glory of the words of Jesus, all that he has made known. Of himself and his Father in his word.
Second, Jesus prays for the sanctification of his disciples by the word of truth. Verse 17, 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 usually think of the word sanctify in 2 distinct but related ways. It has a spatial dimension of being set apart, specifically set apart for the purposes of God, and it has a moral dimension, reflecting the holiness of God. Whatever is set aside for God’s purposes assumes the character of God in His holiness. And so, Jesus prays that the disciples will be set apart for God’s use, as He sends them into the world, and the instrument of their setting apart is the word of truth. Earlier in chapter 17, in verse 8, Jesus says, I gave them the words you gave me, and they accepted them.
They are set apart by the word, because they accepted the words that Jesus, by which Jesus had made himself known, and in which he revealed to them the nature of the Father. The appropriate response to the word of truth is, to accept it, not merely to assent to it intellectually, but with heart and mind and soul and will, to welcome and embrace and yield to and trust the Word of Jesus, in repentance and faith, turning from sin, trusting ourselves, yielding ourselves, gladly, willingly, wholeheartedly, to Jesus, submitting to His rule in our lives. So, the Word that is received by the believer has a double-edged impact, set apart from everyone who does not receive the Word in repentance and faith, and then transformed by that Word, conformed to that Word, as the Spirit works the Word into our lives, what Jesus calls sanctification, the setting apart and making holy of his disciples by his Word.
And then Jesus says, it is for his disciples that he sanctifies, or consecrates, himself. He describes His impending death on the cross as His sanctification. He sets Himself aside for the work which God has called Him to, in dying for the sake of the world. I throw Myself away on the cross for you.
There is no self in what Jesus does. He does it for us.
So, this tells us about the word of truth that sanctifies. The word that sanctifies the disciples is not a word of command, not a word of moralism, or legalism, or demand, It is a word of God’s gift. It is a Gospel. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. God’s gift of His Son, to make those who welcome the Son, holy, set apart for God, and transformed by the knowledge, by their knowledge of the Son.
Not a word of the effort you must expend to perfect yourself, but a word of what God has done for us. The word of truth that sanctifies.
Jesus prays that his Father would protect the disciples by giving them fullness of joy in his words. Then he prays that his Father would sanctify, set apart, and perfect his disciples by the word of truth, the Gospel. And thirdly, Jesus prays that his disciples would be one, as they are united to the Father and the Son through the words of the Apostles. Verse 20, my prayer, 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.
Now, just let this sink in for a moment. You can’t read John’s Gospel too slowly.
On the night of his betrayal, and the eve of his death on a cross, Jesus prays for those who will believe in the message, in the word, of the apostles. He prays for those who will believe in the word of the apostles. So, if you are a believer, if you are a Christian, then I take it that Jesus is speaking of us.
Because I take it, if you are a believer, somewhere, sometime, someone, spoke to us of the Lord and his Gospel, of the love of God in sending the Son of God to die on a cross and be raised again, to pay the debt we owe, to bear the shame that was ours, to lift the burden of guilt and fear, to wash us clean, to purchase us from slavery to sin, to free us from the fear and penalty of death, and to make us his own forever.
Someone spoke to you words of life and love in the gospel of the Lord Jesus as it has been passed down to us by the 11, and you believed.
Praise God.
What a glorious thing that is. What a precious, wonderful, miraculous thing that is.
You might like to give thanks tonight to God for those that spoke that word of life to you, and you might like to thank God for that on the night before his death, Jesus prayed for us.
And what Jesus prayed is that we would be one, united, united with each other and united with him and the Father. Verse 20 again, I pray that all of them, that they may all be one, Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you.
The unity of mind and purpose and will of the Father and the Son is something into which believers are brought as we accept the word of the disciples sent by Jesus, just as they were united with the Father and the Son as they accepted the word that Jesus spoke to them. It is the continuity and the correspondence of the apostolic message handed down through generations that makes new disciples one, with each other, and with the first disciples, and with the Father and the Son. The Lord says it again in a different way in verse 22, 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. And the word glory here reappears, having made its first appearance, as we saw, in the first chapter and the opening verses of John’s Gospel. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth, and he has made him known.
John consistently uses the word glory to speak of the revealing work that Jesus does. He makes the Father known. And in chapter 17, when Jesus prays that he has given his disciples, including future disciples, the glory that God gave him, he means that he has made God known to them all, in the fullness of God’s grace and truth.
We have these debates at times in the church about unity and truth, and some say we must have one rather than the other, and some say they favour one rather than the other, or that one must be given priority over the other. But this cannot be right.
No, Jesus prays that we will be unity in the truth people.
The truth that makes us his unites us to him and to one another.
We must be unity in the truth people.
And Jesus speaks of the truth that unites and the unity that comes from accepting the truth. Unity with one another and with the Father and the Son. 3 prayers: for joy in Jesus and protection in a world hostile to Jesus, for setting apart for the Lord’s service, bearing his likeness and character, and for unity with each other and with the Father and the Son by the word of truth.
And in each case, it is the word by which these prayers will be answered. I say these things, that they may have the fullness of joy within them. Verse 13. Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth. Verse 17.
I pray for all those who will believe in their word, that all of them may be one. And yet, joy and holiness and unity are not ends in themselves. Jesus says twice, in verse 14 and verse 18, that he sends the disciples into the world, as he has been sent into the world, and sending language in the Bible is always mission language. The mission of the Gospel, the mission of the disciples, for which they will need joy, and holiness, and unity, is the mission In verse 21, that the world may believe that the Father has sent the Son, that the world will know that the Father sent the Son and has loved the disciples as he has loved the Son. Jesus has his own mission in mind as he goes to the cross, and he has in mind the mission of the 11 who will speak of him to others so that they may believe.
What is Jesus’ mission to you?
Do you have joy in his words?
Have you repented and put your trust in Jesus so that your life has been set apart for him and is slowly being conformed to his likeness.
And as a community belonging to Jesus in this place, are you united as one, contending side by side for the faith of the gospel, as Paul puts it in Philippians chapter 1 and without being frightened of those who may oppose you.
We must not let the hatred of the world that hated Jesus steal the joy we have in the promises and purposes Jesus has revealed in his words. But where the joy stealer is, Jesus is a joy giver.
We must not compromise, or accommodate, or appease the world in its rejection of Jesus, but rather be set apart as we respond in repentance and faith to the word of truth.
And we must not substitute mere coexistence, let alone colocation, for the indestructible unity that is created by the Gospel. In which we are embraced in the union of Father and Son, in the power of the Spirit. But rather, we must ask the Lord to use our joy and holiness and unity in the Gospel to make known to the world the truth and grace of God in sending his Son for the sake of the world.
That in his mercy, as he has shown his mercy even to us, that in his mercy all may turn to him and know his saving love and power, the fullness of his grace and truth.
May it be so. Amen.
