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When I first began attending church, every Sunday my pastor
would say as he drew his pastoral prayer to an end, “These things we pray in
the name of Him who taught us to pray together,” and then the entire
congregation would repeat aloud:
Our
Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give
us this day our daily bread.
And
forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
·
(Matt 6:9-13, KJV)
Those words were entirely unfamiliar to me as a new
Christian, so most Sundays I would just sort of mumble in whispered tones until
the words of what is commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer” became etched on my
heart. It is one of the most well known passages in all of Scripture, and this
prayer has been recited countless times by countless people through the
centuries. As precious and powerful as this prayer is, it is perhaps a bit of a
misnomer to call it “The Lord’s Prayer.” This is how Jesus said that we should pray, but it is not a prayer
that He Himself prayed. After all, the sinless Son of God could not, and would
not, pray that the Father would forgive Him of His debts or trespasses, for He
had none. That familiar prayer would be better called “The Disciples’ Prayer.”
The seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel presents us with
what may be more accurately called “The Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer is uniquely
His. Here we are encounter the profound communion that has eternally existed
between God the Father and God the Son. This prayer of Jesus “is the purest and
most extensive example in all the Bible of a direct, verbalized communication
between two members of the Godhead,” and in it, “the veil is drawn back and the
reader is escorted by Jesus Christ into the Holy of Holies, to the very throne
of God.”[1]
This is not the only instance of Jesus praying that is
recorded in the Gospels, but it is the longest one. It is commonly called “The
High Priestly Prayer,” because here we find the Lord Jesus interceding as a
High Priest for His people. But in these first five verses, He prays for
Himself. So, let us come into this most holy place and eavesdrop, if you will,
on this private conversation between God the Father and God the Son and hear
how the Son prays for Himself in this true Lord’s Prayer.
I. The occasion of Jesus’ prayer
Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities is probably
familiar to us. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Dickens
was referring to the era of the French Revolution, but these words more
fittingly describe the setting of our text. Verse 1 sets the stage: “Jesus
spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the
hour has come.’” Jesus had just finished the lengthy time of teaching with His
disciples that we call “The Farwell Discourse,” in which He explained to them
that He was returning to His Father. Having completed the work for which He had
come into the world, He would return to His home in heaven, to the place and
position that had been rightfully His for all eternity. It was the best of
times. But it was also the worst of times.
Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus has spoken of “His hour.”
Prior to Chapter 12, Jesus said that His hour (or “time”) had not yet come
(2:4; 7:6, 8; cf. 7:30; 8:20). But with the dawning of this final Passover
week, Jesus began to say that His hour had come (12:23; 16:32; cf. 13:1). He
says it again here in verse 1 as He prays. “Father, the hour has come.” What is
this “hour” of which He speaks? It is the appointed time for His suffering and
death, the culmination of His earthly mission to redeem humanity from sin by
bearing our sins as a sacrificial substitute to bear the wrath we deserve upon
the cross.
Marcus Rainsford was a 19th Century Irish
preacher and his monumental work on this chapter, entitled, Our Lord Prays for His Own, is
considered the evangelical magnum opus on John 17. Listen to his words about
this “hour.”
Many an hour has passed on the dial
of time since time began, but no hour like this. It was the hour on which His
own and His Father’s heart had been set, and with the issues of which His own
and His Father’s thoughts had been engaged from all eternity. It was the hour
for which He became incarnate, and for which He came into the world; it was the
hour when all God’s waves and billows were to pass over Him …. It was the hour
when His soul was to be made an offering for sin; when, having been given by
God to us He was about to offer up Himself to God for us.[2]
This is the hour that has come, and this is the hour in
which He prays. But what does He pray for? We turn our attention to that
question now.
II. The content of Jesus’ prayer
On an occasion such as this, we might imagine that Jesus
would have a long list of personal concerns to bring before the Father. Yet, His
request is limited to a single petition. In a moment like this, with so many
disconcerting circumstances staring Him squarely in the face, Jesus’ singular
request from the Father is this: “Glorify Your Son” (v1).
One of the most audacious prayers recorded in all of
Scripture is that of Moses in Exodus 33:18, when he boldly requested of the
Lord, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” The Lord’s answer was simple: “You
cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (33:20). As audacious as
Moses’ prayer was, we might be tempted to see the prayer of Jesus as infinitely
more audacious. He does not ask to see the
glory of God, but to receive that
same glory unto Himself. In verse 5, He adds to the request, “Now, Father,
glorify Me together with Yourself.”
Any man who is merely a man and utters such a prayer would
surely be guilty of the highest blasphemy! God said in Isaiah 42:8, “I will not
give My glory to another.” Ah, but Jesus, though a man, is not merely a man. As
Handley Moule said, “What creature, however exalted, could so call upon the
Majesty on high? It is the voice of the Son, but of GOD the Son. On the other
hand, it is the voice of God, but of God the SON.”[3] Verse
5 makes that as clear as any verse in Scripture. He says, “Now, Father, glorify
Me together Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world
was.” Jesus is here claiming that the glory for which He asks is rightfully
His, and has been for eternity past. Therefore, this prayer is not ultimately
audacious; it is uniquely appropriate.
You recall that John’s Gospel began with that majestic
statement, “In the beginning was the Word (the Logos), and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God” (John
1:1). Not only did He exist before the world, He made the world! In John 1:3,
we read that through this Person called the Word of God, the Logos, “all things came into being … and
apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” John 1:14
makes it clear that this divine Logos, or
“Word,” is the same Person whom we know as Jesus Christ. John writes, “The Word
became flesh and dwelt among us.” In Jesus Christ, the infinite and eternal
Creator God became a man. Paul described Jesus’ condescension in His
incarnation this way in Philippians 2:6-7 – [A]lthough
He existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God a thing to
be grasped {or “held onto”}, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a
bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. [And He was] … found in
appearance as a man.”
Prior to His incarnation Jesus possessed in Himself the
fullness of all of the attributes of God and the splendor of His visible,
brilliant glory. In becoming a man, He “emptied Himself” (to use Paul’s phrase)
of that visible, brilliant glory, in exchange for human flesh. He maintained,
at least in some measure, the divine qualities of omniscience, omnipotence, and
sovereignty, and His many miracles were glimpses of those attributes. But now,
as He draws His earthly ministry to a close, He asks the Father that the full
measure of infinite glory that was rightfully His for all eternity past would
be returned to Him for all eternity future. He asks to again be clothed with
the splendor which He had exchanged in return for human flesh in order to
identify with us, to live for us, to die for us, and to rise for us.
The time had come for the glorious reunion in Heaven of
Father and Son, and for the coronation of Christ as King. But there would be no
crown to wear apart from the cross to bear. The glory for which Christ prays is
ultimately found through the shame of the cross, for here Jesus would complete
the mission for which He was sent into the world. Hebrews 12 says that it was
“for the joy set before Him” that He “endured the cross, despising the shame.”
The joy to which He looked was the glory for which He longed – the glory that
was rightly His, which had been willfully forfeited for our sake, and which
would be rightfully returned to Him forever upon His triumphant return to His
heavenly throne.
In the cross of Jesus Christ, the audacious prayer of Moses
and the appropriate prayer of Jesus find their answer. Moses asked God to show
him His glory. Jesus asked for the Father to give Him His glory. That glory is
seen nowhere more clearly than in the death, resurrection, and exaltation of
Jesus Christ, by which the human race, which is desperately corrupted by sin,
lost in rebellion, and separated from God by a great, impassable gulf of
iniquity, is graciously reconciled to God in all of His holiness and splendor.
This brings us to the final aspect of Jesus’ prayer for
Himself here in these verses.
III. The purpose of Jesus’ prayer
In the epistle of James, we read, “You do not have because
you do not ask.” But sometimes when we ask, we do not receive, so what do we
make of that? James answers that as well, saying, “You ask and do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your
pleasures.” Selfishness and carnal desire underlie much of what we ask for. Well,
Jesus asked for God to glorify Him. That seems very self-centered, does it not?
It would be utterly self-absorbed for any of us to ask God to glorify us. So,
why is it okay for Jesus to pray this way, but not for us? It is because when
we seek our own glory, we seek something less than God desires for us. He wants
us to know His glory, and when we ask for our own, we ask for too little, and
we ask for it at the expense of His glory. God isn’t going to answer that
prayer. But the Father answered Jesus’ prayer for glory because the glory for
which Jesus asks is inseparable from His own, and ultimately serves to further
the Father’s glory. Jesus says in verse 1, “Glorify Your Son, that the Son may
glorify You.” Everything God does, everything answer to prayer He grants, is
driven by His passionate pursuit of His own glory. And nothing brings glory to
the Father more than the glorification of His Son.
When we pursue our own glory, we are pursuing something
inferior than God, and that is idolatry. When God pursues His own glory, it is
not idolatry or megalomania, because there is nothing greater that He can
pursue. If God were to pursue anything other
than His own glory, He would be an idolater because He would value
something inferior over what is ultimate, namely Himself. And so He delights to
glorify the Son, because the Son is faithfully committed to glorifying the
Father. In the midst of His most critical hour, Jesus cries out for His own
glory, that His glory would magnify and amplify the demonstration of the
Father’s glory. “Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.”
That is the heartbeat of this entire prayer, and every
prayer that Jesus ever prayed. It is also the heartbeat of every word He ever
spoke and every deed He ever did. But the ultimate display of the glory of the
Son, which in turn demonstrates the glory of the Father, is found in the
completion of the work for which He was sent into the world. In verse 2, Jesus
connects His prayer for glory to the authority that was given to Him by the
Father. He says, “glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You
gave Him authority over all flesh.” That means that the Father has given Jesus the
authority to be the rightful King over all, and “[e]verything and everyone in
the universe is subject to this kingdom, whether the point is acknowledged or
not.”[4]
And the ultimate reason that the Father has given Him this unlimited authority
is specified in verse 2 as Jesus continues: “You gave Him authority over all
flesh, that to all whom You
have given Him, He may give eternal life.”
Everything about Jesus’ mission is centered on the authority
that the Father has given Him to grant eternal life to human beings. What is
“eternal life”? We usually equate it with “living forever in heaven.” It
includes that. It is certainly not less than that, but it is a great deal more
than that. After all, if “living forever” is all that is meant by “eternal
life,” then we could say that even those in hell have “eternal life.” Yet the
Bible never uses that phrase to describe the fate of the unredeemed who will
endure the eternal torment of hell. It refers only and exclusively to the
redeemed. So, Jesus defines eternal life in verse 3: “This is eternal life,
that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have
sent.”
That little sentence is loaded with meaning! For one thing,
it categorically denies any and every claim to deity made concerning any person
or thing other than the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the
Bible. He is the only true God, all others are false deities. It also
categorically affirms that there is no knowledge of the only true God apart
from Jesus Christ. Contrary to popular opinion, there are not many paths to
God. There is one, and only one: Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the Way, and the
Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (Jn 14:6). But
it also explains that eternal life is not something that begins when we die and
enter heaven. For those who have come to know the one true God through Jesus
Christ, eternal life has already begun. It is not merely a “quantity” of life,
but a “quality” of life. To know God in this sense is not to have an academic
or intellectual understanding of Him, but to enter into the experience of a
personal relationship with Him. It is to live life in relationship to God. This
is a life that has a definite beginning – it begins when we come to faith in
Jesus Christ. But it has no end. Death itself cannot terminate this life. It
endures for all eternity in God’s presence.
How is it that Jesus can say that He is the only way to know
God? It is because only Jesus accomplished what is necessary for us to know
God. In verse 4, Jesus says, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished
the work which You have given Me to do.” Everything He ever did and everything
He ever said was done in complete obedience to His Father. But the final step of
obedience remained for the following day. His work would not be fully completed
until Jesus laid down His life as a ransom to purchase sinners from their
slavery to sin and Satan and reconcile them to God by dying in our place to
bear the wrath that we deserve. He was sent to live the life that none of us
can live, and to die the death that all of us should die. The merits of His
righteous life are granted to those who trust in Him, in exchange for the
penalty of our sins which was poured out on Him in His sacrificial death.
When Jesus breathed His last breath on the cross, He
uttered, “It is finished!” Yet Jesus was so unswervingly committed to
glorifying His Father in the completion of His commissioned task of saving
sinners that He can speak of it on the eve before it happens as if it is
already a completed work. In His perfect obedience, even to death, even to
death on a cross, the Father is glorified because all of His glorious
attributes are manifested in His Son. His holiness, righteousness, and justice
are displayed in the suffering that Christ had to endure for our sins. His
love, His mercy, and His grace are demonstrated in the salvation that Christ
makes available to us through His sacrifice.
Why did Jesus pray for His glory, and why did the Father
answer? Because Jesus was unflinchingly committed to bringing glory to His
Father through the completion of the work for which He was sent into the world
– the redemption of lost humanity through His shed blood. Paul said that Jesus
“humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a
cross. For this reason also, God
highly exalted Him, and bestowed upon Him the name which is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Php 2:9-11). Peter says it
this way: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has
appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers
in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and
hope are in God” (1 Pet 1:20-21).
Friends, if the very Son of God must pray, then how much
more must we? But we do not pray for our own glory, rather that the glory of
the Father and the Son be manifested in and through us. And it will be as we,
like Jesus, live in obedience to the Father’s purpose for our lives. As we
follow Christ in obedience, we will share in His sufferings. His glory was made
known most plainly through the suffering of His cross, and our own sufferings
can be a means by which others see His glory in us. As we continue in
obedience, even in spite of our sufferings, we demonstrate that the glory of God-in-Christ
is greater than anything this world can offer us or take from us. And by faith
in Christ, at last we will see that glory face-to-face forever – the glory
which the Father has given to the Son, and which the Son has returned to the
Father.
[1] James
Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1999), 4:1246; John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: John 12-21 (Chicago : Moody, 2008), 236
(cf. 239-240).
[2] Marcus
Rainsford, Our Lord Prays for His Own (Chicago:
Moody, 1950), 36.
[3] H. C. G.
Moule, The High Priestly Prayer (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1978), 28.
[4] D. A.
Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar
New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 555.
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