Knowing God (John 17:25-26)

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In Ecclesiastes 12, Solomon wrote, “My son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.” Some of us know this truth from experience. Walk into any bookstore, including any Christian bookstore, and you will find thousands of books on display, many of them having been published within the last few weeks or months. Most of the books that get published do not stand the test of time. When a book endures in popularity for decades, it becomes known as a classic.  Mark Twain once quipped that a classic is a book which people praise and don’t read. Of the books that will come out this year, few if any will endure to become classics. But one book that has stood the test of time for over four decades now is J. I. Packer’s book, Knowing God. In the opening chapter, Packer asserts that “a study of the nature and character of God … is the most practical project anyone can engage in.” He writes,

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.[1]

But Packer goes on to say, “One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him. … [I]nterest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing Him.”[2] Is it any wonder, then, that so many find themselves (in Packer’s words) stumbling and blundering about in a world that seems strange, mad, painful?

Nearly five centuries ago, John Calvin wrote in the opening words of his magnum opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion,

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. … Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self. … [I]t is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize Himself.[3]

Again, it is no wonder that in recent months, we have seen headline stories about people who are confused about their own identity. If Calvin is right (and I am persuaded that he is), it stems from a lack of the knowledge of God. Nothing is more important than this.

Jesus addresses these words to His “righteous Father.” This is the only time in the entire Bible that God the Father is addressed by this title, but throughout Scripture, righteousness is one of the most frequently mentioned attributes of God. In Deuteronomy 32:4, the song of Moses proclaims, “His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” The Psalmist says that “the righteous God tries the hearts and minds” (Psa 7:9). Isaiah said that “the Lord of hosts will be exalted in judgment, and the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness” (Isa 5:16). Righteousness permeates all that He is and does. His judgments are righteous (Psa 19:9; Rom 2:5); His deeds are righteous (Psa 103:6); His ordinances are righteous (119:62); and His Word is righteous (119:123).[4] But He is also a loving Father, as Jesus address to Him here indicates. He is the righteous Father. And Jesus knows Him to be such, but not everyone does.

We cannot overstate how important it is for us to truly know this righteous Father. It is not just that our temporal existence hinges on a right knowledge of God, though that is true. Moreover, our eternal existence hinges on this knowledge of God as well. After all, Jesus said in the third verse of John 17, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” In the closing verses of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, He speaks to the Father about this knowledge: who has it, who doesn’t, and what difference it makes to those who do.

I. The world does not know God.

Jesus could not have said it any plainer: “the world has not known You.” Nearly 70 times in John’s Gospel the word “world” occurs, and as is the case in our usage of the word, it can have a variety of meanings. It can refer to the planet on which we live, as in Chapter 1, when it is said of Jesus that He was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. It can also refer to the entire human race, as it does in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” But very commonly in John’s Gospel (particularly in this Farewell Discourse that began in Chapter 14), “the world” refers to a specific subset of the human race. It refers to those who are in active rebellion to God’s will and word. The world, in this sense, is hostile toward God. Jesus said that the world hated Him and His followers (15:18-19), and that ultimately the world cannot receive the things of God (14:17, 22). Jesus referred to the devil as “the ruler of the world” (14:30), and in this usage, He is speaking of this group of people who defy God and live under the control of Satan. They are described by Paul in Ephesians 2 as those who live according to the prince of the power of the air, in the lusts of their flesh and desires of their minds. And the reason for all of this is here spelled out clearly: they do not know God.

Paul writes often of the world’s ignorance of God in the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians. He says that the world did not come to know God through its wisdom (1:21). Because the world’s wisdom did not lead them to a knowledge of God, God has made the wisdom of this world to be foolishness, and has shamed and nullified the world in its wisdom (1:20, 27-29; 3:19). The message of the cross of Jesus Christ, and the followers of Christ are considered foolish to the world because of their ignorance of God.

Romans 1 makes it clear that the world is without excuse in its ignorance of God. There Paul says that what can be known about God has been made evident through creation and the human conscience. There is enough true revelation within us and around us to convince anyone of “His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature” (Rom 1:21). But Paul says there that they have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. It was their insatiable desire for sin and their inherent disposition for rebellion that caused the world to reject the knowledge of God that is apparent to all in what He has created. And so Paul says, “Even though they knew God (or as we might better say, “knew about God,” or “knew of God”), they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” As a result, the Bible says that God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts, to their degrading passions, and to their depraved minds.” This unbridled depravity and degradation is marked by a whole list of behaviors spelled out in Romans 1, including idolatry, homosexuality, greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, and slander. It includes not only the doing of these things, but also giving hearty approval to those who practice them. All of this is tantamount to hatred of God that stems from their lack of knowledge of Him (see Romans 1:18-32).

This explains almost everything we see in the daily news. Why does the world carry on as it does? Why is good considered evil and evil good in our day? Why are Christian values ridiculed and godless values celebrated? It is because the world in all of its so-called wisdom does not know God. Proverbs 1:7 says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Because there is no fear of the Lord – no reverence for Him as the righteous Judge, or the loving Father – the world has embraced foolishness in the name of wisdom and turned away from true knowledge, which begins with a knowledge of God and a right reverential fear of Him. But the world does not know Him, as Jesus said.

Now secondly, notice that it is written that …

II. Jesus Christ knows God

Jesus said, “the world has not known You, yet I have known You.” Now it may seem that this goes without saying, particularly here among believers in Christ. After all, we confess that Jesus actually is God – the second Person of the Triune Godhead Who, for us and for our salvation, became man in His incarnation. He made that claim repeatedly about Himself. Yet, repeatedly Jesus states that He knows God the Father. In addition to this statement in 17:25, we find in John 7:29 that He said, “I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.” In 8:55, He says, “I do know Him, and keep His word.” In 10:15 He says, “the Father knows Me and I know the Father.” He has complete, total, and perfect knowledge of God.

No matter how well someone else knows you, no other human being knows you better than you know yourself. And no one knows God like God. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” Of course, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father is God the Son, the Lord Jesus. He is the One whom John says existed in the beginning with God, and was God (Jn 1:1). When Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us,” Jesus said, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (14:8). Hebrews 1:3 says that the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature. So it should go without saying that He knows Him.

What Jesus seems to be saying here, however, is more than just that He knows the Father. He seems to be saying that He alone knows the Father. As Rainsford writes, “On this wide earth there was not one solitary being but Himself who knew that Father. When God looked down upon the world He had made, there was not one heart beating in sympathy with His own, but the heart of that beloved Son who was addressing Him.”[5] He alone knows God, and He knows Him to be the righteous Father. That knowledge will sustain Him through the following day as He goes to the cross. Because God is His Father, He knows that nothing will befall Him that has not according to the Father’s loving plan for Him. Because God is righteous, all that He does is perfect and just. As Jesus faces a death that He does not deserve for our sins, His knowledge of God as the righteous Father will enable Him to endure the cross. He knows that His death will be a demonstration of God’s righteousness “so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). In His righteousness, He is just to punish the sins of humanity. In His fatherly love, He is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus – that is, He is the One who removes our sin and declares us righteous on the basis of our faith in Jesus – by allowing our sins to be punished in the Person of the Son.

So it is essential for us to understand that, in a way that no other person can claim with integrity, the Lord Jesus is able to say that He knows the Father. And because He knows the Father, He is able to impart that knowledge of the Father to others who are yet in the world – the world that does not know God – in order to redeem them from the world, that they may come to know God as their own righteous Father. And this is exactly what He came to do. That brings us to the third point here …

III. Jesus makes God known to those who have faith in Him.

It is a truth that man can know nothing about God unless God makes it known. It’s called “revelation.” God has revealed truths to mankind about Himself in creation, including within us, and by His Word. But as the writer of Hebrews says, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb 1:1). Jesus came into the world to make God known. But, many refused the revelation that God was giving to the world through His Son. John 1:11-12 says, “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” Those who believe upon the name of Jesus come to know God, and become adopted as His children.

Jesus says here concerning His disciples, “these have known that You sent Me.” At times, they seemed to not know much, but from their very first encounter with Jesus, they knew this: that He had been sent by the Father into the world. This is where it all begins for each of us. Content to be “of the world,” we are suddenly made aware that there is something unique about Jesus and His claims. It is the Holy Spirit who brings this awareness upon our hearts. We begin to think seriously about Him and consider who He is and what He has said to be of significant importance. After all, if He is not who He said He is, then no one should even still be talking about Him. He is either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord, and the first two of those options seem too ridiculous to consider. We come to know that He is One who came to speak for God in the world, and as we meditate upon what He has said, we come to know that is much more than a prophet. He is the One who came to unite us to God through His saving work upon the cross.

As we come to know Jesus in this way, we begin to grow in our knowledge of God. Our knowledge of God is rooted in the revelation that Jesus Christ has made known to us. Jesus said, “I have made Your name known to them.” To make God’s name known means more than just His title or what He is to be called. It is to make His nature and character known. In His incarnation, His teaching, and His works, we see the nature and character of God the righteous Father on display. If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. If you want to know what God has said, listen to Jesus.

And Jesus says, not only that He has made the Father’s nature and character known, but that He will make it known, implying that the revelatory work is not yet finished. There was more to be revealed. But how can this be so, when He has already declared that He knows His earthly life will end on the following day? Certainly, He means that on the coming day, when He goes to the cross, He will be continuing to make known the nature and character of the righteous Father. The cross is the ultimate display of the nature of God. There are some theologians – those who may know a lot about God, but do not know God – who say that what we see of His character and nature in the cross is not a pretty picture. They see in the cross a bloodthirsty God who murders His own Son in an act that some have described as “cosmic child abuse.”[6] As Paul said, “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” For those of us who have come to believe in Jesus, and to know God through Him, we see in the cross a perfect picture of the attributes of God the righteous Father. In the cross, we see His love, His mercy and grace, His holiness and justice, His wrath toward sin and His forbearance with man all displayed in one moment. The cross, like nothing else, shows us that God is the righteous Father.

Jesus continues to make God the Father known to us by the indwelling of His Spirit, who lives within all those who come to faith in Him. The Spirit illuminates our understanding of the written revelation of God in the Bible. As we read Scripture, the Spirit becomes our teacher, showing us on every page that this is the God whom we have come to know, the God who has saved us and adopted us as His children. How is it that we can know God? By coming to faith in the One whom He has sent, the One who has made His name known to us, and continues to do so by Spirit through His Word. By His Word, by His Spirit, in the message of the cross, proclaimed by His church, Jesus continues to make the righteous Father known until that day prophesied in Jeremiah 31:34 when no man will say to another, “Know the Lord,” for in that day, the Lord says, “they will all know Me.”

The knowledge of God is not like the knowledge of history or some other academic subject. In this life, with our finite understanding, we will not become “masters” of the subject. You can go to seminary and get a degree called a “Master of Divinity,” but you have not mastered the Divine. All of life is a process of growing in grace and in the knowledge of Him (2 Pet 3:18). And as we grow in our knowledge of God, we grow also in our understanding and experience of what it means to be loved by Him. Jesus said that He makes the Father’s name known to us “so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them.” Just as a child grows to experience throughout his or her life the full magnitude of what it means to be loved by earthly parents, so the adopted children of God come to experience in increasing ways the blessing of living in the Father’s love. We come to know that we are loved with the same love that God has for His only begotten Son. That love surrounds and secures us through all of life’s circumstances, be they pleasant or unpleasant. Moreover, as we grow in our comprehension of that love, we begin to display that love for others. We come to love one another with the very love of God that has been given to us. We find the answer to the prayer found in Ephesians 3 taking shape in our lives as we grow in this love. That prayer is that we may be rooted and grounded in love, and be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge (3:17-18).

But it is not just that the love of God is found in us, but also that Christ Himself is within us. He says that He has made the Father known to us “so that … I [may be] in them.” He has given His Spirit to indwell and live within all who believe upon Him by faith, so that we can truly say that Christ Himself is in us. As we grow in the knowledge of God, we come to understand more and more what an infinite and immeasurable blessing this is. He truly is Immanuel, “God with us” (Isa 7:14). He is with us in good times and bad times, and we are never alone. As we grow in our understanding of this, we begin to see Christ in our brothers and sisters of the faith as well. It affects how we treat one another and how we relate to one another, and it heightens our awareness that when we are gathered together, there is a special manifestation of His presence in our midst. Where the love of God is shared between the followers of Christ, He is truly among us in a unique way.

Into a world that does not know God, Jesus has come to make Him known. Those who come to know Jesus can truly say that, through Him, they have come to know God. The assurance of this knowledge is found in His indwelling presence within and among them, and in the love of the Father that flows to them and through them. We have become, as it were, the embodiment of the presence and love of God in the world. If the world is to know Him, then we must continue the work of Jesus. Just as He knew the Father and made Him known, so these must become our priorities as well. We must continue to grow in our knowledge of Him, and we must seek to make Him known to all that we encounter. If our testimony for Him is rejected, and if we ourselves become the object of the world’s hatred in so doing, it is only evidence of the world’s ignorance of God. As Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (Jn 15:18). It is also evidence that we are not of the world, but belong to God. Jesus said, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you” (15:19). But, we rest assured in the love of God, and we secure one another by that love, as He empowers us and enables us to persevere in knowing Him and making Him known in the world. These five words -- Know Him, Make Him Known – describe the mission of Jesus, the mission that He has called us to carry on for Him in the world. If you do not know Him, you can today by turning from your sins and placing your faith and trust in Him as your Lord and Savior, believing that He died for your sins and rose again in victory over your sin and its penalty. If you do know Him, by the power of His indwelling Spirit, and with a heart filled with His love, endeavor to make Him known to others.

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[1] J. I. Packer, Knowing God (20^th Anniv. Ed.; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1993), 18-19.

[2] Ibid., 26.

[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.35, 37.

[4] John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: John 12-21 (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 301.

[5] Marcus Rainsford, Our Lord Prays For His Own (Chicago: Moody, 1950), 446-447.

[6] Giles Fraser, cited by Albert Mohler, “Is the Apostolic Preaching of the Cross Insane?” Online: www.albertmohler.com/2007/04/06/is-the-apostolic-preaching-of-the-cross-insane/ Accessed August 13, 2015. 

The Desire of Jesus (John 17:24)

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One of the most beautiful promises in all of Scripture is found in Psalm 37:4 – “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” On the surface, perhaps it appears to be something like a blank check, promising us that God will give us whatever it is that we want in life. That is not what the passage means, however. More important than the object of our desires is the object of our delight. “Delight yourself in the Lord,” the Psalmist says. When the Lord Himself is our delight, our desires will be shaped by Him so that what we greatly long for is what He greatly desires to give us. Our desire becomes transformed by His desire when we delight in Him. So, instead of coming to God with a long list of our desires, we need to bring before Him a long list of our delights, and confess them before Him and repent of any delight we hold more closely than the delight of knowing Him. Our prayer should be that God would so shape our lives that He alone becomes the object our delight. As we delight in Him, His desire for us will become our desire, and He has promised to gratify the heartfelt desire of the one who delights in Him.

So, what is it that the Lord desires for us, and promises to grant to us when we delight in Him?  Here, as the lengthy prayer of Jesus found in John 17 draws to a close, the Lord states His desire plainly. Verse 24 contains the final petition of this prayer, and it begins, “Father, I desire.” The word “desire” is translated in other versions as “will” or “want” in various English versions of the Bible. In some passages, it is translated with the word “wish,” but the word “desire” seems fitting here in this context. The Lord Jesus does not make wishes, but He prays to His Father with confidence about what He desires. And the overarching desire of His heart, the desire which has prompted all else that He has prayed, and the desire that compels Him as He journeys toward the cross, is, “that they also whom You have give Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory.” He desires that His people, the people for whom He will lay down His life in death and take it up again in resurrection to save, to be present with Him and to behold the fullness of His glory.

So, as we look at His desire, which He presents before the Father here, I pray that these glorious truths will stir within us a deeper sense of delight in Him, and thereby transform our own desires to reflect His desire.

I. Jesus desires for His people to be with Him

It is a humbling thing to realize that God does not need us. He did not create humanity because He was lonely or because He needed something or someone to love. He lacked nothing that we complete. He created human beings simply because He wanted to. When He created man, He did not simply turn man loose in the world to go it alone. He created us to know Him and to live in relationship with Him. In the Garden of Eden, before the entrance of sin, God and man conversed as naturally as any man ever did with a friend. But with the entrance of sin, there came a rupture in man’s fellowship with God. The amazing thing about that rupture, however, is that it was man who withdrew from that fellowship, not God. Genesis 3 records it: “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” Aware of the guilt and shame of his sin, Adam had no desire to be in God’s presence. But God, the ever-loving and ever-faithful One, still desired for Adam to be in His presence. He came seeking Adam when Adam was intent on hiding from God. God called out, “Where are you?” It wasn’t because He didn’t know, or couldn’t find Him. He asked in order to solicit a response and a confession from Adam. Having received it, the Lord made a covering of skins for Adam and Eve, the result of a sacrificial substitute who died to cover their sins. In addition to a covering, the Lord also gave them a promise. The skins of the sacrificial animal was a foreshadowing of what God would do in the fullness of time for the entire human race. A Redeemer, the Seed of woman, was coming to destroy the works of the serpent by His own suffering. 

As Galatians 4 says, “In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.” Jesus Christ is the promised and long-awaited Redeemer who was coming to reconcile the wayward, sinful human race to God. When man was hiding in the darkness of sin, Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. He didn’t have to do it, but He desired to do it. The truth of the matter is that God really wants us to be with Him, so much so that He came to be with us. Isaiah promised the coming of One born to a virgin who would be called “Immanuel,” God with us. He came to be with us to make a way for us to be with Him forever. And here in this prayer, Jesus says that this is His desire: “that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am.” It is a humbling thing: He doesn’t need us, but He wants us. He wants us more than we want Him, and He wants us to be with Him more than we want it ourselves. 

He desires for His people to be with Him because He loves us. He says that we who belong to Him by faith are His Father’s gift to Him. Because He loves the Father, He cherishes the gift that the Father has given Him. And because the Father loves the Son, He has given Him a people who will believe in Him and belong to Him by faith, and who will delight in Him for eternity. Jesus says, “I desire that they will be with Me where I am.”

When He says, “Where I am,” He is not referring to where He was at that very moment. In fact, His disciples were with Him where He was as He prayed this prayer. And, He is praying for others who aren’t even born yet, but who will believe on the basis of the Gospel that these disciples would proclaim. So the “where” of this prayer is somewhere else. Throughout the prayer, He has said that He is returning to His Father, that is, He is going back to heaven. On the following day, He will die upon the cross, and following His resurrection, He will ascend to glory. And His prayer is that those who belong to Him by faith will join Him in heaven. He desires to enjoy eternity in the company of all who call upon His name. Just a short time before this, He had said to them, “In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (14:2-3). Whether it is through the door of death, or if we should remain alive until He returns, we have this promise that He will have the desire of His heart fulfilled. He has prepared us a place, and will come and receive us that we might be with Him forever.

There is a sense in which His desire for us to be with Him relates to us even here and now. Because Jesus desires for us to be with Him in heaven forever, He would surely delight for us to spend time with Him even now. Every time we open our Bibles to hear Him speak to us, and every time we converse with Him in prayer and exalt Him in worship, we are enjoying a foretaste of His desire to be with us. It delights Him for us to be with Him, and the more it delights us to be with Him, the more we will long for heaven as our ultimate home. C. S. Lewis wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.”[1] We may not recognize it as such, but every desire we have that nothing in this world will satisfy is a nagging reminder that our ultimate joy and satisfaction can only be found in heaven – not because of the people we will see again, or the beauty of the place, but because there we will be with Christ forever. Our lives and this world are hard-wired to provide us with dissatisfaction until we make Him our delight and desire. And when we delight ourselves in Him and desire Him above all else, our desire has come to mirror His own. He desires for His people to be with Him.

II. Jesus desires for His people to behold His glory

Like many of you, I love to travel. When you love to travel, it’s hard to not sound like a travel agent or a salesperson of some kind as you tell others about your journeys. You want them to share somehow vicariously in your experiences: to see what you saw, to taste what you tasted, to feel what you felt. And there is nothing quite so disheartening to a travel junkie as when the stories of their adventures are met with a yawning disinterest. It is hard to stir up excitement in someone else simply by telling them what you experienced. They have to experience it for themselves. I can tell you all about my visit to the Grand Canyon and show you pictures of it, but your jaw will only drop when you stand on the rim and behold it for yourself.

No matter how many frequent flyer miles you have racked up in your lifetime, no one ever traveled the distance that Jesus Christ did. You may have circumnavigated the globe numerous times, but Jesus journeyed from heaven to earth. As He prays this prayer, He is on the verge of His return voyage. While upon the earth, Jesus has taught His disciples about His Father, His heavenly homeland, and Himself. And they have seen glimpses of His true nature – not entirely unlike seeing snapshots from someone else’s travels. In the miracles that He performed, they saw His glory – but it was a glory that was veiled in flesh. In spite of the clarity of His words and the wonder of His works, they had not seen the unveiled splendor of His true and glorious nature. The same is true for us. We have seen glimpses and glimmers of glory, but we are looking, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “through a glass darkly.” A day is coming for those who believe upon Christ to see the full radiance of His glory, “then face to face.” And that is the day for which Jesus longs. He desires for us to behold His glory. He prays that His disciples, including those of us who have come to know Him by faith, would be with Him where He is, “so that they may see My glory which You have given Me.”

In that day, we will see the fullness of Jesus’ divine glory – the glory of God Himself in the person of Jesus. It is the glory that was His for eternity past, prior to the days of His flesh. It is the glory that Jesus prayed in verse 5 that the Father would restore to Him, and which will be His for eternity future. That will be the central focus of every eye in heaven – the unmediated, unveiled, and unobstructed glory of God in Christ. If you look at the book of Revelation, where John was given an unparalleled vision of heaven, you will notice that in all of his vivid descriptions of its majestic beauty, the central focus is always on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Chapter 4, when he has the first glimpse of it, he says first and foremost that he saw “a throne, and one sat on the throne.” Everything else he mentioned in that initial vision is described in terms of its orientation to that throne. And in the midst of it all stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, and all of heaven erupted in worship of this Lamb, crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing” (5:12). Near the end of the book, John writes of heaven that it has “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb” (21:23). He writes, “They will see His face” (22:4). That is what makes heaven heaven. It is not merely that we will be reunited with loved ones who have preceded us in death, or surrounded by the beauty of golden streets and jeweled walls. It is that we will be with Jesus and we will see Him, in all of His glory, face to face.

This has been the desire of every human heart since Adam and Eve were banished from Eden – to see God face to face. That desire is not always recognized, but it is there in every one of us. It is what prompts us to seek and enjoy beauty. It is what comes through in those moments of joy when we behold the wonders of creation. We see the artistry, and we want to see the Artist. The Psalmist says, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psa 73:25). Job cried out from the depths of his suffering, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another” (Job 19:25-27). But the amazing thing is that, not only is this the desire of our hearts, it is the desire of the Lord Jesus as well. He wants us to see His glory.

He says that His glory was given to Him by the Father, “for You loved Me before the foundation the world.” His glory is a manifestation of the unique relationship that the Father and the Son have within the unity of the Triune Godhead. His glory marks Him out as the divine Son of God, who has existed with God and as God from before all time. God’s love is often demonstrated in Scripture by His gifts. As John 3:16 says so familiarly, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” But in His love for the Son, He has also given Him gifts. Two are mentioned here in this prayer: He has given His Son glory – a glory that He has vowed to not share with another (Isa 42:8), but which He gladly shares with the Son, because He is fully God with the Father and the Spirit. And He has given His Son a people – as Jesus says so affectionately in this verse, “they whom You have given Me” – a people to behold His glory and to exult in it forever.

He desires for us to be with Him in heaven and to behold the fullness of His glory. It will not be because He has acquired more glory in heaven than He already had, but that we will be better able to see it. That is because we will share in that glory. As if seeing it were not enough, we will participate in it, for unless we did, we would not be able to see it. The writer of our Gospel will say in His first epistle, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 Jn 3:2). And John says that the confidence we have in this hope has an effect on us here and now. He says, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn 3:3). Jesus promised a blessing to those who are pure in heart, that they will “see God” (Matt 5:8). And if we really desire to see God, we will persevere, by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, as He shapes us into the purity of Christlikeness. As we pursue and persevere in holiness, our vision of the glory of Christ will grow ever more in focus through all the days of our lives, until the day comes when we see Him face to face and share in His glory because we will be made like Him, fully and finally. David said in Psalm 17:15, “As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.”

This prayer of Jesus is also a promise. It is a promise for all who come to know Him in life as the Lamb of God who was slain to take away the sin of the world – the sacrificial substitute who took our sins and their penalty upon Himself as He died on the cross in our place, and who defeated sin and death on our behalf in His resurrection. If you have never come to know Him in this way, this promise is not for you. The implicit promise for those who do not know Him as Lord and Savior is the opposite – they will not be where He is, and they will not behold His glory. But for those who belong to Him, who have been given to Him by the Father and have come to know Him through repentance and faith, we have the assurance we will be with Him and we will behold His glory. And this is what He desires for us. Knowing that this is His desire for us causes us to delight all the more in Him. And the promise of God is that those who delight in Him will receive the desires of their hearts. His desire becomes our desire, to be with Him and to behold His glory. And that unquenchable desire grows increasingly until the day when it is gratified in full and we enter heaven to be with Him and to behold Him with new eyes forevermore.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 130.

That They May Be One (John 17:20-23)

Audio

In Exodus 28:29, we read that Aaron, the high priest, was required to come before God wearing the special breastplate which had been crafted for his use, inscribed with “the names of the sons of Israel … over his heart when he enters the holy place, for a memorial before the Lord continually.” We have a high priest who is greater than Aaron. Our High Priest is the Lord Jesus Himself. In John 17, we have a prayer that we refer to as the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. Here we find Him interceding for His disciples – not only for the eleven original faithful disciples but, as verse 20 says, “for those also who believe in Me through their word.” God the Son, our High Priest, comes before God the Father, bearing the names of those whom He has redeemed upon His heart to intercede for us before the eternal throne of grace.[1]

For several weeks we have considered what He prays for during this prayer. We come now to a petition that is so close to His heart that He prays not once, nor even twice, but three times in this chapter. This petition is repeated in verses 11, 21, and 22. As Rainsford writes, “He was willing to ask the best things for them, and He merited that they should obtain any blessing He might be pleased to demand for them of His Father. Yet He doth not ask for worldly riches, nor long life, nor great influence; … He doth not ask that they should be exempt from trial, and difficulties, and temptations, and disappointments.”[2] So what does He ask for so repeatedly in this magnificent prayer? He prays that they “may be one.” His great longing and desire to see His followers, His church, stand together in unity.

As we look at these few verses today, we will examine three components of this prayer for unity in the church. He prays about the pattern of our unity, the basis of our unity, and the result of our unity. It is fitting, and entirely in the sovereign providence of God, that we take up this text on a Communion Sunday, for when we come to the Lord’s Table and take the bread and the cup, we are celebrating our union with Christ and with one another. We drink one cup and eat one bread as a testimony to being one body under the headship of one Lord. But even as we celebrate this truth, we also recognize that our unity is often flawed and imperfect, coming short of what the Lord Jesus has prayed for us to experience and manifest. So, in the Word set before us today, let us also be prayerful that we might “be perfected in unity” as Jesus prays in verse 23. Let us follow the pattern, stand on the basis, and see the results of this unity for which our High Priest has prayed for us.

I. The pattern of our unity.

When instructions were given in the Law for the building of the Tabernacle, the Lord said that it must be constructed “according to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it” (Ex 25:9). Had God simply told His people to build for Him a sanctuary where He would dwell among them and meet with them, it could have taken any shape imaginable. But He did not leave the design up to the imaginations of men; He gave them a precise pattern of what this place was to look like. In a similar way, when Jesus says that His prayer for His people is that they may be one, there are many ways that we could interpret and imagine this sort of unity. But, as with the Tabernacle, Jesus provides us with a pattern for our unity. It is not to look as we envision or imagine it, but as He has designed it and prayed for it to be.

The pattern for our unity in the church is the unity that is found in God Himself. Jesus prays in verse 21, “that they may all be one, even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You.” Again in verses 22-23, He prays, “that they may be one, just as we are One; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity.” So the unity for which Jesus prays is one that is patterned after the unity of God Himself – our Triune God who is One God, existing eternally, indivisibly, and concurrently as three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When God acts in the world, it is an act of all three Persons of the Godhead. Jesus says that the Father is in Him, and He is in the Father, and in John 10 He says that He and the Father are One. In John 5, as Jesus was fielding accusations that He had violated the Sabbath by healing a lame man, He attested that He does the work of the Father, and that the Father has given Him the work that He is to do. He claimed “to have the same authority, purpose, power, honor, will, and nature as the Father.”[3] Again, in John 14:10, Jesus says that this unity is so thorough, that His words and deeds are actually those of the Father. The Father, and the Son, and the Spirit have unique roles and responsibilities in creation, redemption, providence, consummation and judgment, but each One operates in perfect harmony with the other, acting as the One God who He is. No Person of the Trinity is more or less important than the other, and none of the roles or works of Father, Son or Spirit is any less significant than any other. But as Father, Son, and Spirit work in unified harmony in the world, God’s work is done as only He can do it.

There is, of course, a sense in which we – finite and fallen human beings – can never attain to the kind of unity that exists within the perfect self of the Triune God. But Jesus is praying that even our imperfect unity will be perfected (v23) according to the pattern of God Himself. This means that we come to see one another in terms of our identity in Jesus Christ. As Jesus says in verse 21, “that they also may be in Us,” and in verse 23, “I in them.” We need to view one another as equals before God because of our position in Christ. Just as there are distinctions and diversity among the Persons of the Trinity, so there will be distinctions and diversity among us. But this diversity ensures that where one lacks gifts, another has them; where one is weak, another is strong. We are not called to a uniformity in which we are all cookie-cutter clones of one another, but a unity in which we are all uniquely being shaped into the likeness of Christ in ways that complement one another. We will have different roles and different responsibilities, but when we work together in a unified way, we will advance the work of God together in the world.

Nowhere is this kind of unity more thoroughly described than in the second chapter of Philippians. There Paul says,

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion,  make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.  Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. (Php 2:1-4)

As we consider one another in this way, we will see the beauty of unity that can only arise in right relationship with God, and which reflects the pattern of His own unity.

II. The basis of our unity.

Unity is important, but it is not ultimate. If all we had was Jesus praying that His followers might be one, we might be tempted to think unity was ultimate. But, in all of His prayers for unity, He mentions the foundation of this unity. It is never unity for unity’s sake, or unity around the issue of unity. This has been the flaw of many ecumenical movements in the history of Christianity. Surely, it is admirable to seek to unite Christians as one body in the world, and much of the division we see among denominations and movements in Christianity break God’s heart. But in so many of the attempts to unite the global Church of Jesus Christ over the centuries, the strategy has been to remove all that divides us from the discussion in order to unite us around nothing more than unity. A unified church is like a towering skyscraper for Christ in the world. But like all skyscrapers, it has to be built on a firm foundation. Unity itself is no foundation. There are divisions in the church, and there always will be. Some of those divisions are over issues that really matter. To remove them from the table in the name of unity is to build on shifting sand. Christ has given us a rock-solid foundation on which to build a unified church. Like the solid and stable structure of a three-legged stool, our unity is here described in terms of a three-fold basis on which it rests. Think of them like the legs of a stool.

First, a church can only be unified as it rests upon the common confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus says that this prayer is for “those … who believe in Me.” Simply put, there is no unity to be found where there is not this common faith in Christ. Where there is this common faith, there can be unity that transcends every other aspect of life: ethnicity, generation, gender, socioeconomics, education, and so on. This is why the church in our day must be mobilized as a testifying force in a fragmented world. For 50 years, Immanuel has been a pioneer as a church for all people, and the larger Christian community has still not caught up with where Immanuel was a half-century ago. People come in here and wonder how it is that young and old, rich and poor, and people of all ethnicities, can be united in the fellowship of a single church. The answer is simple: the Gospel of Jesus Christ has torn down all the barriers that might threaten to divide us. If we are one body, it is only because we are one body in Him. It is also the case that many of the divisions between Christian movements, churches, and denominations, and within many churches, the root cause is that there are some involved who have not been genuinely born again by faith in Jesus. Satan wreaks havoc on a church and a Christian movement by planting unregenerate unbelievers in the midst of it, and where that is the case, there is always a threat to unity. For a church to be unified, there must be a common confession of faith in Jesus Christ.

The second leg that we find to this basis of unity is the Word of God. Jesus said that He is praying for those “who believe in Him through their word.” Who are the “they” of “their word”? They are His apostles, the ones whom He chose to complete the written revelation of the Word of God that we have in the New Testament. He gave the Word to them (v8), and He will give the Spirit to them, that they might be able to write the inspired revelation of God’s Word for us (14:26 ;16:12-14). Our unity in the church must have a common foundation of confidence in the Bible as the Word of God. We cannot stand together under the Lordship of Christ if we are not in agreement about who He is, what He has said, what He has done, and what He has called us to do in the world. Those things, and much more, are disclosed to us in the Scriptures. As Carson writes, our unity is “a unity predicated on adherence to the revelation of the Father mediated to the first disciples through His Son, the revelation they accepted (vv6, 8), and then passed on” to us.[4] Where there is disunity in the church, there is an obvious malfunction in our understanding, our confidence, or our conviction in God’s truth. To be unified, we must stand together on that firm foundation that is laid for our faith in His excellent Word.

The third leg of this unity that Jesus mentions in His prayer is that of His own glory. In verse 22, Jesus says, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one.” So unity somehow grows out of the glory of Christ. Glory speaks of God’s nature, or in this sense, Christ’s nature – His character and person. He is the radiance of the Father’s glory, as Hebrews says. As God’s glory was present, at work, and on display in Christ in the world, so now His glory is manifested in the lives of His people. Christ, in calling us to know and serve Him, has given us His glory. But just as Jesus’ glory was ultimately displayed in His self-sacrifice, so the glory of God will be seen most clearly in the lives of His people as we lay ourselves down in sacrificial service to one another and to the world. God promised through Jeremiah that He would gather a people together for Himself, and give them “one heart and one way,” or as another translation has it, “singleness of heart and action” (Jer 32:39, NASB, NIV). As we become increasingly aware that we are the people through which God seeks to make His glory and the glory of His Son known in the world, we will unite together and labor together toward this aim. Let us ask ourselves, how would our lives look different if we lived in such a way to make the glory of God-in-Christ known through our service to Him and our relationships with our brothers and sisters in the Church? How would our church look different if our singular aim was making the glory of God-in-Christ manifest in this community and to the ends of the earth? Where other aims and other pursuits enter into a church, division ensues because everyone has their own idea of what our priorities and activities ought to be. But where we can agree together that, whatever we do, whatever we desire, and whatever we decide, our singular aim is to make the glory of God-in-Christ known, there is a great unity that will arise in our fellowship that will be unmistakably evident to all.

So, our unity is to be a unity that rests upon this three-legged stool, as it were: a basis consisting of a common confession that Christ is Savior and Lord; a common conviction that His Word is truth; and a common commitment to pursue and demonstrate His glory in and through our lives individually and together as the church.

This brings us to the final element of Jesus prayer for the unity of His people …

III. The results of our unity. 

Why should we, as a church, pursue unity? Why should we take threats against it seriously? Why should we be concerned if it is lacking? First we should say that unity is not an end unto itself. Remember, it is important, but it is not ultimate. We do not pursue it apart from the three-fold basis we have just outlined. But we also do not pursue it apart from a passionate desire to see the results that Jesus prayed would come from our unity. The aim is not to have unity for unity’s sake, but unity for the sake of our global mission.

In verse 21, Jesus prayed that His followers “may all be one … so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” For reasons we will only understand in heaven, Jesus Christ has chosen to anchor the world’s perception of His claims on the unity of His church. That is mind-boggling. How will the world become convinced that He is who He says He is – the One who was sent by the Father to redeem the world? The church will prove it, not through argumentation, but through a demonstration of unity.

He goes further in verse 23, praying that His people “may be one … so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” The claim of the Christian church is that we who follow Jesus have been adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters through our faith in Him. We claim that we are the special objects of God’s love, unequaled by any affection other than the love of the Father for the Son. We tell the world that they can experience God’s love in this way too, if they will come to call upon Christ to save them. But Jesus says here that if we are not unified, the world will never believe our testimony. An absence of unity in the church will undermine, not only our witness, but the integrity of His own claims in the world.

We all know people, I imagine, who once professed to be followers of Christ and were active in their churches, but who today have drifted away from Christ and His Church. Surely among those we know, there are many who would say that the reason they turned their backs on the Lord and the church is because of the turmoil that they witnessed and experienced in the church. We also know people who have never professed Christ who, when we witness to them, are quick to throw in our faces the failures and follies of some church they have known about. Friends, we have to come to grips with the fact that when the world judges Christ and the church on the basis of our failures, it is because Jesus Himself has given them the right to do so. He said that the world’s belief in Him, and the world’s belief in our claim to be God’s specially loved people would be based on the unity that they see in us.

Because we are God’s sons and daughters that have been adopted into His family, brothers and sisters to one another, we have to take the bond of family unity seriously. Because we believe that Jesus is mighty save, that salvation is His free gift, and that heaven and hell are real places where real people go for a real eternity, we must take unity seriously. A short time ago, we adopted a “conflict resolution policy” here at Immanuel, and several people asked why it was necessary. They asked if we were trying to force people to comply with things they didn’t agree with, or demand uniformity or silence. No friends, there is a time for disagreements, room for diversity of opinions, and freedom to agree to disagree. But the policy was put into place so that we can address, confront, and protect the unity of the church in a way that honors Christ and protects the witness of this church for Christ in the community and the world. But that policy can only do so much. It comes down to a daily determination on the part of each of us that we will humble ourselves and elevate our brothers and sisters and serve them, that we will unite with one another on the basis of God’s word, faith in Christ, and a commitment to pursue His glory, that the world will believe and know who Christ is and who we are as His people.

Do you know what will impress the world about the church? It will not be our size, our prosperity, or our sense of self-importance. It will be, according to the prayer and promise of Jesus, the unity that the world sees among the members of His Church who stand together by faith in Him, upon His word, committed to serving one another and the world for His glory.

In the second century, Tertullian wrote a defense of the Christian faith to a culture that despised the church. He said,

We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. … But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves would sooner kill.

What impressed the world in that day is what will impress the world in our day. Let the world look upon the church and see unity, and say of us as was said of the church centuries ago: “See how they love one another.”

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[1] Marcus Rainsford, Our Lord Prays for His Own (Chicago: Moody, 1950), 372.

[2] Ibid., 372.

[3] John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: John 12-31 (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 290.

[4] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 568. 

Joyful Words in a Dangerous World (John 17:13-20)

Audio 

One of the most popular movies in America right now is called “Inside Out,” and after just a few weeks, it is already the number three grossing movie that Disney-Pixar has ever released. The movie is about an eleven year old girl named Riley – no, actually, it is about the emotions within her: Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust, and Sadness. Joy is the dominant character, always wanting to be in charge and push the other emotions to the side. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that by the end of the movie, Joy has learned that she needs her fellow emotions to be complete and whole. What fascinated me most about this movie was how close it comes to presenting a biblical, Christian, perspective on emotional well-being. The Christian life is not all about running around being happy all the time. If you can genuinely do that, congratulations, but if you can’t, that’s okay. Life’s about more than that. The Christian life is about growing in joy, and joy is something that God Himself must impart to us, that can exist within us in spite of our circumstances, and that needs to exist alongside of other emotions and states of mind.

How would you define “Joy”? C. S. Lewis was captivated by the notion of “Joy,” using it to describe many aspects of the Christian life and the spiritual hunger of all humanity. It shows up in almost every one of his books, and ironically, he even married a woman named “Joy.” But, even Lewis had a hard time defining joy. Last year, a previously unseen, handwritten letter from Lewis to a Mrs. Ellis was found tucked into a second-hand copy of his book The Problem of Pain. In the letter, Lewis writes, “Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony. … It jumps under one’s ribs and tickles down one’s back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o’nights. It shocks one awake when the other puts one to sleep. … [O]ne second of joy is worth 12 hours of Pleasure.”[1]

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians 5. That means that we cannot manufacture it by our own natural resources or will power. It is imparted to us, and through us, by the indwelling Holy Spirit. In 1 Peter 1:8, the Apostle speaks of rejoicing with joy inexpressible and full of glory. John Piper says that, with this phrase, “[Peter] is not describing a decision; he is describing an explosion. You can decide to brush your teeth … but you cannot … decide to rejoice. You can decide to do things that may bring you joy — drive to the country, visit a friend, read a psalm — but whether joy actually happens is not in your own power.”[2] And joy cannot be shattered by contrary experiences or emotions. It is deeper, more enduring, and more ultimately satisfying. That is why the Bible can speak of rejoicing in suffering (Rom 5:3), in affliction (1 Thes 1:6), and in poverty (2 Cor 8:2). Because joy is rooted in our inseparable relationship with Jesus Christ, it transcends the hardships of the world.

This is the point of the passage we have just read. The seventeenth chapter of John is one long prayer – we call it “the High Priestly Prayer” – of Jesus. We’ve given attention to it for several weeks and will for several more weeks. In the portion we are considering today, you will note that Jesus acknowledges His imminent departure from the world. He says to the Father in v13, “now I come to You.” Surely His departure means suffering the cruel death of the cross, but also the joy of returning to His heavenly home and the eternal glory and fellowship with the Father that were His from eternity past. But His disciples will remain behind in the world. For them, His departure could mean nothing but unchecked and unrestrained sorrow. All they have known of this new life they have enjoyed for 3 years will come crashing down in a very short time, bringing them into a potential death-spiral of despair.

This is why Jesus prays for them, and prays for them in such a specific way. He prays, “These things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” But it is always helpful to remember that He is not praying only for that first generation of disciples, but for all of us who have come to follow Him by faith. In verse 20, He prays, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.” That’s you and me, and every other Christian who has ever lived or ever will. He is praying that we all may have the fullness of His joy within ourselves. Notice that the joy He wishes us to have is His own – the very joy that characterized His life; that divine joy that the Holy Spirit imparts to and through us. He prays that we will have this, not in part, but in fullness. He desires that our lives would be characterized by complete and total joy, even when our circumstances are not happy, desirable, or pleasant. Jesus said that He speaks these things “in the world.” In the world, there is much suffering and hardship. Jesus Himself had endured it, and was on the precipice of the worst that anyone has ever experienced or ever will. He knows His disciples will experience it as well. But in the midst of it, we can have joy – His joy, made full, in ourselves, in this world (of all places).

Jesus says He speaks “these things” for this reason – that we might have this kind of joy. So what are the “things” He speaks that enable to us to experience the fullness of His joy in ourselves in the world? There are at least three here that I want to draw your attention to in the time we have today.

I. God’s Word gives us joy in a world that hates us. (v14)

When I first started traveling overseas, I would grow very homesick. On those first few trips to Africa, there was virtually no way to communicate with folks from home. Nowadays, we are a bit spoiled. We have wifi and cell phone signals almost everywhere in the world, and we can email, text, twitter, facebook, facetime, and skype so that we never have to be entirely severed from our comfort zone. And yet, as Christians living in a fallen world, we are never in our true comfort zone. We are, as it were, in enemy-occupied territory. It is as though we are secret agents in a foreign land, and our very presence there is despised and dangerous.

Jesus said that the world hates His disciples. The “world” refers to the general mass of humanity which is marching along in its unregenerate and sinful state in unflinching rebellion against God. As a Christian, you represent everything the world hates, and so you yourself become a target of that hatred. In America, we have been immune to this for a long time, because traditionally it was socially advantageous to be at least friendly toward, if not openly aligned with, Christians in the broader culture. But that day is gone and a new day is upon us. If you want to know how Christians are viewed by “the world,” just read the opinion pieces that circulate daily about issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. We are viewed as intolerant, hate-filled bigots. And in a world that champions tolerance so ardently, we may be surprised to find out how intolerant the world is toward people who do not hold to its moral values.

Hatred. It is a strong word, but it is not an exaggeration. True Bible-believing Christians of consistent conviction and action have always been shunned by the broader culture, even when the broader culture was nominally Christian itself. The world hates the Christian because, Jesus says, the Christian is “not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Jesus came into the world from another realm. This world was not His home; heaven was. But though we were of the world, having been born into it and lived as a part of it for some part of our lives, we were chosen from out of the world, as Jesus said several times in the preceding verses and paragraphs. This world which was once our home is no more. Our citizenship has been transferred to heaven and we live in this world now as alien residents. We do not share this world’s values, priorities or passions, and for that reason, the world hates us.

It can be a lonely place, living in this world as aliens and strangers. But Jesus says that He has given us the Word of God so that we might have joy. When I was in Nepal, I could read the Greensboro News and Record every day online, and communicate with my family online, and feel connected to home, though I was on the opposite side of the world. In a similar way, Jesus has given us God’s Word so that we may stay connected to our true homeland and have His joy in the midst of a world that hates us. Every day, we can read the Word and communicate with God through it. His promises remind us that we are not alone, though we are surrounded by a culture that hates us and the God in whom we trust. He reminds us that He is present with us and in us. Though we are hated in the world, His word reminds us that we are loved at home in heaven, and when this world has done its dead-level worst to us, we are welcomed there. We find unshakeable joy in the midst of a hate-filled world as we immerse ourselves in the Word of God which Jesus has imparted to us. We must not dare to neglect the Word, for we do so to our own peril and to the forfeiture of our own joy.

II. God’s Protection gives us joy in a world dominated by evil. (v15)

Many of you know that my aim in life as a young man was not be a preacher. From my childhood, I dreamed of being an Air Force pilot, and had it not been for God’s intervention in my life, that is probably what I would be doing today. During those years, I went to every air show I could go to in order to see the jets that I dreamt of flying on display. I recall vividly a demonstration that I saw at numerous air shows involving a modified C-130 cargo plane that had the ability to extract a downed pilot from enemy territory without landing. On one pass, the plane would drop a crate via parachute, which the downed pilot would open once it hit the ground. Inside the crate was an apparatus that had a large balloon on end, and an elaborate harnessing system on the other. He would strap himself to the line and deploy the balloon, and the plane would make another pass to grasp the balloon, yanking the downed pilot from the ground and reeling him into the cargo door on the rear of the plane. The entire process took about ten minutes. I never ceased to marvel at that. As an aspiring pilot, I never wanted to experience being downed behind enemy lines, but I was glad to know that there was a way to be extracted if it ever happened.

I’m sure that, as Christians, there have been times when we wished that we could be similarly extracted from this hostile world. Truly, the world is enemy occupied territory, under the domain of the chief of evil, Satan. Under the sovereign rulership of God, Satan is allowed authority here on the world for a season – a season that began at the fall of man into sin in the Garden of Eden, and will end at the return of Christ at the end of the age. The world is a battlefield for Satan and his demonic and human forces to wage war against God and the people of His kingdom. And as we endure life on this battlefield, seeing sin and suffering abound, and experiencing the brunt of it in our own persons on a regular basis, it is only natural to wish that we could be delivered from it. In Scripture we find Moses, Elijah, and Jonah all praying that God would not delay in removing them from the world, even by way of death (Num 11:15; 1 Ki 19:4; Jon 4:3, 8). We may have prayed that way ourselves. We need not be surprised to find that the answer to our prayer is the same as the answer to theirs. In each case, the answer seems to be a resounding, “No!”

For God to answer our prayer to be removed from the world would be for Him to deny the prayer of His only begotten Son, who prayed in verse 15 that the Father would not “take them out of the world.” Though this world is not our home, and it is enemy occupied territory which Satan has filled with evil, Jesus Christ desires that we remain in it, at least until our work here is finished. This would be utterly depressing and disheartening if it were not for the fact that He has prayed for something better than evacuation for us. He has prayed for our protection. In verse 15, He prays, “Keep them from the evil one.”

Every time I have ever traveled overseas, the one question I receive most often before I go is this: “Is it safe where you are going?” I don’t think I have ever been to a country that wasn’t on some kind of watch list of the State Department. So, I suppose the answer is, “No, it isn’t safe.” But, friends, if the last few years have taught us anything in America, it is that safety is a myth. You do not have to travel overseas to be unsafe. Satan is as active in the United States as he is anywhere else in the world. Jesus did not promise safety to His followers, He promised and prayed for our protection. If the world in which we live were safe, we would not need protection. Not only did He pray for us to be kept from the evil one, He taught us to pray for it ourselves. In the model prayer, we are instructed to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” We need constant protection from the evil of the enemy with which he ravages this fallen world.

So, there is joy to be had, though the enemy is powerful. We are kept, protected, by the power of one who is even greater. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world (1 Jn 4:4). And though the world is unsafe, we are protected, and therefore we can have joy, come what may in this world.

III. God’s Mission gives us joy in a world that needs Him. (vv16-19)

We have this sort of notion that life is all about enjoying ease and leisure, and work is what interferes with that aim. This is not the case. Work was given to Adam to do before the fall. Frustration in work, and the laziness and lethargy it produces, is a product of the fall – fruit of our sinfulness. We were made to be active and at work in the world. To work with the abilities and talents God has given us provides a sense of satisfaction. But the greatest and most abiding joy is to labor toward the purpose for which God redeemed us. He saved us to put us on mission, carrying out the mission of Jesus Christ Himself to the ends of the earth, until Christ returns or calls us home in death. This is why we are left in this unsafe world, but protected by the Father’s power. To be taken out of the world might mean relief and ease for us, but it would mean destruction for the world. The world perishes apart from the witness of the Church of Jesus Christ, and Jesus has left us in this world for this purpose.

He reminds us again in verse 16 that we are not of the world, even as He is not of the world. But though the world is not our home, it is our base of operations for Him. And in order to be effective in our mission, we must be prepared. Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them.” To sanctify something is to set it apart from the rest, and in the Bible it has the sense of consecrating something or someone for a holy purpose. Jesus prays that the Father would do just this, consecrate His followers for a holy purpose. He sanctifies us as His indwelling Spirit shapes us to reflect the fullness of the image of Christ. But the tool that the Spirit uses for this sanctifying work is the Word that Jesus has imparted to us. Remember that in v14 He said, “I have given them Your word.” Here in v17 He says, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” As we ingest the Word of God, the Spirit of God uses it to transform us for the Father’s good purpose in our lives. And His good purpose is that we would become participants in the mission of Jesus Christ in the world.

“Sanctify them,” Jesus prayed, for “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” We have been sent by Jesus in a way that reflects His own sending from the Father. Jesus was sent into the world to seek and save the lost, by laying down His life to redeem humanity from sin. He was born to die, and to die for the sins of the human race. Having done that, and conquered death by His resurrection, salvation is available to all who call upon His name. But as Romans 10 says, “How will they call on Him in whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will the preach unless they are sent?” We have been sent by Jesus Himself so that we can proclaim the good news of His salvation in the hearing of the whole world – a world that hates us, a world that is under the reign of the enemy, but a world that desperately needs to hear and call upon the name of the Lord. Jesus sent us as He Himself was sent by the Father. We are not sent to accomplish redemption, as He was. Only He could accomplish that through His sacrificial death. But we are sent to make that redemption known by pointing others to Him. Like His own mission, ours may not always be safe or pleasant, but there is joy to be found in the doing of the work for which we ourselves were ransomed from sin. Ours is not a purposeless existence. We have a divine mission and a holy calling to make Christ known among all nations. As we engage in that mission, we will find a deep and abiding sense of joy that cannot be shaken by this world or anything in it.

Jesus said in v19, “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” In sanctifying Himself, Jesus was consecrating Himself fully to the Father’s mission. He was accepting the charge to live, to die, and to rise again for the redemption of humanity. If it were not for His self-sacrifice in laying down His life on the cross for our sins, we could have no joy. We would be separated from Him forever because of our sins. But because He has sanctified Himself, He has made it possible for us to know God through Him, to be reconciled to God, and to be cleansed, transformed, and used by God to extend His rescue mission into all the world. There is joy in knowing Him and making Him known. It is the abiding and satisfying joy of doing what we were created, redeemed, and empowered by God to do. Though the world may not celebrate our labor for the Lord, their own eternal destiny depends on the faithful carrying out of our mission.

Next to Jesus, I suppose the world has never seen a more joy filled man than the Apostle Paul. Paul comprehended and experienced the joy of the Lord to such an extent that he could sing praises to the Lord from the confines of a dingy jail cell and turn every perilous circumstance – from imprisonment, to earthquake, to shipwreck – into an opportunity to testify of the goodness and grace of the Lord Jesus. I don’t know that any follower of Christ ever suffered for the Lord to the extent that Paul did, and I don’t know that any were ever more effective for Christ than he was. And as we follow Christ in this world, we can expect no better or different reception than Paul did. In Acts 17, after preaching the gospel of the risen Jesus, the Bible says that some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this,” and yet others “joined him and believed.” For the joy of seeing those who will join and believe, we must endure the sneering and the questioning of others. God’s word provides us with joy in the midst of the world’s hatred. His protection safeguards us in an unsafe world controlled by the enemy, that nothing could ever steal our joy. And His mission gives us the joy of satisfaction in knowing that we are doing what He has made us, saved us, and called us to do.

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[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/09/unseen-cs-lewis-letter-defines-joy-surprised-by-joy. Accessed July 24, 2015

[2] http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/the-fruit-of-hope-joy. Accessed July 24, 2015.

Keep Them (John 17:9-12)

Audio

The great 20^th Century preacher Donald Grey Barnhouse once told the story of a woman named Elizabeth who was a servant in the home of Martin Luther. One day, she had decided she had had all that she could endure of her role in Luther’s home, and left without any notice. Some time later, when she became terribly ill, she did not know who to turn to, so she called upon Luther to come visit her. Coming in to her side, Luther asked, “Well, Elizabeth, what is the matter?” Elizabeth replied, “I have given away my soul to Satan.” Luther responded compassionately, “Elizabeth, listen to me. Suppose, while you lived in my house, you had sold and transferred all my children to a stranger. Would the sale and transfer have been lawful and binding?” Elizabeth answered quickly, “Oh no, for I had no right to do that.” Luther said, “Very well, you had still less right to give your soul to the archenemy; it no more belongs to you than my children do. It is the exclusive property of the Lord Jesus Christ; He made it, and when lost, He redeemed it; it is His.”[1]

Like Elizabeth, I suppose every Christian has wondered at times if we have done something which severed us from our relationship with Christ. And like Elizabeth, we need to be reminded at such times that it is impossible for one who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ to ever be separated from Him. For that assurance, we must turn to the Word of God, which reminds us often that it is impossible for a genuinely born-again believer in Christ to ever return to a state of spiritual lostness. As Barnhouse says, “Anyone who believes that one who has truly been born of God can get out of relationship with God and be finally lost is blind to great sections of truth in the Word of God. They look at some experiences in life instead of at the Word of God; they judge the Word by what they see in life, rather than judging life by what they see in the Word.”[2]

Christians have used various expressions for what we believe about the security and assurance we have in our relationship with Christ. It has been called “eternal security,” “the perseverance of the saints,” or “the preservation of the saints.” Baptists have often used the phrase, “once saved, always saved.” Our confession of faith, The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), expresses the truth more fully:

All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.[3]

As we turn to the Word of God to find the assurance of these promises, one of the clearest passages we can find is the one we have just read. John 17, often called the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, contains the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Bible. Several weeks ago, we looked at the first five verses and saw how Jesus prayed for Himself to be glorified. Last Sunday, we looked at verses 6-9 and saw that Jesus prays this prayer for His disciples and not for the world. And here in these verses, we see that, among the thing He prays for His disciples, He prays for those who belong to God through Him will be kept by God.

Jesus is praying this prayer on the eve of His crucifixion. Knowing that His departure is imminent, He says in verse 11, “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You.” The fulfillment of His purposes and the advancement of His kingdom in the world has been transferred over into the hands of His disciples and those, like ourselves, who would come to faith in Him through their message. Throughout the Gospels, we have seen how feeble, how fickle, and how frail these men were, and as we examine our own lives, we find that we are very much like them. Jesus knew that, left to themselves, His disciples would only make a mess of the mission with which He had entrusted them. And so He did not leave them to themselves, but prayed that they may be kept by the God to whom they belonged by their faith in Him.

Marcus Rainsford writes,

They had need of being kept. … [A]ll their own wisdom collectively and individually could not keep them for one moment; all their own watchfulness, all their gathered experience during the many months and years of their fellowship with Christ, could not keep them in one single difficulty; all their resolutions could not keep them for one hour; all their gifts—and many of them had great gifts—could not keep them in one solitary temptation; all their privileges, all their zeal, all their love, and the frequent warnings with which they had been warned, and the example daily before them utterly failed, and must fail, to keep them in one single difficulty or for one single moment.[4]

They had to be kept. And we have to be kept. And we are kept by Him to whom we ultimately and eternally belong. It is what Jesus prayed for us, and it is what the Father is glad to do in response to the prayer of His Son. I want to draw attention here to three elements of this portion of Jesus’ prayer, that we might draw encouragement and assurance from these words.

I. We belong to God for the glory of Christ (vv9-10)

In verse 6, which we looked at last week, Jesus says of His followers that they were the Father’s, and the Father gave them to the Son. Here in verse 9, Jesus says that His disciples were given to Him by the Father, and they still belong to the Father. By giving to the Son those whom He had sovereignly chosen out of the world as His own, the Father secured them for Himself in an eternal covenant bond. We belonged to Him in eternity past, He gave us to Christ, and we belong to Him for eternity future. Jesus said, “All things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine.” This is one of the clearest claims of deity that Christ ever made. All of us could, and should, say that all we have belongs to God. That is a proper declaration of Christian stewardship. But no sane man, who is merely a man, can say, “All that belongs to God the Father rightly belongs to Me.” For Jesus to say this, He must be more than a man, or else a complete madman. As C. S. Lewis rightly said, if Jesus’ claims are not true, they are the claims “of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most sane and humble of men.”[5] In saying that we belong to the Father, and to Himself, Jesus was ultimately saying that we who believe in Him belong forever to God.

If that were not enough, He says, “and I have been glorified in them.” We belong to God for the glory of Christ. It is nearly unfathomable to consider that Jesus, who is infinitely glorious in Himself, actually uses the likes of us to bring glory to Himself in the world. These original disciples were not extraordinary men, nor are any of us. Like them, our faith is often weak, our obedience is often imperfect, and our failures are known all to well to ourselves and those around us. But, Jesus is not ashamed to call us His own and, moreover, is actually able to bring glory to Himself through us. Our lives are on display for the world to see as trophies of His grace and glory.

Notice that He does not say He is glorified by us. Rather, He is glorified in us. It is not what we do for Him that brings Him that brings Him glory, but rather what He has done in us. It is not what we display of our own nature that glorifies Him, but what He displays of Himself in us. In our weakness, Christ is glorified for His matchless power. In our faithlessness, Christ is glorified for His infinite faithfulness. In our failures, He is glorified for His gracious mercy. As He bears with us in longsuffering patience, He is glorified by His enduring goodness. As Rainsford so wondrously stated,

Angelic might cannot display Christ's strength so much as our weakness does; the riches of heaven cannot display Christ's fullness so much as our poverty does; the holiness of archangels cannot speak His praise so much as the covering of our unrighteousness does; the anthems of the seraphim cannot utter His glory as shall the praises of His redeemed; and not all the worship of heaven's hosts can render to Him so grateful an offering, or crown Him with so rich a crown, as the love of His pardoned people.[6]

In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Paul says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” Having been bought with the price of Christ’s blood, you belong to Him, and belong to God forever through Him, and He can and will bring glory to the name of Jesus through you – through your successes and failures, your strengths and weaknesses, your victories and defeats. You are His for His glory. This should be of great encouragement to us, especially in those frequent moments of failure. Failure does not mean that we have been severed from Christ. It means that we have the opportunity to come to Him and repentance and ask Him to redeem the failure and turn it into something glorious for Himself. Would that we would all give Him our success and failures alike to bring glory to Himself, because we belong to Him for this purpose. He is committed to us, to ever be glorified in us. We ought to be encouraged by that, and commit ourselves therefore to bring glory to Him through every experience, good or bad, that we endure in life.

II. We are kept by God for the purpose of unity (v11)

Have you ever had a hard time getting along with someone? I’m sure we all have. It is part of life. Because we are all corrupted by sin, our thoughts, words, and actions are often at odds with each other. I have often said that people are like porcupines. If you get close enough to them, you are going to get pricked. We see it in our dysfunctional families, in our politically divided nation, and, sadly, even in churches. It is impossible to gather a group of people together and have identical opinions and preferences on everything, but hard enough to find agreement on even a few important things. And yet, Christ’s burning desire for His church is that it be united. Later in this prayer, He will pray that the church united would prove to the world His power to save. So a divided church is counterproductive to the spread of the Gospel in the world. And yet it happens so often, does it not?

Now, in His omnipotent power, Jesus could speak a word and obliterate all differences in His church immediately. He could eliminate our unique personalities, opinions and preferences, and program us like robotic machinery to conduct ourselves in a state of uniformity. But Jesus does not seek uniformity in His church; He seeks unity. He desires for His church to be filled with a diversity of people who are unified under the banner of His Gospel. We need differences among us: different gifts, different strengths, different abilities, different styles, different methods, and so on. But we need those differences to complement one another, not compete with one another, that where one is weak, another is strong; where one is poor, another is rich; where one lacks ability, another has it. And thus, we would have unity in the church that conveys to the world the greatness and glory of Jesus Christ and His saving grace.

Left to ourselves, however, we would never be able to manufacture this kind of unity. In verse 11, Jesus says, “I am no longer in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world.” And this world is no place for the unity He desires and prays for to arise organically. Because we are in the world, we are still subject to that inherent sinfulness in each of us that strives to be right, that seeks the first place, that craves power. Our opinions, preferences, and tastes are corrupted by our inherent sinfulness so that we bicker and grumble with each other over our differences. Also, in the world, we are subject to all the attacks and temptations of the devil and his forces, and the world’s ways which are always at odds with God’s. Thus, for the kind of unity that Jesus desires and deserves to arise within the church, He prays for His people to be kept by the Father. “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.” The unity is a result of being kept in the Father’s name.

As we examined before, the name of which Jesus speaks, the name which He said in verse 6 that He had come to manifest to us, represents God’s nature and character in its fullness. We can only be united with one another as we are transformed by God’s grace to reflect His own nature. This is something that only God can do by His power. Left to ourselves, we would not manifest any of God’s nature within ourselves, we would not remain faithful to Him, and we would not be united with one another. But Jesus has not left us to ourselves. He has left us to the power and grace of His Father by praying that we would be kept in His name. As each of us undergoes this gracious transformation, the nature of God comes to bear within and through us. We begin to love each other with His love, we begin to show one another the grace and forgiveness that He has shown us, and treat one another with the patience He has lavished upon us. Our priorities are shaped by His priorities, and we are able to move beyond differences over secondary matters in order to be united on the primary ones.

The unity that Jesus prays over us is the same unity that has been eternally enjoyed between the Father and the Son. Though co-equal, co-eternal, and of the same divine nature, the Father and the Son have different personalities, different responsibilities, and different roles in the singular plan of the united Godhead. The Son is not threatened by the Father, and the Father does not consider the Son a rival. There is a mutual cooperation between the distinct persons of the Trinity that leads to the fulfillment of His purposes. So, Jesus prays that we would be united in the same way. The uniqueness of our individual personalities, our gifts, and our responsibilities come together in harmony to advance the purpose of God in the world through His church. Simply put, as Christians living in this fallen world, we need each other far more than we need to be right, to get our way, or be in charge. We simply cannot exist as Christians in the world apart from the support of our fellow believers in the body of Christ.

I imagine all of us know someone who is a “church dropout,” who says that the reason that they no longer participate in the life of any church is because of the infighting that they experienced or observed. This is certainly an indictment on the church. There is really no excuse for a church which is being kept in the Father’s name to experience this kind of disunity. Ironically, however, the person who has removed themselves from the fellowship of the church for these reasons is also unwittingly indicting themselves. In Scripture, there is no such thing as a “Lone Ranger Christian.” In fact, the only so-called Christians in Scripture who are not faithfully involved in a local church are those who have been kicked out because of their unrepentant sin or false teaching. In other words, they were removed because their testimony as a follower of Christ was suspect. In First John, the author of this Gospel also writes that one of the evidences of our faith in Christ is a love for the brethren (1 Jn 3:14). When one turns his or her back on the body of believers and walks away, there is good reason to question the genuineness of their faith.

Unity in the church flows out of our being kept by the Father. An evidence of our security in Christ is our endurance in faithfulness to God’s church and love for the brethren. When we demonstrate unity in the body of Christ, we are demonstrating that the Father is keeping us, shaping us by His very own nature, to make us a unique and united people in the midst of corrupt and dark world. We are unable to have this kind of unity on our own or in our own strength and power. Left to ourselves, we wouldn’t even want it! But we’ve been left to the Father’s power to keep us, and thereby to unite us with one another under Christ our Lord.

III. We are kept by God so we shall never perish (v12)

When our children are young, we take them by the hand as we walk across busy streets and crowded parking lots. We know that, given a moment’s distraction, they can dart off in a dangerous direction, and so we safeguard them by keeping us close. We reach out for them and we say, “Hold my hand.” We know, even if they do not, that it is not their holding of our hands that keeps them safe, but our holding of theirs. Neither their grip nor their resolve is strong enough to keep them hanging on, but the grip of the stronger mommy and daddy, and the resolve of parental love, is what keeps them safe and secure. And it is the same for the child of God. If it were up to us to keep ourselves holding onto Him, we could never do it. Thankfully, His grip is strong and sure, and we are secure in His grasp so that we shall never perish.

Here in this prayer, Jesus commits His followers to the safekeeping of His Father, pleading that He would keep them. He says, “While I was with them, I was keeping them.” He is the One Who pursued them, Who sought them and called them to follow Him, Who taught them and trained them, and Who would ultimately lay down His own life for them. And on the eve of that fateful day, He says to the Father, “I am no longer in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You.” He is leaving them. Who will keep them? The Father will keep them, that none should perish.

Jesus says that while He was in the world, He was keeping them. He says, “I guarded them, and not one of them perished.” In John 6:39-40, He had said, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” That is a promise that all whom the Father has given to Him will come to Him and believe upon Him, and He will be faithful to keep us in the grip of His grace throughout our lives, even to death, and beyond, for He will raise us up in a glorious resurrection like His own. If you want evidence of your security in Christ, look not to your own ability to be faithful to Him, but to His faithfulness to His promise and His prayer to never let any of His own perish.

But someone may wonder, “Are there any exceptions to this?” After all, what about Judas Iscariot? No need to wonder, for Jesus Himself brings up the subject of Judas Iscariot. There have been two common errors people have made about Judas. One is to assume that, on the basis of “once saved always saved,” that Judas Iscariot only had a momentary lapse of faith and is ultimately and eternally saved. The other is to assume that, on the basis of the example of Judas, that none of us are eternally secure. Jesus corrects both errors here. Make no mistake about it, Judas died a lost man, and on the words of Jesus we can be assured that he will perish eternally in hell. Jesus said, “Not one perished but the son of perdition.” That word “perdition” means “destruction,” and is often used to describe the horrors of an eternal hell. In fact, in the book of Revelation, this is said to be the fate of the Antichrist, who is called “the beast” in Revelation, and who is called “the son of perdition” in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Judas’ fate is the same as his. Jesus is clear that he perished. But Jesus is also clear that Judas is a unique case. Not one perished but this one, and he did so “so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.” In John 13, Jesus applied to Judas the words of Psalm 41:9, which says, “Even my close friend in whom I had trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” Judas was unique, and was set apart by God from eternity past to fulfill the role of the betrayer, albeit not against his own will. He was a willing party in the betrayal of the Lord Jesus, and stands judged under his own culpability for his sin. It wasn’t that Jesus had him, and then lost him. No, in the case of Judas, Jesus never had him. Not once in all the Scriptures did Judas ever call Jesus Lord, and never in his life had he turned to Him in saving faith.

If there is a lesson for us in the person of Judas Iscariot, it is not that a truly born again Christian can lose his or her salvation and perish eternally. Judas was never a truly born again Christian. But herein is the lesson of Judas for us. It is possible to be closely identified with Christ and his followers, to be active in the Lord’s service, and even to hold positions of great responsibility among the Lord’s people and yet not be saved. Remember that Judas was the Lord’s treasurer! We are not saved by coming to church, by singing hymns, or giving our offerings, or by serving in important roles of the church. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And if we have never turned to Him in repentance and faith and called upon Him as Lord and Savior, then we are not saved, and we have no assurance at all. But if we have, then we know that is a result of being given by the Father to Jesus, who safeguards His own to the very end, and commits us to the faithful keeping of the Father, and He will never allow His own to perish. In the words of Hebrews 7:25, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him.”

In a world of hostility, a world filled with the temptations and snares of our enemy the devil, even a Christian may wonder if he or she has done something, or not done something, which has resulted in being cut off from the Lord Jesus. I have heard it said that the devil wants every lost person to think they are saved and every saved person to think they are lost. I believe that is true. But when fears and doubts assail us, when we fail the Lord, and find ourselves in defeat, God has given us promises in His word to assure us. Second Corinthians 13:5 says that we should examine ourselves to see if indeed we are in the faith. And how do we examine ourselves? We do it through the lens of God’s Word. And when we do, if we have believed upon Christ as Lord and Savior and committed our lives to Him, then we will discover that we belong to Him for His glory, He keeps us so that we might be united together with other believers, and because He keeps us, we can never perish. He holds us in His hand, and He has promised to raise us up glorified on the last day. Then we can say with the Apostle Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted Him until that day” (1 Tim 1:12).

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[1] Donald Grey Barnhouse, Let Me Illustrate (Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1967), 102.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article V. “God’s Purpose of Grace”; http://www.sbc.net/ bfm2000 /bfm2000.asp. Accessed July 9, 2015.

[4] Marcus Rainsford, Our Lord Prays for His Own (Chicago: Moody, 1950), 205-206.

[5] C. S. Lewis, “What are We to Make of Jesus Christ?”; God in the Dock (in The Collected Works of C. S. Lewis; New York: Inspirational Press, 1996), 406.

[6] Rainsford, 166.