DTTO

SHOWING YOU THE WORLD IN SCRIPTURE

This page was last updated: August 27, 2009

Introduction:

Let me offer a few preliminary remarks as we begin looking at Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17.  At this time of year people are happy to think about the baby Jesus in the manger, surrounded the animals in Bethlehem.  The baby is not threatening, is not saying difficult things and is not making any demands on their lives.  I’ve been shocked as I invite non-Christian friends out to Carol Services in the last few weeks at just how open they are to coming to sing carols about Jesus’ birth.  Yet these are the same people who reject so adamantly Jesus’ claims over their lives the rest of the year.  We need to remind people that the Nativity Scene is only the beginning of God’s rescue mission which will end with God calling for us all to respond to the good news that commenced with Christ’s birth.  Indeed the writer of Hebrews tells us the clear reason for the incarnation: “He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17)

Why is it called the “High Priestly” prayer?:

We’re at the culmination of Christ’s earthly ministry as He begins this prayer: “Father, the hour has come…” (John 17:1).  In just 2 chapters time He will be nailed to Calvary’s Cross on account of our sin.  Why is this prayer called “The High Priestly prayer”?  To answer this we must ask ourselves: what was the role of the High Priest in the Old Testament?  He was there to intercede on behalf of Israel by offering animal blood sacrifices to cover the sins of the people.  The writer of Hebrews spends a very long time labouring the point that Jesus also has a ministry of intercession: “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25) The incarnation is the start of Christ’s mission to make the ultimate intercession for mankind by offering His own blood to permanently take away our sins, as far as the east is the west, and reconcile us to God. 

Augustine once wrote: “The Old [Testament] is in the New revealed and the New is in the Old concealed” and in these few chapters of John we see the entire Mosaic ceremonial law fulfilled by Christ.  We read in Leviticus 16 that on the Day of Atonement, the high priest was to offer up incense before going behind the curtain into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence dwelt, to sprinkle the blood of the sacrificed animal onto the lid of the Ark of the Covenant to make atonement for Israel’s collective sins.  At the end of the Bible in Revelation 5 we read that the prayers of the Saints are like incense in Heaven.  So what we see in John 17 is Jesus, our great High Priest, offering up His prayers before offering up His own life as the sacrifice to take away the sins of the world and return into His Father’s presence in glory having made the perfect once-and-for-all atonement for sins.

This is why we read in Hebrews: “Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly thing to be purified with these rites but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.  For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf…[Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:23-24,26b).

Jesus’ Intercessions for Us:

That is Christ’s ministry of reconciliation; but let us now turn to consider His ministry of reconciliation.  We get a foretaste in this passage of what Jesus is doing in Heaven now today.  We read that today “…when we sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  He is the propitiation for our sins… (1 John 2:1-2a).  As a law student I can tell you all about advocacy, and it’s someone who represents you (normally when you’re in trouble!).  Jesus is in Heaven today representing us against the accusations of Satan, whose name simply “the accuser”.  We read in Revelation 12 of the rejoicing there will be in Heaven when he is finally silenced, but until then we have Christ interceding for us.  The Father looks to the Son, and sees the lamb slain for us and who was our propitiation (the object bearing God’s wrath against us until it was exhausted at Calvary)

Jesus spoke these intercessions out loud for His disciples to hear, I think, to encourage them.  He’s just spent the last 3 chapters telling them about what is to happen after His resurrection but knows that things are about to get very difficult for the disciples in their faith and they will struggle to see that things are going to work out in the end.  So I think He’s showing them that He has made these petitions on their behalf to God, His Father, and that God will uphold them throughout the storm they’re about to endure. 

In verses 6-19 He prays for the disciples, those whom He is about to send into the world with the gospel, and then in verses 20-26 He prays for all those believers who would come about through their witness.  We all are sent out into the world as Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) so I think this whole passage is relevant for us to study for ourselves today.  We are here to share the Good News of salvation; we are here to be redeeming culture by being salt and light in a dark world; and we are here to be part of God’s kingdom which is now and not yet, until He returns.  This is a pretty big task and we need His prayers and His empowerment!

Let’s look at what Jesus prays and see what it means for us:

1)Jesus prays that His Father will keep His followers safe (v.11-13): “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.  Holy Father keep them in your name… While I was with them, I kept them in your name…I have guarded them…but now I am coming to you”

When you read the Gospels you get a bit frustrated with the disciples because they just don’t get it half the time and mess up so much (it’s encouraging because I know that I’m not much better!)

Jesus is saying that He’s kept them right all this time but now is committing them into the hands of the Father for protection and to be kept right – and we definitely need Him to keep us right!

There’s great assurance in Jesus’ words of prayer here for us as Christians who continue to fall so far short and they very much echo what He has said previously: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.  For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but the will of Him who sent me.  And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:37-39) 

Even today we who know the truth that our salvation is by grace alone and not by works so that none of us can boast (Ephesians 2:8); we so easily slip into relying on our good works for our standing before God.  Friends; the Cross is enough and Christ’s sacrifice was enough!  Our standing before God rests solely in Him!  Our salvation is in His hands and He has promised that He shall not lose us and that He will keep us in His name, so that persevere until the end!  We should say with Paul: “For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that Day what I have entrusted to Him” (2 Timothy 1:12)

    Jesus specifically prays that we are kept in His Father’s name in 2 specific ways:

(v.15) “…keep them from the evil one” – Just before this Jesus has warned all the disciples that Satan seeks to shake their faith violently, as one does to wheat, to cause them to fall (Luke 22:31) – so Jesus out of love is praying on their behalf so they will not fall, and indeed He tells them this. 

Peter warns us: “Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  Peter is writing in the context of a church that is under incredible persecution and the danger he’s addressing is that believer’s hearts will fail and they’ll give up in the face of this opposition so tells them: “resist him, firm in your faith”.  We can resist the devil firmly because we are upheld and protected by the one who has already defeated Satan at Calvary!  ---

(v.17,19) “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth…for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”  Notice Jesus here says that God’s word is not “true” (which is an adjective) but that it is “truth” (a noun, which means that God’s Word is itself the embodied standard of truth – we aren’t to assess the Word to see what bits of it are true; it all is!)

Jesus here is saying that He has consecrated Himself (that is, “set Himself apart to Father’s will, concerning the Cross”) on behalf of believers that God may transform us by sanctifying us (that is “conforming us in ever increasing holiness into His image”).  If we are to be sanctified through the Spirit now working within us, we must follow Christ’s example and set ourselves apart to God’s will for us, which He has revealed in His Word.  Jesus has just before this said: “If you love me keep my commandments!” (John 14:15).

Today the Church is falling away from God’s Word and some even call obedience to God’s Word “legalism”.  In one of his last letters before his execution in Rome, Paul writes to Timothy and emphasises the need for the church to stick to the good deposit of God’s Word at all costs against all the false and people-pleasing teachings that will try to undermine the Gospel.  Today we need to take up Paul’s warning and respect all of God’s Word as truth for our lives and live by it through the strength the Spirit provides.  This obedient surrender to God’s will by drawing close through His Word brings us into close relationship with Him: “Submit yourselves to God… Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:7-8).  *Let’s obey God’s truth!

2)Jesus prays that His Father will make His followers one (v.20-23) “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

Jesus prays for us today, looking ahead to the future Church.  Jesus prays for the unity of the body of Christ (all believers) and asks that “they also may be in us”.  Paul talks about how we have clothed ourselves in Christ and so when we combine that with what Jesus prays we see an incredible thing.  We’re already seeing the internal relationship within the Trinity, as we see the Son praying to the Father; but the Son is praying that we too get to share in the relationship of love within the Trinity.  Jesus tells us that the Father has “Loved them [believers] even as you loved me” so the perfect love that has existed throughout all eternity is the same love that He holds towards us!  That’s incredible, talk about our assurance through our position in Christ!

This is consistent with what Jesus has said previously: “Yet in a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:19-20).

God is all about relationship because God is relationship between the three persons in the Trinity.  From the very first verse in the Bible we are told that God has plurality: “In the beginning God [elohim = plural title for God] created…”.  When He created man in His image it was not good for the man to be alone, because God the Father is not alone because He is a community of love with the other two persons in the Trinity.  Therefore, until Eve came along things weren’t right because Adam had no one who was the same as Him to relate with, but when Eve comes along He sings in perfect Hebrew poetry: “Now this is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone”.  Their rebellion meant our sin cut us off from God, but Christ now has come and reconciled us to God (which literally means “to sit again with”) and more than that has welcomed us into enjoy the love that the Father has for the Son in the Trinity.  That is pretty incredible, and it’s all because of Christ having interceded with God on our behalf as our great High Priest! 

Therefore, every time Satan comes along and tells us that we’ve messed up so bad that God cannot love us any more we need to rest in Christ’s intercession on our behalf and know that the Father’s love for us is the same as that He has for the Son – as the hymn goes: “How deep the Father’s love for us!”. 

Furthermore Jesus has previous said: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:7-9)  When we are abiding in this love, and it abides in us through Christ, then if God cannot be contained by the heavens, then He cannot possibly be contained in our bodies so He will overflow and be clearly manifested in real changes in our character and lives; so all will see His glory in our lives, just as Jesus prays: “the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

3)Jesus prays that His followers will experience the full measure of His own joy (v.13): “that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves”

What is Christ’s joy?  Obedience to the Father: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:10-11)

We haven’t looked at this, but at the start of His prayer, Jesus prays concerning Himself: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.  And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:4-5)  Also we’re told in Hebrews:“[Jesus] who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,  despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).  Christ’s joy came from His obedience to the Father

Even though He shrinks in Gethsemane in the face of the overwhelming task ahead of Him bearing the sins of the world, Christ says: “not my will, but yours be done!” (Luke 22:42) and humbles Himself in obedient death, even death on Calvary’s Cross.

Like Christ, we too are promised to be glorified with Christ and to reign with Him as co-heirs of the kingdom.  Our joy, like Christ, should be in obedience to God’s Word.  Yeah it means we have to go against what this world thinks, but rather than grudgingly obeying we should be joyful knowing that God’s way is best!

4)Jesus prays that His followers will be with Him forever (v24) “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world”. 

This is the gospel and the goal of salvation, that we may go to be in Heaven, not to sit on clouds playing harps but to sing God’s praises and glorify His name!

There is a day of rest coming for us, the Lord’s workers.  He promises us that we will be with Him in glory and we will receive reward for our faithful service here on Earth.  Jesus is reassuring us that He will fulfil His earlier promise: “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again to receive you onto myself, so that where I am, you may be also” (John 14:3)

This is what Paul in Philippians 3 calls the prize that we are to fix our eyes on and run life’s race to reach, in the Lord’s good timing. 

Until then, we can rest in great assurance that we do have a great High priest who intercedes for us and asks of our Father all the things we need – let’s worship our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ!

The High Priestly Ministry of Christ: Reconciler and Intercessor (John 17)

David J. Nixon (14th December 2008)

www.revelationtoday.blogspot.com/