John records in chapter 17 of his gospel, the last prayer
Jesus would offer before His horrific ordeal of taking on our punishment would
begin. John must have remembered vividly
this prayer Christ would offer. It must
have made an enduring impression on him.
It meant something to him. Later
in his gospel, John would write, that Christ did many more things than could be
contained in this book or any other.
John acknowledged in his own gospel, that it was not a complete record
of the life and ministry of Christ. Love
is truly difficult to catalogue completely in the written word. However, these words of Christ still lingered
in the memory of John as he recounts the last moments of Christ here. And so in verse one, John remembers Jesus
saying … “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said,
Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:” To be glorified is to perform love in action
for another. The Glory the Lord has
earned has not come from the power of His might, but from the power of His
love. The hour had now arrived where the
ultimate definition of love would be witnessed by the universe itself. To meet this test, Christ asks that both He
and His Father remain certain in the pursuit of this love.
Jesus continues in verse 2 … “As thou hast given him power
over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given
him.” Power over all flesh was not to be
defined in the establishment of an earthly kingdom where due to His might, He
could rule over the lives of men.
Instead power over all flesh was to be defined as His ability to change
us from within by the power of His love, it was His ability to alter our
desires, our thinking, and our behavior as we submit ourselves to His rule over
us. Eternal life would be the result of
His power over the evil that lies within us.
Eternal life would be the gift that results from the
transformation. And lest any doubt the
love of the Father, Christ expressly identifies that each of us were given over
to Christ, at the will of the Father to have us saved. We who find ourselves saved by the mercy and
love of Christ, find ourselves given this gift not of our own accord, but by
the will of the Father. For it is the
love of the Father that must free us to even make the choice to be saved. If left in bondage of self, we would not be
free enough to choose to break the chains of our addiction, instead it would
overwhelm us. But the power of love of
the Father, breaks that chain enough for us to choose without undue influence,
whether to submit to Christ and be saved, or not.
Jesus then defines what this gift really means in verse 3 …
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” Life
eternal is defined in our relationship with the only true God, and His Son who
was sent to us. It is not measured in
the number of our years. It is not
measured in the total of the things we acquire.
It is not measured by our physical fitness, health, vigor, or what we
refer to as the quality of life. It is
not even measured in the love we reflect to each other. It is measured at the source. It is measured in the context of our discovery
of who the only true God is, and in the discovery of His Son Jesus Christ. To have power, wealth, fame, and influence
has nothing at all to do with what it means to have eternal life. The wealth of heaven is not found in its
abundance of precious gems, gold, diamonds, and purity of nature. The wealth of heaven only has value in its
gift to His creation. Our lives, our
bodies, our senses, our health, are only gifts to help us come to discover what
it means to truly know eternal life – to truly know God. An infinite number of years of existence
denied the knowledge and presence of God, denied His company, is the definition
of pain. Death would be better, than to
live in that kind of pain. Hell, is the
opposite of eternal life. Hell is not
comprised of torture by fire, it is comprised of torture by separation and
choice from the only true God. The last
mercy of God is to bring those who choose that pain to the point of
non-existence. Only then can death, be
no more. Without a knowledge of God, and
of His Son Jesus Christ, there can be no life eternal. The knowledge is not theoretical, it is
instead a living knowledge, an experiential knowledge of love itself. This is His gift to us.
Jesus prays on in verse 4 … “I have glorified thee on the
earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. [verse 5] And now,
O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with
thee before the world was.” The acts of
love Jesus performed throughout His ministry were always attributed to the love
and will of the Father. In so doing,
Jesus has “glorified” the Father. Now He
asks the Father to show Him the love that they have always had. His humanity needs the comfort and assurance
of the love that predates our existence, and predates creation itself. For what He must face, Christ wishes to be
grounded in the love of His Father, sure in the knowledge of that love. He now must risk permanent separation from
the source of that Love. It is possible
that having been stained the with weight of our evil, He may not be able to
return to the side of His Father. He
cannot see past the sacrifice He must make to see us redeemed. But He must proceed, for the nature of the
love within Him, cannot simply walk away and see us all left to the fate we had
chosen. So though the outcome may be at
risk, He presses on nestled in the love of His Father.
Now, Jesus turns His attention, to those who are closest to
Him. Having made the decision to go
forward with His mission of the revelation of the so-great-love of His Father
God, those who stand near Him will face the extreme wrath and determination of
evil. So Jesus begins to pray for His
companions, He continues in verse 6 … “I have manifested thy name unto the men
which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them
me; and they have kept thy word. [verse 7] Now they have known that all things
whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.”
Jesus “manifested” the name of God to His disciples. He “showed” them the love of God in
action. He made known the motives of the
Father to save and redeem. The work of Christ
was not to condemn, but to offer us freedom from condemnation, freedom from the
slavery of self that we embrace. He
points out again, that these disciples “belonged” to the Father and were given
to Christ from out of the world. They
accepted the testimony of Christ, the word of Christ, of who the Father was,
and who the Messiah was, and how we would see our salvation received.
Jesus continues in verse 8 … “For I have given unto them the
words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely
that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” Our reception of the word of God comes from
the belief in Jesus Christ. It was only
Jesus who rightly interpreted scripture to the disciples. He did this, by living the law, by living the
love, by showing what the point of the Bible stories was supposed to be – our
redemption when we trust and rely on God instead of ourselves. Every Old Testament story is rightly
interpreted only through the lens of Jesus Christ. When we see God in person, we see love in
person, we see redemption in person, and we see an escape from the evil we are
bound to when we give ourselves over to the person of God in the form of Jesus
Christ. It is impossible to accept the
word of God, and deny the divinity of the savior the entire book is aimed
at. It is impossible to know God the
Father, and then deny that His Son was our vehicle for redemption. It is this distinction of submission, this
distinction of trusting in something greater than our own ideas and wisdom,
that leads us to see the perfection He alone can create within us. Without submission to Jesus Christ, the word
of God cannot rightly be interpreted.
Jesus then accepts His disciples, and us, as the gifts given
to Him by His Father as He continues in verse 9 … “I pray for them: I pray not
for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. [verse
10] And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.” We belong to the God who accepts us as His
gifts. He claims ownership of us, and
draws a distinction between those who submit to His ownership, and the
remainder of the world who refuses to trust in anyone but themselves. This distinction is not defined by
denomination, or proclamation, but only in depths of a personal relationship
between you and Christ. Only you and
Christ know the extent to which you will submit your will, your decisions, and
your desires over to Him. Membership in
a given church does not equate to personal submission to Christ. A theoretical knowledge of scripture or
acceptance of the idea that a God exists, is not the same thing as you living
day to day, placing everything about your life in hand of Christ. Your parents cannot do this for you. Your spouse cannot attribute this to
you. To be owned by Christ, you alone
must give yourself over to His ownership, and trust in where and how He leads
you. The distinction of those who are
His, and the world, happens even within Christianity, as there are many who
refuse to submit whether in or out of the church.
to be continued …
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