Chapter XVII

We reach the most precious portion of our Gospel. The chapter which is now before us has rightly been called the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Gospel. It is the Holy of Holies, for we behold here our great High Priest in the presence of the Father, and we hear Him utter His great prayer of intercession. It is the true Lord’s prayer. The so-called Lord’s prayer, the ‘Our Father,” was given to His disciples in answer to their request, but He never prayed that prayer Himself. He spent nights in prayer on mountain tops, in desert places, but we do not know what He prayed, for it has not pleased the Holy Spirit to give us a record of these prayer nights. Here we have the words of the prayer which He prayed. It has depths which the finite mind cannot fathom. No saint can comprehend the full meaning of this great prayer. No complete exposition or interpretation can ever be given. Three of the Puritan preachers have expounded this chapter. Manton’s sermons on it make a volume of 400 folio pages; George Newton’s exposition is contained in nearly 600 folio pages and Burgess’s sermons on this chapter comprise 700 large pages. But not one of these great preachers claimed to have given a complete exegesis or exhaustive treatment. If all the Puritan preachers and all the other men of God in all ages were to combine, they would not be able to exhaust the riches of the seventeenth chapter of John.

We approach it, therefore, with the deepest reverence, for we are on holy ground. Let us remember that eleven men listened to Him praying. As they heard these blessed words, as they came from His lips, they learned afresh how He loved them, how He cared for them, what He had done for them, what He would do for them, and they heard also of their glorious future. Through these words of prayer they had a deep glimpse of His loving heart. And as we begin to meditate on His words we still hear Him pray, and as we listen to His voice we too shall learn more and more of his mighty love, the love which passeth knowledge.*

Verses 1-3. There is no need of speculating about the locality where this took place. Some think it was in the same place where He had given His farewell words; others think it must have been out in the open, and they surmise it may have been before He passed over Kedron to enter the garden. The text shows nothing as to the exact place. He had finished speaking all these words, recorded in the preceding chapters, and now He lifted up His eyes to heaven. From there He had come, a little while longer and He would go back to’ heaven. Between the present solemn moment when He addressed the Father, and His physical return to heaven to take His place at the right hand of God, lies the cross, His sacrificial death, His burial and His resurrection. Many times before had He lifted up His eyes to heaven. He did so when He broke the five loaves to feed the thousands who had gathered. He looked to heaven when He healed the deaf and dumb. When He stood before the tomb of Lazarus about to raise him from the dead, He also lifted up His eyes to heaven. And how many more times He must have looked up! Then the first word came from His lips. He said, “Father, the hour is come.” Five more times our Lord uses the word Father in His prayer (verses 5, 11, 21, 24 and 25). He is the Son of God and as such addressed God as Father. And all who believe on Him, and are therefore born again, born into the family of God, also lift up their eyes tojheaven and say with Him, Father. ‘As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God” (i:12, 13). And because we are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father (Gal. iv:6). For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father (Eph. ii:18).

*We do not care to say much about the views of the modernists. Their wicked infidelity becomes very evident when they claim that the Lord never uttered these words, and when they deny the Johanine authorship. They say that some unknown Greek writer, aided by the Pauline theology composed this prayer. This invention is as puerile as it 1s vicious.

The first thing He tells the Father is that the hour is come. What hour is it? Several times before He had spoken of that hour, that it was not yet come (chapter vii:30 and vili:20). It is the hour which had been fixed by the triune God before the foundation of the world; the hour which in the eternal counsels had been marked out for the sacrificial work and death of the Son of God, the appointed Lamb of God. For four thousand years the Spirit of God in the Word announced that hour. Beginning with the third chapter of Genesis where the fall of man is recorded, that hour becomes the subject of divine revelation. In type, history and prophecies it is constantly pointed out, the hour in which He should make ‘‘His soul an offering for sin.” For the sake of that hour He had left the bosom of the Father, for that hour He had taken on in the Virgin birth the human body. It was the great end purpose of the incarnation.

Then follows His first petition. ‘“Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee.” We notice first another striking evidence of the Deity of our Lord. Only one who is equal with God, who is God, could ever utter such words. They would be blasphemy in the lips of a mere creature. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has glorified the Father every moment during His life on earth and now He asks to be glorified, so that He might glorify the Father in being glorified. These words can only be explained in their meaning by what was to take place in the hour before Him, and what would follow that hour, namely, His sacrificial death, His burial, His resurrection and His exaltation to the right hand of God. This glory He asked of the Father. And as a result of being thus glorified as the Lamb of God, the sin-bearer by His suffering and death, as well as His glorious resurrection and exaltation, the Father would be glorified. ‘The work of God the Son in His suffering and the glory which followed, glorifies every attribute of the Father. It manifests His holiness, His righteousness, His justice, His mercy, His love and His faithfulness, as well as His power. In all the Son of God suffered as the sin-bearer the Father is glorified and in all He received in glory the Father is glorified.

Next the fact is stated by Him that the Father has given Him power, or authority, over all flesh, to béstow eternal life to as many as the Father has given unto Him. All power and authority belongs to the Son of God, and, in the realm of redemption, power is conferred upon Him by the Father. This power extends over all flesh, which denotes the entire human race, Jews and Gentiles. But all flesh is not being saved, but those who believe on Him, are the gift of the Father to the Son, and these constitute the members of His body. Ultra-Calvinists apply the term “fall flesh” to the elect only, but that is incorrect. There is implied a redemption in its offer, but not in its results. The whole is given to Him, but only that He may impart eternal life to the chosen. Who are thus chosen is indicated in chapter vi:40, namely, ‘‘every one that seeth the Son and has faith in Him.” The gift He bestows upon those is eternal life, as we read in Romans vi:26, “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What this eternal life is we have expounded before. But we read, “‘And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee as the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” Eternal life is something received, the impartation of a new nature, the divine nature. It is therefore a present possession and carries with it the positive and blessed knowledge of the only true God, and the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent into the world. Such knowledge is out of the reach of the natural man. Such a one may have a head knowledge about God and Christ, but what is meant here is the true knowledge of God, and our Lord, and which is manifested in a life of righteousness, a walk in fellowship with the Father and the Son.

Critics have made much of it that the third person is used, as well as the fact that our Lord speaks of Himself as Jesus Christ. It is true such a declaration is not found elsewhere in the Gospels, but this is not an evidence that a later writer composed this prayer, as the rationalists claim. The time had come for Him to declare His Messiahship and He did so in His prayer, and called Himself Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, in the Father’s presence and within the hearing of His disciples.

Verses 4-5. We cannot be in doubt what the first part of the fourth verse means. It refers to His holy life on earth, in which He constantly glorified the Father. But what does it mean “I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do’? We have, in teaching on this chapter, always stated it means the finished work on the Cross. But some have a difficulty. If He meant the finished work, His death, how could He speak thus, when that work was still unfinished? We must remember that elsewhere in this prayer He speaks of being ‘‘no longer in the world” yet He was still here. In anticipation He looks onward beyond the cross. He knew His work could never fail, that it would be finished,and therefore He gives expression to it in the presence of the Father and for the comfort of His own. Augustinus states this in an excellent way: “Christ saith He has finished, that which He most surely knows He will finish. Thus long before in prophecy He used verbs of past tense, when that which He said was to come to pass after many years. “They pierced my hands and feet’ He says, not they will pierce.”

The fifth verse introduces us to one of the most striking utterances of our Lord, which demonstrates His Deity. If there were in the whole Bible no other statement revealing the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ but only this fifth verse in this chapter, His Deity would be forever established. The self witness of our Lord as spoken to the Father tells us two things: He was with the Father before the world ever existed and He possessed glory with the Father. That outward glory, the very glory of God, for He is God, He had left behind when He came down to earth to be born in Bethlehem. Going back to Him who sent Him, He clothed Himself with that eternal Glory of Godhead. In what that glory consists we do not know, for it is unrevealed and passes our comprehension.

Verses 6-8. After having told the Father about Himself, the work He finished, and after requesting His glory, He speaks of those who belong to Him. Before Him, listening to His petitions, were eleven men. What He says concerned them. But all believers are included as well. Verse 20 makes this clear.

The first thing He mentions in speaking about those who belong to Him, because they believed on Him as the Son of God, is, the manifestation of the name of God. Jews revered the name of Jehovah. Even at the present time strictly orthodox Jews are afraid to pronounce the name “Jehovah” and substitute in its place the name “Adonai.” And now the Lord says, “I have manifested Thy name.” ‘The word manifest means literally “to cause to shine forth.” The name that was enshrouded in darkness, in thick darkness (Exod. xx:21), the name of Him who dwells in an unapproachable light, which no man can find out by searching, is caused to shine forth through the Son. ‘‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath manifested Him”’ (i:18).

But what name of God has He made known? ‘The name, Father. David and the other inspired writers of the Psalms, like Asaph and the children of Korah, employed different names of God. Not once did they use the word “Father” in their prayers and hymns of praise. No prophet, priest or king of the Old Testament dispensation ever addressed God as Father. It is true nationally Israel was God’s firstborn son, and therefore God was the Father of the nation (see Isa. ]xii:18 and lxiv:8), but the individual knowledge of God as Father, and the Fatherhood of God, His character and His attributes, could only be made known by the Son. All through the preceding discourse He had manifested to them what His Father is and as He knew Him. He did not speak about the Father to the unbelieving Jews, but only to His own. Well may we remember in these days of an obnoxious Modernism, that the knowledge of God as Father is only possible in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ, the Virgin-born Son of God, who died for our sins, there is no Fatherhood and Father-knowledge of God. It was after His death, resurrection and ascension that the full realization of all this was bestowed upon believers in the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Sonship, by Him we cry, Abba, Father.

“Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy Word.” Believers are given, or entrusted (the meaning of the Greek verb) by the Father to the Son; and now the Son tells the Father that they were His in the beginning. Some have applied this to Israel, the chosen people, but this is incorrect. It means all believers. All believers are given by the Father, predestined and chosen; their very number and names were known before the foundation of the world. This is a wonderful fact which our finite minds cannot comprehend, but which we reverently believe. All true believers who believe and repent, who have received the Spirit, may fairly take comfort in the thought, that they were known and cared for and given to Christ by an eternal covenant, long before they knew Christ or cared for Him. It is an unspeakable comfort to remember that Christ cares for that which the Father has given Him. The fact that His own keep His Word, give attention to it and believe it, is the evidence that they belong to Him and are born again.

He speaks of their knowledge. They had realized that His words and His works were of the Father. While the enemies attributed His mighty works to satanic agencies and charged Him with blaspheming when He spoke of His Father and His union with Him, while others, like Nicodemus, were convinced that God was with Him, His own knew that all He said and all He did was of the Father. From Him they had received the Father’s words, believed them, and they knew that He had come from the Father.

Verses 9-12. With the ninth verse the specifically intercessory part of His great prayer begins. He makes requests for those given to Him by the Father, and as we shall see, He prays for their sanctification, their union, their preservation and their glorification. ‘I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me.” These words have been interpreted in different ways. Some teach that our Lord, when He said, “I pray not for the world,” meant that He did not pray at that particular time for the world, and that He certainly makes in heaven intercession for the wicked. Others say He is only praying for the elect and all others are excluded and have no share in His prayers. It is the question as to the character of His prayer. In His mediatorial work He is the mediator between God and man, and this certainly includes the unsaved world.

But the prayer before us is the prayer of priestly intercession and that concerns only His people. The high priest in the Old Testament is the type of Him who is our great High Priest. Aaron carried upon His bosom the breastplate of twelve stones and upon his shoulders two stones. In the breastplate and the shoulder stones the names of the twelve tribes of Israel were engraven. He presented the people of God in the presence of the Lord and not the Jebusites, the Amorites or the Hittites. The Epistle to the Hebrews makes it plain that our High Priest appears in the presence of God only for those who believe on Him. ‘Those who do not believe on Him, who reject Him, have no share and part in His priestly intercession. “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth and maketh intercession for them” (Heb. vii:25). His priestly intercession in glory is occupied with His own. He prays for those given to Him by the Father, and who are the members of His body. The day is coming when that body is complete, when the last one given to Him by the Father is added to it; then that body will be taken to glory, in answer to the last petition in this prayer (verse 24). When the redeemed are brought to the Father’s house, those who died in the Lord, raised in incorruption, and those who live when His shout is heard, changed in a moment, then His prayer for His own ends. They need it no longer. Another request will He then make of the Father. He will pray for the world at that time. There is an unprayed prayer, which our Lord has not yet uttered. In the second Psalm God addresses His Son: ‘‘Ask of Me and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” ‘That prayer will be answered and at His second coming He will receive His blood bought inheritance and claim the uttermost parts of the earth.

“And all mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them.” This is a parenthetical statement and brings out once more the same truth so prominent in this Gospel, the unity which exists between the Father and the Son. What Luther said on this verse is true, “Any man may say, What is mine is thine, but only the Son can say, What is Thine is Mine.” His equality with the Father is testified to by Himself. All the Father is and has, He, the Son is and has. “Thine are Mine” means, therefore, Thy nature, Thy Name, Thine eternity, Thy holiness, Thy perfection, Thy fulness, Thy glory, Thine attributes, Thy throne, Thy people, and everything else. Previously He had witnessed the same when He said, “All things that the Father hath are Mine; therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and show it unto you” (xvi:15). Inasmuch as believers belong to the Father, are His gift to the Son, our Lord in this statement includes them. Those who have believed on Me are Thine, O Father; they are Mine likewise. They are ours mutually, equally and eternally. What marvels of Divine Love and Grace we are facing in this unsearchable statement of our Lord! ‘Therefore because we are owned, possessed by the Father and the Son, our temporal and spiritual interests are their interests. We are the objects of the Father’s and the Son’s love and care. Here our faith rests. ‘Then we look onward to eternity and realize in the light of these words spoken by our Lord what glory awaits us in that everlasting fellowship with the Father and the Son.

And He is glorified in them, that is, in His people. Believers are the blessed and ever precious fruit of His own work; we are His workmanship. Our salvation and all that goes with it is His glory. His power, His faithfulness, His never-failing grace, all His loving-kindness and condescension, as well as everything else He is, is glorified, manifested in His people. There the Church, to which all true believers belong, is called His body, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. It is His glory.

“I am glorified in them.” We feel as if we could dwell on this sentence, and never weary of the wonderful theme it presents tous. It is a precious prism, every aspect of it sheds forth divine radiancy. Angelic might cannot display Christ’s strength so much as our weakness does, the riches of heaven cannot display Christ’s fulness so much as our poverty does; the holiness of the archangel cannot speak His praise so much as the covering of our righteousness does; the anthems of the seraphim cannot utter His glory as do the praises of the 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. “s,“‘1 am glorified in them.”’*

“And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee.” That is, these words are an evidence that our Lord speaks of Himself, as having finished the work on the cross, risen and ascended to heaven. He was soon to be no more in the world and in anticipation He speaks of it as already accomplished. But while He went back to the Father, His own are still in the world. This fact that ‘“‘these are in the world” is now in His intercessory prayer the chief burden. He speaks of them as being in the world, not of the world, hated by the world, and to be in the world, as He, the sent One of God, was in the world. His first petition is for their preservation. ‘This is the only time we hear our Lord addressing His Father as ‘Holy Father.” The reason why here only He mentions His Father as the holy Father is not difficult to discover. His own were left in an unholy world, surrounded by evil on all sides. As belonging to the Father and the Son they were called to holiness. He commits them, therefore, to the care and keeping of the Father, He who is holy and who is able to keep them free from the dominion of evil and able to make them sharers of His holiness (1 Peter i:14-17). He prays that the Father may keep them in the power of that name, which He had manifested to them. That keeping means everything. Keeping from falling away, from evil doctrines, from being overcome by sorrow, or in tribulation and suffering, keeping them in life and in death. From this first petition of our Lord’s prayer we learn the absolute security of a true believer. If a true believer, one who belongs to Christ, who has been given by the Father to the Son, for whom the Son of God intercedes, can be lost, it would mean the loss of Christ’s glory, the loss of a part of the travail of His soul. It would mean the helplessness of God in that He could not accomplish what He destined before the foundation of the world, and that the world, the flesh and the devil have greater power than God has. It

*Rainsford.

would mean that Christ died in vain, and as a result of the loss of true believers, demons could forever sneer and mock. But the impossibility of this was taught before by our Lord (chap. x). Here He puts those given to Him by the Father into the Father’s hand and keeping.

The second petition “that they may be one, as we are,” we shall examine more fully in connection with verse 21.

He tells next to the Father that while He was with them, His disciples, He kept them. ‘“Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” And that one was Judas Iscariot, concerning whom the Lord said that it would have been better if he had never been born. Judas never had believed on Jesus as the Son of God. He did not own Him as Messiah and Lord. He addressed Him as Rabbi, and as we pointed out before, when the other apostle by name of Judas addressed Jesus by the divine name Lord, the Holy Spirit makes it clear, it was not Judas Iscariot who confessed Him thus (chaps. xiv:22). The Scriptures had foretold his case (Psalm Ixix:25, cix:8), it was foreseen that he loved cursing and did not delight in blessing, that he would beathief, and the Lord knew that he had a demon and would betray Him. Arminian theologians delight to quote Judas as an example that a believer can fall from grace, but he did not, for he never had it. And what a solemn warning he is! A man may go far in professing discipleship and even enjoy special privileges, and yet be unsaved and on the road to eternal perdition. Churches are full today of unsaved, unregenerated, professing Christians. They are going to be lost, for they never were saved; church membership, ordinances and religiousness of an outward form does not save. Many have asked the question why was it ordered that there should be a Judas among the twelve? We give a good answer from another. “It may be this: our Lord, when He came to this world, came to be tried, He came to taste the sorrows and the difficulties of His people, so that He might know them all. There is not a greater trial or sorrow for a tender heart than unkindness and ingratitude. Here was one bound up with Him in the family circle, the constant companion of Christ, admitted to the closest fellowship, and yet a traitor to Him in heart, watching Him with malice, and betraying Him for thirty pieces of silver. I believe it was one of the bitterest of sorrows which He tasted here. Or it may be this: here was a traitor in the camp, a spy upon Christ, and if he had discovered a fault in thought, or word, or deed, he would have been ready to tell it, ready to expose and exaggerate it, but it is something glorious to hear this enemy forced to confess, ‘I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood.’”’

Verses 13-16. All these words addressed by our Lord to His Father were spoken audibly in the presence of His disciples. They heard every word which fell from His lips. This is the meaning of the phrase, “These things I speak in the world.” The purpose was that His joy might be fulfilled in them. The joy of which He speaks is His joy, which is His to bestow, of which He is the author and the giver, and of which He Himself is the object. It is His own personal joy which He imparts to those who have trusted in Him and walk in His fellowship. When the disciples listened to His prayer they knew nothing of that joy. It became their abiding portion after the Holy Spirit, the other paraclete, had come upon them. Then they entered into His joy and realized all it meant. This joy is ours, too, and belongs to all the children of God. It is the joy of salvation, the joy which comes in believing, which is the result of trusting in Him and accepting the bounties of His grace. Thus we rejoice in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven, that we are reconciled, that God is our Father, the Son of God our Loving Lord and Friend, the Holy Spirit our indwelling guest, and that the Father’s house is our blessed and eternal home, where we shall meet Him, to be forever with the Lord. And we rejoice in Him. The fulness of joy is He Himself. Rejoice in the Lord is the repeated exhortation of the Spirit of God. “In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

With verse 14 our Lord prays concerning His own as present in the world, though no longer of it, but called to be His representatives down here. He speaks of having given to them His word. The Father had sent Him, the

Word; He is the expression of the Father’s mind.* He had entrusted to them the Father’s Word for the purpose that they should in the world reveal and manifest that Word. Such is the calling of a true believer in Christ. And the world, of which John in his epistle bears witness as lying in the wicked one, hated them. The world can do nothing but hate that which the Father has given, for this world is controlled and governed by its god, which is Satan, the prince of this world. But there is another reason why the world hates those who are Christ’s. The Lord states it in that profound declaration ‘Because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” This is stated once more by Him in verse 16. It is a great declaration of tremendous meaning, but alas! how little it is understood and how little is the great truth it contains manifested in the lives and in the conduct of God’s children.

Our Lord was not of the world. In Him was no evil, no sin; He had no fallen nature. The prince of this world came and found nothing in Him. Because He was not of the world, not indwelt by the principles which govern the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of eyes and the pride of life, He lived that holy life in which He glorified God. We are by nature of this world. We have a fallen nature because we are conceived and born in sin. We are enemies by wicked works and linked with the author of sin. Yet the Lord Jesus Christ speaks here of His own as being not of the world, even as He is not of the world. His disciples as well as we and all other true believers are by nature all which we state above. But when we believe on Him we are born again. In the new birth we receive the divine nature, and of that new nature, the nature imparted by the Spirit of God, it is written, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John iii:9). The Son of God, our Lord could not sin; and the new nature, the divine nature, received in the birth from above, cannot sin. When we sin as believers, it is our old nature. In this blessed sense, then,

*In verse 8 a different word is used than in verse 14, where the word employed is ‘Logos,’ the same as used in the first chapter of this Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” — Logos.

are believers no longer of the world, even as He is not of the world. He has taken those who believe on Him out of the world, by separating them from the world and unto Himself, and giving them the divine nature.

Because believers are not of the world, even as He is not of the world, they have the capacity to walk even as He walked (1 John ii:6) and be His representatives. If believers live according to His calling, separated from the world, they will be hated by the world. But if the believer is conformed to this world, loves the things of the world, lives a worldly life (as so many professing Christians do), they know nothing of that hatred. The separated life stirs up the world, and especially the ‘religious world” and hatred follows, for the faith and the corresponding life of separation condemns the world. If we were more consistent in our lives, more outspoken, more faithful in our daily witness, more separated from the ways and methods of this evil age, we would also find out that it is still true that the world hates us. But, on the other hand, believers must guard against courting the world’s hatred by discourtesy or by erratic ways and manners. How soon a believer may forget this weighty saying of our Lord, “‘not of the world, even as I am not of this world!” It can be realized only as we keep our hearts and minds fixed upon Him in yonder glory and our heavenly calling in Him. As a result the Holy Spirit will lead us into an unsparing self-judgment as to our ways.

“That the world improves for Christ or His own is as false as that the flesh can ameliorate. Such a belief is light become darkness and how great is that darkness! There may not be the reflex of the latter part of the first chapter in Romans, but it answers to the beginning of 2 Tim. iii. It is the natural man knowing enough to forego what is shameless, and to invest all with a religious veil; it is the world essentially occupying itself with the things of God in profession, but in reality of the world, where common sense suffices for its service and its worship, and the mind of Christ would be altogether unapplicable. What a triumph for the enemy! It is just what we see in Christendom; and nothing irritates so much as the refusal so to walk, worship, or serve. It does not matter how loudly you denounce or protest; if you join the world, they will not mind your words, and then you are faithless to Christ. Nor does it matter how much grace and patience you show; if you keep apart as not of the world, you incur enmity, hatred and contempt. To act as not of the world is felt to be its strongest condemnation; and no meekness or love can make it palatable. Nor does God intend that it should, for He means it as part of the testimony of His Son. And as the world neither receives nor understands the Father’s word, so it hates those who have that word and act upon it.’”’*

His prayer for His own is not that they should be taken out of the world, but that the Father should keep them from evil, This does not clash with the great revelation the Lord gave later to the Apostle Paul. The time will come when the Lord in glory will ask the Father for the taking out from the world of all who belong to Him. In fact He requests this later in His prayer (verse 24). When that prayer is answered He will ‘descend out of heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God.” Then the righteous dead will be raised from among the dead, the living believers changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye and caught up together with them in clouds to meet Him in the air. Then all are taken out of the world. But the time for that was not yet when He spoke these words of prayer, nor is the time now. His own are to remain in the world for a very definite purpose. Many a believer, if not all, would love to leave this dark world with its conflicts and troubles behind at once to be with Him forever. If the Lord would take all true believers at once out of the world, it would be disastrous to the believers, as well as to the world. Believers need the conflict, the trials, the bitter experiences in the world for their own good. Well has it been said “Believers would never value Christ and heaven as much as they will do one day, if they had not been kept here on earth, taught to know their own hearts, and be made like Him, perfected through suffering.” It would be equally disastrous to the world itself if all true believers were at once taken out of it. The world would be deprived of the

*William Kelly.

testimony and the light which believers are called to give and be. Supposing all these eleven men had been taken with Christ to glory, when He left the earth, how could the world have received a testimony apart from them and believe? He still leaves us here for the double purpose, for our own good, and for the good of the world. When the hour comes, scheduled before the creation of the world, when His body shall be joined to Him, every true believer will be taken out of the world. Here also is a refutal of asceticism. Men and women still shut themselves up in cells to be separated from the world, to flee from it. But this cowardly desertion of the world, as practiced in Romish monasteries, is not Christianity. It is a pagan institution. Buddhism and other Oriental religions have their monasteries, and practice the same asceticism as Rome.

Instead of asking that they might be taken out of the world, He prayed “that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Does this mean evil in the general sense of the word, or does it mean “the evil one,” that is Satan? The Greek may mean both, evil and the evil personified in Satan. We think the evil one is meant. It has this meaning in Matthew xiii:25, 38 and 39. John in His first epistle uses the same expression and there it always means the evil one. See 1 John ii:13, 14; 11:12; v:18. What we call evil, trials, losses, bereavements, temptations, persecutions, slanders, etc., are the things which all must work together for our good. It is inconceivable that our Lord should have prayed that His own might be kept from this. The devil is a roaring lion seeking to devour the children of God and Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. His aim is to destroy or to corrupt those who belong to Christ and snatch them out of His hands. Hence our Lord prays the Father that they may be kept from the evil one. And when he comes to ask for them, as he asked for Job’s testing and for Peter, the intercession of Christ in the behalf of His beloved ones keeps them from being overcome, “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not,” He said to Peter before Satan ever appeared to sift him as wheat.

Then once more He tells the Father of the position of His disciples. ‘They are not of the world even as I am not of the world.” As He overcame and Satan’s power could not harm Him, so His own, no longer in the domain of the power of darkness, but belonging to Him, will be kept.

Verses 17-19. ‘To the most precious things already mentioned by the praying Lord He adds now the petition for the sanctification of His disciples. ‘“‘Sanctify them by Thy Truth; Thy Word is Truth.” Many expositors have greatly misunderstood the meaning of this simple request. They speak of it as if the Lord requested their setting apart for ministry. We quote from one of these expositors: “The original may mean either ‘consecrate’ or ‘sanctify.’ It means both to set apart from a common to a sacred use, and also to make holy for that use; in other words, it may mean to make holy in mission and in character. The former is evidently the meaning here; Christ prays that the Father will set apart His disciples to a life of divine service as priests unto God.” But this view is incorrect. The petition for their santification must be connected with the preceding verse, which we quote once more, ‘“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” As we have pointed out before, believers in Christ as the Son of God, as these disciples were believers, have received the new nature, the divine nature, and inasmuch as it is a holy nature they are constituted in Christ Saints, they are sanctified. The petition which follows for their sanctification by the Truth of the Father concerns the believer’s practical sanctification, how they are to live as not of the world in a life of separation. This is accomplished in the first place by the Father’s Word, that word which is Truth, while He whom the Father sent and through whom His Word is given, is the Truth. As the believer walks in the truth, the truth made known by the Father through the Son, he is increasingly sanctified and enabled to walk even as He walked. It reminds us of chapter viii:32: ‘“And ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” In his expository thoughts on the Gospel of John, the late Bishop Ryle makes some excellent remarks on sanctification which will be helpful to all. He gathers four great principles from this petition of our Lord.

(1) The importance of sanctification and practical godliness. Our Lord specially asks it for His people. Those that despise Christian life and character, and think it of no importance so long as they are sound in doctrine, know very little of the mind of Christ. Our Christianity is worth nothing, if it does not make us value and seek practical sanctification.

(2) The wide difference between justification and sanctification. Justification is a perfect and complete work obtained for us by Christ, imputed to us, and external to us, as perfect and complete the moment we believe, as it can ever be, and admitting of no degrees. Sanctification is an inward work wrought in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and never quite perfect so long as we live in this body of sin. The disciples needed no prayer for justification; they were completely justified already. They did need prayer for their sanctification; for they were not completely sanctified.

(3) Sanctification is a thing that admits of growth; else why should our Lord pray, ‘Sanctify them’? The doctrine of imputed sanctification is one that I can find nowhere in the Word of God. Christ’s imputed righteousness I see clearly, but not an imputed holiness. Holiness is a thing imparted and inwrought, but not imputed.

(4) The Word is the great instrument by which the Holy Spirit carried forward the work of inward sanctification. By bringing that Word to bear more forcibly on mind and will, and conscience, and affection, we make the character grow more holy. Sanctification from without by bodily austerities and asceticism, and a round of forms, ceremonies, and outward means, is a delusion. True sanctification begins from within. Here lies the immense importance of regularly reading the written Word, and hearing the preached Word. It surely, though insensibly, promotes our sanctification. Believers who neglect the Word will not grow in holiness and victory over sin.”

The next sentence is closely linked with the petition for the sanctification of His people, ““As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world.”? While believers are not of the world even as He is not of the world, they are in the world as His representatives, sent into the world, as the Father had sent Him. What a high and holy calling this is! Well may we cry out, “Who is sufficient for these things”! While this applied first of all to the disciples who surrounded Him then, whom He sent forth as His messengers, it equally applies to us. We are His sent ones. As such we must be holy, separated from evil. As His representatives and witnesses we need to be spotless and blameless, and for this He prayed when He said, ‘‘Sanctify them.”

Another important statement follows: “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the Truth.” Here is the second means for the sanctification of believers. They are not only practically sanctified by the Word, His Truth, but He Himself for their sakes has sanctified Himself, that by this sanctification they also might be sanctified through the Truth. Most expositors apply these words of our Lord to His sacrificial death on the cross. They claim that it was then He sanctified Himself for us, that is, in the offering of His body. It is true that the believer is set apart, the meaning of the word sanctified, by the death of Christ, for we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ (Heb. x:10), but this is not the real meaning of the words spoken by our Lord. If His sanctification meant the work of the cross it should have preceded the prayer-petition, sanctity them by Thy Truth, for all practical sanctification is the result of His work for us on the cross.

But our Lord sanctified Himself in another way. He set Himself apart to God after His passion; He went to heaven, receiving glory at the right hand of God, and is now in His risen and glorified humanity the image of God (see 2 Cor. iv:4). In that glory light in which He has set Himself apart for our sakes He is the pattern of His own redeemed ones. What He is they all shall be in that glorious day when He will be manifested, when all His own will see Him as He is and will be like Him. He is the Firstborn among many brethren, and ultimately all His own, whom He is not ashamed to call brethren, will be conformed into the same image of Himself in resurrection glory. The contemplation of this wonderful truth, the highest and the best, leads to our own sanctification. As we behold His glory as in a glass we are changed into the same image from glory to glory.

It is the contemplation of, and the heart occupation with Christ glorified and we in Him, which detaches the believer from the world and leads Him in the path of separation. For this He prayed. First, that the Father’s word He had communicated to His own might sanctify us, and that His own place in glory at the right hand of the Father might accomplish our sanctification also.

Verses 20-21. ‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” We hear from His own blessed lips that all believers are included in this gracious intercession. If this word had not been spoken one might

think that He prayed only for His disciples, but His words tell us that all His Saints at all times are included. They all need preservation, sanctification, and His ministry as priest and advocate. He prayed for all coming believers, for generations upon generations, including ourselves, whom He knew would be given to Him by the Father.

His petition is for their unity. In verse 11 He had prayed also “that they may be one as we are.’ In that verse it concerned the Apostles. It was accomplished in them by the power of the Holy Spirit. Here is another and larger unity, for all who believe on Him, which means again all future believers, are to be one. Unbelievers have frequently ridiculed this request of our Lord as they pointed to the many denominations, the different creeds, ceremonials, and the confusion which exists in professing Christendom, and then claimed that Christ’s own prayer has never been and never will be answered. But our Lord did not pray for an outward unity expressed in an imposing organization. The true Church, the body of Christ, is not an organization but an organism, with the Head in glory and members put into this mystical, invisible body by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The unity is a unity in the Father and in the Son, “that they also may be one in us.” It is that fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ of which John writes in his first epistle (1 John i:2). It is fellowship in virtue of the Father made known in the Son, and of the Son the object of the Father’s love and delight, into which all true believers are brought by the Holy Spirit. As we delight ourselves in the Son we are one with the Father, for He is His delight; as we know God as our Father and the Father’s love, we are one with the. Son. This is the unity of which our Lord speaks here. Into this spiritual unity, Jew, Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free are brought in Christ. The Jew hated the Gentile and the Gentile hated the Jew; one was bitterly opposed to the other, hating and being hated. But now this unity, this blessed oneness! Jew and Gentile in Christ, the middle wall of partition broken down, both having access by one Spirit unto the Father!

And this unity needs to be manifested in a practical way, that is in love for the brethren, for all the Saints. In this is the call for the world to believe that the Father sent the Son. Not through the law but by the coming of the Son of God these blessed results have been brought about. Whenever believers walk in fellowship with the Father and the Son and in fellowship one with another, loving each other with a pure heart fervently, they bear a witness to the world that the Father sent the Son, for it is the work of Christ which has accomplished this. Alas! that the world in our own day should have so very little of this witness!

Verses 22-26. He had prayed for the preservation and the sanctification of His own, and now He prays for their glorification. It is a wonderful legacy which the Lord of glory bestows upon His people and with which He introduces the final section of His prayer, “The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them.” Commentators have fairly wrestled with the question, what did our Lord mean with these words? What glory is it He promises to give? We mention a few of the different opinions.

Augustinus and others with him thought it is immortality and glory which those received who have served Him faithfully. Calvin stated that it is the restoration of the image and likeness of God. Bengel, the author of the Gnomen, declared that the glory means that insensible power, influence and authority, which accompanied all our Lord did and said during his earthly ministry. Zwingli, Brentius and others taught that the glory is the power of working miracles, while two other well known exegetes, Stier and Hengstenberg held that the glory is unity of mind and heart. Even so good an expositor as Bishop Ryle says, “the question will probably never be settled.”

There is no difficulty whatever connected with this saying of our Lord. Like the other statements “I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do,” “I am no longer in the world,” the gift of His glory was spoken in anticipation of His resurrection. In resurrection the Father rewarded Him for His faithful work. This is the demand of the righteousness of God. His ever blessed Son came to earth, glorified Him in His holy life, and finally glorified Him in His death on the cross, in which He vindicated the holy character of God and satisfied His righteousness in behalf of lost sinners. ‘This demanded a reward. The reward is that God raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory. It is the truth stated elsewhere, as in Phil. ii, “Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name.” This acquired glory it is which He gives to His own. It is a most refreshing and wonderful truth. The Son of God came to die for our sins and when He died as our substitute He took upon Himself all which we deserved as guilty sinners — Jesus paid it all. Then God, because He did this work, righteously rewarded Him, because He and He alone deserves a reward. This reward consists in glory. Then our loving Lord gives the glory He deserves and He received to all those who belong to Him. He makes His own sharers of His acquired glory.

It is not difficult to find the acquired glory of our Lord in the New Testament. It is sevenfold. We mention them briefly and show how the believer participates in these acquired glories. (1) He received in resurrection the glory of sonship, inasmuch as He is the First begotten from among the dead. We share this sonship with Him and are sons of God in Him. (2) Then God made Him the heir of all things (Heb. i:2). The International Bible Student Association, also known as Russellites, sometimes give this fact as an evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ was a created Being and not very God, that He received divinity after His death. Such an argument shows the ignorance of these people. Christ is God and all the glory of God is His glory. But to make redeemed humanity, redeemed through His own precious blood, sharers of all things, God made Him heir of all things as the head of the new creation. And we are heirs of God and fellow-heirs of Christ. (3) God gave Him a glorious place for a reward. He seated Him at His own right hand. The man in Glory is as near to God and as dear to God as any Being can be. He holds a place higher than the angels. In Him we are seated in the heavenly places of Christ Jesus. (4) He received as His reward a glorious name, “‘the name which is above every other name.” And it is written “I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it,” the promise to the overcomer (Revelation ii:17). ‘‘And I will write upon him My new name” (Rev. iii:12). “‘And they shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads” (Rev. xxii:4). (5) He received the glory of Priesthood, being constituted a priest after the order of Melchisedec. And we are priests with Him. (6) He is made King of kings and God will give Him the promised kingdom. The throne over all the earth is His and the nations will yet be His inheritance. His own are to reign and rule with Him. (7) Finally He received the glory of Judgeship. All judgment is committed to Him. This also His own will share with Him, for it is written “Do ye not know that the Saints shall judge the world? Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor. vi:1, 3).

Such are His acquired glories and our participation in them. The consummation of all is not now but in that coming day of glory, ‘when He is manifested we shall be manifested with Him in glory.” It is the day in which He will come “in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke ix:26). His own will be with Him in that glory; they shine in His glory. Therefore in that day He will receive the request of His lips and the desire of His heart (Psl. xxi:2). Then He will receive the travail of His soul and be satisfied when ‘‘He cometh to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believed” (2 Thess. i:10). Thus shall we be perfected in one, and the world will then not be called upon to believe that the Father sent His Son, but the world will know. Faith will be changed into sight. There will be a glorious public display, when the Son brings many sons in His glory. In that day the whole world will know and all the present day infidelity will be forever banished. It will be the answer of God to all the inventions of modern rationalism as upheld by the liberal teachers in Christendom. It will be the answer of God to silence the delusion cults. It will be the means of the conversion of the remnant of Israel.

Then follows that blessed and gracious petition, which to the full still remains unanswered. “Father I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.” It is His Prayer for the glorification of His people. In praying He uses a word which He used nowhere else, the word “I will.” The original verb (Delo) has a meaning of a positive purpose. It is therefore more than a mere request, it is a demand. He had promised them “I will come again and receive unto myself that where I am ye may be also (xiv:3)” and now He tells the Father what He wills in behalf of His own, because His will was in perfect harmony with the Father’s will. Here is the blessed hope for those who belong to Him. It is not the visible manifestation, but the home-bringing of those who are His. How this will take place is revealed in that great revelation given to the Apostle Paul by the Word of the Lord and recorded in 1 Thess. iv: 16-18. It awaits its glorious fulfillment. ‘The same Lord who promised “I will come again,” the same Lord who prayed “Father, I will,” the same Lord who is our intercessor in the presence of the Father, will descend out of heaven with a shout. The great transformation will take place. The sleeping saints (as to their bodies) whose spirits are in a disembodied state in His presence, will receive their resurrection bodies, and we shall be changed to be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then shall we be with Him where He is and share His glory as well as behold His own glory, which here is the glory which is proper to Himself, as the object of the Father’s love, a love which goes beyond the time of the world’s foundation. What will it be when it shall be done! What glory is our happy and eternal portion!

Then He tells the Father of the contrast between the world and His own. “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me.”

Before He had addressed the Father as ‘Holy Father,” but here He speaks of Him as “Righteous Father.” That righteous Father the world did not know, and all along His gracious ministry the world refused to know Him. But He, the Son, has known Him, though He walked in the garb of a servant, having humbled Himself, yet all along He knew the Father, even as He had said before, “Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him” (Matt. xi:27). Then He spoke of His disciples, “these have known that Thou hast sent Me,” and in this knowledge that the Father sent the Son, they know and have the Father also. It was His comfort that while the world knew Him not, His disciples knew Him and were in the fellowship with Him and the Father.

This great chapter ends with the final word which He prayed. It is another word of comfort and cheer when He tells the Father, ‘And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” To make the Father’s Name known to those whom the Father had given Him had been His ministry to the disciples. Only He who koew the Father could make Him known. But this ministry is not confined to the past, it is a present ministry, for He says, “and will declare it.” Therefore, from heaven, He continues to make known to the hearts of those who believe on Him, the Father and the Father’s love, so that all may have the consciousness of the same love which rested upon Himself when He was on earth. He Himself is identified with His own; He is in them. And the marvelous thing is that we all can say in faith, “I am loved as! He’isiloved.” Our poor doubting hearts object, and the thought comes of our weakness, our imperfections, our sinfulness. May we realize that we are beloved thus not on account of any loveliness which is in us, but because we are in Him, who is altogether lovely. Because we belong to Christ, are in Him and He is in us, because we are one with Him, of His flesh and bones (Ephes. v) we are loved as He is loved. We close our meditations on this most precious and holy portion of the Gospel of John with the words which George Newton, the puritan preacher, put at the close of his exposition of this chapter.

“How earnest and importunate is Christ with God the Father, that we may be one here, and that we may be in one place hereafter! Oh, let us search into the heart of Jesus Christ, laid open to us in this abridgment of His intercession for us, that we may know it and the workings of it more and more, until at length the precious prayer comes to its full effect, and we be taken up to be forever with the Lord, and where He is there we may be also.”