His Prayer

(John xvii:15-26.)

I. The Analysis.

See Our Hope: for May, 1904, page 654, where the Editor has given a most spiritual analysis of the great intercessory prayer of Christ.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

There is a close moral connection between this lesson and the parable of the vine and the branches. In both the underlying truth is the oneness of the believer and Christ. In that parable the truth of the oneness was considered in its relation to the believer's fruitfulness; in this lesson the emphasis is more on his perfect security, and his joy. It is important, therefore, that we see how the unity of Christ and the believer is the very groundwork of all that He asks in our behalf in this great prayer. "Thine they were, and thou gavest them me." Because of that He has given them everything He has, and asks for them everything God has. The Father gave Him to have life in himself and to give away, so He gave life to the disciples. God was His Father, so He made the disciples children, too. The Father gave Him certain words, so He gave those words to the disciples. Now He asks that the disciples may be with Him where He is, and that they may share all there is in heaven for Him. And all this based on the great fact of identity. "All mine are thine, and thine are mine." "I in them, and thou in me."

This is the immense truth which marks off the saved of this dispensation from the saved of past ages, and of the ages to come. The Old Testament saint was a "friend of God," like Abraham, or a "friend of the Bridegroom," like John the Baptist. The Tribulation saints will be "before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple." The millennial saints will be subjects of the King. But the Christian is, by the new birth, identified with the Father by nature (2 Peter 1:4); with the Son by oneness of life (1 John v:12; Col. iii:4; John xiv:19); and with the Holy Spirit by His indwelling (1 Cor. vi:19; 1 Cor. vi:17). It is the truth which the Reformation did not discern, and to a consciousness of which the church is coming but slowly.

But, after all, important as it is, and central as it is to the possibility of such a prayer, the identity is not the heart of this lesson.

What that heart is our Lord makes clear: "And these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves." Or, as Weymouth renders: "that they may have my gladness within them, filling their hearts." That is, the things which the Lord was saying were the things which filled Him with gladness; and He spoke them in our hearing that we, knowing them, might be filled with the same gladness.

Those "things" are, (1) an accomplished redemption. "I have finished the work thou gavest me to do." Our Lord in this prayer puts Himself this side the cross. All that was necessary for our perfect salvation He accomplished on Calvary. (2) A perfect manifestation. He not only revealed the Fatherhood of God as the true relation in which God stands toward every believer in Christ crucified, but He perfectly revealed the Father. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (3) He rejoiced in being the representative of the believer with God. The seventeenth of John is but an example of the ceaseless intercessory work of Christ in the believer's behalf. He had represented the Father in heaven to the sons on earth, now He was representing the sons on earth before the Father in heaven. (4) He rejoiced in the way He was providing for the perfect security of the believer amid all the trials and temptations of life. He was depositing them for safe-keeping with the Father. Our security rests on the Father's fidelity to a trust reposed in Him by His Son. (5) He rejoiced in the sure sanctification of the believers. The word here means a gradual separation from all that is not of God--a setting apart. He so set Himself apart, that we might also, through the truth be set apart. (6) He rejoiced in that all believers were to be glorified.