John 17
FOR Jesus, life had a climax, and that was the cross. To him, the cross was the glory of life and the way to the glory of eternity. ‘The hour has come’, he said, ‘for the Son of Man to be glorified’ (John 12:23). What did Jesus mean when he repeatedly spoke of the cross as his glory and his glorification? There is more than one answer to that question.
(1) It is one of the facts of history that again and again it was in death that the great ones found their glory. It was when they died, and how they died, which showed people what and who they really were. They may have been misunderstood, undervalued or condemned as criminals in their lives, but their deaths showed their true place in the scheme of things.
Abraham Lincoln had his enemies during his lifetime; but even those who had criticized him saw his greatness when he died. Someone came out of the room where Lincoln lay, after the assassin’s shot had killed him, saying: ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ Edwin Stanton, his war minister, who had always regarded Lincoln as crude and uncouth and who had taken no pains to conceal his contempt, looked down at his dead body with tears in his eyes. ‘There lies’, he said, ‘the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen.’
Further, the cross was the glory of Jesus because it was the completion of his work. ‘I have accomplished the work’, he said, ‘which you gave me to do.’ For him to have stopped short of the cross would have been to leave his task uncompleted.
There is another question—how did the cross glorify God? The only way to glorify God is to obey him. Children bring honour to their parents when they bring them obedience. Citizens bring honour to their country when they obey it. Scholars brings honour to their teacher when they obey what they have been taught. Jesus brought glory and honour to God by his perfect obedience to him. The gospel story makes it quite clear that Jesus could have escaped the cross. Humanly speaking, he could have turned back and need never have gone to Jerusalem. As we look at Jesus in the last days, we are bound to say: ‘See how he loved God! See to what lengths his obedience would go!’ He glorified God on the cross by rendering the perfect obedience of perfect love.
But there is still more. Jesus prayed to God to glorify him and to glorify himself. The cross was not the end. There was the resurrection to follow. This was the vindication of Jesus. It was the proof that human beings could do their worst and that Jesus could still triumph. It was as if God pointed at the cross and said: ‘That is what human beings think of my Son,’ and then pointed at the resurrection and said: ‘That is what I think of my Son.’ The cross was the worst that could be done to Jesus; but not even that could conquer him. The glory of the resurrection obliterated the shame of the cross.
But in this context the primary meaning of ‘to glorify’ is ‘to clothe in splendour’, as v. 5 makes clear. The petition asks the Father to reverse the self-emptying entailed in his incarnation and to restore him to the splendour that he shared with the Father before the world began.
That Jesus should pray that the Father might glorify the Son is therefore also a moving expression of his own willingness to obey the Father even unto death
As he seeks not the praise of men but the glory that comes from the only God (5:44), so Jesus seeks by his own glorification nothing less than the glory of his Father
Jesus has prayed for himself, in particular for his glorification (vv. 1–5). That glorification is integrally bound up with the benefit of all those the Father has given him (v. 2), so it is not surprising that he now turns from his single petition for himself to his several for his disciples. Before beginning them, Jesus advances the grounds for these petitions, i.e. the reasons why he is praying for these people as opposed to others, and the reasons why the Father should meet his requests.
17:6. These people for whom Jesus now lifts his voice in prayer are those whom the Father has given to the Son
Christ’s prayer divides easily into three logical, successive sections. In verses 1–5 he prayed for himself. In verses 6–9 he prayed for his apostles. And in verses 20–26 he prayed for the church in the world.
A. W. Tozer wrote:
Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.
The more we know of Christ, the more we are drawn to him, and the more we are drawn to one another.
As Jesus prayed for our relationships with each other as Christians, he also prayed that we would be constantly kept aware of and growing in the knowledge of God, especially his Fatherhood. In that way we would keep growing in oneness, which will result in joy—his joy. That is how we are to relate to fellow Christians.
The answer is in verse 15: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” First, the Christian attitude toward the world should not be one of withdrawal. Christ does not ask that we be taken away. Withdrawal has always been a temptation for the religious, and in Jesus’ time the Pharisees succumbed to that temptation. To be a Pharisee was to be a separatist. The goal of that group was to escape the contamination of fallen society. In the third century Christian hermits fled to the deserts of Egypt.
Our Christian lives can easily become monastic. We often find our lives arranged so that we are around nonbelievers as little as possible. We attend Bible studies that are 100 percent Christian, Sunday schools that are 100 percent Christian, and church services that we hope are 100 percent Christian. We read only or at least primarily Christian books, send our kids to Christian schools or home school them, listen only or mostly to Christian radio programs or tapes. None of these things are bad, but it is easy to use these so much that we isolate ourselves in a Christian subculture.
