THIS PAST TUESDAY, I took a day away from my desk, and Jan and I made a trip to Frisco, which is one of the places we like to go when we can. We ate at a favorite restaurant, relaxed and talked a bit, and then, as we almost always do, we went our separate ways – Jan to shop, and what I always do is, I go to a bookstore and browse through the books. But this time what I wound up doing was: I spent most of the afternoon, thinking through this passage from John’s Gospel. Now, don’t feel sorry for me. I actually enjoyed every moment of it. It was uninterrupted study time, and that was a true gift.
Now, I knew going in with that this entire chapter is a prayer Jesus prayed. In fact I have preached on and taught this text many times. But this week I saw some things that I had not seen before, and they came together in a fresh way. And I want to invite you, if you are willing, just to look with me at this passage and see what we discover. As we do, we need to keep in mind that Jesus prayer this prayer the night before He died, and he knew He was going to die the next day. Now, why is that important? It’s important for this reason: If we wanted to know what Jesus’ priorities are, we might very well expect to find out by listening to what it is He prayed about just hours before He laid down His life for us. We will never get closer to His heart than this. Now, this might be a big assumption to make, but I can’t help but believe that, if we know what Jesus’ priorities are, we will adopt them as our own. We will make His passions our passions, His aims our aims, and, and if He prayed for these things, we will pray for them as well.
So, what are Jesus’ passions? I see three of them in this passage. As we look at His prayer, we discover that He is passionate, first, about His own glory, second, about the church, and third, about reaching the world with the gospel. You and I might summarize them this way: the glory of Christ, the body of Christ, and the work of Christ in the world. Those are Jesus’ passions. And what we need to ask ourselves today is: Are these our passions? It’s an important question because: We want to make His passion our passion, His aims our aims, and, since He prayed for them so fervently, we want to pray for them as well.
Take the first one: a passion for the glory of Christ. In John 17, verse 1, we read that Jesus “looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you.’” You will notice that He repeated this petition in verse 3, when He said, “Now, Father, glorify me in you own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”
Is this our passion – to desire and defend the glory of our Savior? It is if we want to make Jesus’ passion our passion, if we want to make His aims our aims. And, if that is what we want, then the glory of Christ must become a priority for us. It ought to be the first consideration in everything we do as a church. We ought to ask, Does this – whatever it is – exalt Christ? Does it display His character and His will? Does it reveal His heart? If any place on this earth is to be devoted to lifting up the name of Jesus, it ought to be this place. If His name is spoken with affection anywhere in this world, if anywhere our Lord Jesus is looked upon with adoration and reverence, it ought to be here, among His people, in His church. Right? We are here to glorify Him. This was His passion; it must be our passion as well.
The second passion of Jesus revealed in this prayer is for the well-being of the church. And, if you look closely, what you will see is that He prays that the church may be kept safe and sound – safe from threats without and from threats within and sound in what it teaches. To use words that have a kind of Presbyterian flair to them, our Lord prays for the peace, unity, and purity of the church.
He prays for the peace of the church, because it is ever under threat of persecution. He prays that His church will be safe from threats without because those threats are real. Over the past several months, we have all become aware of the fact that many of our brothers and sisters – people we do not know but with whom we are bound together in Christ – are suffering severe persecution.
So, here in John, chapter 17, we see how Jesus prays for the peace of His church. “While I was with them,” He prays, “I protected them in your name…. I guarded them.” “Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world…. Holy Father, protect them in your name.”
But Jesus not only wants to keep us safe from outside threats to the church. He also wants to keep us safe from inside threats. So, He prays not only for the peace of the church but for its unity as well. He says to His Father: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, even as we are one.” In fact, you will notice in this chapter that Jesus prays repeatedly for the unity of His church.
It is never unity for unity’s sake, though. What unites us is Christ. It is always unity in Him. “I in them,” Jesus prays, “and you [Father] in me, that they may become completely one.” So, are we? Are we one? In the words of the old hymn, are we “one in hope and doctrine, one in charity”? Are we careful how we speak to and about one another? Are we mindful that we are here to seek together the will of Christ and not just to get what we want? Do our relationships reflect more and more the Spirit of Jesus? We would do well to read again Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 and Philippians 2 and test ourselves against those standards. They tell us how people in Christ related to each other: “Love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor….” That’s from Romans 12, and that chapter goes on to say: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it be possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves…” (Rom. 12:10, 17-19a). I want to tell you, we need to get on our knees and repent for the ways we have ignored these words that come from Holy Scripture.
Jesus’ passion is that the church be safe, but his passion is that it also be sound. Safe from threats outside and inside and sound in doctrine. Peace and unity but also purity. We hear this clearly in His prayer: “The words that you gave to me,” He says to His Father, “I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me…. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
Do we embrace this? Do we recognize, as the Westminster Confession says, that “the authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, depends not on upon the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) who is the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God”? (I.4). Do we recognize – again, as it is worded in the Westminster Confession – that the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments “are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life”? (I.2). Jesus tells us here in John 17 that the Father gave Him His word and that He gave it to His followers. We have received it from Christ Himself. Do we treasure it? Do we read it? Do we permit ourselves to be changed by it? Jesus prays that we may be sanctified in the truth and then says to the Father, “Your word is truth.” Do we believe that? Will we be governed by God’s truth as it is revealed in His Word? Will we submit to it and live by it? Jesus was passionate about this. Will we make His passion our own? Will we make His aims our aims? And will we pray, as He did, that they may come to fruition – in the lives of others, to be sure, but first of all in our lives?
Jesus prays for His own glory and for the church to be safe and sound – safe from external and internal threats and sound in doctrine. He also prays that the church will be effective in bringing others to faith in Him. If His priorities are our priorities, then our priorities will be the glory of Christ, the body of Christ, and now, finally, the work of Christ in the world – His mission.
According to Jesus, this is the reason our unity is so important. If we do not love each other, it will be difficult to convince the world of the love of Christ. So, we hear Jesus praying: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” – why? – “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” That’s verse 21. Two verses down, in verse 23, Jesus continues. He says, “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” – again, why? – “so that the world may know that you have sent me.” Do you see how I can say that this is Jesus’ passion – to see His church reach out to the lost and to call them to faith in Jesus Christ for salvation? That is his passion. Is it ours? If it is, what are we doing about it?
I urge you today to make Jesus’ passion your passion, His aims your aims. And I have a suggestion for something we can do – you and I – to do just that, to make His passion our passion, His aims our aims. We can do what He did. We can pray.
And here is a prayer you might consider? In fact, I would like to invite you to make a commitment to pray this prayer every day in the coming week. The prayer is simple and short, and it goes like this:
Dear Lord, I pray…
…that Your church may be kept safe and sound,
…that Your sheep may be sought, that they be found,
…that Your name be known and with glory crowned.
Our passion and the aim behind everything we do ought to reflect these three priorities: first, the glory of Christ, second, the body of Christ, and third, the work of Christ in the world. Will you stir up your passion for these things, and will you pray – this week! and with all your heart – that the name of Jesus be exalted, that the church be kept safe from all harm, and that we be used of God to seek and to save the lost? These are the things for which Jesus prayed just hours before His death. They ought to be the things for which we pray – and for which we live – each hour of each day of our life.
