John 17: 1 – 26
The Lord’s Prayer
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. 6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me. 9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. 20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
I am sure many of you are aware of this but let me clarify this for the possible few who do not know. If I said let us all together pray the Lord’s prayer, I venture to say that almost all would recite the Lord’s words from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6 which says, “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen
Am I right?
In truth we find out in the Gospel of Luke that the disciples had observed the Lord take time alone to communicate with Father God so they wanted to be able to do the same thing. So He said to them, 5 “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father Who Is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. 7 And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray.
Today, we are going to look at the actual ‘Lord’s Prayer. So, let’s see what our Precious Lord, King and Master prayed to Father God. The prayer can be divided into three sections. In the first He prays for the fulfillment of the Father’s purposes regarding Himself (verses 1-5), in the second He prays for the possibility of the fulfillment of the Father’s purposes through the Apostles (verses 6-19), and in the third He prays for the fulfillment of those purposes in all true believers (vv. 20-26).
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
For a little while our Holy Lord greatly enjoyed the moment As He looked up to the third heaven where Father God was majestically ruling the heavens, the earth, and all that is in it. He offers a prayer of hope and expectancy of being able to go home.
As He looks with Love to The Father and comments that ‘the hour is come’, His words bring home His expectancy of death. He knows that soon He will have the pay the cost for us sinners by dying on the cross. They can be likened to the words spoken by the condemned man before he walks out to execution. He was ready to face His fate.
In His ministry The Lord Jesus has continually revealed His glory, but this is leading to greater glory, for it is a glory achieved through the final fulfillment of God’s plan of deliverance in which the power of the enemy is broken through the self-giving of Himself as The Lamb of God, while He Himself is raised to Supreme Authority. Yet in the end it is seen to be but the restoration of His former Glory.
The result of His receiving His glory will be that He brings great glory on the Father, for His glorious work is at the behest of His Father, and reveals the wonder of God’s being. Above all it reveals His outstanding love.
2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.
Our Lord makes the statement to Father God, ‘Even as You gave Him authority over all flesh.’ The idea is that this One Who goes to His death Is primarily the Judge of all the earth, and has authority over all men. In consequence He has the authority to do whatever He will, and as a result He has also the authority to forgive sins. He came to the world from the Father and the world was under His feet. Thus He could have done what He would, for He had authority over all. He could have taken power and ruled as Satan tempted Him to do but this would not have achieved the object of redemption. So He willingly and tenaciously chose a different path, the path that God had laid down, giving eternal life to those given to Him by the Father in full awareness of the consequences of His choice.
We all have to note the contrast between ‘being given authority over’ and ‘receiving as a gift from the Father’, the one authoritarian and judgmental the other personal and redeeming.
The people of God are here described as God’s gift to Christ. This gift of the Father to His Son has been mentioned earlier in passages where The Lord Jesus has made plain that men respond to God because He has chosen them and drawn them. All those whom the Father gives Him will come to Him, for they put their trust in Him. Indeed no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him so that no man comes fully to Christ Jesus The Lord unless he or she is given to Him of the Father.
3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Now this verse is great. It reveals to us that this life, we now learn, consists of men and women entering a place whereby they “know the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent”. They enter into a deep and personal experience of God. They ‘know Him’, that is, they ‘see’ and enter under the personal rule of God and receive a new spiritual awareness. To them God is no longer far off, but is real in their experience. In addition, this will then lead on to them knowing Him in eternity in the fullness of His being and glory.
It is significant that here our Lord Jesus alters His description from ‘Father’ to ‘only true God’, for here He is including Himself within the Godhead as the One member of the Triune Godhead sent from the only God in all His fullness. Being sent by God does not necessarily signify that He Himself was not God.
4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
Our Lord Jesus can say with a certainty that He has faithfully fulfilled the task given to Him by the Father. He has accomplished the work which the Father had given Him to do, and has brought glory to God by what He has done and what He will do, for both His life, teaching and miracles, and the final work on the cross, are part of that task. Now He prays that He might be fully restored to His former eternal glory and intimate relationship with the Father.
With these words our Lord completes His personal remarks to The Father. Please note that He only fills 5 verses with His own personal feelings. . His words about Himself, compiled together, reflect that He rejoices that He can be back in Heaven with Father God.
There are 21 more verses in His prayer. In His love He thinks about His disciples and us. He thinks more about us than Himself.
First of all The Lord Jesus now turns His attention to the needs of His Apostles. They are men of proved faithfulness, but He Is aware of all that they must face in the future, and He thus commits them to His Father’s care.
6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
He points out that He has revealed to the Apostles Who The Father Is. He has revealed ‘His Name’ to them, that is, His very nature. And these are the men whom the Father has ‘given Him out of the world’. They are the elect from among the world of men.
Our Lord Jesus describes them as men who ‘belonged to the Father’ and had been ‘given to Himself’. That ‘they were Yours’ refers to their condition before they were given by the Father. The natural reading of this is that they responded to Christ because God had already in some way made them His own by sovereign choice prior to making a gift of them to His Son.
They were men who had ‘kept the Father’s word’, which included the words that The Lord Jesus had given them. The idea is that they have believed them, treasured them and held them fast. They had also fully recognized The Lord Jesus’ uniqueness as God’s Son. In this we see clearly that their response is due to their ‘election’ by God Who has set them aside as His own before time began.
They had been given to The Son of God Jesus Christ ‘out of the world’. From among mankind in its rebellion and subjection to the Evil One the Father had taken them and given them to His Son.
As I think about this declaration I am drawn back to what was revealed in the Gospel of Luke chapter 13. As you read through the Gospels you will take note how our Precious Holy Master loved to get off by Himself and communicate with Father God. I can see that on one occasion The Father reveals who are the chosen men to be His apostles. We read this, “12 Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. 13 And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles: 14 Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; 15 Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; 16 Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor.
To them He has ‘openly revealed the Father’s name’. In Jewish thought the ‘name’ was seen as signifying the whole of what a person was. This includes His name as the ‘I am’. It is the name on which the name YHWH (‘The One Who Is’) was based.
7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.
‘Now they know.’ They have professed to this understanding and He Is satisfied that it is true in so far as was possible at this stage. In simplicity I love Peter’s remarks after our Lord spoke about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. As you know almost all of His disciples walked away from Him except His apostles. Not truly understanding the spiritual emphasis of what our Lord was saying they still loved and said that they are sticking with the Lord. We read in chapter 6 verse 68 this, “But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
They implicitly believe that what He has taught and revealed is of the Father, and they have received His words and accept their source in the One Who sent Him. Indeed they see clearly that Jesus was sent by the Father. They are thus worthy recipients of His favor, not because they deserve it, but because they have believed in the One Whom He sent, and have believed that He sent Him.
In Deuteronomy 18:18 God promised to Moses, “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him." The Lord Jesus’ words are words given to Him by the Father. They rightly interpreted Moses remarks as signifying a Prophet who was expected in the end times. It thus finds fulfillment in The Son of God Jesus Christ Whose words were the very words of God and were passed on to the people of God.
9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
Those ‘who are given to Him’ are true believers. Right now He has the Apostles primarily in mind here. These are the subject of this portion of His prayer here.
If you haven’t yet taken notice please look at what our Precious Lord said - ‘I do not pray for the world.’ Does it seem out of place to you or incorrect for the Lord to say this? I am sure you have in mind one of the most popular verses in mind which is John 3:16, which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Of course our Holy Master and King Jesus Christ loves the world but we see in His words His special singling out of His followers for protection and blessing. In a way He Is saying, ‘Father, I want to single out of all those in the world the ones who have faithfully been my followers.’He stresses the wonderful fact that while they have been given to Him, they also belong to the Father (‘they are Yours’) because He and the Father share all things mutually. And He emphasizes that they will bring Him great glory. That is why He selects them out for His prayers.
If you are a servant presently of The Lord Jesus then you should take great encouragement in these words from our Lord - ‘I am glorified in them.’ Our Lord Jesus was to be glorified by being lifted up on a cross and then through His resurrection and ascension to the throne of God. But He will receive further glory because of chosen men, who by their dedication, sacrifice and suffering will bring about the fulfillment of His purposes, ‘filling up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ’ by taking His name to the world in the face of all the consequences as the letter to the Colossians 1.24 teaches us.
11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
I want us all to take a hard look again at the beginning of verse 1. Our Precious Holy Lord in His prayer to Father God says, ‘Now I AM no longer in the world, but these are in the world.’ Wait a minute here! At first glance our Lord Who Is present on earth and while John His apostle is listening in to His conversation says He isn’t in the world anymore. So, what is actually happening here?
Have you ever heard the statement that ‘he is so heavenly minded that he is no earthly good.’ This is an entirely inaccurate statement. Since we are talking about our Great Master and King let me say that He Is both Heavenly and Earthly good. How so? Well as I have said in the beginning of this study chapter 17 is the Lord’s Prayer to Father God. In the first 5 verses we have greatly learned of our Precious Holy Lord’s joy in knowing that He has successfully completed all the work The Father gave Him to do with the completion of His sacrifice at the cross. Now He greatly is looking forward to be back with The Father in Heaven again. With this excitement His thoughts are fixed in anticipation of His accomplishment. When your thoughts are fixed on the Glorious prize all other factors go by the wayside. So, although yes He Is still here on earth, all His thoughts are in His Home -Heaven.
The second portion of the Lord’s Prayer is focused on His followers. They are still in the world. He knows what the world is about to do to Him. And He is leaving them in the world knowing that the world will seek to do the same to them. So He prays the Father to keep them in His Name. The Good Shepherd Is temporarily going to leave them and commits the sheep into the hands of and equal loving Shepherd -The Holy Spirit.
We are part of the body of Christ. All the parts of our bodies must function in total harmony, would you agree? In our human bodies there is sometimes something that attempts to cause our bodies in its harmonious functions. Do you know what this violator of bodily systems is? It is called ‘cancer’
12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
I have dealt with a lot of people who have sinned and are so overwhelmed that they feel that they have lost their salvation. I like to take them to this verse and have the person read it for me. I ask them how many people did the Lord say He lost? They usually do not answer me. I reply that he or she is not saying anything because they was only one person who was lost– Judas. There is only one and he lived and is dead. The scripture says there was only one [period].
Some people have also come up to me and say wasn’t Judas repentant? No, after Satan used him for his devilish scheme he left Judas. If you ever visited prisoners ask them if they are sorry for their crimes. You will be amazed at the answers you get in which you will come close to one hundred percent that they are sorry for the crimes. The interesting thing is that they are not sorry for the crime itself but for getting caught.
Perdition means s state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and impenitent person passes after death. Judas facing the consequences of his betrayal of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, instead of seeking the Lord’s forgiveness for his act went and hung himself thus dying without ever being an impenitent person.
13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.
Our Holy Lord Jesus points out that all that He Is saying, and has said, is so that they may experience the fullness of the joy that is His in the midst of a hostile world. In combating it they will need the awareness of the keeping and protecting power of God, the knowledge that they are branches of the true Vine, and the awareness of His constant provision of what they need in their ministry so that they can face the somewhat grim initial future with joy. And that joy is to be the joy of Christ that He constantly experienced because of His Oneness with the Father. It is a joy that He wants them to have to the full.
Now He Is leaving them and going to the Father while they must continue living in the world. But they have been given His word and the result is that they no longer live and behave as those who are ‘of the world’. Like Him they are ‘out of’ it. They are under God’s rule, not of the world. They do not follow the world’s ways. They are citizens of Heaven living as aliens in the world. And the consequence is that the world will hate them.
Our Lord emphasizes - ‘I have given them your word.’ They no longer view things as the world views them. They have the Word of God to be their guide. They are citizens of Heaven. The thought also includes the fact that that word has been entrusted to them, to be cherished and passed on. For it is not for them alone but for all whom the Father has given Him. And the result of their having that word and passing it on to others will be the hatred of the world.
The disciples have already experienced something of the world’s hatred. Just as the world hates the light so does it hate those who shine the light on it and its ways? This is inevitable. Christian experience is ever the same. Men like to be associated with ‘goodness’ as long as it is not too strictly demanded of them. So for a while the world may sometimes admire Christians and speak well of them, but eventually their refusal to compromise will bring them into hatred. As our Holy Lord Jesus said elsewhere as recorded in the Gospel of of Luke chapter 26 verse 6, , ‘beware when men speak well of you’. They did the same to the prophets before they killed them.
16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
Now here is an excellent statement by our Lord for all of us to stop and think about. Our Lord Jesus has just stated that all those who believe and follow Him are not of the world, right? Then why are so many of us still clinging to all that is in the world? There was a young woman who worked with me in street evangelism outreaches. Of the hundreds of young men and women who were her age she stood out. I told her about this and asked her why? I love her answer. She told me that if Jesus Is All that the bible says He Is, then why not be all in to loving and living for Him. This statement of hers is imprinted in my mind. Right on sister!
To be ‘all in’ for our Lord Jesus’ is the term ‘sanctified’. It means to ‘make holy’ or to ‘set apart as God’s’ so that they begin to partake of the ‘wholly other’. They are to have the touch of God on them, within them and around them
When you get in to reading, memorizing, and thinking about all that is in the bible you have to be in awe of the perfection of God’s word. Stop and think that to get together 40 writers over thousands of years and put everything together you see a harmonious author behind it all. God’s Word Is Truth!. IF you ever come across someone who doubts this then tell them to read the bible from cover to cover and come back and talk to you about their doubts.
18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
If you have been with us from the beginning of the Gospel of John then you know that our Lord Jesus has said a lot of times that He was sent by the Father to ‘the world’ as a light, to open its eyes, shake its complacency and make it aware of its evil. Now The Son of God our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Is sending His disciples to do the same.
19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.
In verse 17 our Lord Jesus has previously asked the Father to sanctify the disciples. Now we learn that this can only be because of what He will do when He goes to the cross and as He makes intercession for them. Through His sacrificial death and continual intercession their sanctification in truth (being wholly set apart to God by their experience and knowledge of the truth) is made possible. Man can know the truth because He Who Is The Truth sanctified Himself on their behalf as an offering for sin. In His ‘setting apart’, His own also are set apart.
This benefit of Sanctification is something that the disciples will enjoy because the Lord Jesus Is deliberately “setting himself apart” (sanctifying himself) to suffering and glory. They too will be set apart to suffering and to glory, because they possess the truth. We note all through the prayer that our Lord Jesus Is aware that as long as the truth abides in them everything else will fall into place. It is when we diverge from the truth or cease to follow it that our problems begin.
20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
In the closing of The Lord Jesus’ prayer to the Father, He thinks about all of us. He began to pray for all who would become believers in the future not only through the men who walked with Him while He was here on earth but also through the ministry of others in the future who would proclaim the same truths in His Name.
21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
As we read back in the Gospel of John chapter 13 verse 35 our Lord reveals what we read about here, “35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
His prayer is that the unity which He has requested for the Apostles may also be experienced by His people as a whole. That unity He likens to the unity between Himself and His Father, a unity of purpose and action, of love and truth, which will be theirs as they abide in Him and the Father. This portrayal of unity and love will then make its impression on the world so that the world will believe that Jesus Christ came from the Father.
For some considerable time that unity did impress the world. They said, ‘see how these Christians love one another’. In fact believers in our Lord Jesus Christ as being the Messiah were referred to as the ‘Way.” It was later on in Antioch were called Christians because people started commenting that believers were acting like the One they had heard about –Jesus Christ. We learn this from the book of Acts chapter 11 verse 26, “And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”
Even today whenever the hearts of Christians are firmly set on Christ rather than on the church there is a unity and love which is remarkable to behold. The more we ‘abide in Christ’, the more that oneness is seen. Sadly, how would you rate the love of Christ today between believers? The enemy that our Lord warned about has us fighting and devouring each other.
22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
The glory of our Lord Jesus as revealed in chapter 1 verse 14 in this Gospel was ‘full of grace and truth’. It was a glory of compassion and mercifulness, and above all of truth concerning God. This He has sought to pass on to His own.
Our Lord Jesus then goes on to make clear that Christians are introduced into a fellowship of love and truth that is almost beyond comprehension. It is a unity caused by His indwelling in them and the Father’s indwelling in Him. They are made ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1.4). They are united with His own body (1 Corinthians 12.12 ff). But as He has made clear it is a unity based on truth (verses 17-19).
Once so-called Christians begin to diverge from the central truths in the word of God they no longer share in that unity but have become mere philosophers, borrowing Christian truth for their own purposes and destroying the central nature of truth. And the only test we have is the word of God. On the other hand, by uniting in truth we will be perfected into one, and nothing will disturb that oneness.
24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
I want you to stop and see the amazing truth here regarding the Lord’s thoughts about you. First of all He loves you so much that He cannot take His eyes off of you. In addition, He can’t wait for you to be with Him forever – “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am’.
In chapter 13 verses 2 and 3 our Lord reveals, In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also
25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
In all our dealings and thoughts concerning Father God we have to recognize that He Is the righteous Father. Everything He thinks and does is right. That was what the world failed to recognize about Him. They were unaware of His true righteousness, and therefore did not realize their need for atonement, or their need to become truly righteous. They thought that they could get away with being religious. But the Father is a righteous Father, and all hypocrisy collapses in His presence. Righteousness and truth are branches from the same stem.
God in Christ was unrecognized and unwanted by the world with its distorted aims and motives, and by ‘His people’ because He was not what they wanted. The world may to some extent have gained a general perception of a‘Father’ God above, but they do not have a conception of a ‘righteous Father’, a Father Who in His love requires strict adherence to His word, His laws and His ways, a Father Who requires obedience. The truth is that the Father requires of us that which is good, and those who are His will therefore be obedient to His ways, and will work them out in their lives with great care. They know that God is at work in them and they therefore respond fully from the heart
The world neither knows nor heeds a Father like this. They are not subject to His ways. But our Precious Holy Lord Jesus knew Him fully, and knew and revealed Him in this way, and those who are His know that The Lord Jesus was sent from God and has made known to them His name, and will continue to make it known. Thus through Him they too come to a true knowledge of God and of His righteous requirements. It is fallen and unredeemed man who makes the grace of God an excuse for carrying on sinning.
God Himself possesses His people, and dwells in those who believe in Him. This is the Christian’s final glory that Christ dwells in his heart by faith. Thus do they know that they are rooted and grounded in love and that the love of God and of Christ is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit Who is given to them.
