The High Priestly Prayer Of Jesus (Part 2) Series

I only want to spend a little bit of time here, because this is not the primary point of the passage. The primary point of the passage is about unity in verses 20-23 and the blessings of knowing Christ in verses 24-26. But, I don’t want you to completely gloss over this detail. At the beginning of verse 20, Jesus says, “I do not ask for these only…” That’s a reference back to verses 1-19 where he was praying for those who already are believers. But now he is praying that God would be glorified in the lives of the people who do not yet know God personally and experientially. I’m not gonna lie – this puzzled me for a minute. But as I looked close, what we see is that Jesus is praying that God would be glorified through the lives of people that were not yet Christians? In other words, God is still saving people and some of those non-Christians that he’s praying for will one day be Christians.

Sometimes I think there is a tendency to reduce our prayers for non-Christians down to only “Jesus save them.” And hear me clearly, evangelistic prayer is the most important (and probably least practiced) aspect of the Great Commission. Now listen – prayer takes the things that are on God’s heart and puts them on our hearts. And the thing that is on God’s heart is people. And when we spend time praying for people, we become more aware that we are to live our lives on mission. In fact, praying Great Commission, evangelistic prayers, should help guard us from being completely consumed with the stress of living in the here-and-now. And so we show faith, knowing that even in his sovereignty, he has somehow chosen to respond to believing prayer.

Listen to the first part of verse 20 again: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word…” There is a lot of debate about the mystery of election. But don’t get bogged down in the verses that aren’t clear to the point that you disregard the verses that are clear. Listen to 1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for ALL, which is the testimony given at the proper time."

2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance." To quote an old Bible professor, “All means all, that’s all all means.” So in praying for “those who would believe in me,” we see that we should align our prayer with God’s desire…and God’s desire is that ALL people would come to repentance and faith because Christ died for the sins of ALL men. His death was sufficient for all men, even though it is only efficient for those who believe.

So evangelistic prayer is both neglected and needed. But in the context of these verses, Jesus is not just praying for the future salvation of non-believers, he is praying that they would live in such a way that would glorify the Father. That’s why he is already praying for their unity as Christians before they even know Christ.