John 17 has rightly been described as
the high priestly prayer of Christ. This prayer discloses some of His inner
thoughts, and also shows us the deep and passionate relationship He had with
the Father. This prayer also covers a wide scope in terms of the time. Jesus not
only prayed for Himself, but also for His apostles, and the church that comprises
of disciples of all periods of time, even to our present day and age. Essentially,
our Lord prayed for three things. He first prayed for himself to be
glorified, then he prayed for the remaining eleven apostles to be protected and
sanctified, and lastly, He prayed for the church to be unified.
In these opening five verses, we see
Christ praying for Himself, specifically for His personal glorification. To
help us understand, we need to know what the statement - “to be glorified” means.
It simply means to made manifest hidden riches, to make known some hidden
values. In asking to be glorified, Jesus was requesting that what was
previously hidden from the world to be revealed and made known. Here He asked
the glory of God to be seen in two ways.
Firstly, He asked the glory of God to
be revealed through the cross. When He said, “…the hour has come…,” He was referring
to His impending death on the cross. Here He was asking that through His pain,
blood, agony, grief and loneliness, He would be glorified. And through the
result of the cross the Father would also be glorified. How would this death on
the cross bring about the glory? Firstly, through the cross, He would have authority
of all flesh. His Lordship would be made known. The cross would reveal that He
has the sovereign right to reign over the nations of the earth. Secondly, through
the cross, He would gain the right to offer eternal life to all that the Father
would bring to Him. Eternal life here is seen in knowing God. To know God is
the crux of human existence. Knowing the Father brings great fulfilment to
life. Knowing God brings meaning to our living. It is through the cross that Christ’s
work on earth would be complete. This is what He came to do: to redeem and reconcile
us to the Father. And this is completed through the cross.
In verse 5, we
see the second way Jesus asked to be glorified. He asked to return to the glory
He shared with the Father in heaven, before the beginning of time. Christ was
the Creator before time began. He came to earth in order to be our Redeemer. With
His redemptive work soon to be completed at the cross, He now asked to return
to the glory He had shared with God as the Creator.
To Jesus, the humiliation He would
soon go through was glorification. No wonder Hebrews 12:2 tells us that “(Jesus)
who for the joy set before
Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
That’s the reason why we must fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and completer
of our faith. It’s also the reason we run the race before us with endurance,
and not be derailed by the circumstances of life.
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