John 17:6-8 – The importance of hearing the words of Jesus

Jesus had prayed for Himself in John 17:1-5. He now turned to pray for the apostles. God had given Him twelve of them but one had gone astray. So in the upper room there were the remaining eleven. Bear in mind that while Jesus was with them He had made known the Father to them. They on the other hand had depended on His physical presence. At this point, Judas Iscariot had left the upper room to get ready to betray Him. And Jesus was about to leave for the Father and the Holy Spirit had not yet come. The Lord knew that they were not yet fully equipped to handle the full impact of what would soon happen at Calvary. So He prayed for God to protect them. He began by reminding God that these eleven were His in the first place. And God had so kindly given them to Jesus who had not failed to make known the Father to them.

When Jesus said that He had manifested God’s name to them, He meant that He had made God known to them. Name represents the whole person. To have manifested the name of God to them was to make known the whole personality and essential nature of God. The wonderful thing to note is that they had kept the Father’s word, which Jesus had shared with them. So He prayed for the Father to preserve and keep them in His name.  Granted that it took a while for them to realize that Jesus came to do the mission of the Father, but they did. They could see that Jesus was intricately connected with the Father and everything Jesus had shared was given by the Father. What Jesus had passed on to the apostles was a God-given message. Hence the message they received was a divine revelation. In contrast to the religious leaders, these eleven accepted what Jesus had shared with them as God’s message. And were assured of His divine origin, i.e. that Jesus came from God. 

The apostles came to a sure conviction of the origin of Jesus through listening and accepting the words He shared with them. Today in the Bible, we have the full counsel of God. It behooves us, as His followers now, to also pay close attention to what He is saying to us through the Bible. We must therefore make time to read, study, meditate, memorize, digest, and assimilate the word of God and make them a part of our life. When we are grounded in His Word, we will come to experience Christ and be kept in Him.