Harry Foster
Reading: John 17
THE Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray, but we are not told that He ever prayed with them. He prayed for them, of course, and on this special occasion He allowed them to overhear His prayer and to record it. And what a prayer! Whenever we are reminded that now He lives to intercede for us in heaven we ought, perhaps, to re-read this chapter and allow the Holy Spirit to remind us of how He prays for His Church.
For it was the Church that He was praying for. It is only reasonable to conclude that His last supreme prayer would concern that which mattered to Him most, and both the spirit and the words of this prayer reveal to us how very much we do matter. For it was for us -- His Church -- that He prayed so earnestly. He might have prayed for the nation Israel. No doubt He often did. God knows, it needed prayer then and has done ever since, even till today. He might have prayed for all the nations of the earth, for they were in misery and confusion then as they certainly are now. But no, in this connection He specifically stated that He was not praying for the world -- not in that prayer. He was concentrating all His affections and His earnest pleadings on behalf of His redeemed people.
He hardly prayed for Himself at all. We are not surprised, for that is just like Him. He did announce several times that He was about to return home once again: "I come to thee" (v.11). In that connection He felt it right to ask that as Man, and as our Representative, He might be received into the same glory which He had always had before ever there was a world (v.5). We take it that His first request that the Father would glorify His Son was really a confession of need to be supported right through to the end of [99/100] what He Himself calls His finished work (v.4). The real burden of His intercession, however, was for that group of people whom He seven times describes as "those whom thou hast given me" (vv.2, 6, 6, 9, 11, 12 and 24). In that last verse He does ask something for Himself, as well as for us, for He gives voice to His longing desire, praying concerning this God-given people: "I will that, where I am, they also may be with me" (v.24). We are His precious treasure and He wants us always near to Him throughout all eternity.
It needs no argument to prove that His prayer was not confined to the eleven men then present with Him, but included all His blood-bought people. We are, perhaps, familiar with the idea that we are precious to Him because He bought us at such a tremendous cost, but probably far less prone to dwell on the amazing fact that we are the Father's love gift to Him.
He prayed for His Church not as an institution but as individual men and women. He certainly prayed that the Father would make of all His own a people so knit together in divine love that we would be one in partaking of that eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son -- admitted into the family. We are glad to know that that request was granted at Pentecost when there was created "the unity of the Spirit" which we are now enjoined to give diligence to keep (Ephesians 4:3). But He prayed for us not only as a 'Fellowship', but as individuals in that community, namely, "those whom thou hast given me".
I imagine myself as John, or Peter, actually hearing the dear Lord asking His righteous Father that I might have a place near Him in the glory, ever learning more of the great Name and sharing more of the divine and intimate love. Well, although I was not there, it is equally true of me. I may read myself into that prayer. Seven times over, then, I am assured that I form part of the special people chosen out of the world to be Christ's precious and personal possession. I am the Father's love gift to the Son, a gift so valued that His supreme request on the eve of Calvary was that I should be cherished and kept so that, when He is in the glory, I may be there with Him.
Can it be that His final request to the Father before He moved on into the Garden, and then emerged from the darkness of Calvary to the bright light of eternal glory, was that He must always have me with Him? Dare we put it like this: Heaven would not be truly heaven for Him unless He had His people there with Him? Or, putting it more positively: Glory will be all the more glorious for Him by reason of the fact that with Him He will have those who are the Father's gift of love to Him?
It needed the Holy Spirit to make this divine fact real to those listening disciples. And later on, Paul (who had been given some glimpse into the preciousness to Christ of His Church) prayed that a spirit of wisdom and revelation might be granted to us Christians so that we might know "the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18). A spiritual apprehension of this great gift must surely melt our hearts and inspire us to new longings for holiness. How much -- how very much -- we matter to Him!
As I re-read the prayer in this light, those phrases about knowing and keeping God's Word, about sanctification, witness and unity, take on an altogether new importance. That is surely why God inspired John to write the prayer in such detail. The truth is at one and the same time a cause of deep humility and an inspiration to greater devotion.
So even I, and with a hope more sweet,
Groan for the hour, O Christ! of Thy returning,
Faint for the flaming of Thine advent feet.
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