Though our Lord was pre-eminent in His prayer life, as in all else, we could form but a meager conception of the character of His prayers, had it not pleased God to leave on record this wonderful example of intercession, contained in John 17. It is as though our Lord wished us to know how He prays for us now. This chapter has been called “Our Lord’s Priestly Prayer.” If so, it was by anticipation of a new and heavenly order. For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, not being of the priestly tribe. Now, in ascension glory He is “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” and “ever liveth to make intercession for us.”
In John 13, we have seen the Lord cleansing His disciples’ feet, as did the priests of old before entering the Tabernacle (Ex. 30:17). In the chapters that follow, we may see something corresponding to the furniture of the Holy Place, the ministry of Christ illuminating His disciples by His Word, showing them Himself as the object of their faith and spiritual sustenance, and becoming, in the revelation of His person, like a sweet incense ascending to the Father.
Now, He leads them into the Holiest of all in the Heavenly Temple, “the House of God, not made with hands,” and so initiates them into the secrets of His communion with the Father. It might be profitably studied in this aspect, but it is as a declaration of the Father’s Name that I propose now to consider it.
He is declared here as the Great Giver, not only of “every good and perfect gift” to us, but also as the Fountain of the Trinity: that is, the Source and Originator of all Divine counsels and blessings. For, though all the Three Persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and co- substantial, they do not all exercise the same functions in the Godhead.
The first gift is glory. If the Son is to be glorified, it must be by the Father: “Father, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee,” not with a new glory, but “with the glory that He had with Thee before the world was;” nor must it be apart from the Father; it is to be “with Thy own self” (v. 5).
In verse 22, He speaks of this glory as already bestowed, and at His disposition to bestow on His own. Truly, His words at the grave of Lazarus might be written across this whole prayer, “I know that Thou hearest Me always.” In Mark 11:24, the Lord exhorts us to believe “we have received,” as soon as we ask, and here does so Himself. In verse 22, the glory seems to be connected with the gift of the Holy Ghost, by whom the unity of the body of Christ is formed and secured, “that they may be one, even as We are.”
The recipients of eternal life are another gift of the Father to Christ, for they are described all through the chapter as “them whom Thou hast given Me.” “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me, and they have kept Thy Word” (v. 6), and they are still the Father’s. “All Mine are Thine and Thine are Mine, and I am glorified in them.”
The third gift is power (lit., authority) “over all flesh,” an authority exercised in the case of His own in giving them eternal life. The original is hard to render, but the R.V. is nearer it than A.V., “that whatsoever Thou has given Him” (lit. everything, i.e., the company of the redeemed viewed as a whole), to them He should give eternal life, for they must receive it as individuals.
Then fourthly, the very work He had finished, was a gift of the Father, “I have finished the work Thou hast given Me to do.” The Lord did not “do something for God,” but the work the Father gave Him to do, as we too are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before prepared, that we should walk in them.” Nor did He speak His own words, but the Word of God in the very words of God, “I have given unto them the words that Thou gavest Me” (v. 8). These words then were yet another gift to Christ.
The second character in which the Father is revealed in this prayer, is as the Keeper of Christ’s People. “Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name, which Thou hast given Me” (vv. 11-12, rv). The Lord, while with them, had kept them in the Father’s Name, and none of them was lost, but (in contrast with such) the Son of Perdition was lost. Compare for a similar construction, Luke 4:26-27, where the widow of Sarepta and Naaman are clearly not exceptions to, but in contrast with, what has gone before.
Connected with this assurance of being in the hands of the Father, come our Lord’s words, “These things I speak in the world, that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” And no wonder, for what better ground of rejoicing can we have than to know for sure that we are in the hands of an infinitely tender Father, full of solicitude for our highest good, to whom we belong by election, creation, redemption, and adoption? He it was who gave us to the Son, who has handed us back to the Father to keep for Him.
As to the manner of this keeping, it is revealed in the next character of the Father as Sanctifier, and the safeguards are not legal but moral, not of peculiar dress, but inwardly of the heart; not of stone walls, but spiritual. Believers are not to be taken out of the world like hermits, but preserved like “pilgrims and strangers” in it. “Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy Word is truth.” And it was in order that the Word might be able to exercise its separating effect that the Lord separated Himself by death and resurrection, for it was only thus the Spirit could come and render the Word effective.
And all this He prays, not only for the eleven, but for those who become, by their testimony, believers in Him, that they, too, may form part of the one body. This unity is spiritual and divine, and will be openly manifested when the Lord returns in glory with all His saints, because the oneness of the body will then be manifested complete and perfect. That Christians ought to keep the unity of the Spirit is true, but have grievously failed is too sadly evident. But I do not judge that this is what the Lord is asking for here. Rather He is asking that their integral unity should be assured to the end, by their baptism in the Spirit into one body.
We are not exhorted to keep the unity of the body, which is guaranteed, not by the well meant efforts of Christians of different denominations uniting from time to time for prayer and gospel effort–at best an imperfect and partial thing, but by this prayer of Christ; the promise of the Father, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But we are told to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love,” and that on the basis of the sevenfold unity detailed in the following verses (see Eph. 4:4-6).
The last revelation of the Father in this prayer is as the Lover of His People. The world is to know that the love of the Father to His people is commensurate with His love to Christ, a love which was in effect before the foundation of the world. Not only does the Lord desire that His people should be with Him, to behold His glory, but that the love wherewith the Father loves Him should be in them and He in them, as a present enjoyed reality, and each be able to say with confidence–“The love wherewith He loves the Son, such is His love to me.”
It is with this end in view that our Lord declared the Father’s Name. This prayer was not the conclusion of His interpretation of the Father while in this scene, for He adds, “and will declare it.” The testimony was continued by Him in the Epistles and the Revelation, through the Spirit, and will continue forever in heaven.