Text: " I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through his word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, and they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them, even as you have loved me. Father they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me. That they may see my glory you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you and they know you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.
This is the longest prayer of Jesus recorded in the Bible. It marked the end of Jesus earthly ministry, but Jesus looked forward to the ongoing ministry of the immediate and future disciples. Prayer was an important aspect of Jesus ministry. When ever strategic time approached, Jesus spent time in prayer. The world is a battle ground.
Constant spiritual and physical warfare wages between the forces of God and Satan. Jesus prayed that God would keep his people pure, give them abundant joy, Give them peace and unity, and protect them from Satan's power. Jesus frequently, separating himself from every earthly distraction,
recommends we find a quiet place for us and God to meet alone. A missionary and his family were forced to camp outside on a hill. They had money with them and were fearful of an attack by roving thieves. After prayer they went to sleep. Months later an injured man was brought into the mission hospital. He asked the missionary if he had soldiers guarding him on that special night.
" We intended to rob you, "he said, " But we were afraid of the twenty-seven soldiers."
When the missionary returned to his homeland, he related this strange story, and a member of his church said, " we had a prayer meeting that night, and I took the roll. There were just twenty-seven of us present".
Back to our gospel text. We picture Jesus praying. We feel almost as if we were on holy ground, in a sacred place, listening in on a most private conversation, trying to understand this most private dialogue between Father and son.
Our text is the last part of the long prayer of John 17. After this prayer was finished, according to John's gospel, Jesus went straight out with his disciples to Gethsemane to be betrayed, seized, bound, whipped, and crucified.
In our text Jesus prays for the church: The church present and the church to come. He prays that the church may become one even as he and the father are one, that among his followers there be a unity of love, and among those who believe in him will be seen as the same kind of love that the father has for the son. Jesus did not ask that the disciples be taken out of this world. He left them and us to be an example, of how God's people were to live and serve. On the contrary, they are to be the hope and the light of the world and the salt of the earth. They have a crucial message the world needs, and their mission and ours is to spread the good news of eternal life through Christ our Lord.
William Barclay wrote: Christianity was never meant to withdraw man from life.. It was meant to equip him better for life. Christianity does not offer us release from problems, but a way to solve it. The Christian must never desire to abandon the world, they must always desire to win the world. Though twenty-centuries since that dawn when Mary Magdalene and the women failed to find Jesus body in Joseph's tomb, our text is unique in one way, that we can claim that we who are living at this very moment were included in Jesus prayer centuries ago, for he prayed not only for his disciples then, but for all those who someday would believe in him (John 17:20).
Jesus prayed that all those who believed would be one. What kind of oneness did he have in mind?
Some argue that Jesus prayer means all churches should unite. (Good Luck in that endeavor)! Jesus prayed for unity, where men loved each other, because they loved Christ. It will never be that they will worship God the same way. It will never be that they will all believe exactly the same things; but the love of each other for Christian unity comes through the love for Christ which rises above their own denomination; for in my Father's house, while the rooms are different, the roof is the same, for it covers all. Lutheran theologian Warren Quanbeck writes of Christian unity, which we already have." There is only one Christ, one gospel, one church. All who belong to Christ through baptism and faith are members of this one church.
We must remember that Christ in his sacerdotal ( pastoral) prayer, prays first for his own glorification, then for his present disciples, and finally for the future believers in the final consummation and bliss in heaven.
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