David Bahn – Reflections

John 17:6-9a

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. ⁸For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹I am praying for them.

Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer is not as well known as the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t recite it regularly. We seldom read it. But here Jesus reveals his heart for the Father, his disciples and the people who will come to faith in the future. The lengthy mid-section of Jesus’ prayer focuses on his disciples. Jesus was nearing the time of his death and departure to return to the father. His prayers for his disciples take on new earnestness and reveal some important truths about God’s heart for his people.

There is certainly a knowledge base that is important for the disciples’ on-going life and ministry. They were to know the truth of who Jesus is and where he was from. They knew God more deeply and profoundly because of Jesus’ life, ministry and teaching.

Jesus prays for the disciples’ continuing faithfulness, that they be kept in the Father’s name, being one in himself and the Father, and that their joy in him may be full. They will face the challenge of a hostile world, but it is a challenge they must face because Jesus will send them there. To take on this mission, Jesus realized they needed each other. He prays for them not only because he knew they would need God’s help once he left them, but because he knew they would need each other. Jesus did not undervalue the importance of the disciples’ communal faith.

One way of speaking of our lives as disciples of Jesus is to use the three-dimensions of UP-IN-OUT. We relate to God through Christ (UP). We relate to other believers in Christ (IN). We relate to the world around us, as Christ’s co-missioned ambassadors (OUT). Here Jesus prays fervently about the disciples’ UP-IN-OUT relationships, that the disciples may be one.

Our unity in Christ is vital to our walk with him in faith, love and mission. And as we seek to uphold that unity as it relates to both our faith in God and our part in God’s on-going mission to the world, we will be expressing the answer to Jesus’ prayer. Our oneness is not just in knowing God, but in taking up the call of Christ to go into the world and advance his kingdom’s cause (OUT). But such going (OUT) is impossible without the strength of God’s truth (UP) and the sustaining encouragement of brothers and sisters in Christ (IN). “IN” is vitally important; without it, we will surely fall along the way.

John 17:6-18

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. ⁸For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. ¹¹And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.¹² While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.