OUR LORD’S HIGH PRIESTLY PRAYER

Part 3

JOHN 17:5-10

17:5

Having accomplished everything according to the predetermined plan of His Father, Jesus knew that He would be exalted to the place of honor He enjoyed before His incarnation.

Now, Father, glorify (doxadzō – exalt, honor, magnify) Me together with Yourself, with the glory (doxa – with the honor and majesty) which I had with You before the world was.

The apostle John had already described the eternal fellowship Christ enjoyed with the Father in John 1:1-2

In the beginning was the Word (the Son), and the Word was with God (literally face-to-face with God) and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

The universe and this world “were made” in the beginning, but the Word “was” in the beginning.

Arthur Pink in his book “The attributes of God” said this: There was a time, if “time” it could be called, when God, in the unity of His nature (though subsisting equally in three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Spirit), dwelt all alone. “In the beginning, God.” There was no heaven, where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There was no angels to hymn His praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one, but the Triune God; and that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but “from everlasting.” During a past eternity, the Triune God was all alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied; in need of nothing. This is the glory Christ shared with the Father before the world was.

After an earthly life of submission and humiliation during the incarnation, Jesus was ready to return to the full glory that awaited Him at the Father’s right hand. It was time for His coronation.  Philippians 2:6-11

Jesus looked beyond the humiliation of His death on the cross to the glory that awaited Him upon His return to heaven. The glory He would receive was rightfully His, both by His divine title (the second person of the Trinity) and by His perfect submission to the Father’s will.

17:6

Christ had manifested by His life and teaching the Father’s character, nature, and attributes to those given Him by the Father out of the world. The aorist tense denotes that this was an accomplished fact, one that Christ had perfectly finished according to the Father’s plan.

I have manifested (phaneroō – I have revealed You, I have explained You, I have made known) Your name (onoma – your person, your being) to the men whom You gave Me out of the world (to the ones you gave Me from this world); they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept (tēreō – they held fast) Your word.

The supreme manifestation of the name of God was the Lord Jesus Christ, God in humanHe who sees Me sees the One who sent Me (John 12:45) and, He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9). flesh. So perfectly and completely did Jesus reveal God’s nature and character that He could make shocking statements like

The New Testament writers declare Him to be the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), in whom all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form (Col 2:9), who existed in the very form of God (Phil 2:6) and is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature (Heb 1:3).

Christ again describes the disciples as those the Father had given Him out of the world. The world (kosmos) is the evil, godless, satanically ruled system composed of all the unredeemed and all that oppose God and His kingdom.

Christians are no longer part of the world, having been rescued from the domain of darkness, and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col 1:13).

All those given to the Son by the Father belonged to the Father by electing grace before the world began.

Ephesians 1:4 For He chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14; 2 Timothy 1:9

All those from eternity past that the Father has chosen to save out of Adam’s fallen race He has given to His Son to die for on the cross. Having chosen to redeem them, the Father gave them to the Son as gifts of His love.

Jesus describes the disciples as those who kept the Father’s word. This was just another way of saying that their faith was proved genuine through obedience to God’s word. As James states, faith without works of obedience is dead.

17:7-8

In verses seven and eight, Jesus is the PROPHET who reveals the Father’s will to those that the Father has given Him out of the world.

Now (at last) they have come to know (ginōskō – come to understand, to perceive) that everything You have given Me is from You (belongs to You, is really and truly Yours); for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received (lambanō – accepted) them and truly understood (ginōskō – to know positively and in reality) that I came forth from You, and they believed (episteusan – to believe with absolute assurance) that You sent Me.

The words which the Father gave the Son, the Son has given to His disciples fulfilling the office of Prophet. A prophet proclaims truth about God, (who He is, what He has done and will do), and what He wants and expects from man.  Jesus was a faithful prophet because all things that He heard from His Father He has made known to us His followers (John 15:15).

17:9

In verse nine, Jesus is the PRIEST who not only dies for those whom the Father has given Him but he prays for them.

I ask on their behalf (I am praying for those You have given Me Father); I do not ask on behalf of the world (the unredeemed world, the non-elect), but of those whom You have given Me (the elect); for they are Yours (they belong to You).

Christ’s intercessory work as High Priest is only for those who belong eternally to Him because they have been given by the Father.

Christ (as the High Priest) is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them. Such a high priest meets our need — one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of His people. He sacrificed for their sins once and for all when He offered Himself. (Hebrews 7:25-27).

17:10  

In verse ten, we see Jesus as KING who is over all things and glorified in all things.

And all things that are Mine are Yours (belong to You), and (all things that are)Yours are Mine (belong to Me); and I have been glorified (doxadzō – honored, exalted, magnified) in them (in them My glory is achieved).

All the glory of the Father belongs to the Son and all the glory of the Son belongs to the Father. The Father has exalted His Son as King through the redemption He accomplished for those the Father had given him.

Jesus Christ came into the world to fulfill all righteousness, and die on a cross as a substitute for all those the Father had given Him. He came to establish a spiritual kingdom in which He rules and reigns over all things to the church, which He purchased with His blood.

After Jesus accomplished redemption for His people through His death and resurrection the Father seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:20-23).

At His return Christ will hand over His kingdom to the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power. Christ must reign (as King) until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:24-26).

Death has no victory for the believer, it has no sting. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us (the believer) the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ

(1 Corinthians 15:56-57).

He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free; His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me.