John chapter 17 beginning at verse 6. Jesus says, ‘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. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For 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. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine. And I am glorified in them. And 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.
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. But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we can be like your disciples hearing you pray for us. Open our hearts to hear you speak to us and open our hearts to hear you speak for us as you intercede on our behalf before our heavenly father, praying for us, praying for our preservation and our faith. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
So after first praying for himself by asking the Lord to glorify him with the glory that he had before the world existed and after explaining that eternal life comes through the intimate relational knowledge of both God the Father and Jesus Christ his son, Jesus next prayed for his disciples. Jesus prayed for the 11, his closest disciples who were remaining there with him and through them. He also prayed for all of his future disciples, everyone who was and who would be separated out from the world. And ultimately through this prayer for his disciples, Jesus was praying especially for their sanctification.
Jesus prayed, ‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.’ Now, this sentence, it seems simple and plain and straightforward, but it contains four very important elements that really summarize Jesus’s teaching during that whole evening. And it provides us with some definitive categorical terms describing the persons involved here.
The first and second is Jesus declared that he has manifested his father’s name. Remember the Greek term translated as manifest describes an act of revelation. But how was the father’s name revealed by or through Jesus? You will remember that God’s name was not actually revealed to humanity until the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush when he asked God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ And they asked me, ‘Well, what is his name? What shall I say to them?’ And God answered him, saying, ‘I am who I am.’ Answering him with something rather less than a proper name and more as a statement of his eternal existence, an expression of his absolute being.
But over the course of history, the spoken use of this divine name was abandoned and lost. And so Jesus, he did not re-reveal God’s name verbally. Instead, he lived as the manifestation of the name’s meaning. See, Jesus proved that God is and that he himself is God. That he is the prophesied Emmanuel, God with us. And Jesus proved himself to be God through all of his many signs and wonders. And finally, Jesus proved the truth that was within his own name of Jesus, which means the Lord saved, proving it through his atoning work on the cross.
The third element, Jesus referenced the people whom the father had given to him from out of the world. And these people are all of God’s elect, his particular chosen people from across all of redemptive history. See, this people includes everyone that is grafted into Christ by the grace of their faith and trust in the Lord. And they were chosen from before the beginning of creation.
And within this element here, Jesus defines the first two of three categories of person. First category being God as the sovereign chooser because he is both the giver and the receiver of this unique and particular people. People he has chosen according to his own sovereign grace and according to his sovereign will, purpose and plan. The second category is this chosen people. A people chosen by God in gracious love. A people chosen to receive his forgiveness and mercy. A people chosen to be brought into a covenant relationship with the Lord as their father through his sovereign act of adoption. To a people chosen to be separated from the world and to become uniquely distinguished from everyone who is not so chosen by being made whole.
Fourth, Jesus distinguished his chosen people, his chosen received people from the people of the world. From those people who remain a part of the cosmos, from those people who belong to Satan and sin. From those people who love the darkness and abhor the light. And next Jesus, he prayed specifically for those 11 who were present with him, saying that yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. These 11 disciples who were with him, they belonged to the father and the father had shared them with his son Jesus. And it was because of this sharing, because of them having been given to Jesus that they had kept, obeyed and followed God’s true word through Jesus’s oversight, his guidance, and his help.
So as a result of this, his training now they know that everything that God had given him is from him. Now they knew the truth that Jesus knew. Now they knew that Jesus spoke truly. Now they knew that everything Jesus possesses had been given to him by God the Father. And then Jesus said, ‘For I have given them the words that you gave me and they have received them.’ But the words which Jesus had first received from the father and then gave to his disciples was not just merely words, phrases, sentences or other grammatical constructs, but rather these words were the greater echoes of Exodus 20 where Moses wrote and God spoke all these words saying before leading into the Ten Commandments.
Historically the Jews didn’t call them the Ten Commandments. They are known as the words. That’s the way they referenced them. So here the words that Jesus meant was all of his teaching and his commandments including all of the truth that Jesus had spoken and revealed concerning the Lord God, his father, humanity, and our sinfulness, himself as the Christ, the logos who is theos anros about salvation by grace alone through faith and about life eternal.
And then Jesus said that his disciples have received these words and have come to know in truth that he came from the father and they have believed that the father sent him. See, he was affirming that their belief and trust was actually in him, believing that all he had told them, believing all that he had told them and therefore that they believed that he did come from the father.
Then his prayer shifts as he prays, ‘I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me for they are yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine and I am glorified in them.’ See, Jesus clarified that while he was praying with those 11 disciples present with him, his prayer was also including all of his disciples spread across time and space. But Jesus was only praying for those who belong to him. Those who are and those who would be grafted into and united with him and not praying for those who belong to the ruler of this world, the devil and Satan. Jesus was only praying for those whom he had covenanted with the father to redeem. He was not praying for the reprobate wicked or the totality of a fallen creation.
He prayed for these few because since they are and shall be united into him just as he is united into the father. He would therefore be glorified through them just as he had glorified the father. And after this he declared, ‘And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you.’ Because Jesus was leaving this physical earthly world while his disciples were going to physically remain. Jesus was about to depart this earthly life just like he’d already told them where I’m going you cannot come because Jesus was about to relocate himself to heaven to reign. And he was making a very clear distinction between earth and heaven as being different and real locations.
And he prayed, ‘Holy Father, keep them in your name which you’ve given me that they may be one even as we are.’ Jesus prayed for their preservation in the Lord’s name. Preserved in accordance with his divine will, his purpose and plan, praying in the Lord’s name, having the unshakable certainty that the father would and will and shall preserve them. Jesus prayed for their unity, for their oneness together, praying that it would be like his unity with the father, unity and agreement in their understanding and application of God’s truth. Unity in their communion with Christ and one another as his body. Unity in their desires and goals as related to the growth of the church from Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
Unity of purpose for the proclamation of the gospel and the ministry of reconciliation. Jesus prayed that their unity of fellowship as the church would be maintained and preserved. Jesus prayed these things for them, the 11 and the early church of the apostolic era. And he prayed these things for us, the continuing church of our present day. He continued, ‘While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you’ve given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, so that scripture might be fulfilled.’ Jesus prayed that they would continue to be guarded and protected in the world just as he had done throughout his earthly ministry.
Jesus prayed that they would be protected and preserved in the faith that they would not fall away from faith in the truth. That they would not become lost and condemned in their sin and unrighteousness. Jesus prayed so that his disciples would know and understand that even Judas’s betrayal and his abandonment was foretold and was appointed by divine providence, all according to God’s sovereign will, purposes, and plan. Because Judas’s fall was not a failure of God’s plan or power. His fall was not Jesus’s failure, but a necessary component of Jesus’s work for our redemption.
Next, he prayed to his father. ‘But now, I’m coming to you, and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.’ He was not reminding the father of his imminent arrival. It said he was reminding his disciples that this prayer he was praying was for their benefit in multiple ways. It’s why as being for their good when it was fulfilled. Its example demonstrating how they should intercede for others through prayer. Its words, its content. And this prayer was spoken for their good benefit so that Christ’s joy would be fulfilled within them when they saw all that Jesus prayed for come to pass. So that when they saw them, they would remember, they would know and believe that Jesus spoke truly and believe that Jesus is God.
He continued, ‘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. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I’m not of the world.’ See, Jesus had spoken God’s word to them, and he explained it. Jesus had spoken God’s truth to them, telling them true things and speaking truly. And these truths would soon be what’s passed on by them and recorded as our sacred scripture.
And Jesus again warned them about the world’s hatred for them, reminding them that they will be hated because they are not of the world just as he is not of the world. That there is something exceptionally different about them, something which causes them to not belong. Everyone who belongs to him, everyone who’s grafted into his true vine cannot also belong to the world or its ruler, Satan. They are no longer a part of the world, the cosmos. They are no longer truly a part of fallen humanity. That they are cut off from it. And now they have been separated and divided from what they once were by an ever-widening spiritual gulf.
They now belong to heaven above rather than the earth below. Their true home is located with Christ in his father’s eternal heavenly house and not in this rebellious enemy-occupied world. They are lights in the midst of darkness. But it feels kind of awkward, doesn’t it? To hear that Jesus prayed, ‘I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.’ Because Jesus, he did not ask his father that they or we be immediately removed from the world and instantly translated into heaven like Enoch or Elijah.
Jesus did not ask that because he knew that that is not the father’s plan or purpose for his disciples. Because the Lord has a purpose and plan for believers to share his gospel throughout the whole world. See, Jesus did not ask for their immediate removal because his disciples are were like members of the French resistance or the underground during World War II, working to spread his good news and truth throughout enemy territory. His disciples are purposed to bring hope to the hopeless and point those who are lost to the one who wants to be found.
But instead, Jesus prayed that they would at least be kept safe from the evil, kept out of his clutches and his spiritual grasp because they are not of the world just as Jesus is not of the world. And now this is where Jesus finally reaches the core of his prayer for these his disciples because now he specifically asks God for the what and the why of his intercession praying, ‘Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.’
To the what Jesus prayed that his disciples would be sanctified, that they would be transformed and be made holy. Why? Jesus prayed that his disciples would be sanctified because the Lord’s plan and purpose for them requires that they be holy. Jesus prayed this because he was sending them out into the world on a purposeful mission just as their heavenly father had first sent him. Because the Lord is holy, Jesus is holy. Therefore, if we his disciples are to be Christlike, and if we are to be in close fellowship with God our father, then we must be holy just as they are.
See, Jesus, he prayed that his disciples would be set apart and separated from the world as holy, not as their ultimate end, but as the means working towards his ultimate redemptive end. Because as Jesus had come into the world, first bringing us the good news of the kingdom of God and then making us fit and suitable for entry into that kingdom by his righteous life and his atoning death. Now, by working through his disciples, through our union, they and we would carry the good news about what Jesus has done to reconcile his people to God, out into the world.
His disciples, having been sanctified and continuing to grow in holiness, are purposed to show the world how the children of God are meant to live within his kingdom. His disciples, having been sanctified and continuing to grow in holiness, are purposed to begin work at reconciling the world to Christ. His disciples, having been sanctified and continuing to grow in holiness, are purposed to begin working to transform the world into his kingdom on earth.
His disciples, having been sanctified and continuing to grow in holiness, are purposed to invite the world to cease its rebellion against God, to repent of its sinfulness and to switch their allegiance to Christ the King Jesus. His disciples, having been sanctified and continuing to grow in holiness, do these things by living obediently to God’s word, by loving others, and by glorifying God with the totality of their lives.
Even though we know and understand that this purposeful work in the world will never be complete until Christ returns and restores all things. And this divine purpose leads us to the practical effect of Jesus’s prayer and its application to the life of every disciple of Christ, whether it was one of the 11, part of the early church, or a believer today. Holiness, our personal holiness and growth and sanctification is perhaps the most critical part of our Christian witness because without it we are hypocrites and we risk proving our confessed faith as a lie.
Because holiness and unholiness, they mix just as well as oil and water. Says the universal sovereign and perfectly holy Lord God Almighty, says he wants to be in a relationship with us. Says he has condescended to enter into covenant with us, us wicked and unholy sinners that we were. Therefore, he must transform us and make us to become holy to be with him. First, he calls us holy and then he makes us holy and he does this using his holy word.
To the evangelist, he’s made it plainly clear that the Holy Spirit is the divine agent of our sanctification as our paraclete, our helper. And he is the one, the spirit is the one who does the hardest work at making us become holy. But we must cooperate with him in the process if we’re going to make any good progress. And while there is surely a supernatural aspect to his work of sanctification, the primary means that he works through is God’s word, the Bible.
Jesus prayed that God would sanctify his disciples in, with, by, and through the truth that is God’s holy word. God’s divine decrees, God’s commandments and moral statutes, God’s revelation of himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the logos. God’s words here that have been inherently recorded as sacred and authoritative scripture as the true rule and guide for our whole life and faith. Scripture is the only means whereby we may know the Lord’s decrees or his commandments or even know who God is.
So in essence, Jesus prayed that his disciples would well know, well love and well live the Bible as the Holy Spirit works within them, sanctifying them through the use of his word as the beneficial effect of Christ’s redeeming work for our salvation. Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, ‘How is the word made effectual to salvation?’ And it answers, ‘The spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.’
So you see scripture, it sanctifies Christ’s disciples by helping us to know what truly is right and good. Knowing what God’s holy law is. Knowing what God’s purpose and plan for us is. Knowing what God requires of his people. Knowing how to be holy. Scripture continues to sanctify us through our belief in it even when and especially when we dislike it or disagree with it. Believing scripture, trusting it produces this natural consequence of trust. Trusting that holiness is both good and good for me.
Scripture further works to sanctify us because once we know and understand what the Lord requires and once we believe it and trust that God’s will always works for the good of those who love him, then we may and will and shall apply the truth of scripture to our own lives and begin to act more in accord with God’s will and begin to become more Christlike. We will more naturally do what is right and good. We will begin to become more obedient to God’s revealed will. We will begin to more and more better love our neighbor as Christ has first loved.
And we will do these things more as a response to what Jesus Christ has done for us and not merely out of a sense of dutiful obligation. We do such things willingly and gladly instead of feeling like we’re being forced to do something unpleasant. So once we know what holiness is and once we believe that living in a holy way is good and once we start living more holy then we will actually become what Christ has declared us to already be, his holy people, the saints of God.
It’s at this point, it’s at the point of our lived application of God’s true word that as we begin to continue and improve our living in a holy manner, that is when our separation from being of the world becomes more readily apparent to ourselves and to those around us. Because this separation is the natural product of our becoming sanctified. We’re in the world but not of the world. So we do not belong. And eventually Christ, he will return and then he shall remove us from this world and then we will be where we truly belong.
But in the meanwhile, we remain in the world, separate and distinct from the world. That’s not to say that Christians should separate themselves from the world in a manner similar to the Amish, but rather as we grow in our faith and in holiness, our more holy living will produce this natural distinctiveness.
We will separate ourselves from the world by not joining in doing unholy and worldly things. We will separate ourselves from the world by not joining the world in celebrating unholy worldly things. We will become more separated the more sanctified we become because we will naturally move in one direction while the world moves in another. We will become more separated, more sanctified as we become because the unholy will always flee from the presence of the holy.
Remember the examples of Isaiah and Peter. When Isaiah beheld the Lord’s perfect holiness, he became so acutely aware of his own sinfulness and unholiness that he was caused to exclaim, ‘Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.’ Likewise, Peter, when Jesus commanded him and his fellow fishermen to cast their nets back into the sea after an unproductive night’s work, causing them then to draw in the biggest catch of their lives, Peter, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’
It should be so much more clear just how important the Bible, God’s word is to us rightly living a Christian life. How critical it is for our own ongoing sanctification. Because the Lord has commanded his people, his children, you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. A command that Jesus repeated during the sermon on the mount. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
And then Jesus, he prayed that his disciples would be sanctified, that we would be made holy. So clearly our holiness is important to God. The Lord has given us a guide and helper to help us become more holy, the Holy Spirit and holy scripture. So, it’s up to us to do our part. This is why our biblical literacy is so important. This is why studying scripture and learning theology is important. Because unless we know what the Bible says well, we cannot understand what it teaches, and we cannot live according to unless we know and believe God’s word.
We cannot apply it to our lives and we cannot become more sanctified because scripture is the means that God has appointed for and has given to us. So if you claim to be a Christian, then you must be Christ’s disciple. And if you’re going to be Christ’s disciple, then you must know his word and you must believe his word and trust it. And then you must live according to his word, obedient to God’s holy law.
And if you love Jesus and if you love God, then you must also love their word. So if you love them and if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, then you should want to become more sanctified and you should want to grow in your own personal holiness so that you will grow to become more like Christ. The desire to grow in holiness is the spiritual consequence of our union into Christ, of being grafted into his vine.
And it is the spiritual consequence of our redemption being applied and our regeneration by the Holy Spirit. And it is the spiritual consequence of Jesus’s high priestly prayer for his disciples which includes us. So study and know God’s word. Believe it and trust him because this is our response of faith. Be holy and live whole because your father in heaven is whole. Amen.