The Greatest Prayer
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 23 January 2022
John 17 has no parallel, our Lord Jesus is interceding for His own before the Father. This happened on the day that our Lord was crucified when He prayed this prayer, of His ongoing ministry of intercession for all who belonged to Him throughout all of history. What is the most encouraging doctrine for Christians? That those who believe in Jesus Christ will be taken to heaven, and that the Lord will lose none.
There are people that teach that salvation can be lost, it can be forfeited. But that is not what the Bible teaches. Such is the testimony of Scripture. We find it even back in the Old Testament as God defines His salvation as something that is everlasting. Psalm 37:28 says, “For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake His godly ones; they are preserved forever.”
The prophet Isaiah said much about the nature, and the extent of salvation. In Isaiah 43:1-7, “But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by My name; you are Mine! 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.”
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. 4 Since you are precious in My sight, since you are honored and I love you, I will give other peoples in exchange for your life. 5 Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west.
6 And I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring My sons from afar and My daughters from the ends of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made.” That is the promise of God to gather all of His own beloved into the final glories of heaven. My salvation will be forever.”
John 5:24, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” Verse 39, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose none, but raise them up on the last day.”
And we have Romans 8 in which the apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says, “Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ.” He begins by saying, “There will never be any condemnation to those who belong to Christ.” Philippians 1:6, “The one who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Christ,” when we see Christ face-to-face.
Hebrews 7:25, “The Lord Jesus ever-lives to make intercession for us.” He is praying for us for the purpose of bringing many people to glory. And that is exactly what we are hearing in John 17. This is the biblical illustration of the Lord Jesus and His intercessory ministry as our Great High Priest, praying for us in heaven. Intercession goes on all the time until all the sons of God are brought to glory.
Paul in Romans 5 says there is a much more work than the cross and the resurrection. Christ paid the penalty for our sins in a moment on the cross. For a few hours, He suffered the wrath of God. Christ came out of the grave in a moment and He was alive from being dead. But now much more work goes on continually is this work of securing us for eternal glory, to bring us home to God.
John 17 is a pre-exaltation example of our Lord’s intercessory ministry as the High Priest. Our Great High Priest has gone into the heavenly Holy of Holies, sprinkled His own blood as an atonement for our sins, and sat down in the Father’s presence to constantly plead for His people to bring them to eternal glory against all of our failures, our iniquities, our transgressions, and all of our sins.
Against all the accusations brought by men, demons and Satan himself, the Lord prays us into heaven. No one is lost. This is His prayer. So in verses 1 to 5, He prays to the Father to glorify Him now that His work is done. This is in the darkness of Friday morning. He is headed toward the cross. And, by Sunday, He’ll be out of the grave. Forty days after that, He will ascend into heaven.
When He says, “The hour has come,” He means the hour of His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His exaltation, and the beginning of His intercession; and here is an example of that intercession. He starts out, in verses 6 and following, praying for the disciples that the Lord, God the Father, has given Him. “He’s praying for the men whom You gave Me out of the world.”
But what He prays is not limited just to them. Verse 20 says, “I do not ask on behalf on these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.” And that stretches forward and backward. He is praying for all people who are God’s children, all who will be given to Him throughout all of redemptive history. He is praying them all, as it were, into heaven.
The specific requests in His prayer are given in verses 11 - 19. He makes the statement that He is leaving in verse 11, “He is no longer in the world; yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to you.” It is that setting that establishes the character of His prayer. We have to be here in this hostile, deadly, dangerous world; this world filled with sin while He is in us as the Holy Spirit.
John 16 ended by Him saying, “In the world, you have tribulation.” We are left here; He is gone. In view of that, He is praying for us in His absence. He has already promised us that He would send the Holy Spirit. And that the Spirit would come and take His place, and even be better for them because He had been with them in Christ; now He would be dwelling in them personally.
He has filled the previous chapters on that Thursday night and Friday morning with all kinds of promises. But now comes the prayer that pulls it all together: “Father, fulfill all these promises. Send Your Holy Spirit and, Father, these are the specific requests that I ask of You regarding My people.” Starting in verses 11 till 19 is the first element of that. “He prayed for our spiritual security.”
“Keep them in Your name.” Verse 12 says, “I guarded them; not one of them perished but the son of perdition.” He says, “Father, I pray for their spiritual security, that they’ll be secure all the way to glory.” “He prayed for our spiritual unity,” at the end of verse 11, “That they may be one even as we are.” In verse 13, He prayed for our spiritual joy. “These things I speak so that they may have My joy.”
The Lord is praying for our unity; not a unity that is simply trying to get us all to like each other, but an internal unity of eternal life that we possess. This is the true unity of being one with Christ, and therefore, one with each other. He’s praying for the reality of the body of Christ to possess divine life. Earlier, He said that He would give us His peace. Now He prays that we would have His spirit.
“Jesus prayed for our spiritual immunity, that we would be protected,” verse 15 says “from the evil one.” Verses 14, 15, and 16 speak to the fact that we are in the world that hates us. We are not of the world, even as our Lord was not of the world. We are in a dangerous place, and He prays for our protection, our immunity from the devastating power of the evil one.
Now, all of these prayers for spiritual stability, spiritual unity, spiritual joy, spiritual security, all the way to spiritual immunity, all of these are motivated by love. “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the max.” We have been loved by God from the beginning of the world. It’s not because we’re deserving of that love, it is a gift of God’s grace.
Then there’s one final prayer that our Lord has. He prays for our spiritual purity. He prays for our sanctification. Verse 17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” Very direct focused and profound point is being made here.
Sanctify is mentioned in verse 17 and twice in verse 19. Three times we see that verb. He prays for our holiness. Now, sanctification essentially means “separation,” set apart from sin. He’s praying for our purity and increasing godliness. We will become increasingly more holy in practice as we are in position. He prays according to the Father’s will and according to the Spirit’s work.
This prayer deals with our human flesh. We have three enemies: the world, the devil, and the flesh. Jesus prayed that we’d be protected from the world. We’ve heard about the devil, the evil one; and Jesus prayed that we would be protected from the evil one. Here He prays that we will be victorious over our flesh. That humanness in which we are still incarcerated even though we’re a believer.
The apostles and all believers have been separated from the penalty of sin. Jesus paid the penalty; we’re never going to see that penalty. His resurrection separated us from the presence of sin in heaven; and in the middle, we are now in need of being separated from the power of sin. Here the work of separation from the power of sin is a lifelong progressive work of God.
He is speaking of already regenerated, already justified, already converted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, being continually made more holy. He accepts us in our imperfections and prays for us to become more holy. Where is the truth found? It’s the revelation of God; it’s the Scripture. If we immerse ourselves in the Word of God, we are in the place where sanctification operates.
This is progressive sanctification, separation from sin, as we look at the Word of God; and as we read it, understand it, embrace it, and love it. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” That Spirit of God conforms us to the image of Christ.
Psalm 119:11, “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin.” Peter said, “As babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow thereby.” The Word of God works against the sin that remains in us. The Word of God reveals the glory of Christ in all His beauty; and as we are caught up in that glory, and believe it and love it, the Spirit uses that to make us more and more like Christ.
This is the goal, to be like Christ. And now before we get to that reality, we pursue that, even in this life. Why is this important? Verse 18, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” It’s important because we have a mission to accomplish, and holiness is critical to that mission: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your works, and glorify your Father.”
You have to put the gospel and the power of God on display. If we say, “The Lord changes lives; the Lord transforms sinners; the Lord takes evil people and makes them good,” you’re going to have to be an illustration of that. The Great Commission says, “We’re sent into all the world to preach the gospel to everyone, to make disciples, to baptize, to teach them all things whatsoever I have commanded.”
Our Lord says, “The Father sent Me into the world in the power of the Spirit. I’m sending you into the world in the power of the Spirit. The Father sent Me to manifest a holy life to put His glory on display that His message might be believed. I send you in the power of the Holy Spirit to live a holy life, also to put His glory through the gospel on display.” So the objective in sanctification is to be as much like Christ.
Now, in verse 19 our Lord says, “For their sakes, I sanctify Myself.” Why would He sanctify Himself? Two reasons, theologically speaking. He needed to live a perfect holy life. Because there had to be at least one perfect holy life lived by someone in the history of the world, and He’s the only one. Because when you put your trust in Jesus Christ, that perfect life is credited to your account; it’s as if you lived His life.
That’s the doctrine of imputation in 2 Corinthians 5:21. That’s how we become the righteousness of God in Christ, literally. But, He also had to live a perfectly holy life, not only so that it could be imputed to us, but as an example to us. His life is also an example to me of sanctification. In justification, my position is taken care of. In sanctification, my practice is dealt with.
Sanctification is perfect obedience, motivated by perfect love. The Lord Jesus was perfectly obedient to the Father out of perfect love. Christ doesn’t do anything independent of God, He can’t. So what about us? The New Testament is loaded with the word “walk” describing the Christian life. John says, “Walk like Jesus. If you say you are in Him, and it’s true, then walk like Jesus walked.”
Colossians 2:6, “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” Follow His pattern; follow His life. Obey the Lord in everything: everything you do, everything you say, everything you think. Be pleasing to Him. He is your example of righteousness, a pattern to be followed in your practice and in your sanctification. Walk in the Spirit, and you will be walking the way Christ walked. Let’s pray.