The Prayer for His Disciples
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 6 February 2022
What we call the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 is a prayer that Jesus could never pray, because it’s a prayer that asks for forgiveness of transgressions and debts. That does not apply to Him. But John 17 is the true Lord’s Prayer, because He prayed it; and this is a prayer that no human could ever pray. That is reinforced to us as we study each of these verses of His prayer to the Father.
These are the last hours before the cross. He has said most of what He wanted to say to the disciples in the upper room on Thursday night when they celebrated Passover and when He was instituting the Lord’s Table. And He said more things as they left the upper room and walked through Jerusalem, headed toward the garden of Gethsemane. And He is now done with what He’s been saying.
The legacy of Jesus is given to His disciples and to us in John 13 through 16. And now in John 17, He prays that God the Father will fulfill all these promises, and fulfill them in an ultimate way by bringing His own to heaven. These are the Lord’s words to the eleven before His death, and what we have here is a preview of His new heavenly ministry which is about to begin.
But it won’t begin until Jesus ascends into heaven, 40 days after the resurrection. And then He will begin His new ministry, and it is a ministry of intercession. He will not be the sacrificial Lamb, He will be the great High Priest. He will be the advocate between His people and God, He will intercede for them. The moment is a critical moment in redemptive history and in the life of Christ.
His work of intercession gets overlooked a lot. He prays, in the opening five verses, that He would be glorified; and then in verses 6 to 19, that the disciples would be glorified; and then in verses 20 to 26, that all believers through all time would be glorified. In other words, He’s praying that He be glorified; and through His glory, we all be gloried; and through that, God be glorified.
Hebrews 7:25, “He ever lives to make intercession for His people.” Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” What is much more than His death? His life. He ever lives to make intercession for us to bring us to glory.
So when the Lord said on the cross, “It is finished,” the work of sacrifice was finished, the work of atonement was finished, the penalty for sin was paid in full. But His work on behalf of elect sinners wasn’t finished. It’s going on even now. It began when He went back to heaven and took His place at the right hand of God to intercede for us. Romans 5 says He became our advocate. He became our intercessor.
He became our great High Priest at the Father’s right hand in the heavenly Holy of Holies. He is always doing the supernatural work of intercession for His redeemed people still struggling on earth. And because He was in all points tempted like as we are, fully man, at the same time fully God, He knows our weaknesses, He knows our temptations and He knows the enemy’s strategies.
His intercession is to assure that we come to glory in the end. I believe if you’re saved you’re going to go to heaven.” But the reason you’re going to go to heaven, is because Christ intercedes for you. There is a means by which God brings us to glory. Jesus is different than any other priest, because they die. But He is a great High Priest who lives forever to make intercession.
He keeps cleansing us from all sin in 1 John 1. He keeps on advocating our place before the throne of God. 1 John 2:1 says, “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.” It is accompanied by the present ministry of the Holy Spirit in us, because Romans 8:26 says “the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.”
So we have an advocate in heaven at the right hand of the Father. And we have an advocate living in us, the Holy Spirit. Both the Holy Spirit and the Son are interceding on our behalf to bring us to glory. Jesus is doing His mediatorial ministry for us. This is pure prayer for His glory, the disciples’ glory, our glory, and the Father’s glory. And this is a preview of that intercessory ministry.
So let us look only at verses 6-10, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them.”
“And have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me. 9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.” The saving purposes of God have always been Jesus’ primary concern, when He was on earth, as well as now in heaven.
We all know what’s going to happen with the eleven disciples. When Jesus is arrested, they’re going to scatter in fear. Their faith is going to be shaken. Their hearts are going to be even more grieved than they have been. But though His suffering is infinitely greater than theirs, though His suffering infinitely outweighs theirs, His love for them causes Him to pray this prayer.
Even though they are weak, even though they stumble, even though their faith is shaken, even though they abandoned Him, He prays for their eternal glory. Why? Because it says in John 13:1, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the limits of divine love.” In other words, He loved them as much as God can love, and it is that love that brings them to glory.
In verses 6-10, He identifies them from the divine side and from the human side. Here we face that great mystery of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Verse 6 says, “I’m praying for this group of eleven men. These are the men I have manifested Your name to, whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”
He’s praying for those who are marked on the human side by believing and obedient faith. Those two always go together. So let’s look at verse 6, “I have manifested Your name.” He said essentially the same thing in verse 4, “I have glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You’ve given Me to do.” “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father. I and the Father are one.”
The truth about God through Christ was hidden from the wise and the religious, from the elite, the leaders of Israel; but it was revealed to babes, to these humble men. As many as seven of them might have been fishermen. None of them were a part of the religious establishment. “So, Father, the hour has come. I have manifested Your name to them, all the men You gave Me.”
The term ‘You gave Me’ appears for example again further down in John 17:24, “I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am,” and He says it again in the same verse. Go back to verse 6 and look at this phrase, “They were Yours.” Before they were converted, before they were called, before they knew anything, before they believed, they were Yours.
Past tense, they were Yours. They were in the world, and You gave them to Me out of the world, but they were Yours even when they were in the world. The world is the evil anti-God, anti-Christ, satanically ruled system of evil and sin, composed of demons and all the unredeemed human beings who oppose God, who belong to Satan, and who live in the kingdom of darkness.
But within this realm of darkness, there are some sinners who belong to God. Back in John 15:18-19, our Lord Jesus Christ said earlier that night, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; yet because you’re not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
There’s an illustration of this in Acts 13:48, “When the Gentiles heard from Isaiah that the Messiah was a light to the nations, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” The Lord spoke to Paul in Acts 18:10, by a vision, “for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.”
There were people in the city of Corinth who belonged to Christ, who belonged to God. They were still in the world, in the darkness, in the ignorance of sin, but they belonged to God. How? Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” Colossians 3:12 says, “We are those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved.”
Ephesians 1:5-6 explained this, “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the One He loves.” Verse 11, “Predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His own will, to the praise of His own glory.”
Those who believe in the Son of God, those who accepted the ministry of Jesus and believe in Him, did so because they are God’s. They’ve always been God’s. They were God’s before there was a creation. Revelation 13:8, Revelation 17:8, “Their names were written in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world.” God chose them before He ever created them.
And Revelation 20:15 says, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he’s thrown in the lake of fire.” Much earlier in our Lord’s ministry, He made it clear to the disciples that anyone who came to salvation was a gift from the Father. Listen to 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, or reject.”
There are people throughout all of human history who are born sinners in the world, engulfed in sin, spiritually dead and blind and ignorant, but they belong to God and in God’s time, He plucks them out of the world, then they become love gifts to His Son. The Father chooses, the Father gives; the Son receives, the Son keeps, and the Son raises them on the last day, and no one is lost.
In John 17, the Father gives us to the Son as His bride, purchased at the infinite price of His own life. That’s why the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21, is a bridal city; that’s why Revelation talks about the marriage supper. All the redeemed of all the ages become the bride of Christ so that they can honor Him, love Him, serve Him, worship Him, adore Him, and reflect His glory forever.
The Father’s gift of redeemed souls is so precious, He is willing to die under divine judgment for all the sins of all the elect. Jesus said, “I’m praying for those who are Mine because You gave them to Me.” This is the divine reality in salvation. But there’s a human aspect too. Verse 6 says “They have kept Your word.” That’s the side that shows the believer’s obedience to the gospel.
The gospel is a command. We talk about it being a gift in the sense that you don’t have to pay for it. Obedience to the command of the gospel is essential, and our Lord is saying they obeyed. That’s essentially the same as faith. Obedience and faith are one in the same John 3:36. Jesus says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son will not see life.”
Obedient faith is love in John 14 and 15, “If you love Me, you do obey Me. Whoever obeys Me, loves Me.” This is the human side. Verses 7 - 8, “Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.”
That essentially is what ministry is about. That is our Lord giving us a model of ministry. He came so that they would know the truth, so that they would receive the truth, so that they would understand the truth and believe the truth. They believed that Jesus worked by the power of God. They believed that Jesus had come from God. They said, “We know You are the Holy One of God.”
Now to the divine side in verses 9 – 10, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.” That is a very significant statement. Martin Luther wrote this: “Everyone may say this: ‘All I have is God’s.’ That is much different than saying, ‘All that’s God’s is mine.’”
1 Peter 4:11 says, “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever, Amen.” You have had a glimpse of how He prayed for His disciples. That prayer is extended from them to all who believe in Him. Let us pray.