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May 23, 2004
7th Sunday of Easter
John 17:20-26
Pastor Joel Zank

Jesus Prayer for All Believers!

(John 17:20-26) "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.24 "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.25 "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

In Christ Jesus who is the answer to every prayer, dear fellow redeemed,

James, the brother of our Lord, writes in his epistle, "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16). To be righteous means to be right with God. Can you think of anyone more righteous than Jesus Christ? Everything he ever said, or did, or even thought was always right in God's eyes. So just imagine, then, how powerful and effective Jesus' prayers are in God's ears! God hears everything Jesus says, and grants everything he asks! How wonderful for Jesus! How wonderful for us! Why for us? Because when Jesus prays, he always talks to his Father about us, asking God to grant us tremendous blessings. That's what St. John tells us today. We'll study his words, taking as our theme: Jesus Prays for All Believers! 1) He prays that we might be united; and 2) He prays that we might be glorious.

Let me set the scene for you. It's Thursday of Holy Week. Jesus is beginning the longest night of his life on earth. Before all is said and done, one of his closest friends will betray him; the other eleven will desert him. A mob will arrest him, soldiers will beat him, and God will forsake him. And what is more, Jesus knows all this. So it's time for Jesus to pray.

Now that, in and of itself, may strike us as odd. Jesus is God. He has no need to pray. This is true! But don't forget he is also fully human. And the very fact that he prays reminds us how much this brother of ours humbled himself to help our fallen race. So that he could be in a position to live and die in our place, he chose not to make full and constant use of the power that had been his forever. Rather than calling on his own divine strength, he threw himself on the mercy of God. He turned to his Father in prayer, and in this way, serving as our Substitute, gave God the worship and honor that all of us humans owe our Creator.

So if you were Jesus on this particular Thursday, aware of all that was about to take place, what would you pray for? I think my prayer would sound very self-centered. I would be telling God, "You have to help me. You have to make this all go away." But that's not what Jesus prayed. Oh, he made mention of himself in the opening words of his prayer, but only to ask that God help him to help us. He wasn't concerned about himself. He prayed for his disciples, first for the ones with him that night, but then he said to his Father, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message" (John 17:20). Think of it, dear Christians, with these words Jesus begins his prayer for you and for all who follow in the faith of the apostles. What does pray for us? Listen! "I pray...that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us" (John 17:21). Jesus prays that we might be united with God and thereby with each other.

The unity that Jesus seeks isn't superficial. He's not merely saying, "Father, let them all play nice with each other." No, with this one prayer, Jesus is asking God to destroy the power of sin in our lives. Sin is the great divider, ruining every relationship it gets its hands on. You know it as well as I do. God brings man and woman together in marriage, saying, "What I have joined together, let no one separate." But no sooner are those words spoken and sin begins to mock them, leading nearly half of all married couples to decide that divorce is their only hope for happiness. And it's not just husbands and wives. Sin comes between parents and children; it turns sibling against sibling and divides even the closet of friends.

But all of that is just the aftermath of sin's biggest accomplishment, the one of which Isaiah speaks when he says, "Your iniquities have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). He's not talking about some minor tiff. This is a separation that could very well lead to eternal disaster, the one Jesus has in mind when he reports, "This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50). Sin is the great divider! To be separated from God by any sin at all leads to eternal damnation.

This is why our Savior prays that we might be one with God. However, for such unity to become a reality, Jesus would need to do more than pray about it. He would need to become the answer to his own prayer; and so he did as St. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:19: "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." When our sins kept us from being able to, and even from wanting to reconcile with God, he found a way to reunite us sinners to himself in Christ. Sin was standing between Holy God and us, so God took our sins and counted them against Jesus instead of us. His anger burned against our Substitute until every sin of ours was vaporized in the flames of hell. And now that the sin that once separated us from God is gone forever, all that there is left is unity - reconciliation between God and sinners.

How do we know this? Jesus told it to his disciples, and they, in turn, by the power of the Holy Spirit have left this message of reconciliation for us in the Scriptures. The apostles' good news, or as the Bible calls it, the "power of salvation," has brought us to believe in Jesus as our Savior from sin , prompting St. Paul to write in Ephesians 2:19-21: "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household,20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord."

Each of us is joined to God by the faith he has worked in us through his gospel. Since each of us is joined to him, we are also joined to each other, like so many spiritual stones in God's invisible church. Instead of mortar, faith holds us together - faith that shows itself in love. Out of love and gratitude to God who has forgiven our every sin, we find it possible to forgive one another all those sins that threaten to break our family ties and ruin our friendships.

You and I are united by our common faith in the Savior and all of his teachings. This faith gives us boldness to stand together and to speak as though we were one individual. We don't all want to run off in different directions, telling others what we think the Bible means to say-each of us with a different opinion. We join our voices to tell the world, "this is what God says." My friends, when we do that it is a powerful witness to the world.

Nothing hinders the preaching and teaching of God's Word more than when the people of God can't get his message straight. The fact that there are so many different branches of Christianity out there doesn't help the church's mission one bit. It only serves to confuse the world. Jesus prays that his church be united with all its members believing and speaking the very same truths, so that, as he says here to his Father, "the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17:21). Our unity brings us peace and gives us opportunity to share the same with our world. This is why Jesus prays that we may be united. But that's not all that he asks. His prayer for all believers continues; he prays also that we may be glorious.

When God first made us human beings in his image, we shared in the glory of his holiness. But when humanity fell into sin, we lost God's image. This is what Paul means when he says in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." So Jesus came to make up for our shortfall. We were no longer right with God so Jesus became our righteousness. He came to our world in the image of God, lived a holy life in our place, and then restored us to God's image by entering our hearts through his gospel and making his home within us. This is why Jesus can say in his prayer, "Father... I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one 23 I in them and you in me." (John 17:23). Jesus brought God's glory to earth and now he has brought that glory to our hearts. Each of us can say in the words of Paul from Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

We have God's glory dwelling within us, but our sin keeps that glory from shining forth in all its splendor. Because Christ is in us we have holy desires. But so often our sin keeps those desires from bearing fruit. The loving words we plan to speak rarely cross our lips. The loving things we mean to do, so seldom come about. It's discouraging, isn't it? Jesus knows that it is, so he prays for us. He prays that sin not get the better of us. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world" (John 17:24). Already on Maundy Thursday evening Jesus knew the outcome of his saving work. He knew that he would return to heaven as the King who destroyed death for his people by conquering sin and Satan on our behalf. He could already hear his Father say, "You are my Son whom I love; with you I am well pleased!" Our Ascended Lord has now returned to heaven. But he will not rest until we arrive there also not only to see his glory but to share in it perfectly through all eternity.

Again, so that this will happen Jesus has become the answer to his own prayer: "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them" (John 17:25-26). In order for us to one day live in heaven, Jesus must continue to live in us throughout all our days on earth. He does this through the same blessed means by which he first came to us, through the message of his gospel. He has ascended but still speaks to us through those he has sent to serve us. "It was he who gave some to be apostles,...and some to be pastors and teachers,12 ...so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-13). As we celebrate the ministry anniversaries of two of our teachers, we are reminded that they and all their coworkers are gifts to us from Jesus. I hope you will agree with me when I say that they have the most important job in all the world. For long after this earth is gone and all its professions with it, the work that these servants of Christ did among us, and the Word they shared with us will live on and because of it, we too will live on, we and our children. What could ever be more important than that?

But so that you will not think that I am boasting, please know that we who serve in ministry realize what a privilege we have, one that we in no way deserve. We serve at the pleasure and calling of our Lord and so every day we must pray for his grace so that we do not ruin his work. Unless he gives us his strength we have no power to share. Unless he gives us his Word we have nothing to say. So we rely on him, and he never lets us down. On the contrary, he lifts us up with a message so wonderful that it gives us nothing but joy to speak it to you and your family day after day. It's the wondrous truth that Jesus speaks in verse 23 of our text when he prays on our behalf, "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23). Just think my friends, so complete is Christ's payment for our sin, so covered are we by his holiness, that he can actually say as he does here, that our Father in heaven loves us as much as he loves Jesus. May this truth bring us the unity and glory Jesus seeks for us both in this life and in the one come, for Jesus' sake. Amen.