A Different Lord’s Prayer - John 17:1-5

At my previous church there is a man, who is an incredibly kind and intelligent man. He is eccentric to say the least, but he has a heart of gold.

And you really saw his heart shine through when he began to pray. He was a real life prayer warrior. His private prayer life would see the light of day when he would offer these beautiful, sincere, heartfelt prayers in corporate gatherings. And he passed his heart for prayer down to his entire family as well.

Both his wife and daughter would do the same thing, on many occasions they would offer sincere, heartfelt prayers in corporate settings as well. And certainly this particular family was not without fault, but you couldn’t help but love them after hearing them pray. It was always earnest, heartfelt and sincere.

I hope it’s somewhat obvious to you why I’m talking about prayer: All of John chapter 17 is one big, long, prayer. In fact, John chapter 17, which is commonly referred to as Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer is the longest prayer in the New Testament.

Interestingly enough, we call it the High Priestly Prayer, but nowhere in the actual content of the prayer does Jesus mention the words High Priest.

John 17 is referred to as the High Priestly Prayer, not because he mentions the words ‘High Priest’, but because Jesus uses intercessory language throughout his prayer which of course was the primary function of the High Priest. The job of the High Priest was to represent the people before God, while it was the job of a prophet to represent God to the people.

The Old Testament High Priest would go into the Holy of Holies, where the very presence of the Lord dwelt once a year on the Day of Atonement and intercede between God and the people of Israel.

He would sacrifice a bull for his own sin and would offer two goats for the sins of the people. One goat he would kill and sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat. The other goat, he would put his hands upon its head and confess all the sins of Israel upon it and then release it into the wilderness.

The goat that was released into the wilderness is often referred to as the “scapegoat.” Hopefully you can see the rich symbolism. The death and blood of the one goat paid for the freedom and life of the other goat. Does any of that sound familiar? Jesus’ blood was the payment for our sins.

And so Jesus is our High Priest because he provided the necessary sacrifice to take away your sins and my sins. It’s also worth noting that Jesus not only made the sacrifice, but was also the sacrifice.

And so Jesus in his prayer is impressing upon his disciples that he’s the High Priest of a new and better covenant where final and complete atonement will be made through his once-for-all sacrifice on the cross.

It’s what the writer of Hebrews talks about in chapter 10 where he writes:

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

And in John chapter 17, Jesus is on the cusp of offering himself on the cross. In fact, the cross is only hours away, which is of course, why Jesus lifts up his eyes and says that “the hour has come.” The cross was imminent and so he prayed.

This particular prayer is densely theological and incredibly comforting. I recently learned that John Knox, the Father of Presbyterianism asked his wife to read Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer to him on his deathbed.

Because so much of what Jesus is doing in the upper room is comforting his disciples. John chapter 16 really centers around the work of the Holy Spirit and how he will guide and comfort them after Jesus is gone.

And so it’s on the heels of that, Jesus continues to comfort his disciples by offering one of the most glorious prayers in all of Scripture. And this evening, we’re only going to look at the first five verses. The High Priestly Prayer as a whole breaks down very simply: Jesus begins by praying for himself, which is what we’ll be looking at this evening, then he prays for his immediate disciples, which we’ll look at next week, and he ends his prayer by praying for all Christians, which we’ll look at in two weeks.

This evening, we’re going to be closely examining just the first part of his High Priestly Prayer: his prayer for himself. And he prays for something very specific about himself: he prays for his own glory.

Glory in Humility (vv. 1-2)

It’s worth noting that just within the first five verses, Jesus mentions the word, “glory” five different times.

Verse 1: “glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…”

Verse 4: “I glorified you on earth…”

Verse 5: “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

There’s a lot of glory in these first five verses, isn’t there? To our modern ears what Jesus is saying might sound a bit vain, right? The most direct statement comes from verse 5: “glorify me.”

Just imagine for a second if I stood up here and said before you all, “Father, glorify me!” There would probably be some boos, perhaps some tomatoes would be thrown my way, and a shepherd’s crook would probably appear to drag me out of here.

And you all would be totally justified to react that way, because I don’t deserve glory, but Jesus Christ does. Amen?

We all know that intuitively. It’s the typical Sunday School answer, the right answer is almost always Jesus.

The natural follow up question requires a little more thought: Why does Jesus deserve glory?

Notice what Jesus says in verse 1: “glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…”

That statement hints at rich trinitarian theology, because we have a window into the Son’s relationship with the Father. You might even say, they share glory, because to glorify the Son is to glorify the Father.

Remember the words of Christ: I and the Father are one. You cannot glorify Jesus without glorifying God and vice versa! And so, Jesus is emphasizing the fact that he is fully God and coequal with the Father to his disciples.

Here’s a critically important point: When Jesus seeks his own glory, he seeks God’s glory. His glory and God’s glory are one in the same.

But that of course is not true for you or me. Again, if you or me seek our own glory it is unbridled selfish ambition. It’s what used to be called vainglory. Vainglory isn’t really a word that we use anymore, but it’s defined as, “inordinate pride in oneself or one's achievements; excessive vanity.”

Which is why you would take the food from the back and launch it my way if I was to seriously say, “Father, glorify me.” It’s blatant vainglory.

But it’s really worse than that. Because when you or me seek our own glory, when we seek to make our names great we’re robbing God of his glory. It’s a failure to recognize that everything we have is on loan from God. Your talents, your finances, your family.

But what’s our natural temptation? I did this and therefore deserve all the credit for it. And the moment you begin to think that way, it’s no longer about God receiving glory, it’s about you receiving glory. And if you’re not careful eventually you will replace God. So quickly we forget about God’s grace and mercy towards us, and it’s replaced with my hard work, my efforts, my abilities.

The Apostle Paul in Philippians 2 tells us why we should glorify Jesus and it’s not for the reasons we would necessarily expect. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The rich beauty of Jesus’ glory is that it didn’t come through self-exaltation. His glory comes through humiliation. He made himself low and therefore he’s worthy of our praise, honor, and glory.

Jesus’ moment of greatest suffering is the reason for his glory.

And so when Jesus says, “glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” we know what he’s talking about! He’s talking about the glory the triune God will receive through the cross.

The cross glorified God. But again, it wasn’t as if Jesus emptied himself of his divine power and authority by humbly going to the cross. That’s a recipe for heresy. No, he maintained all power and authority but obediently and humbly went to the cross.

Which is why he says in verse 2: “since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” Jesus had authority over all flesh, and had a very specific mission: “to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.”

There’s a hint here of the pactum salutis or covenant of redemption for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing. But the idea is that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross wasn’t “Plan B,” it had been “Plan A” for all eternity. Because the Father sent the Son into the world for our redemption and the Son acquired our redemption for us.

And so Jesus humbly, obediently, accomplished God’s plan of saving sinners is why we praise his glorious name!

Glory in Eternal Life (v. 3)

But Jesus doesn’t stop there! He goes on to describe eternal life in verse 3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Notice where Jesus puts the emphasis in describing eternal life: the knowledge of the one true God and Jesus Christ.

The key word there being ‘knowledge.’ But knowledge is hard isn’t it? How do you know that you know something? Sometimes even things that you think you know, you don’t know that well.

Take yourself for example. Wouldn’t you assume that the person you know the best is yourself? But have you ever taken one of those personality tests?

I looked one of these personality tests up the other day and had to either strongly agree or strongly disagree with a variety of statements. One of the statements was: “You regularly make new friends.” What is regular? Is that a new friend every day, every week, every month, what exactly does that mean? And then to complicate things, how do you distinguish between the person that you actually are and the person you want to be? You might want to be someone that “regularly makes friends,” but is that the person you actually are? How do you separate those things?

My point is, knowing yourself isn’t always as straightforward as you might think.

Jesus makes it clear that eternal life hinges on your knowledge of the “only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

What sort of ‘knowledge’ does Jesus have in mind here? Is it merely intellectual? Is it a feeling? How can you know that you know God?

I like the way one commentator put it: “To know the Father and Jesus Christ refers not to merely abstract knowledge, but to joyful acknowledgment of his sovereignty, glad acceptance of his love, and intimate fellowship with his person.”

The knowledge that Jesus has in mind here is very similar to what we refer to as faith. Our faith isn’t blind.

There’s a certain content necessary to the Christian faith. There’s also a conviction that it’s true. And you must trust and rest in that truth. My point is, eternal life requires a holistic sort of knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.

I was recently talking to a young woman and she told me that she believed in a higher power, that even perhaps there was a god out there, but didn’t necessarily know who it was.

That’s insufficient isn’t it?

A mere acknowledgement of God has always been insufficient.

Simply stating that God may exist or that Jesus was a good person has always been insufficient. You have to have a real, holistic, loving fellowship with the Lord in order to inherit eternal life. It cannot be simply an intellectual tip of the cap.

Leaving the door open to Christ isn’t going to cut it. You have to really know him, and believe what he said, and submit your life to him.

Glory in the Ascension (vv. 4-5)

But notice what he says here in verses 4 and 5: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Jesus lived the perfect life. He accomplished everything that he set out to do and looks forward to being in his heavenly presence. But probably the most fascinating aspect of verse 4 is the fact that he speaks in the past tense.

He’s praying as if he’s already gone to the cross. Notice what he says there in verse 4, “accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”

Is Jesus putting the cart before the horse? After all, he hadn’t gone to the cross quite yet.

Obviously no, but the point that Jesus is making is that the cross was as good as done. It was such a certainty that he was going to accomplish the will of the Father that he could speak about it as if it had already been done. He was going to accomplish God’s will. He was going to do it and his disciples could take that to the bank.

And it’s for his sacrificial death that he would be glorified. In fact, he asks the Father to “glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” He existed in glory before the foundations of the world and yearns to return home to be with the Father.

You see Jesus is looking forward to, rejoicing in, as one commentator put it, “the joy of his saved people, the very people whose salvation he (together with the Father and the Spirit) had planned from eternity before the world existed.”

And that is of course, one of the beauties of the ascension. When Jesus ascended into heaven, it was God glorifying the Son.

Obviously, in these first five verses Jesus is concerned with his own glory, and what we see in these verses is that his glory came through the cross.

We worship, honor, and praise Jesus for what he has done for us and of course, it’s because of his work on the cross that God the Father has highly exalted him and given him the name above all names.

I can’t help but consider what the writer of Hebrews said, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

And on the surface, I’m sure that sounds obvious doesn’t it? We glorify Jesus because of his work on the cross! Many of you might be thinking, well of course!

But I think we forgot a key element in all of this: Christ’s righteousness is your righteousness. Christ’s honor is your honor. Christ’s glory is your glory.

Which of course makes tremendous sense, doesn’t it? Again, he’s praying in front of and for his disciples!

It’s not a selfish prayer, but rather a prayer in which our Lord has you and me specifically in mind. And that comes out more clearly later in John 17, but really that’s true for his prayer from beginning to end.

And of course, it’s not about us, but what’s important for you and me to see is that all of our spiritual blessings come in and through him. I like the way Sinclair Ferguson put it: “His glory is our blessing.”

And so, we’re left with no choice but to praise his name. We’re left with no option but to sing his praises because apart from him we are hopeless. I pray that when you look around at your life you see God’s hand of provision, and blessing in your life.

Sometimes it’s difficult to see but if you diligently look for it, you will find it.

Apart from Jesus you have nothing, but by faith in Him you and I have everything. Let’s pray together.