Dear Friends,

Today’s devotional consists of notes on the greatest prayer ever prayed, the great High Priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ recorded in John 17. Meditate on it and you will be encouraged. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

John 17:1-2:6
b. Jesus prays for His Father’s blessing (17:1-26)
“I would ever be careful lest I should appear to differentiate between the value of one part of Holy Scripture and another, but no one will deny that when we come to this chapter we are at the center of all the sanctities.” [Morgan, p. 266]
“St. John 17….is the true ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ for the prayer Christ taught beginning, ‘Our Father,’ is really the Disciples’ Prayer.” [Wood, Through the Bible Day By Day, p. 166]
“Melanchthon, another of the Reformers, when giving his last lecture before his death, said on John 17: ’There is no voice which has ever been heard, either in heaven or in earth, more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime, that the prayer offered up by the Son to God Himself.’” [Pink, p. 904]

“On his deathbed he [John Knox] asked his wife to read to him the seventeenth chapter of St. John, ‘in which,’ said he, ‘I first cast anchor’…” [James Stalker, John Knox: His Ideas and Ideals, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), p. 11]

“This is the longest of our Lord’s recorded prayers…. It is uttered by One who has just affirmed that He has overcome the world (16:33), and it starts from this conviction. Jesus is looking forward to the cross, but in a mood of hope and joy, not one of despondency. The prayer marks the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, but it looks forward to the ongoing work which would now be the responsibility first of the immediate disciples and then of those who would later believe through them. Jesus prays for them all.” [Morris, p. 716]
“The seventeenth chapter of the Gospel by John, is, without doubt, the most remarkable portion of the most remarkable book in the world. The Scripture of truth, given by inspiration of God, contains many wonderful passages, but none more wonderful than this — none so wonderful. It is the utterance of the mind and heart of the God-man, in the very crisis of His great undertaking, in the immediate prospect of completing, by the sacrifice of Himself, the work which had been given Him to do, and for the accomplishment of which He had become incarnate. It is the utterance of these to the Father who had sent Him. What a concentration of thought and affection is there in these few sentences! How ‘full of grace,’ how ‘full of truth.’ How condensed, and yet how clear the thoughts, — how deep, yet how calm, the feelings which are here, so far as the capabilities of human language permit, worthily expressed! All is natural and simple in thought and expression — nothing intricate or elaborate, but there is a width in the conceptions which the human understanding cannot measure — a depth which it cannot fathom. There is no bringing out of these plain words all that is seen and felt to be in them.” [John Brown in Pink, p. 904]
“…The 17th of John is full of…reasoning and pleading, — most full of reasoning and pleading, remarkable to discover, than even of petitioning. Three petitions, or at most four, are all that our Lord makes to His Father in that great audience of His. And then, all the rest of His time and strength, in that great audience, is taken up with pleadings and arguments and reasonings and appeals, — as to why His four petitions for Himself and for His disciples should be heard and granted.” [Alexander Whyte, Lord, Teach Us To Pray, (New York: George H. Doran Company, n.d.), p. 216-217]

“In this, His high priestly prayer, Jesus prayed for Himself (vv. 1-5), His disciples (vv. 6-19), and all of His church (vv. 20-26).” [Wiersbe, With the Word, p. 701]
i. Jesus prays for himself (17:1-5)
“Now observe, Christ began with prayer for himself, and afterwards prayed for his disciples; this charity must begin at home, though it must not end there.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary V, p. 928]

“Mark the arresting words with which He began: ‘Father, the hour is come.’ All through John we have found references to that hour. It began away back, when talking to His Mother at Cana He said, ‘Mine hour is not yet come.’ Now He said, ‘Father, the hour is come.’ To this hour He had been looking forward from the beginning; for it, He had been preparing in all His teaching, and all His doing; it was this hour which had constituted the underlying passion, urge of His life. ‘Father, the hour is come.’ In the presence of that consciousness, He expressed two desires for Himself. The first is contained in the early verses… What is the desire? ‘Glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee.’…The deepest passion of the heart of Jesus was not the saving of men, but the glory of God; and then the saving of men, because that is for the glory of God.” [Morgan, p. 269-270]
”If it be objected, that never was there any thing less glorious than the death of Christ, which was then at hand, I reply, that in that death we behold a magnificent triumph which is concealed from wicked men; for there we perceive that, atonement having been made for sins, the world has been reconciled to God, the curse has been blotted out, and Satan has been vanquished.” [Calvin’s Commentaries XVIII, p. 164]
ii. Jesus prays for the Apostles (17:6-19)

“…In the previous chapters we have beheld Christ dealing with believers in the name of the Father, opening His counsels to them; now we find Him dealing with the Father on behalf of believers, presenting their cause to Him…” [Pink, p. 906]

“…At verse six He began to pray for the men about Him. He first referred to the work He had already done with them. He said, ‘I have manifested Thy name’ to them…. For these men He expressed three desires: ‘Keep them in Thy name…that they may be one, even as We; the two show how that will be done: ‘Keep them from the evil,’ ‘Sanctify them in the truth.’” [Morgan, p. 272]

“I do not see how predestination could possibly be taught more clearly than it is in the whole of this high-priestly prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter of John. A master thought — I think I might almost say the master thought in it — is that predestination precedes faith. The disciples belonged to God — that is in His eternal plan — before they believed; they did not come to belong to God because they believed; but they were enabled to believe because they already belonged to God and because in execution of His plan He drew them.” [J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1937), p. 64]

“He prays that His disciples may be (a) kept, (b) sanctified, (c) united, (d) and be with Him in glory.” [Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels IV, p. 185]

iii. Jesus prays for his church (17:20-26)
“He now gives a wider range to his prayer, which hitherto had included the apostles alone; for he extends it to all the disciples of the Gospel, so long as there shall be any of them to the end of the world…. This prayer of Christ is a safe harbor, and whoever retreats into it is safe from all danger of shipwreck; for it is as if Christ had solemnly sworn that he will devote his care and diligence to our salvation.” [Calvin’s Commentaries XVIII, p. 181]

“Note three things: the persons prayed for; the mark by which they are identified — faith in Christ; the ground and warrant of their faith — the Word.” [Pink, p. 956-957]
(A) For its unity (17:20-23)
In the 1920’s the Presbyterian Church split into three groups: (1) a small group of liberals; (2) a small group of Bible-believers; and (3) a group of men who were conservative in their theology but who wanted peace in the church more than truth. “…It was this mediating group — essentially conservative in theology and temperament — that held the balance of power and eventually decided the issue.” [Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957), p. 119]
For further study: David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “The Basis of Christian Unity,” Knowing the Times, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), p. 118-163]
(B) For its vision (17:24-26)
“…Our Lord names the fourth and last thing which He desires for His disciples in His prayer. After preservation, sanctification, and unity, comes participation of His glory.” [Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels IV, p. 204] “Christ is not content till the saints are in His arms.” [Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial, (Grand Rapids: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1663), p. 17]