Calvary Road Baptist Church

“THE LORD JESUS CHRIST PRAYING FOR HIMSELF” Part 5

John 17.1-5 

My text for this message is John 17.5. So we can better understand the context in which our text is found, let us read verses 1-5. Please stand for the reading of God’s Word when you have that passage in front of you: 

1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. 

May I remind you of the greatest conversation found in the Word of God? That conversation between the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles at the beginning and between the Lord Jesus Christ and His heavenly Father at the end is recorded in John, chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17.

As just mentioned, there are two portions to this greatest conversation, the first portion dealing with the Savior’s conversation with His eleven remaining apostles, beginning in the Upper Room and continuing as they walked toward the Garden of Gethsemane, and then our Lord’s high priestly intercessory prayer of John chapter 17, which is the record of His most detailed conversation with His Father preserved for our benefit in Scripture. Thus, it surprises us not at all to learn that the prayer found in John chapter 17, while not the longest of our Lord’s prayers (on many occasions He prayed through the night), is the longest of His prayers recorded in the New Testament.

At this time, we come to John 17.5, the final verse of that portion of Christ’s prayer in which He prays to the Father on His Own behalf. In subsequent verses, He will pray to the Father on behalf of His apostles and those disciples who will come after them. Of course, that means you and me. Such praying for His followers will be the Savior functioning in His mediatorial role.

I want to mention practical and theological things before I rehearse some extraordinary observations made by the Puritan divine Matthew Henry on this verse. First, I think a word about the Savior’s prayer will serve as a practical benefit for every developing prayer warrior. Every child of God should be a developing prayer warrior if Paul’s remarks in Ephesians 6.18 are to be heeded: 

“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” 

Notice, please, how many times the Lord Jesus Christ addressed the First Person as “Father” over the first five verses of this prayer. He addresses His father but twice in five verses. Notice how much of a departure is the Savior’s practice from so many believers whose public prayers seem to use references to the Father as so much punctuation. I would advise young Christians to be thoughtful about the repetitive use of references to the Father, to avoid inadvertently employing the vain repetition of the heathen, and as a caution against taking the name of the LORD in vain (which refers to the use of His name in a manner that does not reflect reverence or seriousness).

Reference to the Father does not need to stand at the head of every utterance or be used to take the place of every comma in the course of a prayer to God. If you want to pause between thoughts while praying in public, then pause. There is no need to invoke a reference to God every five seconds. Such is characteristic of immature prayer with new Christians and thoughtless prayer with seasoned believers, and no Christian’s prayer should ever be thoughtless.

Second, an observation related to Christ’s glory. When the Lord Jesus Christ left the throne room of heaven for the womb of the Virgin Mary He consciously and intentionally divested Himself of His glory, but only for a while. Our Lord asks His heavenly Father to restore the glory that He once had in eternity past and in time before His incarnation.

Now, He recognized, had come the time in His earthly ministry for Him to request that His heavenly Father glorify Him with the glory He had before. And is it not amazing the steps the Lord Jesus Christ will take to be glorified?

Do you reflect on such matters as glory, and honor, and humility? It would be time well spent. In Proverbs 15.33 and 18.12, we are taught that “before honor is humility.” And no greater humiliation can be conceived than the Lord Jesus Christ’s voluntary humiliation of becoming sin for us and enduring the death of the cross. Wherefore, the Apostle Paul tells us, in Philippians 2.9, God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name. Since the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Revelation 13.8, it may very well be that divesting Himself of His glory to become a man, and to enable Him to humble Himself as our sin-bearer, should be seen as a vital step in glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ in a way He had never before been glorified.

To be sure, the incarnation should never be seen as a temporary step taken by the Savior, for He will from henceforth always be the God-man. He will forevermore be glorified and will reign as King of Kings, this one who became the God-man.

Notice also that the Lord Jesus Christ does not ask His heavenly Father to be glorified for Himself only. His request to the Father is that He be glorified with the Father by the Father. Thus, there is nothing about this request that should be seen as selfish. He is worthy to be glorified because He is God. And He seeks to be glorified, and properly so, with His heavenly Father.

But there is another reason the Lord Jesus Christ sought to be and ought to be glorified. It was for the benefit of His apostles, and it is for the benefit of we who are His disciples. Our reason for existing, after all, is for the Father to be glorified through our lives and ministries and for His Son Jesus Christ our Lord to be glorified.

Indeed, the reason for Calvary Road Baptist Church, and every other New Testament Church to exist and function, is to be useful to Christ in seeing His Father glorified, Ephesians 3.21: 

“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” 

Now for some helpful comments about this verse from the pen of Matthew Henry: 

First, See here what he prayed for: Glorify thou me, as before, Joh 17:1. All repetitions in prayer are not to be counted vain repetitions. What His Father had promised Him, and He was assured of, yet He must pray for; promises are not designed to supersede prayers, but to be the guide of our desires and the ground of our hopes.

It is a glory with God; not only, Glorify my name on earth, but, Glorify me with thine own self. It was paradise, it was heaven, to be with his Father, as Pr 8:30; Da 7:13; Heb 8:1. Note, The brightest glories of the exalted Redeemer were to be displayed within the veil, where the Father manifests His glory.

It is the glory he had with God before the world was. By this it appears, (1.) That Jesus Christ, as God, had a being before the world was, co-eternal with the Father; our religion acquaints us with one that was before all things, and by whom all things consist. (2.) That his glory with the Father is from everlasting, as well as his existence with the Father; for he was from eternity the brightness of his Father's glory, Heb 1:3. As God’s making the world only declared his glory, but made no real additions to it; so Christ undertook the work of redemption, not because he needed glory, for he had a glory with the Father before the world, but because we needed glory. (3.) That Jesus Christ in his state of humiliation divested himself of this glory, and drew a veil over it; though he was still God, yet he was God manifested in the flesh, not in his glory. He laid down this glory for a time, as a pledge that he would go through with his undertaking, according to the appointment of his Father. (4.) That in his exalted state he resumed this glory, and clad himself again with his former robes of light. Having performed his undertaking, he did, as it were, take up his pledge, by this demand, Glorify thou me. He prays that even his human nature might be advanced to the highest honour it was capable of, his body a glorious body; and that the glory of the Godhead might now be manifested in the person of the Mediator, Emmanuel, God-man. He does not pray to be glorified with the princes and great men of the earth: no; he that knew both worlds, and might choose which he would have his preferment in, chose it in the glory of the other world, as far exceeding all the glory of this. He had despised the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them, when Satan offered them to him, and therefore might the more boldly claim the glories of the other world. Let the same mind be in us.

See here what he pleaded: I have glorified thee; and now, in consideration thereof, glorify thou me. For, 1. There was an equity in it, and an admirable becomingness, that if God was glorified in him, he should glorify him in himself, as he had observed, Joh 13:32. Such an infinite value there was in what Christ did to glorify his Father that he properly merited all the glories of his exalted state. If the Father was a gainer in his glory by the Son’s humiliation, it was fit the Son should be no loser by it, at long run, in his glory. 2. It was according to the covenant between them, that if the Son would make his soul an offering for sin he should divide the spoil with the strong Isa 53:10, 12, and the kingdom should be his; and this he had an eye to, and depended upon, in his sufferings; it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross: and now in his exalted state he still expects the completing of his exaltation, because he perfected his undertaking, Heb 10:13. 3. It was the most proper evidence of his Father’s accepting and approving the work he had finished. By the glorifying of Christ we are satisfied that God was satisfied, and therein a real demonstration was given that the Father was well pleased in him as his beloved Son. 4. Thus we must be taught that those, and only those, who glorify God on earth, and persevere in the work God hath given them to do, shall be glorified with the Father, when they must be no more in this world. Not that we can merit the glory, as Christ did, but our glorifying God is required as an evidence of our interest in Christ, through whom eternal life is God’s free gift. 

I will now summarize this portion of the Lord Jesus Christ’s high priestly intercessory prayer by recapitulating the five verses that comprise the beginning of John chapter 17, that contains the beginning of the second portion of the great conversation recorded in Scripture, and that presents the Savior’s great purpose toward His Father, which demands that we so order our perception of our grand purpose rather than imagining that we are justified in ordering our lives according to our ideals and imaginations. 

First, RESTATING THE MAIN FEATURES OF VERSE 1. 

“These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” 

I want to suggest three benefits we derive from this verse:

First, we see the distinctiveness of the personalities of the First and Second Persons of the Godhead. If personhood requires intellect, sensibility, and will, we see the personhood of both the Father and the Son in this verse. Glory and glorifying is a moral attribute, showing sensibility. An appreciation of the hour having come shows Christ in possession of intellect. His request that the Father glorify Him establishes that He possesses a will. That the Lord Jesus requests that the Father glorify Him shows that He recognizes with that both the Father’s sensibility, having the capacity to glorify, and the Father’s will. After all, He urges the Father to express Himself as an act of will. Third, to communicate to the Father that “the hour is come” reveals intellect possessed by the Son and also by the Father. They both know “the hour is come.” The importance of the personality of the Father and the personality of the Son, and that their personalities are shown in this prayer to be distinct, just as when the Savior was baptized and the Father spoke of Him, and on the mount of transfiguration when the Father spoke of Him. Meaning? Meaning the Gnostic heretics were wrong. Meaning the Aryans were wrong. Meaning the Jehovah Witnesses are wrong. Meaning the United Pentecostals and the Oneness groups of our day are wrong. Modalism is not Scriptural. God really does exist as one God, yet as more than one personality. Three, in fact, with two personalities clearly shown in this verse.

Next, we see the deity of both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father acknowledged in this verse. God’s people so under appreciate glory, but so important a matter to God. It is time well spent for the Bible student to study God’s glory, with the advance recognition that while you may learn more about God’s glory, it will always be a topic that is basically beyond our comprehension though beneficial as something to study. You are probably aware enough of God’s glory to recollect that in the many passages that deal with glory, there are two in which He has declared that He will not share His glory with anyone else. That is clear from Isaiah 42.8 and 48.11: 

42.8:   

"I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." 

48.11:

"For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another." 

How do we square these two verses with Christ’s prayer request in John 17.1, requesting that the Father glorify Him so that He might glorify the Father? Servants of God can engage in the activity of glorifying, but only God merits the standing as God of being glorified. Yet both the Father and the Son are in this verse both glorifying and the recipients of glory. How can this be possible? Only if both the Father and the Son are God, because only God can be glorified.

I will admit to you that the first two benefits derived from John 17.1 are intensely theological. Important, but theological and a bit abstract. The third benefit is very practical. The Lord Jesus Christ prayed for Himself before He prayed for anyone else. Placing yourself first is thought by many to always be selfish and self-centered. But we see the same pattern employed by the Apostle Paul in Acts 20.28, where he said to the Ephesian elders, 

“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.” 

Paul urged upon the Ephesian elders the importance of, first, taking heed to themselves, because spiritual leaders are of no benefit to those they lead apart from intentional attendance to their own spiritual needs. So for pastors or our era, and parents, for that matter. You actually harm your child by communicating to your youngster that your spiritual welfare is of secondary importance to theirs. Of course, this applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. However, another consideration also applied to Him. He prayed for Himself first. After all, He is God because He is the Son of God. It was appropriate for Him to first pray for Himself. 

Next, RESTATING THE MAIN FEATURES OF VERSE 2. 

“As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” 

Notice two realities that stand or fall together:

First, is there any doubt that the Father gave Christ power of all flesh? With the word power translating exousia, we recognize that the Savior refers to the authority granted to Him by the Father. How can anyone doubt that He was given such authority? Did He not turn water into wine? Did He not cleanse lepers? Did He not raise the dead? Did He not give sight to the blind? Did He not make whole the lame and the infirm? Did He not feed the 5,000 and then the 4,000? On top of that, did He not specifically claim that God had given Him all power in the Great Commission?

Who would dispute Christ possessing such authority except those who are infidels who deny any such thing as supernatural power. Yet the first half of verse 2 is linked to the second half of the verse: 

“that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” 

Think of it, beloved. As soon as you dismember or deny the back half of verse 2, or in some way try to twist the meaning of what the Savior actually said, you also ruin the first half of the first. So, unless you want to deny Christ’s authority to do what we have no doubt that He did, all those wonderful miracles, you have to accept that Christ gives eternal life to those the Father gives Him. Folks who try to conform the second half of John 17.2 to fit their Arminian theology, so God’s sovereignty and Christ’s sovereignty are minimized, diminished, or distorted can only do so by calling into question Christ’s authority over all flesh. No one has to like the implications of what the Bible says concerning God’s sovereignty and Christ’s sovereignty, but it is a dangerous matter not to accept what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty and Christ’s sovereignty. You should be glad God is sovereign, and you are not, and that Christ is sovereign and that you are not. 

Third, RESTATING THE MAIN FEATURES OF VERSE 3. 

“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” 

How very straightforward this verse is. How very exclusive and narrow. First, allow me to point out what this verse does not say. It does not say that eternal life has anything to do with your deeds. This removes, or ought to remove, all consideration of works righteousness or merit-based salvation.

Second, let me point out that eternal life is shown to be unrelated to what you know here. Facts, information, catechisms, creeds, etc., are not what is at issue with respect to eternal life.

Eternal life is a matter of only one reality. Do you know God, and do you know Jesus Christ who was sent by God? Not know about, but know. Do you know God? Do you know Jesus Christ? Do you? 

Fourth, RESTATING THE MAIN FEATURES OF VERSE 4. 

“I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” 

We are certain that the Son of Man said He came to seek and to save that which was lost, Luke 19.10. Yet both John 17.1 and John 17.4 reveals glorifying God is the whole of which seeking and saving sinners is a part.

What was Christ’s earthly ministry about? What was the work He spoke of having been given by the Father? Giving His life a ransom for many.

That said, anyone and everyone who is so wide of the mark as to suggest Christ’s earthly ministry was all about saving sinners misses the crucial reality that saving sinners is the incredible means whereby the Lord Jesus Christ glorifies the Father.

Though many, in their zeal, miss that crucial truth, one must ask, “How can you miss that truth? It is central to God’s unfolding drama of redemption.” 

Finally, RESTATING THE MAIN FEATURES OF VERSE 5. 

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” 

Does the significance of glorifying God, the centrality of glorifying God, and the undeniable sense of glorifying God make so much more sense now that we see the issue in context? Is the salvation of the lost important? The importance of the salvation of lost sinners is profoundly difficult to overestimate. But its importance is better understood when it is recognized that the salvation of sinners is a critical means by which God is glorified.

Don’t let that slip past you unrecognized. Christ left heaven’s glory to glorify His Father. He divested Himself of His glory for a time that He might glorify the Father. He died on the cross to atone for sinners’ sins ... that He might thereby glorify the Father. 

Beloved, what it is all about is glorifying the Father.

Revelation 4.11 establishes that truth: 

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” 

They know it in heaven.

Paul did his dead-level best to make sure we know that it is the reason for our Church, Ephesians 3.21: 

“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” 

What we ought to be doing here and now in our worship and our service in this Church is what we will be doing throughout eternity.

If it is the admitted goal and pinnacle of Christ’s efforts and work to glorify God (and it is), then we are blind who do not see that everything Christ does for us, to us, and through us, is so that He might make us more and more useful to Him to, through us, glorify the Father.

To that end, Jesus Christ prayed for Himself in John 17.1-5.

To that end, we, too, should pray, and serve, and live our lives.

Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Please contact him by clicking on the link below. Please do not change the subject within your email message. Thank you.

Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church