Jesus' Prayer For Us John 17

Jesus' Prayer For Us John 17

One of the most encouraging experiences as a Christian is to be prayed for by someone else – and not only prayed for but prayed with. When someone prays for you in your presence, something special happens in your heart: you feel warmed and encouraged. There’s a sense of intimacy, both between you and the other person and between you and God. It’s like you’re knocking on heaven’s doors together. It is one of the best ways to build relationships between Christians and one of the surest ways of ensuring unity in the church. It’s pretty hard for division to exist and take hold when people are praying together. Have you had that experience? While we do have to pray for one another, I believe firmly that we ought to pray with one another more.

 It is one thing for us to pray for and with one another – to bring our brothers and sisters in Christ before the Lord in prayer – but it is quite another to realize that in Jesus we have someone interceding on our behalf. Do you know that Jesus prays for you? Do you know that he goes to the Father on your behalf and on our behalf? See Hebrews 7: 25 and Romans 8: 34 

Jesus’ Prayer for Protection
Jesus’ first prayer for us is a prayer for protection. Of course, we have the benefit of knowing in advance that our Father is there to protect us; although just like the young boy, we don’t always see our Father guarding us. Jesus asks the Father to “protect” us. He prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” A little later he prays, “I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Eugene Peterson translates the word “protect” as “guard,” and this is a helpful way of seeing it, especially when we think of that father watching over his son while the son was in the woods and thought he was alone.

Against what are we being protected? Jesus asks that we receive protection from the evil one, that we would be protected when faced with temptation, opposition, persecution, etc. He takes as inevitable that we will face such things.

But he doesn’t ask that we be removed from these things. As Jesus says, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world.” But while we are in the world, he wants us to be protected and guarded. Now the word that we translate here as “protect” or “guard” is tereo, which can also mean “to preserve.” Jesus wants us to be preserved while we are in the world. Jesus’ prayer for protection is a prayer that the disciples would remain in – and be shaped by – the revelation of God that they have received through Jesus once Jesus is no longer physically present. Jesus says, “Protect them in your name that you have given me.” This is the same as saying “Father, help them to remain true to what they have received from me. No matter what they face in this world, no matter how the evil one attacks them, help them to remain in me. Preserve them, protect them, and guard them.”


Jesus’ Prayer for Sanctification
Jesus’ second prayer for us is a prayer for sanctification. Sanctification here means “to be made holy,” and being made holy means being set apart. Jesus wants us “to be consecrated” for service. It has to do with being set apart for the purposes of God. Jesus is praying that we would be set apart by the truth of who he is for the purpose of being sent into the world. We are in the world, but we do not, as Jesus says, “belong to the world.” Being holy, sanctified, and consecrated means that we belong to God and that He has set us apart for a purpose.

“Jesus is asking God to do for the disciples what he has already done for him: set them apart for God’s work in the world.” Just as God set apart His Son for a mission in the world, so Jesus is asking that the Father would set apart his disciples for God’s work in the world. As Jesus says, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

“Sanctification is not about living a clean or perfect life, but an obedient life. The attraction of the world, the weakness of the flesh, and the onslaught of the devil are daily battles. It involves a purifying of the whole life of that person or thing to the service of God. In the Old Testament it usually conveyed the idea of making something sacred, usually by the burning of the sacrifice. It does not mean to purify as to purify from sin. Jesus purified Himself even though He had no sin by setting Himself apart as the sacrificial offering to God so that we His followers might also be pure and holy.
Sanctification is not about avoiding or escaping the world but yielding and surrendering to God. Being set apart does not mean we are stored away.”

Jesus’ Prayer for Unity

What does it mean to have unity here? It doesn’t mean that we agree on every single point of doctrine. It doesn’t mean that there is only one denomination. But it does mean that we are united in confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. It means that we confess in a united way that the Father and the Son are one and that the Father sent the Son into the world and reveals who the Father is.

The importance of oneness and unity is emphasized over and over again in our passage: “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one (v. 11).” “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one (v. 20).” “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one (v. 22, 23).”


Jesus’ Prayer for Us
Lastly it is very important that we recognize that this passage is a prayer. Jesus is asking his Father to accomplish all these things. He is asking his Father to protect us. He is asking his Father to sanctify us. He is asking his Father to make us one in heart and mind. These are not things we can accomplish. We cannot preserve ourselves. We cannot sanctify ourselves. And we certainly cannot make ourselves one and create unity amongst ourselves. Jesus entrusts his disciples to God the Father. So should we.

All of what Jesus asks of his Father here can be summed up in what he says at the end of his prayer: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Love is the key.