As GoogleEarth pans out, it sets your house, town and country into its global context. The prayer of Jesus draws to a close in these verses and as it does we see our Lord’s vision panning out and taking into account the final picture. It’s a thrilling and humbling sight.
1. To be with me
Having prayed for those who would believe in him through the apostles’ witness, Jesus now prays for every believer, for all those that the Father has given to him. And what he prays for is that all his people might be with him, where he is.
We’re used to tales of superheroes saving the world and then riding off into the distance but that isn’t what Jesus is about – that isn’t why God made the world, it isn’t why he sent his Son to rescue this fallen world. The Lord’s purpose, in creation and salvation, was to save a people for himself, people who would be in relationship with him and who would ultimately live with him.
This is what thrilled and encouraged Paul so much as he languished in a Roman prison and penned his letter to the Philippians – to “be with Christ which is better by far.” The Christian hope is not simply that one day we will live in the renewed heavens and earth where sin can no longer spoil and where death cannot rob and grieve. The centre of our hope is the Lord himself.
Have you ever wondered what that bit in Revelation is about, when it says that there will be no temple in the new heavens and earth? Why is that? Because “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (21:22). The temple served as the place where God’s presence was localised in this world and the same is true, in essence, of the church as the temple. But the great hope held out before us is for the full presence of God to flood the whole of creation.
We shall be with him. And look at what Jesus prays here: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me”. This is what God wants, this is the passionate desire of Jesus, to have his people with him and for him to be with them.
One writer has said that “’With me’ is the language of love. The beloved longs for the lover’s presence. So Jesus…gazes across the rolling aeons of the future and anticipates the embrace of his beloved bride in the glory that is to be” (Milne).
For now, Jesus has prayed that we not be taken out of this world but rather protected whilst in it. But that’s only while time lasts. His ultimate desire is for his own to be with him. He wants us there and so prays for us to be there. And we shall be. No prospect can be so thrilling or sustaining amid the challenges and disappointments of life in this world. He wants you, wants us, to be with him.
2. To see my glory
But that isn’t all. The reason Jesus wants us to be with him is so that we might see his glory, the glory that he had with the Father because the Father loved him before the creation of the world.
We have already seen something of the glory of God in the face of our Lord Jesus. It is a sight of exquisite beauty and grace; when we see something of the wonder of God’s grace and love radiating from his Son, it takes our breath away. But there is yet more to see, so much more. Jesus wants us to see the glory he had with the Father ‘in the beginning’, before the days of time.
Here is a glory that is beyond words to begin to describe – the full relation of Father and Son, in the Spirit; the glory of the eternal God. And Jesus says that the Father gave him this glory because he loved him before the creation of the world – this is a glory that is not simply about salvation but takes up the full reality of the eternal God, who he is in himself, who he is in the relationship of the members of the Trinity.
The sight we have now is true but it is only partial; what Jesus is praying for here is the fullness. It will be a sight that is not clouded by sin, nor limited by our mortality. John tells us that when we see Jesus, we will be made like him for we shall see him as he is. It is that sight Jesus is praying about here.
When we fall asleep in Jesus we go to be with him in that moment but even then there is something more to come, the full revelation of his glory at his coming when he will be marvelled at among us.
Have you ever had the hairs on your neck stand up at the sight of a beautiful sunset? Or maybe just gazed admiring the clouds in the sky and adored the one whose canvas displays such amazing artistry? Have you had times when the reality of God’s love to you in Jesus has reduced you to grateful tears?
All those experiences are glimpses of the glory of God but they will be far surpassed. Jesus is asking here for us to be allowed to have, not a glimpse, but a full and unending grasp of the amazing reality that is God himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. Your love in them; I myself in them
With his last petition, Jesus returns to the interim. Having set up the prospect of the final consummation of all things, he states that the though the world does not know the Father, he does and his disciples know that the Father has sent him.
He is the one who has made the Father known to the disciples. All knowledge of the Father comes only through the Son, the one who is the express image of his person. But coming to know the Father through the Son is not a one-off event that is then done for ever. Jesus affirms his intention here to go on making the Father known to his people.
Whilst ever we remain in this life, Jesus will go on making the Father known to us. Our life as disciples is not to be static but an upward path as he opens to us through his Word, by his Spirit, the riches that are God himself. This is the desire and stated aim of Jesus, to reveal the Father to us as his people. That commitment by our Lord should lead us to say with Paul, “I want to know him…” and to pray with him, that the Lord would give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we might know him better (Eph. 1:17).
But why is Jesus committing himself to making the Father known to us? “That the love you have for me may be in them…that I myself may be in them” (v.26).
There’s a couple of things to notice about this.
i) Jesus wants us to know personally the same love that the Father has for him. To know and share in that is the very pinnacle of salvation. But Jesus is not speaking of our individual experience here; he has in view the love that exists and is shared within the Trinity also existing and being shared by the members of his family, the church.
Jesus makes the Father known to us so that we might share in their love, delighting personally in it and collectively demonstrating that love. Discovering more about God is not a merely intellectual exercise; it is for the purpose of showing love to each other and so declaring to the world the reality of who Jesus is and why he came.
ii) Jesus makes the Father known to us so that their love might be in us and so that he himself might be in us. And that is where we come to the highest goal of all in the purposes of God – that he might be all in all and that we might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
You see, at the end of the day, it isn’t just about being forgiven and made new, it isn’t just about renewing the moral order of the world; it is, rather, all about God making his dwelling with humanity. And not just among us but in us.
Many centuries ago, a man called Athanasius said this: “the Word took bodily form so that we might receive the Holy Spirit: God became the bearer of a body so that men might be bearers of the Spirit.” That is how our Lord Jesus will be in us, each one and as a body collectively.
That is what Jesus is praying about here with his cross in full view. The only way that God will be able to dwell among and within people is by Jesus going the way of the Cross, bearing away all our sin and shame, enduring untold agony so that we might know inexpressible joy as we are filled with his love and indwelt by the Lord of glory.
This is what we hold out to this world as we preach the gospel. No-one else is worthy of our love and devotion.
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