Prayer For His Disciples

Uplook – July/August 2014 — Grace & Truth Magazine

Prayer For His Disciples
John 17:9-19

“I pray for them.” —John 17:9 KJV

How wonderful to hear His intercession before His Father’s face! Yet He does not pray for the world. In fact, for the world as a system away from God there is no hope – it is appointed to judgment (Acts 17:31). But the true disciples are the Father’s gift to His Son; and since He is leaving them for the time, He commends them to the Father’s tender care for they remain just as truly the Father’s as the Son’s.

Verse 10 of John 17 confirms that all that is the Father’s He shares in common with the Son, and all that is the Son’s He shares in common with the Father. Moreover, the Son is glorified in the disciples. In them is wondrous proof of the greatness of His work, though He was here in lowliest humility, seeking no glory for Himself.

But He was leaving the world and His own in it while He Himself was returning to His Father; whom He addresses as “Holy Father” because of the relationship of a Father with His children. The Son is sanctified – apart from all that is evil, loving what is good. And He deals with believers in such holiness, not simply in righteousness as He does with the world (v.15) which He will judge.

He asks the Father to keep in His own name those who are given to the Son. The Son had kept them while He was with them and this care would not be discontinued because of His absence. None of His own were lost. If Judas seemed to be an exception it was because he was “the son of perdition” and never a true disciple (v.12). Scripture had foreseen the treachery of Judas and his sad end in judgment. If he seemed to be a true disciple this was due only to his deceit in covering his falsehood. But the Word of God would triumph. Verse 13 is clear that this prayer of the Lord is spoken and recorded for the sake of His true disciples, that His own joy might be fulfilled in them – the joy of direct communion with the Father.

As to this the Father’s word was vital, and the Son had given them this full communication of the mind of the Father. It was this that drew out the world’s hatred toward His own because it separated them from the world. In fact, in the same measure that Christ is not of the world, so are His disciples not of the world (v.14). His word clearly draws the line.

But the reality of their sanctification was to be proven by their being left in the world for the time. The Lord prays that they might be kept out of the evil that so permeates the world while they pass through the midst of it. In this connection He repeats His words at the end of verse 14. While He was in the world He had been morally apart from it in purest reality. He was both their Object and Example.

They require the truth, the Word of God, to accomplish this practical sanctification. He asks the Father to apply this, for without such sovereign power we should be helpless. The Father Himself gives effect to His word.

As the Son had been sent by the Father into the world so the Son sends His disciples into the world – not to be part of it, but as His own representatives. Wonderful dignity indeed! For their sakes He was about to sanctify Himself in a complete way, that is, through leaving the world entirely and returning to His Father in order that His disciples might be sanctified in truth. How beautifully this is seen later in the book of Acts: Christ set apart in glory becomes such an Object that His disciples’ eyes are so turned toward heaven that the world loses all appeal to them. Theirs becomes a vital, real sanctification – the truth of the Word holding living power over their souls. If sanctified from the world, it is because of the positive power of sanctification to Christ in glory.

(Used with permission from Biblecentre.org)

By Leslie M. Grant (adapted)