'I have declared onto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love
wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.'--JOHN
xvii. 26.
This is the solemn and calm close of Christ's great High-priestly
prayer; the very last words that He spoke before Gethsemane and His
passion. In it He sums up both the purpose of His life and the
petitions of His prayer, and presents the perfect fulfilment of the
former as the ground on which He asks the fulfilment of the latter.
There is a singular correspondence and contrast between these last
words to God and the last words to the disciples, which immediately
preceded them. These were, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation, but
be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' In both He sums up His
life, in both He is unconscious of flaw, imperfection, or limitation;
in both He shares His own possessions among His followers. But His
words to men carry a trace of His own conflict and a foreboding of
theirs. For Him life had been, and for them it was to be, tribulation
and a battle, and the highest thing that He could promise them was
victory won by conflict. But from the serene elevation of the prayer
all such thoughts disappear. Unbroken calm lies over it. His life has
been one continual manifestation of the name of God; and the portion
that He promises to His followers is not victory won by strife, but the
participation with Himself in the love of God.
Both views are true--true to His experience, true to ours. The
difference between them lies in the elevation of the beholder's eye.
Looked at on the outward side, His life and ours must be always a
battle and often a sorrow. Looked at from within, His life was an
unbroken abiding in the love of God, and a continual impartation of the
name of God, and our lives may be an ever growing knowledge of God,
leading to and being a fuller and fuller possession of His love, and of
a present Christ. So let us ponder these deep words: our Lord's own
summing up of His work and aims; His statement of what we may hope to
attain; and the path by which we may attain it. I shall best bring out
the whole fullness of their meaning if I simply follow them word by
word.