_CHRIST'S INTERCESSORY PRAYER._
"These things spake Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He
said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may
glorify Thee: even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that
whatsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give eternal life.
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true
God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. I glorified
Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast
given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own
self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. I
manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the
world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have
kept Thy word. Now they know that all things whatsoever Thou hast
given Me are from Thee: for the words which Thou gavest Me I have
given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I
came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me. I
pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou
hast given Me; for they are Thine: and all things that are Mine are
Thine, and Thine are Mine: and I am glorified in them. And I am no
more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee.
Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, that
they may be one, even as We are. While I was with them, I kept them
in Thy name which Thou hast given Me: and I guarded them, and not
one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. But now I come to Thee; and these things I speak
in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I
have given them Thy word; and the world hated them, because they are
not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that
Thou shouldest take them from the world, but that Thou shouldest
keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth. As
Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the
world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves
also may be sanctified in truth. Neither for these only do I pray,
but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they
may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that
they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst
send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto
them; that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou
in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know
that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Father, that which Thou hast given Me, I will that, where I am, they
also may be with Me; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast
given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. O
righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and
these knew that Thou didst send Me; and I made known unto them Thy
name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst
me may be in them, and I in them."--JOHN xvii.
This prayer of Christ is in some respects the most precious relic of the
past. We have here the words which Christ addressed to God in the
critical hour of His life--the words in which He uttered the deepest
feeling and thought of His Spirit, clarified and concentrated by the
prospect of death. What a revelation it would be to us had we Christ's
prayers from His boyhood onwards! what a liturgy and promptuary of
devotion if we knew what He had desired from His early years--what He
had feared, what He had prayed against, what He had never ceased to hope
for; the things that one by one dropped out of His prayers, the things
that gradually grew into them; the persons He commended to the Father
and the manner of this commendation; His prayers for His mother, for
John, for Peter, for Lazarus, for Judas! But here we have a prayer
which, if it does not so abundantly satisfy pardonable curiosity, does
at least bring us into as sacred a presence. For even among the prayers
of Christ this stands by itself as that in which He gathered up the
retrospect of His past and surveyed the future of His Church; in which,
as if already dying, He solemnly presented to the Father Himself, His
work, and His people. Recognising the grandeur of the occasion, we may
be disposed to agree with Melanchthon, who, when giving his last
lecture shortly before His death, said: "There is no voice which has
ever been heard, either in heaven or in earth, more exalted, more holy,
more fruitful, more sublime, than this prayer offered up by the Son of
God Himself."
The prayer was the natural conclusion to the conversation which Jesus
and the disciples had been carrying on. And as the Eleven saw Him
lifting His eyes to heaven, as if the Father He addressed were visible,
they no doubt felt a security which had not been imparted by all His
promises. And when in after-life they spoke of Christ's intercession,
this instance of it must always have risen in memory and have formed all
their ideas of that part of the Redeemer's work. It has always been
believed that those who have loved and cared for us while on earth
continue to do so when through death they have passed nearer to the
Source of all love and goodness; this lively interest in us is supposed
to continue because it formed so material an element in their life here
below; and it was impossible that those who heard our Lord thus awfully
commending them to the Father should ever forget this earnest
consideration of their state or should ever come to fancy that they were
forgotten.
Beginning with prayer for Himself, our Lord passes at the sixth verse
into prayer for His disciples, and at the twentieth verse the prayer
expands still more widely and embraces the world, all those who should
believe on Him.
First, Jesus prays for Himself; and His prayer is, "Father, glorify Thy
Son; glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was." The work for which He came into the world
was done; "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." There
remains no more reason why He should stay longer on earth; "the hour is
come," the hour for closing His earthly career and opening to Him a new
period and sphere. He does not wish and does not need a prolongation of
life. He has found time enough in less than a half of three-score years
and ten to do all He can do on earth. It is character, not time, we need
to do our work. To make a deep and abiding impression it is not longer
life we need, but intensity. Jesus did not find Himself cramped,
limited, or too soon hurried out of life. He viewed death as the
suitable timely step, and took it with self-command and in order to pass
to something better than earthly life.
How immeasurably beneath this level is the vaunted equanimity of the
thinker who says, "Death can be no evil because it is universal"! How
immeasurably beneath it is the habit of most of us! Which of us can
stand in that clear air on that high point which separates life from
what is beyond and can say, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest
Me to do"? A broken column is the fit monument of our life, unfinished,
frustrated, useless. Wasted energy, ill-repaired blunders, unfulfilled
purposes, fruitless years, much that is positively evil, much that was
done mechanically and carelessly and for the day; plans ill conceived
and worse executed; imperfect ideals of life imperfectly realised;
pursuits dictated by uneducated tastes, unchastened whims, accidental
circumstances,--such is the retrospect which most of us have as we look
back over life. Few men even recognise the reality of life as part of an
eternal order, and, of the few who do so, still fewer seriously and
persistently aim at fitting in their life as a solid part of that
order.
Before we know whether we have finished the work given us to do we must
know what that work is. At the outset of his account of Christ's work
John gives us his conception of it. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us; and _we beheld His glory_, the glory as of the Only-begotten
of the Father." This work was now accomplished, and Jesus can say, "I
have glorified Thee on the earth"; "I have manifested Thy name unto the
men which Thou gavest Me out of the world." We may all add our humble
responsive "Amen" to this account of His finished work. John has carried
us through the scenes in which Jesus manifested the glory of the Father
and showed the full meaning of that name, displaying the Father's love
in His self-sacrificing interest in men, the Father's holiness and
supremacy in His devoted filial obedience. Never again can men separate
the idea of the true God from the life of Jesus Christ; it is in that
life we come to know God, and through that life His glory shines. This
many a man has felt is the true Divine glory; this God yearning over His
lost and wretched children, coming down and sharing in their
wretchedness to win them to Himself and blessedness--this is the God for
us. This alone is glory such as we bow before and own to be infinitely
worthy of trust and adoration, almightiness applying itself to the
necessities and fears of the weak, perfect purity winning to itself the
impure and the outcast, love showing itself to be Divine by its
patience, its humility, its absolute sacrifice. It is Christ who has
found entrance for these conceptions of God once for all into the human
mind; it is to Christ we owe it that we know a God we can entirely love
and increasingly worship. With the most assured truth He could say, "I
have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do; I have glorified
Thee on the earth; I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou
gavest Me out of the world."
But Christ recognises a work which ran parallel with this, a work which
continually resulted from His manifestation of the Father. By His
manifesting the Father He gave eternal life to those who accepted and
believed His revelation. The power to reveal the Father which Christ had
received He had not on His own account, but that He might give eternal
life to men. For "this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Eternal life is
not merely life indefinitely prolonged. It is rather life under new
conditions and fed from different sources. It can be entered upon now,
but a full understanding of it is now impossible. The grub might as well
try to understand the life of the butterfly, or the chick in the shell
the life of the bird. To know what Christ revealed, this is the birth to
life eternal. To know that love and holiness are the governing powers in
conformity with which all things are carried onward to their end; to
know what God is, that He is a Father who cannot leave us His children
of earth behind and pass on to His own great works and purposes in the
universe, but stoops to our littleness and delays that He may carry
every one of us with Him,--this is life eternal. This it is that subdues
the human heart and cleanses it from pride, self-seeking, and lust, and
that inclines it to bow before the holy and loving God, and to choose
Him and life in Him. This it is that turns it from the brief joys and
imperfect meanings of time and gives it a home in eternity--that severs
it in disposition and in destiny from the changing, passing world and
gives it an eternal inheritance as God's child. To as many as believed
Christ, to them He gave power to become the sons of God. To believe Him
and to accept the God He reveals is to become a son of God and is to
enter into life eternal. To be conquered by the Divine love shown us; to
feel that not in worldly ambition or any self-seeking, but only in
devotion to interests that are spiritual and general, is the true life
for us; to yield ourselves to the Spirit of Christ and seek to be
animated and possessed by that Spirit,--this is to throw in our lot with
God, to be satisfied in Him, to have eternal life.
The earthly work of Christ, then, being finished, He asks the Father to
glorify Him with His own self, with the glory He had with Him before the
world was. It seems to me vain to deny that this petition implies on
Christ's part a consciousness of a life which He had before He appeared
on earth. His mind turns from the present hour, from His earthly life,
to eternity, to those regions beyond time into which no created
intelligence can follow Him, and in which God alone exists, and in that
Divine solitude He claims a place for Himself. If He merely meant that
from eternity God had conceived of Him, the ideal man, and if the
existence and glory He speaks of were merely existence in God's mind,
but not actual, His words do not convey His meaning. The glory which He
prayed for now was a conscious, living glory; He did not wish to become
extinct or to be absorbed in the Divine being; He meant to continue and
did continue in actual, personal, living existence. This was the glory
He prayed for, and this therefore must also have been the glory He had
before the world was. It was a glory of which it was proper to say, "_I
had_ it," and not merely God conceived it: it was enjoyed by Christ
before the worlds were, and was not only in the mind of God.
What that glory was, who can tell? We know it was a glory not of
position only, but of character--a glory which disposed and prepared Him
to sympathize with suffering and to give Himself to the actual needs of
men. From that glory He came to share with men in their humiliation, to
expose Himself to their scorn and abuse, to win them to eternal life and
to some true participation in His glory.
But Christ's removal from the earthly and visible life involved a great
change in the condition of the disciples. Hitherto He had been present
with them day by day, always exhibiting to them spiritual glory, and
attracting them to it in His own person. So long as they saw God's glory
in so attractive and friendly a form it was not difficult for them to
resist the world's temptations. "While I was with them in the world, I
kept them in Thy name"--that is, by revealing the Father to them; but
"now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come
to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast
given Me. Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth." Christ
had been the Word Incarnate, the utterance of God to men; in Him men
recognised what God is and what God wills. And this sanctified them;
this marvellous revelation of God and His love for men drew men to Him:
they felt how Divine and overcoming a love this was; they adored the
name Father which Christ the Son made known to them; they felt
themselves akin to God and claimed by Him, and spurned the world; they
recognised in themselves that which could understand and be appealed to
by such a love as God's. Their glory was to be God's children.
But now the visible image, the Incarnate Word, is withdrawn, and Christ
commits to the Father those whom He leaves on earth. "Holy Father," Thou
whose holiness moves Thee to keep men separate to Thyself from every
evil contagion, "keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given
Me." It is still by the recognition of God in Christ that we are to be
kept from evil, by contemplating and penetrating this great
manifestation of God to us, by listening humbly and patiently to this
Incarnate Word. Knowledge of the God whose the world and all existence
is, knowledge of Him in whom we live and whose holiness is silently
judging and ruling all things, knowledge that He who rules all and who
is above all gives Himself to us with a love that thinks no sacrifice
too great--it is this knowledge of the truth that saves us from the
world. It is the knowledge of those abiding realities which Christ
revealed, of those great and loving purposes of God to man, and of the
certainty of their fulfilment, which recalls us to holiness and to God.
There is reality here; all else is empty and delusive.
But these realities are obscured and thrust aside by a thousand
pretentious frivolities which claim our immediate attention and
interest. We are in the world, and day by day the world insists that we
shall consider it the great reality. Christ had conquered it and was
leaving it. Why, then, did He not take with Him all whom He had won to
Himself out of the world? He did not do so because they had a work to
accomplish which could only be accomplished in the world. As He had
consecrated Himself to the work of making known the Father, so must
they consecrate themselves to the same work. As Christ in His own person
and life had brought clear before their minds the presence of the
Father, so must they by their person and life manifest in the world the
existence and the grace of Christ. They must make permanent and
universal the revelation He had brought, that all the world might
believe that He was the true representative of God. Christ had lighted
them, and with their light they were to kindle all men, till the world
was full of light. A share in this work is given to each of us. We are
permitted to mediate between God and men, to carry to some the knowledge
which gives life eternal. It is made possible to us to be benefactors in
the highest kind, to give to this man and that a God. To parents it is
made possible to fill the opening and hungry mind of their child with a
sense of God which will awe, restrain, encourage, gladden him all his
life through. To relieve the wants of to-day, to refresh any human
spirit by kindness, and to forward the interests of any struggler in
life is much; but it is little compared with the joy and solid utility
of disclosing to a human soul that which he at last recognises as
Divine, and before which at last he bows in spontaneous adoration and
absolute trust. To the man who has long questioned whether there is a
God, who has doubted whether there is any morally perfect Being, any
Spirit existent greater and purer than man, you have but to show Christ,
and through His unconquerable love and untemptable holiness reveal to
him a God.
But as it was not by telling men about God that Christ convinced men
that somewhere there existed a holy God who cared for them, but by
showing God's holiness and love present to them in His own person, so
our words may fail to accomplish much if our life does not reveal a
presence men cannot but recognise as Divine. It was by being one with
the Father Christ revealed Him; it was the Father's will His life
exhibited. And the extension of this to the whole world of men is the
utmost of Christ's desire. All will be accomplished when all men are
one, even as Christ and the Father are already one.
This text is often cited by those who seek to promote the union of
churches. But we find it belongs to a very different category and much
higher region. That all churches should be under similar government,
should adopt the same creed, should use the same forms of worship, even
if possible, is not supremely desirable; but real unity of sentiment
towards Christ and of zeal to promote His will is supremely desirable.
Christ's will is all-embracing; the purposes of God are wide as the
universe, and can be fulfilled only by endless varieties of
dispositions, functions, organisations, labours. We must expect that, as
time goes on, men, so far from being contracted into a narrow and
monotonous uniformity, will exhibit increasing diversities of thought
and of method, and will be more and more differentiated in all outward
respects. If the infinitely comprehensive purposes of God are to be
fulfilled, it must be so. But also, if these purposes are to be
fulfilled, all intelligent agents must be at one with God, and must be
so profoundly in sympathy with God's mind as revealed in Christ that,
however different one man's work or methods may be from another's, God's
will shall alike be carried out by both. If this will can be more freely
carried out by separate churches, then outward separation is no great
calamity. Only when outward separation leads one church to despise or
rival or hate another is it a calamity. But whether churches abide
separate or are incorporated in outward unity, the desirable thing is
that they be one in Christ, that they have the same eagerness in His
service, that they be as regiments of one army fighting a common foe and
supporting one another, diverse in outward appearance, in method, in
function, as artillery, infantry, cavalry, engineers, or even as the
army and navy of the same country, but fighting for one flag and one
cause, and their very diversity more vividly exhibiting their real
unity.
But why should unity be the ultimate desire of Christ, the highest point
to which the Saviour's wishes for mankind can reach? Because spirit is
that which rules; and if we be one with God in spirit the future is
ours. This mighty universe in which we find ourselves, apparently
governed by forces compared to which the most powerful of human engines
are weak as the moth--forces which keep this earth, and orbs
immeasurably larger, suspended in space,--this universe is controlled by
spirit, is designed for spiritual ends, for ends of the highest kind and
which concern conscious and moral beings.
It is as yet only by glimpses we can see the happiness of those who are
one with God; it is only by inadequate comparisons and with mental
effort we can attain to even a rudimentary conception of the future that
awaits those who are thus eternally blessed. Of them well may Paul say,
"All things are yours; for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." It is
for Christ all things are governed by God; to be in Him is to be above
the reach of catastrophe--to be, as Christ Himself expresses it, beside
Himself on the throne, from which all things are ruled. Having been
attracted by His character, by what He is and does, and having sought
here on earth to promote His will, we shall be His agents hereafter, but
in a life in which spiritual glory irradiates everything, and in which
an ecstasy and strength which this frail body could not contain will be
the normal and constant index of the life of God in us. To do good, to
utter by word or deed the love and power that are in us, is the
permanent joy of man. With what alacrity does the surgeon approach the
operation he knows will be successful! with what pleasure does the
painter put on canvas the idea which fills his mind and which he knows
will appeal to every one who sees it! And whoever learns to do good by
partaking of God's spirit of communicative goodness will find
everlasting joy in imparting what he has and can. He will do so, not
with the feeble and hesitating mind and hand which here make almost
every good action partly painful, but with a spontaneity and sense of
power which will be wholly pleasure; he will know that being one with
God he can do good, can accomplish and effect some solid and needful
work. Slowly, very slowly, is this arrived at; but time is of no
consequence in work that is eternal, so long only as we are sure we do
not idly miss present opportunities of learning, so long only as we know
that our faces are turned in the right direction, and that a right
spirit is in us.
If there lingers in our minds a feeling that the end Christ proposes and
utters as His last prayer for men does not draw us with irresistible
force, it might be enough to say to our own heart that this is our
weakness, that certainly in this prayer we do touch the very central
significance of human life, and that however dimly human words may be
able to convey thoughts regarding eternity we have here in Christ's
words sufficient indication of the one abiding end and aim of all wisely
directed human life. Whatever the future of man is to be, whatever joy
_life_ is to become, in whatever far-reaching and prolonged experiences
we are to learn the fruitfulness and efficacy of God's love, whatever
new sources and conditions of happiness we may in future worlds be
introduced to, whatever higher energies and richer affections are to be
opened in us, all this can only be by our becoming one with God, in
whose will the future now lies. And it may also be said, if we think
this the prayer of One who was not in the full current of actual human
life, and had little understanding of men's ways, that this prayer is
fulfilled in very many who are deeply involved and busily occupied in
this world. They give their mind to their employment, but their heart
goes to higher aims and more enduring results. To do good is to them of
greater consequence than to make money. To see the number of Christ's
sincere followers increasing is to them truer joy than to see their own
business extending. In the midst of their greatest prosperity they
recognise that there is something far better than worldly prosperity,
and that is, to be kept from the evil that is in the world and to extend
the knowledge of God. They feel in common with all men that it is not
always easy to remember that great spiritual kingdom with its mighty but
unobtrusive interests, but they are kept by the Father's name, and they
do on the whole live under the influence of God and hoping in His
salvation. And it would help us all to do so were we to believe that
Christ's interest in us is such as this prayer reveals, and that the
great subject of His intercession is, that we be kept from the evil that
is in the world and be helpful in the great and enduring work of
bringing into truer fellowship men's lives and God's goodness. Alongside
of all our profitless labour and unworthiness of aim there runs this
lofty aim of Christ for us; and while we are greedily following after
pleasure, or thoughtlessly throwing ourselves into mere worldliness, our
Lord is praying the Father that we be lifted into harmony with Him and
be used as channels of His grace to others.