John 17:1-5. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest 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.
In the next verse, Christ defines the eternal life which He was appointed to bestow: “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent”. By the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, we are not to understand here a mere intellectual acquaintance with the spiritual nature and the infinite excellencies of God, and with the history, character and work of Jesus Christ. If this was all, almost every member of a professedly-Christian community would possess eternal life, for who does not know that “God is a Spirit: infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth”? And who has not learned that Christ, being the Son of God, became man and obeyed, suffered, died and rose again that He might reconcile sinners to God?
In too many instances, such knowledge exists only to increase the guilt of sinners to a fearful extent, as it leads them neither to flee from God’s anger or to accept of His mercy. The knowledge that is here referred to is experimental and saving, and is accompanied with admiration, acquiescence and love. As it results not only from an investigation of the works, ways and Word of God, but also from direct communion with Him – from a real, personal and prolonged experience of His mercy through Jesus Christ – it is frequently used to denote the entire Christian character, the sum of a believer’s attainments.
It is in this large and comprehensive sense that Paul uses the word when he prays for the Colossians that they might increase in the knowledge of God. So too does Peter when he exhorts those to whom he wrote to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”. And so does God Himself, when He proclaims, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving-kindness, and judgement, and righteousness in the earth”.
1Taken, with editing, from Remains of Rev James Stewart. In the first section, printed last month, Stewart expounded verses 1-2.
Enoch must have possessed such knowledge in a high degree; it is said that “he walked with God”; so also Abraham, who was called the “friend of God”; and Moses, whom “the Lord knew face to face”; and David, whose constant longing for the divine presence and favour is so beautifully expressed in the Psalms. Every believer enjoys such knowledge, to a greater or more limited extent, and it is increased by every approach to God’s footstool, by every opening of His word, by every dispensation of providence, by every time of meditation, by every hour of communion. “And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
The knowledge of “the only true God”, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, are not two independent, separable things. The Father is known by us only in and through the Son, who is “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person”. God, who “commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ”. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?”
There is indeed a knowledge of God which results, not from a revelation of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, but from an experience of His anger against whatever is opposed to the holiness of His nature. The wicked shall have this knowledge, for God’s glory shall be a consuming fire to them. Fallen spirits possess it; their acquaintance with God’s glory makes them tremble at the thought of His existence. This knowledge, however, is not eternal life; on the contrary, it is the very sting and essence of eternal death.
Eternal life is here said to consist in knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent – because this knowledge leads to possessing eternal life. It is by the Spirit revealing to us God, “in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” that we are converted, sanctified and saved. And it is by contemplating the glory of the Father manifested in and through the Son that the joy of the spirits of just men made perfect is sustained and augmented. It is when believers see face to face, and know even as they are known, that they are gratified to the measure of their capacity, and realise their inheritance as “heirs of God”.
Christ had offered up the prayer, “Glorify Thy Son”, and had expressed His motive for presenting this petition, “that Thy Son also may glorify Thee”, and had stated the reason why it should be favourably heard, “Thou hast” already, by solemn covenant, “given Him power over all flesh, that He might give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him”. He now urges that the time when it should be answered had fully come: “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest 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”. The latter clause of the fourth verse ought to be considered as explaining the former. The truths therefore which it contains are: Christ had now accomplished the work assigned Him by the Father, and the Father was glorified in its progress and consummation.
The work which Christ had now finished was that in which He had been occupied since His entrance into the world, of which we have a detailed historical account in the Gospels. It comprehended the perfect obedience which He had rendered to God’s law in the midst of suffering and temptation; the preaching of the gospel to His countrymen, and particularly to His disciples, who were destined to carry the knowledge of it to all nations; the performance of such miracles as were calculated to teach the origin, purpose and authority of the dispensation He had ushered in. In a word, it comprehended whatever was necessary to fulfil the numerous prophecies of which He was the subject, to meet the various descriptions of His person, character and kingdom contained in the Old Testament Scriptures, and to furnish a perfect model of excellence which His followers, to the end of the world, might imitate, and which might furnish an argument for the truth and authority of His doctrine that all could understand and feel.
Christ might be said to have finished the work which was given Him to do even at the time when He offered up this prayer, if by work we understand the active obedience which He was appointed to render to God’s commandments. Up to this period, He had gone about continually doing good, but now He particularly gave Himself up to the endurance of His Father’s wrath. Hitherto He had – by a life which set at defiance the breath of slander, by teaching a way of salvation which He was about to set open to all, and by signs and wonders and mighty works – manifested forth His glory and fulfilled His high commission. But now He was called to surrender Himself to those who were prepared to deride, mock and crucify Him. In a word, His obedience had hitherto been most obviously active, but now it was to be most obviously passive; He had hitherto obeyed, but now He was called upon to suffer; He had hitherto a work to accomplish, but now He had an agony to endure.
But if by “the work” which was “given” to Christ “to do” we understand the entire work of redemption, then we must suppose that He here speaks of that which He purposed and was about to do as having been already accomplished; and He might adopt this manner of expression both because His work was already almost finished and because its final and perfect fulfilment was absolutely certain.
Whether we suppose that by the work which was given Him to do, Christ here meant the active obedience which, during His whole life, He had rendered to the divine law, or the entire work of redemption, which included what He suffered as well as what He did, it is equally true that He thereby glorified the Father. Christ honoured God by His life, which was a continued acknowledgment of the authority and obligation of the divine law; by His teaching, in which He revealed the divine character in its majesty, beauty and grace; by His miracles, which were equally expressive of unlimited power and infinite mercy; and by His sufferings, which formed a stupendous exhibition of patience, meekness and forbearance.
Christ so illustrated every perfection, or glory, of the divine character that it excited either the love or the hatred, the hopes or the fears of men. That the direct tendency of the teaching and miracles of Christ was to glorify the Father is shown by numerous examples. When the multitudes witnessed a cure He had performed on a man sick of the palsy, “they marvelled and glorified God, which had given such power unto men”. And “when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see . . . they glorified the God of Israel”. When He raised to life the son of the widow of Nain, “there came a fear upon all and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited His people”. It is said of a leper whom He had healed, that he turned back, and, with a loud voice, glorified God; and of the centurion at His crucifixion, that when he “saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man”.
But in illustrating Christ’s declaration: “I have glorified Thee on the earth”, it is not necessary to prove its truth merely from the effects produced on the minds and characters of those who heard His teaching and witnessed His miracles. From what Christ did and suffered on earth, the Father shall derive a revenue of glory in the grateful praises of just men made perfect and in the admiring acclamations of angelic hosts throughout eternity.
By the fact that the work of Christ was “given” Him to do, we are reminded of the existence of a covenant between Him and the Father, in which it was stipulated that, for the redemption of the elect from the dominion and punishment of sin, He should render such an obedience and endure such suffering as the Father should appoint and should suffice to “magnify the law and make it honourable”. But the same covenant – according to the terms of which Christ had to obey and suffer – entitled Him to ask for the reward which was solemnly promised. When He had finished the work which was given Him to do, He could present the prayer, “Now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
In this petition, Christ describes the object of His desires, and the reward due to His obedience, as the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. It was the glory which is inseparable from the divine nature, the glory which was essential to Him as the Second Person in the blessed Trinity, as one with the Father and the Spirit, the glory which angels saw, venerated and worshipped when the inhabitants of this world existed only in the foreknowledge and decree of God.
The necessity of this prayer existed in the fact that, during Christ’s humiliation and suffering, His glory even as the eternal Son of God had been obscured. He did not and could not divest Himself of the glory which is essential to the divine nature but, in a sense which we cannot comprehend, He emptied Himself, withholding the manifestation of His transcendent brightness. He did not and could not lay aside any of the perfections of divinity, for with Him there is no variableness or shadow of turning; but He hid them in the nature which He assumed; He covered them with humanity as with a cloud; He refrained from actively exhibiting them to the creatures. In this prayer, therefore, He anticipates with strong desire the time when He would again be manifested to the universe in the infinite glory which He had with the Father from eternity.
This is by no means the whole meaning of the petition, “Glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was”. It is not merely as the Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity, but as God-man, as Mediator, that He here asks the Father to glorify Him. In order to accomplish His people’s redemption, He had clothed Himself with our nature. “And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The exaltation that Christ prayed for, as what He had with the Father before the world was, is the glory which Paul refers to as having actually been given Him. Christ asked to be raised in His character and capacity of Mediator to the power, dignity and dominion which, from everlasting, was His as God; He asked to be invested as Mediator with that kingly authority which He had eternally exercised in His divine nature. The supremacy and power which Christ prayed for and received, was in every respect the same as that which He had possessed before the world was – only that, subsequent to His exaltation, He held them in fulfilment of the conditions of a covenant and exercised them with a special view to the safety and salvation of His people. In a word, that which as divine He held by essential right as God, He now holds by purchase and investiture as God-man.
But there is a sense in which Christ had with the Father, from eternity, His mediatorial as well as His essential glory. To the mind of God, all that is past or to come is really present. Succession can exist only in the apprehension of creatures who gather their knowledge of things only as they happen. To Him whose will determines every event, and whose wisdom and power bring them to pass, with whom “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” all things must be the objects of constant and direct perception. It is therefore plain that the incarnation, ascension and glorification of Christ were as really present to the divine mind before the world was as they now are – when they have become, in the apprehension of creatures, the subjects of history. The Father from eternity beheld His Son in His mediatorial glory, that glory for which He endured the cross, despising the shame – that glory with which, in the estimation of His disciples, He was invested, when they saw Him ascend on high, leading captivity captive.
This view is obviously suggested by the remarkable passage which occurs in Proverbs 8: “When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass on the face of the deep; when He gave to the sea His decree that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundation of the earth; then I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth, and My delights were with the sons of men”. Surely if, from everlasting, Christ, in the presence of the Father, rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth and had His delights with the yet-uncreated sons of men, it could only be in His character and capacity of Mediator, as their covenant head and representative, as He who, by His obedience, sufferings and death, was appointed to “redeem them from all iniquity, and to purify them unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works”.
Practical Lessons from Christ’s Example of Prayer
Many important practical lessons may be deduced from this passage. Those to which I would draw your attention are drawn from the example of Christ and relate to the duty of prayer.
(1.) Christ’s example, in this passage, teaches the general duty of prayer. If it was necessary for Christ to engage in this exercise, how much more necessary is it for us? Christ was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” but we have numberless, aggravated offences to be confessed, bewailed, repented of, and forgiven. The moral nature of Christ was pure as the divine law itself, but our hearts are “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” and require to be softened, renewed and sanctified. The Holy Spirit was given to Christ without measure, and His whole character and life were in perfect harmony with the Spirit’s suggestions; but we need daily to present our supplications to Him who has promised to give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Christ was ever ready to do the will of Him who sent Him “and to finish His work”; but we are opposed to God’s will, and disinclined to His service; we need ever to pray that His will may be wrought in us both “to will and to do of His good pleasure”.
Christ maintained, without intermission, a spiritual and devotional frame of mind, and enjoyed uninterrupted communion with His Father in heaven, but our souls “cleave to the dust” and we ever require to make an effort to shake off our lethargy and directly and formally seek fellowship with the Father of spirits. In a word, the entire obedience of Christ was in harmony with His own inclinations, but ours is a perpetual struggle which cannot be continued without increasing communications of grace in answer to believing, importunate prayer.
(2.) Christ’s example here teaches us the time at which prayer is specially necessary. It was in anticipation of the “hour and the power of darkness”, in the immediate prospect of temptation, suffering and death, that Christ offered up this prayer to His Father; it is when difficulties encompass and dangers threaten us that we are most strongly urged to ask for God’s help.
But if Christ’s example instructs us to present our supplications to the Father for “grace to help in time of need”, we must, according to the Apostle’s exhortation, “pray without ceasing”. At no time are we free from temptation. Sin in its innumerable forms perpetually suggests itself to our thoughts and urges itself on our affections and practice. Our spiritual adversary “goeth about as a roaring lion” and seeks an avenue to our hearts through every object which pleases us, through every circumstance which affects our external condition, and through every occupation in which we engage. While the example of Christ leads us to pray without ceasing, “Lead us not into temptation”, it more especially instructs us that in prospect of unusually-serious duties and trials, no exercise is more suitable or more profitable than prayer. It is the best way of preparing for discharging the one successfully and enduring the other patiently and submissively.
(3.) Christ’s example here teaches us what we should pray for. The prayer which occupies the first five verses of this chapter is in fact fully expressed in one clause, “Glorify Thy Son”. Christ’s people cannot now pray for Him to be glorified in a sense precisely the same as that He used in His own prayer.
But in so far as His glory is manifested in the sanctification and salvation of His people, in their consistent and blameless behaviour, in the spread of the knowledge and influence of His gospel to the remotest parts of the earth, and in the final and everlasting blessedness of all who value His mediation, we ought daily to offer up the petition, “Father, glorify Thy Son”.
But believers may warrantably follow the example of Christ in praying, not only for His glorification, but also for their own. The glory which awaits the followers of Christ is to them as legitimate an object of desire, and as proper a subject of prayer, as the mediatorial kingdom and glory were to Christ Himself. But the glory of believers is necessarily involved in, and forms a part of, the glory of Christ. When therefore they follow His example in praying to be glorified by the Father, they ask only the blessings which Christ has already purchased and received, as their surety and representative, and which He is Himself glorified in bestowing.
(4.) Christ’s example here teaches us what our motive in prayer should be. As He asks the Father to glorify Him in order that He may in turn glorify the Father, so we should desire the blessings of salvation, in order that we may more efficiently glorify God in our bodies and in our spirits, which are His. This motive is consistent with others sanctioned by Scripture and which a believer must necessarily feel, such as a desire to escape from eternal misery and to be exalted to the blessedness of heaven. It is in most perfect accordance with, and necessarily includes, all such motives which arise from our present condition, and the hopes set before us in the gospel. But if we are urged to prayer by any motive inconsistent with the glory of God, our prayer shall assuredly be ineffectual. “Ye ask, and receive not,” says James, “because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”
(5.) Christ’s example here teaches us the plea by which our prayer should be supported. He asks the Father to glorify Him because He had already, by a solemn and inviolable covenant, engaged to do so. But in this covenant Christ acted, not for Himself, but as the surety and representative of His people. They were therefore virtually parties in this covenant; and as Christ has, in their name, fulfilled its conditions, they are now entitled to plead its existence for the blessings which the Father solemnly promised. But the Father has already fulfilled His part of the covenant, for He has caused that all fulness should dwell in Christ and has invited us to receive “out of His fulness, and grace for grace”. Do you then desire to be delivered from the guilt, the love and the practice of sin? “Come unto Me,” says Christ, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “Behold, the Lamb of God,” says John, “which taketh away the sin of the world.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” says Paul, “and thou shalt be saved.”