In and Within 34 The Lord Promoted Us

[HKHaugan]

John 17:20-26 is a great guide for our personal prayer time. It specifies themes that lift up the uniqueness we have been given in our relationship with the Lord Jesus. He prayed with us in mind. Now as He sits with His Father on the throne of Heaven we know He has the full authority of the Father, the full knowledge of each of our lives and the fullness He planned for each of us in Creation. He has us framed in His image. His prayer, often called the ‘High Priestly Prayer,’ sets for us an eternal path that realizes His goal for us. He planned for us to live by faith in this world as the vehicle by which He reveals the knowledge of Himself, His Father and the Spirit. Faith is the nature of the Kingdom as is His grace, His love and His hope.

In the Old Testament faith in one God was practiced in a system of daily obedience to the Law and worship centered on an ongoing annual animal blood sacrifice in a temple. The High Priest was the central functionary in its practice. He was the visible image standing between God and His people. It was an external system designed to prepare humanity for the coming of the Messiah.

In the New Testament faith in one God is practiced in a relationship where Jesus, who, on the Cross, being the perfect blood sacrifice for sin, became the once-and-for-all eternal High Priest thus replacing animal sacrifice. That one event brought us direct personal access to God through faith in Jesus. Now the temple is the individual’s mind, heart and spirit in which we give up our will and choose the presence of Jesus in every next moment. That brings us to the next elevation God chose for us, being priests.

We know from Exodus 19:6, Isaiah 61:6 and 1 Peter 2:5, that He has called us to be priests, priests of our minds, hearts and spirits. In Hebrews 3:1 we are told that He is the High Priest who has called us to be priests of our witness to Him and He has called us to be priests of the relationships we have with one another in this world.

The priest’s work throughout Scripture is sacrifice. In the Old Testament it was external sacrifice. In the New Testament it is internal sacrifice. Jesus fulfills the purpose of external sacrifice on the Cross in order to show something new. He is the perfect priest before the Father for us. He is the perfect priest before us for the Father. He is the perfect priest in every human relationship in every area of life in our personal relationship with Him. His complete sacrifice was for the sin of the whole world which each of us bears from birth. He bore that before the Father for us. Only He could make that sacrifice. Thus He made it [possible for us to personally experience the Father’s heart for us. Now, through Jesus, our sacrifice is a “broken and contrite heart (Ps.51:7),” a spiritual engagement of our total being to the rule of Christ in the heart. This is what being one of His priests is all about.

Our priesthood starts as the sinful heart yields to God’s heart, putting God before self, His will before our will and His Spirit leading our spirit. “Not my will but Thy will be done” is the motto of all born spiritually from above. This is the heart of the High Priest at prayer that John so marvelously describes in his 17th chapter.

The whole prayer shows Jesus as the eternal High Priest of choice. In every event, every moment and every encounter Jesus revealed He was the intermediary between man and God choosing to do His Father’s will above all else. As High Priest He chose to submit His mind, heart and Spirit to His Father’s purpose, being faithful. The Cross was His final choice in this world to be obedient even to death so that His Father’s will for our recovery could be realized. Jesus was the High Priest of faith who made choices in faith.

As the eternal High Priest He sets the example for the priesthood to which He calls each one of us. But this new priesthood in faith is more than just personal prayer. It is a priesthood of choice in every next moment, faithful choice. We become a living sacrifice in all the activities in which we take part. Thus we are, like Him, first priests of prayer submitting our total being to His mercy, love, forgiveness, direction and purpose. Then we are priests of our whole life here on earth. We are priests of our attitude, our intellect, emotions and spiritual experience. We have become priests of the heart for His heart, faithful hearts for a faithful God.

Vs.20 begins the specifics of that part of the prayer, He prays for those who will believe as a result of having heard the message of the Apostles. That’s all of us who have accepted Him as our personal Lord.

So the first thing He prays for is our unity. He prays that all of us who believe in Him will be one just as He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. That’s a tall order but one that can be realized through the power of the Spirit. It’s not institutional unity, nor unity like secular unity for the sake of unity. It is unity in Jesus. It is our consciousness of His presence and His Word in His Spirit that make us one. We are one in Him. He is the One who holds us together.

The second thing Jesus prays is that the world may believe that the Father sent Him. He wants believers to know that the Father loves them even as the Father loved Him. Jesus gives all believers the glory that He was given by the Father. Jesus’ attitude, faith, love, hope, insight, will, purpose, meaning, identity and eternal security. These are the things that make up life into eternity. It is life in the Holy Spirit, life in Jesus, life in the Father.

The third thing Jesus prays for is the believers to be with Him where He is, to see His glory, the glory He was given because the Father loved Him from before Creation. There are three gloried here. There was the one He had as God the Son. There was the one He had in revealing the nature of God in man to correct man’s course from sin. There is the one where He is faithful on the Cross before them. Then there is the one in His Resurrection back into eternal life as King of Heaven.

Of course His each and every contact and event we read in the Word was a revelation of His glory, a revelation of God’s glory, a revelation of the glory that is eternal life in Him. Today we see His glory revealed in every event of faithful ministry and mission. We see it in the faces of the converted, the healing of hearts, minds and bodies in hospitals, schools, worship, casual meetings between disciples and any faithful response anyone has because Jesus has touched their lives.

Here then is a personal prayer from God Himself, a prayer that we can copy for our prayer life. Take its themes and apply them in the context of your daily events. Prayer is the lubricant for the spiritual life, the lubricant for our relationships and the lubricant that brings the spiritual dimension to bear on the world we see. Choosing to live by faith and not by sight is living as His priest in the glory of God.