Lenten Study on Jesus' high priestly prayer

John 17 Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer of Consecration
Consecration: to be set apart from the ordinary uses, practices and aspects of the world and dedicated to the exclusive service, worship and glory of God.
In ancient times the first born male was considered sacred to God and consecrated for God’s glory. Satan had distorted this understanding into the practice of human sacrifice.
God began the process of redefining consecration with Abraham and Issac on Mount Moriah.
The Law God revealed to Moses provided the framework for the person and purpose of Jesus Christ.
God completes the redefinition of consecration in Jesus’ high priestly prayer, sacrifice, and resurrection.



Jesus Prays for Himself to be consecrated
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come.
· The prayer is public, meant to include all people in the communion of the Son with the Father.
· Jesus reveals the personal and specific nature of God as he uses the word “Father”. His choice of address is both personal and definitive.
· Jesus seems to state the obvious as he says: “the hour has come,” yet he makes the statement to acknowledge the fulfillment of the Plan of Salvation. It is central to Jesus’ perspective on his purpose when he prays: Father, not my will be Thy will be done.
· Most people most of the time seek to define God according to the self will of our own needs and desires. Jesus accepts God the Father’s self disclosure of himself as he is. And, Jesus accepts the Father’s Plan of Salvation at the time and place of the Father’s choosing.
Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3
· The request for the Father to glorify the Son emerges from the essential unity of the Trinity.
· For any human being to make this request would be prideful and blasphemous.
· Jesus can only pray this way since he and the Father are one in being.
· Jesus acknowledges his Lordship over the Creation in a way no prophet, priest or king ever could.
· Jesus also acknowledges that the Father has given the Son the authority to give the gift of eternal life to all who believe in him.
· Jesus acknowledges that the Father draws people into faith and directs them to the Son.
· The Plan of Salvation is that the Son should reveal the Father and give eternal life to all who come to the Son.
· Eternal life is a quality of existence that begins now in this world and continues forever.
· Eternal life is the relationship of the soul to the Father through the Son.

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
· Eternal life is the relationship not a product of the relationship.
· The “knowledge” is the personal intimacy of the relationship not the outward and fixed facts about God’s actions or attributes.
· The “knowledge” is open not closed. It implies growth not rigidity.
· There is only eternal life in a dynamic, active, spontaneous relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

4 I have glorified You on the earth.

· Jesus came into the world to glorify God.
· To glorify God is to make manifest the person and attributes of God.
· To glorify God is to reflect the love and holiness of God in thought, word and deed.
· Jesus glorified the Father by becoming the Father’s love and compassion in the world to all people.
· We glorify God as we make a real choice to say to ourselves, to others and to God: I acknowledge your love and holiness by choosing to participate in your divine life by conforming my self will (the will to power) to your divine will (the will to compassionate service).

I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.

· The completion of the Father’s Plan of Salvation comes in Jesus’ arrest, condemnation, torture, and execution.
· Jesus acknowledges that what people consider his utter defeat and complete failure is the Father’s path to salvation for the world.
· Jesus made a conscious choice to follow the Plan into the depths of darkness and death.

5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

· Jesus invokes the Great Mystery of the Eternal Trinity and pulls eternity into a single moment in time that the Glory of God (love and holiness) might be revealed in his prayer, obedience, suffering and death- all counter intuitive to the way people think and to what people expect.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples to be consecrated
6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.

· The “name” reveals and communicates the essential nature, character and quality of the person.
· To manifest God’s name is to manifest the essential nature, character and quality of God.
· God is love and holiness.
· Jesus communicates God’s love and holiness first to his followers.
· The Father called and gave the disciples (students) out of the world into a new relationship with Jesus Christ.
· The world is the world system, the culture of separation, self will and death.

They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.

· The Father knows those who sincerely seek (however imperfectly) God.
· Those who sincerely seek God are found by the Father.
· Those whom the Father finds He gives to the Son.
· All who seek God are found by God in Jesus Christ.
· All who are in Christ keep the word, the co eternal logos, the divine, rational, creative pattern of the universe.
· We keep the word by seeking to manifest the divine nature (love) and character (holiness) in our lives.

7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You.


· All who grow in faith grow in their understanding that Jesus is the fullness of God in human flesh.
· All who sincerely follow Jesus come to accept His divine nature and character through his words and works.

8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.

· The Son only speaks what the Father gives him to speak.
· The disciple recognizes that Jesus speaks the word of God.
· The disciple recognizes that Jesus is the word of God.
9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.

· At this juncture, Jesus clarifies that he is only praying for those The Father has given him.
· Jesus prays here specifically for his disciples.

10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.

· In the unity of the Trinity all who come to Jesus come to God.
· Those who come to Jesus glorify him by their faith.
· The glory is the acknowledgement that Jesus is the fullness of God in human flesh.

11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You.

· Jesus has left the world of human fear, self will and pride.
· Jesus has entered into the center of the world’s rebellion against God.
· Jesus’ disciples still live and move in the world of separation, sin and death.
· Jesus is already in the process of leaving this world and returning to the Father in Heaven.

Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.

· Jesus prays that the disciples may remain in the love and holiness of the Father.
· IN that love and holiness the disciples will live in unity of plan and purpose.
· The unity of the three persons of the Trinity is a model for the unity of the disciples with each other and with God.

12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.

· Jesus kept the disciples safe while he was with them.

Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

· Only Judas is lost.
· The others are kept safe in Christ.

13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.

· Jesus is preparing to leave Earth.
· Jesus speaks these words for the benefit of the disciples who hear him.
· The benefit is the fullness of joy.
· The joy comes from the choice to embrace God’s eternal love in Jesus Christ.

14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
· The world culture of separation hates the revealed word of God in the scriptures and in Jesus Christ.
· As the world culture hates God’s word so it hates those who embrace reunification with God in Christ.
· The hatred is the active rebellion against reunification with the Father through the Son.
· The hatred is rebellion against the reunification of the human race.
· The hatred is the rebellion against the reunification of the human soul with its original pattern, plan, and purpose.

15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

· Jesus does not ask the Father to separate or segregate his disciples.
· Jesus asks the Father to protect his followers from the deceit and spite of Satan, the accuser.

16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

· To be baptized into Christ is to enter into a new way of living that is different than the way the world culture teaches.

17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 1

· To sanctify is to make holy.
· Holiness is God character.
· Holiness is wholeness, happiness, health.
· Jesus prays for his disciples to be made holy in the Father’s word.
· The Father’s word is truth.
· Jesus, the logos, is the Truth.

8 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

· Just as the Father sent Jesus into this world to seek, find and reunite the lost so He sends his disciples into the world to do the same.

19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

· Jesus immerses himself in the wholeness, health and happiness of the Father so that those who follow Jesus may also be immersed in holiness.


Jesus Prays for All Believers of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to be consecrated
I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;

· Jesus now applies his prayer for his disciples to all who will believe in him through their preaching.


21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us,

· The prayer for unity is the prayer that all believers in Jesus Christ would immerse themselves in the unity of the Holy and Eternal Trinity.
· The prayer for unity is for all believers to make a choice to maintain the bonds of love and compassion with each other.



that the world may believe that You sent Me.

· Unity of believers will encourage non believers to have faith.

22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:

· Jesus not only shows us the Divine Presence, Jesus is the Divine Presence.
· As we immerse our minds, hearts and wills in the Divine Presence we surrender self will, fear and pride.
· As we immerse our souls in the Divine Presence we live in the unity of pattern, plan and purpose Jesus prays for us to experience.

23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

· The unity derives from the love and produces love.
· The unity is the witness to the world of the love.
· The unity integrates our souls into the Divine Life of the Holy and Eternal Trinity.

24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

· Jesus prays that all believers would come to perceive the fullness of Divine Love and Holiness expressed in the unity of the Three Persons of the Eternal Trinity.

25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.

· The world culture of separation and rebellion cannot not and will not know God.
· Only those in Christ can seek God and be found by God.

26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

· The Name is the character and nature of God.
· Jesus is God’s declaration that God is love and holiness.
· Jesus is God reaching out to fill all people with eternal love.