Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 17-18.

I am going to start today’s blog from the end of the passage with Jesus’ exchange with Pilate about truth.  When Pilate asks Jesus for the second time if He is a king, Jesus responds by telling Pilate that “king” is his word, not Jesus’ word.  Then He tells Pilate that He to testify to the truth and that everyone on the side of the truth listens to Him.  To which Pilate replied with “What is truth?” and walked away without waiting for an answer.  Like so many people today, Pilate did not believe that there was such a thing as objective truth.  Which brings us to the first step necessary to faith in Christ: you need to believe that there is such a thing as objective truth.  You don’t have to believe that you know what that truth is, or even that you can know what that truth is.  You just have to believe that truth exists, and that Jesus embodies Truth.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 17-18.

A few weeks back I heard a sermon where the preacher said that our prayers should primarily be for our fellow believers.  I am really oversimplifying what he said here because he did not say that we should not pray for unbelievers (his point was not that we should pray for unbelievers less than we do, but that we should pray for believers much more than we do).  He based saying that on the fact that most of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are for believers (a large percentage of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are in Paul’s letters).  I fully agreed with everything that preacher said in that sermon, except his emphasis on focusing our prayers on believers (I didn’t exactly disagree, I just wasn’t sure that he was correct).  Which brings me to today’s passage.  In His final prayer before His arrest Jesus prays for His disciples, both those who followed Him during His ministry and those who followed Him based on the testimony of those who followed Him.

Jesus identifies those for whom He is praying by saying that they accepted the words from the Father which Jesus had given to them.  He prays that the Father protect them, but not by taking them out of the world, or even protecting them from the world.  Rather Jesus prays that God the Father will protect us (yes, those of us today who call upon His name are among those for whom He was praying) from the evil one.  We have been sent into the world by Jesus, but we are not to be of the world.  Jesus prayed that all believers would be brought to complete unity.  That unity should lead us to live our lives so that the world would know that He was sent by God.  I struggle with this because there are those who use Jesus’ call for unity among believers to interfere with rooting out of false teaching.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 17-18.

When John recounts Jesus final prayer at the Last Supper he brings us back to the transitive principle which played a large part in his accounts of Jesus’ teaching.  At its most basic, that transitive principle was that Jesus was in the Father and the Father was in Jesus, therefore anyone who knew Jesus knew the father.  Jesus further extended that by saying that He was in anyone who believed in Him and followed His teaching, and they were in Him.  In this prayer, Jesus takes this yet further by saying that those who believed in His words as communicated by His disciples entered into this transitive relationship.  So, just as Jesus’ disciples were able to be in Him and have Him in them, we also can be in Him and have Him in us.  Of course, if Jesus is in us that should impact the way in which we feel about the sins which we are constantly tempted to commit.   Hopefully we can come to see that the pleasure we might receive from the sins which tempt us is not worth the joy they will cost us.

Also in His prayer Jesus warns us that the world will hate us for believing in Him because we are no longer part of the world.  The world will try to reclaim us and cause us to recant of testifying to the truth.  We see a form of this hostility in Pilate’s response to Jesus’ statement that He came to testify to the truth.  Pilate asked “What is truth?” indicating that he did not believe there was such a thing as truth.   Our society today also rejects the idea that there is such a thing as truth and hates anyone who claims that there is.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 17-18

Before He was arrested Jesus prayed for His disciples, but not just for those who followed Him while He was here on earth.  John records that He said that His prayer was also for those who believed in Jesus through the message given by those who followed Him here on earth, which includes those alive today who believe in Him.  He warned us that the world would hate us because we are not of the world, just as He was not of the world.  However, He prayed that God would protect us and make us one.

Jesus’ prayer here has always given me great comfort, even though He warns us that the world will hate us.  If we follow Christ we are not of this world, but we should not seek to leave this world.  God will protect us from the evil one and make us one with Himself.  When we allow God to shape us through Jesus’ words we will be unified in a way which reveal to the world that God sent Jesus into the world, that Jesus has sent us into the world, and that He loves us.  I am not sure I have truly expressed why this prayer gives me comfort and joy, but hopefully as you read it today it does the same for you.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 17-18

In His prayer at the end of the Last Supper, Jesus makes a point which applies the promises and instructions which Jesus gave to His disciples to us today who believe in Him because of their message.  I fully believe that John intended for us to read it that way.  In addition to what He prayed for and taught His disciples, Jesus prayed for something specifically for those of us who came to Him through their message.  He prayed that we would have unity with each other and with Him and the Father.  The unity which Jesus prays for His followers only happens if those followers are in God and have God in them.  He does not pray for unity for unity’s sake.  Rather He prays for us to be united in Him, as He is united with the Father.

The world will hate us, just as it hated Jesus.  Nevertheless, Jesus sends us out into the world, just as the Father sent Him into the world.  Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice so that we might be made holy by God’s truth.  Therefore, we should give ourselves as a sacrifice to bring glory to God’s name and so that others might be made holy by God’s truth.  Jesus teaches us that there is objective truth and that we can know that truth.  However, we must continually listen to the Holy Spirit as it reveals that truth to us.  Just because there is objective truth and we can know that truth does not mean that we do know that truth.  Or, to put it more exactly, just because we know some of the truth does not mean that everything we know is the truth.