John 17:1-5 (NIV)
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
In this first section of what has been called Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer,” Jesus prays a personal prayer between Him and the Father. The overarching theme is Jesus’ desire that the Father receive glory through His obedience.
In everything He did, Jesus’ goal was always to glorify the name of the Father, His reputation among the people of the world. Jesus knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that His time to lay down His life was imminent, and He wanted to be sure that the way he approached it, the way He went through it, and the whole outcome of it all served to bring glory to the Father.
Jesus knew that, as God the Son, He had authority over all humanity. But He was also aware that He had a special authority, not to judge or condemn (John 3:17), but to bestow eternal life on those who believed in Him. Jesus’ definition of eternal life might surprise some who only think of it as an endless existence in God’s presence. Instead, He defines eternal life relationally. Since both Jesus and God the Father (and the Holy Spirit, too!) are the source and wellspring of life, to be in intimate relationship with them is to experience eternal life as a natural outflow of that relationship.
To live in that kind of eternal relationship is far from simply an endless existence. It is to experience warmth, love, joy, and a commonality of purpose that will last through all eternity, starting here and now, with no fear that death, even death of one’s physical body, will ever interrupt it.
Jesus had faithfully completed every task that the Father had given Him to do. There wasn’t a single illness that the Father had told Him to heal that was still lingering. There was not a single person the Father had told Him to raise from the dead who was still in the grave. And there was not a single word that the Father had told Him to say that remained unspoken. He had been 100% faithful and obedient.
Oddly to some, that utter faithfulness and obedience was now leading Jesus to unimaginable pain and suffering on the cross. But Jesus also knew that the pain and suffering was only a doorway to the glory and joy that was on the other side of it (Hebrews 12:2). Within a mere 24 hours of that moment, Jesus would be in Paradise (Luke 23:43). And a mere 7 weeks from that moment, He would be permanently seated at the right hand of the Father.
Father, I see two things here that really strike me today. The first is that the path to eternal life for us runs straight through faithfulness and obedience, just as it did for Jesus. And the second is that we need to always maintain the long view of things. Even in the midst of pain and suffering, we need to remember where we’re headed, to the final realization of our eternal relationship with You, and we need to let that vision carry us through. Amen.
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