Did Jesus Pray for You?: A Brief Reflection on John 17:24

In his sermon “Jesus’ Own Desire,” Alistair purposefully paused to offer the opportunity for everyone to consider what it means to be “given” to Jesus.

May I just pause here for a minute and acknowledge something? Even as our service has opened this morning, the phraseology as we’ve been led in song makes clear that we understand ourselves in large measure to be a gathered community made up of those who have come to know Jesus in a personal and a saving way. While that may be true in large measure, there is no doubt that it is not entirely true. And so, when I was working through my material this week, I said to myself, “What about the person who is sitting in the seat and immediately saying to themself, ‘Where am I in relationship to this group? If Jesus’ focus is expressly on those whom the Father has given to Jesus as a gift, am I in that group? And if not, do I care? And if I do, is there some way that I might be helped to consider what it means to be included in that company?’”

So this is just a sidebar for a moment or two for those who may be asking themselves that very same question. Because “those whom you have given me,” as the phrase is used, is made up of a company of individuals who have come to Jesus. They have come to Jesus. It’s not made up of the general population that was moving around Him, hearing Him as He proclaimed, hearing, watching Him as He performed His miracles. There were many, many people who were familiar with Him in that way, but they had not come to Him. And the only way to come to Jesus is to come to Him as a Lord and a Savior and as a King.

The story of the Bible in short order is the story of all that God has chosen to do in Jesus to redeem men and women who are actually disinterested in Him—worse, who are in rebellion against Him. The story could go simply like this, in three phrases: God made it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it.

God made it. Made what? He made the entire universe. He made everyone on Planet Earth. When He established the world, it was perfect. He made it, He looked on it, and He said it was good. Into that world He put Adam and Eve, giving them the privilege of enjoying all that He had made save one tree. What’s the issue with the tree? God gave to them a test to see whether they were prepared to trust Him as the Giver more than become fascinated with the gift. And, of course, what actually happened was that they believed a lie. They believed a lie that is a contemporary lie: that somehow or another, God wants to deprive you of the things that will make you really happy, that will fulfill your life, and so on. “If only you had this…” They believed it. They turned away from God. They were banished from the garden. And we in Adam, our representative head, fell along with him.

That’s when the writer says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we[’ve] turned—every one—to his own way,”¹ we recognize that to be true—so that the good world that God made we broke. Why is there so much sin, sorrow, disease, pain, death? Because death is the punishment for sin. Despite what people tell us today about just the natural process, death was not God’s intention. Death is as a result of our rebellion. And God’s hatred of sin—which has broken the world and broken our individual worlds—God’s hatred of sin is unchangeable.

How do people who are hiding from God find themselves included in the company of those who are known by God? It happens in and through Jesus.

And yet at the same time, His love is unfathomable, so that although they were banished from the garden, He still clothed them; He still pursued them; He still called out to them. And fascinatingly, they were hiding. Hiding from God! How do people who are hiding from God find themselves included in the company of those who are known by God, who are part of the company that God from all of eternity has given to His Son Jesus as a gift? How does that happen? Well, it happens in and through Jesus —only in and through Jesus.

I can’t delay on this, and maybe I just suggest to you that you take the Gospel of John  and read it for yourselves. Because there we discover that the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all²—that He bore our punishment so that we might enjoy life with Him now and forever. And that’s why people today, seeking satisfaction, seeking security, seeking significance… And they are! You can’t read a newspaper or a magazine or listen to a podcast without understanding these things. Whether they’re fourteen-year-old youngsters or whether they’re forty-five-year-old adults: “Where is my significance to be found? Where is security to be found? Where is satisfaction to be found?” The lingering cry of the Stones from the ’60s remains: “I can’t get no satisfaction.”³ You tried religion. There’s no satisfaction in religion. You tried good deeds. There’s no satisfaction in good deeds, ’cause you’ve got a lot of bad ones as well. No, there is only one person and one place.

You remember C. S. Lewis in the essay “The Weight of Glory”? He says the problem with us is not that our desires are so strong against things; he says it’s because our desires are so weak. “We are,” he says, like “half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can[’t] imagine what is meant by the offer of a [vacation] at the [beach].”⁴

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