Sermon - Easter 7 - John 17:1-11

Easter 7

John 17:1-11

“Jesus the High Priest”

John 17 is widely known as the “Great High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus.  It follows Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” of John chapters 13-16, and immediately precedes the account of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest in chapter 18.

But before digging into the text itself, let’s consider the scriptural character of priesthood, and how Jesus fits into it.

In the Old Testament, the priests were set aside as a special, or holy, class of individuals whose basic purpose was to represent the people before God.  They did this by their activity in the sacrificial system – offering up various sacrifices on behalf of the people.  They also did this by their ministry of prayer – which was also on behalf of the people.

But one man held a singular office – that of the high priest.  He represented, in himself, all of the people.  It was the high priest alone who once a year entered the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the people by means of the sacrificial blood.  It was the high priest alone who placed the sins of the people upon the scapegoat and sent that goat out to die in the wilderness with those sins.

So the priesthood as a whole, and the high priest in particular, served not only to deal with the sins of the people and represent the people before God, but also as a grand foreshadowing of the person and work of Jesus himself.

Jesus, you can see, then, is the great high priest.  He represents the people before God – ALL the people.  Jesus offers up the sacrifice, the once-and-for-all sacrifice of himself, for the sins of the world.  Christ the victim, Christ the priest, as our hymn puts it. 

You need such a priest, for you are a sinner.  And like me and all the other sinners out there – you can’t come to God on your own, on your own merit, with your own good works.  Sinners have no standing before Holy God.  You could sooner get the president on the phone.  You need someone who has access to get you access.  You needs someone who is approved, who has standing, who has the right to speak to God – to speak for you.  You need a priest, and a really pretty good one at that. 

And Jesus Christ, as the highest of high priests, not only represents us before the Father by his blood, but also in his prayers.  Here in John 17 we have a very precious one of those prayers recorded.

What a wonderful blessing to have this extended prayer of Jesus written for our learning!  Herein, he teaches and comforts us.  He shows us his nature and purpose, and also defines us as his people over against the unbelieving world.  He lets us listen in, as it were, on his earnest prayer to the Father on our behalf. 

First, Jesus prays concerning glory.  That he has glorified the Father and that he, the Son, would be glorified.  Here Jesus refers to his work on Earth to this point, and the “hour that has come”, namely, his upcoming suffering and death.  It is in the shame and suffering and humiliation of the cross that God is glorified, that Christ is glorified.  What a strange glory it is – to be unjustly arrested and tried, tortured and killed.  It is not a glory as the world counts glory.  But it is the highest glory of God, the Christ crucified for sinners, to gain eternal life for his people.  The glory of the cross.

Then he would be glorified in resurrection and ascension, having accomplished all, and returning to the presence of the Father.  Jesus knew the plan all along, understood it, and accomplishes it perfectly.

Secondly, he prays for us, his people.  The ones that the Father has given him.  The ones that are “out of” the world.  One of the running themes in John’s Gospel is the distinction between the believers and the world, And what makes these disciples of Jesus, and all disciples so distinct from the world?  They keep the word of the Father, and of the Christ.  We hold to his teaching and trust in his Gospel.  This is faith language.

We trust Christ and receive him because we know that he is one with the Father, and that all the Father has given him, he gives to us, most especially his word.

In this, Jesus does NOT pray for the unbelieving world.  They don’t know him anyway.  They hate him.  They despise his word and rebel against the Father.  Such were you and I apart from his gracious call to faith.  Until the Father gave us to Christ.  But now we are his, and we are in him and in the Father.  And as we trust in him and are saved by him, he is glorified in us.

Jesus also prays, in this prayer, that we would be one.  That the church that belongs to him and has been called out of this world would be united with one another in him.  Jesus prays that this would happen as we are kept in the Father’s name.

Unity in the church, unity of faith, is found in the unity that God gives by his word.  It is unity based in that word, and what it teaches.  No outward unity matters compared to this.  It’s more than that we would just all be nice and get along with each other.  It’s greater than shared traditions, a shared musical heritage, or favorite pot-luck recipes.  Christians are united – absolutely one – in Christ.  And in our faithfulness to his word, we express that unity outwardly by our confession of it.

And isn’t it wonderful that the Father answered Jesus’ prayer!  He glorified Christ in that cross.  He glorified him in resurrection and ascension.  And he glorifies him in the church, even now, as sinners come to repentance and faith, and Christ crucified is preached to the very ends of the earth.

I encourage you to read the rest of this chapter, for we only have the first 11 verses of it in our reading today.  There Jesus continues to pray that his people would be consecrated and sanctified.  He prays that we would be kept from the wicked influence of the world, and from the evil one.

And he even makes it crystal clear he isn’t just praying for the 12 disciples, or that small band of early Christians in Jerusalem.  He says, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Jesus is our great prophet, priest and king.  Today we consider him as the Great High Priest.  The one who prays for us.  The one who is sacrificed for us.  The one who is glorified by the Father at the cross, and who shares that glory with us, his people.

Thanks be to God for the ongoing ministry of Christ.  For he who shed his blood at Calvary, now pleads for us by that same blood before the throne of God.  And he who prayed before his disciples, and in the garden, still prays and intercedes for us, on our behalf.  May our Great High Priest ever be glorified also among us.