Dennis Rainey, director of Family Life Today, a ministry to families, explained two decades ago “…that of the top ten personal needs for which respondents said they want help from the church, six involve marriage and family issues.”[i]
What does this mean for us? It means that many relationships are in a state of crisis, beginning with our core and closest relationships. People are not relating in a healthy way. If we can’t make it in our most significant relationship, then we often struggle with others, and it all begins with our relationship with God. Many people are choosing to live isolated lives. People today try and insulate themselves from pain coming from broken relationships by having superficial ones. People often stay at arm’s length for fear of being hurt. But what did God have in mind when He made us in His image? What is God’s design for human relationships? I’m not just speaking here of marriage but of all kinds of relationships, from our family to those at work or school, and those that become personal. How should we relate to family, friends and even foes? One thing the bible reveals over and over again is that we were designed to relate to others.
What is fascinating is that just before Jesus was about to be crucified, He prayed an incredible prayer for Himself, His closest followers and for us who came to believe because of His message. The prayer I’m referring to is found in John 17. Here we gain an understanding as to God’s design for healthy relationships, which is the mission of Christ and the church. This mission can only be achieved when we have a proper relationship with God and one another as His followers.
Without healthy relationships, marriages crumble, families disintegrate, workplaces lose productivity and often struggle financially, churches lose impact, and people become embittered and lonely. Then to compensate for the loss, people often begin to search for meaning in superficial relationships, temporal gains, or all-consuming addictions. We try and fill our emptiness with something other than what God intends. What people end up finding out is that false substitutes don’t satisfy.
Let’s turn now to Jesus’ prayer and find three powerful insights into experiencing God’s design for healthy relationships.
I. THE FIRST INSIGHT INTO GOD’S DESIGN FOR RELATIONSHIPS IS SEEN IN HOW WE RESPOND TO GOD, OUR FATHER.
In Jesus’ prayer for Himself, we see the uniqueness of His relationship with His father. It is a relationship that we all need to cultivate if we are going to handle life’s challenges. We need to find hope and strength from our Father in heaven.
A. The primary focus of prayer should be on the glory of God.
Jesus knew that God is glorified through relational reconciliation that can only come through His sacrificial death.
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.[ii]
Roland Tasker speaks to the heart of the issue in Jesus’ high priestly prayer.
The entire life of Jesus has been a setting forth of the divine love. Herein lies its uniqueness. All that He has said and done, His teaching and his mighty works, has been prompted by the desire that men and women should enjoy that higher life, which is experienced in its fullness only when their sins are forgiven and they are reconciled to God. And when once the perfect sacrifice of Himself has been offered, it will affect that reconciliation, the gift of eternal life will be available for all believers.[iii]
Now he [Jesus] prays that he may indeed be glorified. None can glorify him but the Father: unlike others, he seeks ‘the glory which comes from the only God’ (Jn 5:44). The cross, as he knows full well, is to be the vehicle of that glory, and he prays that he may so accept it as to bring glory to his Father in turn.[iv]
Jesus desired to have His glory restored, but what did that mean for Him?
1. That Jesus would be glorified for the work that He was about to accomplish.
I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.[v]
The ultimate expression of that work was to bring people to the Father, and this could only be accomplished by His death as a sacrifice for our sins.
2. Jesus prayed that He might share the equality that He enjoyed with the Father. That once again He would experience what he had from all eternity. He would experience non-moral attributes of being Omniscience, Omnipotent, Omnipresent. That the relationship would return to what it was before His earthly coming.
And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.[vi]
3. And how does that apply to you and me in our relationship with God? It is only through the work of Christ that we can have eternal life.
Here we have explained for us the nature of the life we have with God. It is described as eternal in nature. Eternal life is only received by being in a right relationship with God. This is not based on an intellectual understanding but involves a relationship that is personal.
The Father and the Son know each other in a mutuality of love, and by the knowledge of God men and women are admitted to the mystery of this divine love, being loved by God and loving him–and one another in return.[vii]
Eternal life is not what happens after we physically die, but it is a quality of life we can have right now. The moment we enter relationship with God, we have the highest form of life, because we are in the highest realm of environment. Merrill Tenney describes the nature of this life:
A worm is content to live in soil; [I’ll add; a fish is content with living in the water], we need not only the wider environment of earth, sea, and sky but also contact with other human beings. For the complete fulfillment of our being, we must know God. This said, Jesus constitutes eternal life. Not only is it endless, since the knowledge of God would require eternity to develop fully, but qualitatively it must exist in an eternal dimension. As Jesus said farther in this prayer, eternal life would ultimately bring his disciples to a lasting association with him in his divine glory (vs. 24).[viii]
Anything less than knowing God leaves a huge emptiness within our souls. That is why Augustine wrote: ‘Our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee, O God.’ Listen to King David’s longing for God.
God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.[ix]
Do we know God’s love? Do we love Him? Do we love others? We can measure our love of God by how we are doing in our love for others. How are we treating others?
Author, Eugene Peterson, in his book, ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’, speaks about the threat of Gnosticism, which are about all those alternate stories out there about Jesus.
No sooner had the ink dried, than a rash of apocryphal stories, with Jesus smoothed out and universalized, flooded the early church. They were immensely popular. They still are.
In these accounts of the Christian life, the hard-edged particularities of Jesus’ life are blurred into the sublime divine. The hard, historical factuality of the incarnation, the word made flesh as God’s full and complete revelation of himself is dismissed as crude. Something finer and more palatable to sensitive souls is put into its place. Jesus was not truly flesh and blood but entered a human body temporarily in order to give us the inside story on god and initiate us into the secrets of the spiritual life.
…The feature attraction [of this kind of thing] is that we no longer have to take seriously-that is, with eternal seriousness, God seriousness-either things or people. Anything you can touch, smell, or see is not of God in any direct or immediate way. We save ourselves an enormous amount of inconvenience and aggravation by putting materiality and everydayness of every kind at the edge of our lives, at least our spiritual lives.
…people are glorious as long as they are good-looking, well-mannered, bolster my self-esteem, and help me fulfill my human potential, but if they smell badly or function poorly they certainly deserve to be dismissed.
…Against the life of the community of the children of God, commanded to love one another, the gnostic is absorbed in the self.
Against the life of the ordinary, an embrace of family and work, cooking and sewing, helping the poor and healing the sick-all the foolish, weak, low, and despised ‘in the world’ honored by St. Paul (1 Cor. 1:27-28)- the gnostic claims a special status among the elite that exempts him or her from the sacred ordinary.[x]
Peterson is describing a false spirituality based solely on personal spirituality, not realizing that rolling up our sleeves and ministering in practical ways to the needy, broken, unlovable people of our world is actually true spirituality. This leads to our next point.
II. THE SECOND INSIGHT INTO GOD’S DESIGN FOR RELATIONSHIPS IS HOW WE EMBRACE OUR MISSION TO OTHERS
Jesus prayed that the disciples would experience success in the mission He had called them to. We live in an age where the emphasis is on rights and privileges, but the reality is that for healthy relationships to develop there needs to be a focus on laying aside our rights for the sake of others. That is what Jesus did when He left heaven and became a human being to restore humanity’s relationship with God.
Mission includes not just what we do, but what we become. Christianity is one of those rare religions that marries internal reality with outward obedience.[xi]
A. One of the characteristics of a disciple is that we believe in Christ and obey God’s word.
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.[xii]
One of the expressions of our obedience to Christ is seen in our treatment of people. In his parable regarding that theme, Jesus challenges us in our relationships with the stranger, the sick, the needy, and the prisoner.
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.[xiii]
When asked when they did these things, Jesus answered: “…Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40.)”
Jesus defines that our mission is directed toward those who are in need of grace, and when they accept the message of the gospel, they will come to God in a personal way. Yet, Jesus realizes that as we are in this world, we also will need His grace in fulfilling our mission.
B. The content of Jesus’ prayer is for protection.
I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name–the name you gave me–so that they may be one as we are one.[xiv]
What are we to be protected from? Jesus knows that we are still in this world. The idea here is that our society with its values are generally in conflict with God’s will. We must anticipate rejection as we embrace God’s will and ways because we will find ourselves out of step with the values of our world. God’s purpose is that we may be like our Father in heaven and as we do God’s will, we bring glory to Him. Notice that Jesus said, ‘glory has come to me through them.’ The reason for this is that Jesus is now with the Father.
Jesus then prays that the unity that God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit shared with each other will also be experienced by us. One of the reasons the enemy works hard to tempt believers to be in conflict is that it flies in the face of this prayer of unity. When we are in step with God, we will generally find ourselves in step with other believers.
C. Jesus also prays that we will experience joy despite opposition.
I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.[xv]
So often in our lives we run from difficulties, but Jesus is praying that we will face them. Two weeks ago, in the message on ‘How to transform our grief into joy,’ I explained that often the very thing that causes us pain is the vehicle to our growth and maturity as believers. Jesus is not taking us out of the world but praying for our protection from the enemy ‘who is the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient (see Ephesians 2:2).’
The most effective way for the enemy of our souls to defeat us is to tempt us to disobey God, to embrace the values of our society. The bible describes this seduction of our souls as worldliness. Wilbur Chapman once wrote:
It’s not the ship in the water but the water in the ship that sinks it. So it’s not the Christian in the world but the world in the Christian that constitutes the danger.[xvi]
Jesus is praying not that we would withdraw from society, but that we would not conform to it. What is the purpose of our lives as believers?
Its raison d’etre [the church’s reason for existence] is to convey to the world the revelation imparted by Jesus, and to reflect the self-sacrificing love manifested by Jesus on the cross. …He does not pray that they escape from the world, for that would be to frustrate the divine purpose; nor that they may be immune from the world’s hatred, for it is inevitable that that hatred should continue to be directed against both Jesus and His friends precisely because they cannot conform to the world’s standards.[xvii]
We are faced with incredible challenges and that’s the reason for the prayer. We are in an intense spiritual battle. Warren Wiersbe explains how God’s word is critical in this spiritual battle.
The Word not only imparts the joy of the Lord, but it also assures us of His love (John 17:14). The world hates us, but we are able to confront this hatred with God’s own love, a love imparted to us by the Spirit through the Word. The world hates us because we do not belong to its system (John 15:18–19) and will not be conformed to its practices and standards (Rom. 12:2). The Word reveals to us what the world is really like; the Word exposes the world’s deceptions and dangerous devices.[xviii]
D. Jesus prays that we will experience one of God’s primary agencies in bringing about our transformation.
The word of God is one of God’s primary agencies in bringing about change in our perspective, attitudes, and ultimately in our actions. It is a change from the inside out. God’s word is the means of knowing who God is and what God has done, and is going to do in us and in the larger scheme of our society. “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”[xix]
When we hear the word sanctify, we need to realize that it is a part of a word group which includes the word, holy. To be holy or sanctify means that we have been set apart by God and for God. D. A. Carson explains the impact of this text by bringing out the idea of what it actually means in practice.
At its most basic level of meaning, ‘holy’ is almost an adjective for God: he is transcendent, ‘other’, distinct, separate from his creation, and so the angels cry unceasingly in his presence, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ (cf. Is. 6:3; Rev. 4:8). Derivatively [because of this], then, people and things that are reserved for him are also called holy—whether a censer for an altar in the temple of the old covenant, or a man set apart to be the high priest. The prophet Jeremiah, and Aaron and his sons, were all ‘sanctified’, i.e. set apart for sacred duty, reserved for God (Je. 1:5; Ex. 28:41). The moral overtones in our English words ‘holy’ and ‘sanctification’ emerge only at that point: i.e. ideally if someone is set apart for God and God’s purposes alone, that person will do only what God wants, and hate all that God hates. That is what it means to be holy, as God is holy.[xx]
What are we hearing from Jesus’ prayer for us, his followers? That through the word of God we will become more and more like God. We will be separated from the love of the values of this world. Our desire will be to please our Father in heaven. John in his letter defines for us the nature of worldliness in our lives.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.[xxi]
So what is it that ought to be motivating our lives? Obviously, to please God and to live our lives in such a manner that we bring glory to him. This is done through our lives as we continue to be transformed more and more into the image of our heavenly Father by living in obedience to His will as revealed in His word.
E. The purpose of our lives is to fulfill God’s will.
Just like Jesus was sent into our world by the Father to bring about a means and message of reconciliation with God, so we are also sent out by Jesus with a message of reconciliation.
As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.[xxii]
This commission by Jesus, is not limited to vocational ministers, but for all of us as disciples. We are all called to live missional lives. What then is our purpose? To bring Christ to others through the example of our life and the words of our lips. We bring God’s message of saving love to others.
F. Our model is Christ.
For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.[xxiii]
The word ‘sanctify’ also means to ‘consecrate oneself.’ The idea of consecration is that we come to God with our hands full. We bring to God everything. We are offering the totality of our lives. Gerald Borchert explains what Jesus is saying about Himself here in this act of self-giving surrender.
It is to be understood as an act of committing himself to the holy will of the Father and in dedicating himself to Calvary. Consecration is also identified in the Torah with sacrifice (Deut. 15:19), a sacrifice that usually implied the death of the offering. In consecrating himself, Jesus modeled for his disciples what is meant to be both alien from the world and yet committed to a mission in and to the world, even to the point of death.[xxiv]
In other words, like Jesus we give up our lives for others in bringing them to God. I’m reminded of the words of martyred missionary, Jim Elliot, who wrote in his diary, ‘He is no fool who gives us what he cannot keep, in order to gain what he cannot lose.’ We can’t keep our lives, so to give up our lives for Christ and the gospel is eternal gain.
III. THE FINAL INSIGHT INTO GOD’S DESIGN FOR RELATIONSHIPS IS HOW WE RELATE GOD’S LOVE TO OTHERS
One of the most powerful ways to communicate love is seen in how we treat each other. Here Jesus is seen praying not only for those disciples that had walked with Him, but for those who would be reached through their lives and message as it is passed down, which includes us.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,[xxv]
A. What’s the heart of Jesus prayer for us?
Jesus prayed that we would manifest a unity of spirit which would be a demonstration of God’s love.
That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.[xxvi]
This unity is a byproduct of mutual relationship we have with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is missional in nature.
Unity requires oneness of inner heart and essential purpose, through the possession of a common interest or a common life.[xxvii]
Unity is not conformity, but a oneness of life and mission. It expresses itself in diversity. Paul speaks of the human body as an illustration of unity expressing itself in its various different parts. So, how do we treat others who are different than ourselves? Are we critical? Judgmental? Threatened? Harsh? Indifferent? Or do we value others, because God values them? Do we practice the golden rule: ‘treating others in a manner that dignifies and respects them.’ Do we treat them in a way that we would want to be treated?
Our concern about unity in our marriage, our church, our job is the most demonstrable way in which we communicate to others that we truly love them. Fragmentation, conflict, division and divorce is not the language of love. Now, I make a caveat here: I realize that there are situations where we have done all we can to relate in a healthy and meaningful way, but the other person rejects us. Paul shared this thought with the Roman church, that we were to endeavor to live at peace with all people, if possible. In other words it takes two people to make relationships work and sometimes people on one side or the other refuse though sinful, selfish actions. Our part is to make every effort, yet there are some situations where it becomes impossible, because the other person does not respond in a healthy way.
The key to experiencing the unity of which Jesus prayed for us to experience the reality of God’s love in our hearts. Love is what brings people together.
B. God Models Perfect unity of relationship.
God’s example to us is found in the way the Trinity relates to each other. There is perfect unity seen in their unity of thought and mission, though we find different functions in their unity.
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.[xxviii]
Jesus explains that he has made the name of the Father known. It’s about letting the world know that the Father sent Jesus with a mission that we need to all hear and respond to. Gerald Borchert explains the significance of that statement to a culture who thought they were revering God, but in essence were keeping God at arm’s length through many of their practices.
He has given the disciples a divine revelation: he has made the name (onoma, the NIV omits this important idea) of God known to them (cf. 17:6, 11; cf. also 5:43; 10:25; 12:28). In a time when the Jews had adopted a remote and highly transcendent view of God and likewise had been avoiding the name of God for fear of taking it in vain, Jesus reintroduced the necessity of direct encounter with God and reverently referring to God as Father, not some mysterious unapproachable deity.
But Jesus has also made known to the disciples the nature of God as a caring God of love. The God of Jesus was actually the same God as the God of the Old Testament who, although he demanded obedience, time after time showed the erring people of Israel his gentle forgiveness and loving kindness and offered comfort to them in their brokenness (cf. Isa 40:1–11).[xxix]
One of the great errors in any age is to focus on one aspect of God’s nature at the expense of other aspects and therefore communicate a distorted view of who God really is. While in Jesus’ hour, the focus was upon the holiness and judgment of Almighty God. Jesus came to correct and remind them of the grace, love, and forgiveness of God. Today we seem to have flipped that image to the neglect of judgment that God brings upon those who reject his message of love and continue in their sin. Either view at the expense of the other is a distortion of who God is.
The world is a hostile place, and the disciples were now to be sent to that world. With what spirit should they go? And what would be their model and resource? …The spirit of the disciples was to be that of love, not the love of which the world speaks but the kind of love God had for the Son. May that kind of love be in us! And the model and resource of the disciples? Surely not the power structures of the world. It must be Jesus himself. Jesus would act in them after the resurrection through the agency of the Paraclete.[xxx]
Even so, it is the same for us today. We must go in the power of the Holy Spirit reflecting God’s love, with the understanding that this love can be rejected, even as we read through the pages of Scripture. God designed us to relate to Him and bring His message to others. Ultimately it is for us as believers to reveal God’s love to others by the way we treat one another. As Jesus explained to His disciples regarding one of the identity markers of true believers:
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.[xxxi]
[i] Dennis Rainey, as quoted by Gary Thomas, Healthy Families Create Healthy Churches, National Pastors Convention, 2007.
[ii] John 17:1-3, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[iii] R. V. G. Tasker, John, TNTC, (Grand Rapids, Mi: William Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960), 188-89.
[iv] F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, (Grand Rapids, Mi: William Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1983), 329.
[v] John 17:4.
[vi] John 17:5.
[vii] F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 329.
[viii] Merrill C. Tenney, The Gospel of John, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary vol. 9, (Grand Rapids, Mi: Zondervan, 1981), 162.
[ix] Psalm 63:1.
[x] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 60-60
[xi] Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, (Grand Rapids, Mi: Zondervan Pub., 2000), 254.
[xii] John 17:6-8.
[xiii] Matthew 25:35-36.
[xiv] John 17:9-11.
[xv] John 17:13-15.
[xvi] J. Wilbur Chapman (1859-1918), Men of Integrity May/June 2004.
[xvii] R. V. G. Tasker, John, TNTC, 190.
[xviii] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Expository Commentary, Vol. 1, (Victor Books, 1996), 370.
[xix] John 17:17.
[xx] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, Mi: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 565.
[xxi] 1 John 2:15-17.
[xxii] John 17:18.
[xxiii] John 17:19.
[xxiv] Gerald Borchert, John 1–11 Vol. 25B, (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 203-04.
[xxv] John 17:20.
[xxvi] John 17:21.
[xxvii] Merrill C. Tenney, John: The Gospel of Belief, (Grand Rapids, Mi: William Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1948), 248.
[xxviii] John 17:22-23, 27-28.
[xxix] Gerald Borchert, John 1–11 Vol. 25B, 210.
[xxx] Ibid, 210.
[xxxi] John 13:35.
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