John 17:9-10

John 17:9-10 and the High Priestly Prayer

17. We continue on with the Lord's High Priestly Prayer, and obviously we've come to verse 9, a verse that you're probably rather familiar with. I ask on their behalf, speaking of the disciples specifically, those that have been given by the Father to the Son out of the world, we've already seen that, I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours, and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.

I am no longer in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, the name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in your name, which you have given me, and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, the son of perdition, so that the scripture would be fulfilled.

John 3:16, the World, and Different Kinds of Love

Now, once again, you have a very specific group of people in view here. We are talking about the disciples in contrast to the world. One of the reasons I wanted to make sure we did not rush through this verse is so often one of the barriers, one of the difficulties we face in attempting to talk with our brethren even, outside of the Reformed faith, is certain large number of traditions and presuppositions that they have embraced, realizing that they are just that, traditions and presuppositions, and that they are not actually biblically based.

And there are certain people who know John 3 .16 really well, but they do not know much else in the Gospel of John, and so they have been taught that, well, for God to love the world means that God has an undifferentiated kind of love.

Do not worry about all that Old Testament stuff, where you have Israel and over against Egypt and Babylon and stuff like that. Even though that would seemingly indicate that God has a redemptive love, that there is something about grace and love, and that how he demonstrates his love for the people of Israel is very different than how he shows his love for the people of Egypt, who are involved in idolatry, and the Red Sea covers them over, and the plagues, and the firstborn, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Let us just leave all that stuff alone, because that is very uncomfortable for us. John 3 .16 tells us that God's love is peanut butter love. And I have told you about peanut butter love before. You know, when you get the peanut butter out, you just slather it everywhere.

You do not put peanut butter on a specific part of the bread or the bagel. It just goes everywhere. And I have unfortunately embarrassed my poor son in the past by noting that when he was younger, we could always tell when he had eaten peanut butter, because it would not just be on the bread or the crackers, but it would also be on the handle, it would be on the jar, it would be on the knife, it would be on the refrigerator door.

It was just sort of a explosive methodology of applying peanut butter to the entire kitchen. But that is the kind of idea that people have, is that unlike human beings, who can differentiate in kinds of love and objects of love.

You are to love your wife in a way you do not love someone else's wife. Your love for your children is different than you have love for somebody else's children. You would think that you would love your children differently than you love your pets, but I'm not so sure about that in our nation anymore.

And in fact, one of the reasons that the reproduction rate has dropped so precipitously is that the current generation replaces children with pets, which is an amazing thing to consider what that means about our society as a whole, but there you go.

But the point is that we as human beings at least have the capacity to love in different ways depending upon the object of our love. But evidently, we got that ability from nowhere at all. Because there are a lot of people that would say, well, God can't do it that way.

I would suggest to you that if we have that capacity, that means God has that capacity in even greater and more perfect and holy fashion. And so you put all those presuppositions together and you look at John 3 .16, it's like, well, that means God has undifferentiated love for every single individual and on the basis of that, then he's trying in the exact same way, at the exact same level to save every single individual equally.

And you just, I just sort of sit back and I go, you really think that's the story of the Bible? You really think that God was trying to save Pharaoh in the same way that he was trying to save Moses? That's what you're telling me?

You have all of those people in, you've got the Amorites and all the people in the promised land that are to be driven out, not only just the armies, but the entire, everybody, man, woman, child, kitties, doggies, and geese, whatever they've got, they're all to be driven out of the promised land.

And in certain situations, completely wiped out. God's judgment, and it even says, the Bible says, God's wrath was not yet full, his judgment had not yet come upon these people, but it would. And we have zero evidence that God was sending prophets to them and warning them or anything else.

A simple fact of the matter is, these people were engaged in horrific idolatry, the people of Israel are warned, don't do what the people of this land do, because the things they do are toevah, they are an abomination in my sight, and the land's going to spew them out.

You look at what he does with Israel, you look at water from the rock, the manna from heaven, all the patience he shows them, and then you look at the Amorites and go, yeah, yeah, I see exact same, sure, yeah.

Canonical Challenge, the Old Testament, and Strong's Concordance

And I just go, really? This is one of the reasons why much of modern evangelicalism is so, what I would call, canonically challenged. Functionally, the Old Testament text is a deuterocanon. You may have heard that term before.

In Roman Catholicism, you have the deuterocanonical books, we call them the apocryphal books, but they call them deuterocanonical. Well, deutero, deuteros, deuteronomy, the second giving of the law, namos law, so deuterocanonical is the second canon, sort of a little less of the canon, not quite on the same level, but sort of.

And so, I think for a lot of evangelicals, the Old Testament books are canonical, but, you know, we're not under the law anymore, therefore, they're not really as inspired as the New Testament, and we all know that the red letters are the most inspired part of the Bible, right?

You know, I mean, we all got that down real well, we hopefully all understand that, and those of you listening by audio hopefully caught the sarcasm there. So, for so many people, they put the Old Testament on a lower level, so they don't have to deal with that wrath and stuff, and, you know, that even within Israel, you see God's wrath coming upon unbelieving Israel, and then you have this limna, this remnant experiences this incredible grace from God, this remnant, and this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, so we're just going to leave it off to the side, and let's just quote John 3 .16.

The problem is John 3 .16 has that all as background, and it's also a part of the book that has verses like this in it, and what you see here is a very strong disjunction, which is found a number of times in John.

I mean, you know, some scholars argue authorship issues, but in 1 John chapter 2, which we read just recently on Sunday morning, anyone who loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now, this drives the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance methodology of exegesis insane, and if you don't know what that means, if you've never had a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, it means you're not as old as I am, but there was a day when we all had the same big huge green monster, big huge honkin' book, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of, of course, the King James Version of the Bible, and there was a New American Standard version of it.

I imagine there was an NIV version of it. Now, you're all going, well, I cut down my phone. Yeah, I know, but there was a time when we didn't have phones like that. There was a time when a phone was actually, it hung on the wall, and when I was a kid, you dialed it by going,.

I mean, I remember the first time I went, beep, beep, beep, whoa, cool, that's wild, you know.

Anyway, my age now having been demonstrated, we didn't have those kinds of gadgets, and so if you wanted to look up a word, you got out this big old honkin' book, and you plopped that thing open, you felt like a real scholar as you looked these things up.

The problem was that was based on English translation, first of all, and yet, it had little numbers that would tell you what the Greek word was if you wanted to really get that deep into it, but the problem was a lot of people learned to do Strong's Exhaustive Concordance studies, where you look up the word world, and I even heard someone present this once.

The idea was you find the first time that word's used in the Bible, and then that's going to be its meaning through the rest of the Bible. So, if world means something in Genesis 1, then that's what it means all the way through the rest of the Bible.

Well, that will lead you absolutely into a stone wall. It doesn't work. It's absolutely impossible. And here's a good example of it. Here with the same author. Do not love the world, for God's love of the world.

And then the imitators of me. I mean, you can turn... It'd be so easy to take a snippet here, a snippet here, a snippet there, and create absurd contradictions. And that's exactly what atheists tend to do, actually.

And this would be one that they might refer to. But we know, I would hope, that that would be easy to do to anybody. You could isolate words and phrases from anyone's books, or even articles, or anything else, speeches, whatever it might be, and turn them into a mishmash of contradiction if you ignore a what context.

And every word has a meaning only in the context in which it is used. We all know that. We all know the English examples of these terms, like the word light. We had a problem with a light in the back.

But the reality is, most of the lights we put in the lights are very light. And if you've been using light buttery spread, you might have it on your fingers while you touch the light, which will cause the light to not last as long, no matter how light it might be.

You know, you actually know what I was saying, but you were having to contextualize every term, the word light there, because I used it in three different ways. One as a weight. One as something to create light.

I didn't even use light in the word of light. I didn't say we didn't have enough light in the back, because I had a problem with the light, which is very light, because someone touched it with light buttery spread on their finger.

I mean, point is, same word, even though light buttery spread would normally be L-I-T-E. But in the spoken form, can't tell any difference between them. It's all a matter of context. And the same thing is the case here.

John uses the word world in many different ways. And people are afraid to recognize that in this text, for whom Christ is interceding, are specifically differentiated from the world. And specifically, it is said, I ask on their behalf, peri auton, in behalf of them, u peri, to cosmu, not in behalf of the world.

So it's direct parallel. And whatever it is he's asking for, unity, the revelation of God's character via his name, the revelation of who Christ is via his unity with the Father, all of these blessings and things that are a part of Christ's high priestly prayer are specifically for a specific people.

It would not make any sense, obviously, for Christ to pray for the world to have unity as long as the world remains in rebellion against God. I pray they'll always be united in their rebellion. Doesn't make any sense.

And so, it's not difficult to follow the text unless your presuppositions and your traditions just stand up and say, can't go there. You can't go there. If Christ here is functioning as a high priest, and this is his high priestly prayer, then it likewise makes perfect sense.

And nobody, no one who originally read this text would stumble at this point because everyone understood that the high priest functioned as the high priest only for the people of God. That when the high priest offered the sacrifice, he was not offering sacrifice to the Egyptians.

He was not offering sacrifice to the Babylonians. In fact, in the highest sense, he was only offering sacrifice for those who truly had faith in Yahweh. Even though the texts talk about the people of Israel, it's understood that if you don't truly believe in Yahweh, you're not one of the people of Israel, even if you bear the covenant signs.

If you've been circumcised, if you don't believe in God, that's a circumcision only of the flesh, not of the heart. So, they would never have stumbled. They wouldn't have found this to be a difficult thing to understand.

I ask on their behalf, and given that these are covenant blessings, these are blessings that are specifically for the people who have been given by the Father to the Son, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

Sovereign Election, Human Freedom, and Inter-Trinitarian Unity

But once again, the same theme that we saw just a few verses earlier, the sovereign ownership of God over all men, so that he can freely and justly and properly distinguish and give a certain people, not on the basis of anything he foresees in them, but he can give a specific people to the Son for their salvation, for the demonstration of his grace, his mercy.

He doesn't have to do this with everybody, because if he did, then God has no freedom. We've got some young men from Grand Canyon here. I'll give you a story from my days at Grand Canyon, when it was much smaller than it is now.

It was teeny, teeny, tiny. In fact, I'm going there. I'm teaching a class there Wednesday morning. I hope I remember. Seven o 'clock in the morning. I have no earthly idea where in the world I'm supposed to go.

None whatsoever. I'm going to need to get hold of Matt Hampton and say, where am I going? But much more so, where am I parking? That's the main thing. I've only driven by since, literally, when I think about it, I may have visited Ethington Theater or something since I graduated, but I don't think I've been back on campus since 19...

No, well, obviously, duh. I taught there. So when I was teaching there, it was last year I taught there, about 97, 98. I don't think I've been back since then. So I have no idea where I'm supposed to park, or I'm probably get ticketed or something, but we'll figure it out one way or the other.

But I remember back in the olden days, my professor for what we called Christian doctrines back then, I don't think he would have called himself a Calvinist. But it was interesting that when we address the subject of election, a good old Dr. Martin, Dr. D .C. Martin, Davis Carroll Martin.

Wow, was he an interesting fellow. Once a year, we still get together. We have what's called the Society of St. Martin. And all of us who knew Dr. Martin, we all get together and we exchange stories about D .C.

We met back in March, I think. I think this last month, it might have been February. March, February, we got together. That's right before I went to Ukraine, so it was February. And myself and Mike Baird and Chris Potts and some other people from the school get together at a Mexican restaurant and have chips and salsa and talk about Dr. Martin.

We call it the Society of St. Martin because he's a saint. He's gone to heaven, so we're talking about Dr. Martin. Anyway, he was talking about election. And half the class was asleep by this point, but I was quite interested.

And so I'm giving him full credit because he was the first one to rather point this rather obvious thing out. He said, well, when you think about it, there are really only three choices. And he wrote these things down on the board.

I remember exactly what it looked like while he was doing it, it's interesting. Either God saves everyone, God saves someone or God saves no one. So he put those three options up there. God saves everybody.

God saves some people or God saves nobody at all. And he goes, now, in which one of these three does God have any choice at all? And it was like by saving someone. He gets to choose. He gets to choose to whom he expresses his wrath and anger and justice and those to whom though not deserving it, he expresses his love and grace and mercy and kindness.

And the other two, if God saves no one, we never see his love, his mercy, his grace. If he saves everyone, we never see his wrath and his justice. And in only one situation, does God have any choice, freedom to act at all?

And I wish I'd had the opportunity. I didn't get the opportunity. I didn't get the opportunity to sort of sit down with D .C. years later once we were more colleagues than the teacher-student relationship and have a chat about exactly where he was coming from on some of those issues.

But it was and remains, I think, a very important thing to point out. And most people have never really thought that through. Of course, most people are coming from the perspective that what's most important is not God's freedom.

But man's free. That's the key issue. That's the primary thing that people are thinking about. But here we have these themes. We already saw it. Now it's repeated again. He asks in behalf, not of the world, but of those whom you have given me.

This is a specific people. There are those who would say that he's asking on behalf of an unnamed and unknowable people. There are many who would say that the elect are an unknown group in the sense that God does not determine that.

He knows who's going to be in it, but he only knows who's going to be in it because he knows the future and he sees who's going to accept him. Then, of course, you've got your open theist who would say, no, no, no, no.

If God knows that, then there is no real freedom of choice. Because if God knows that person X is going to believe, then person X has no choice but to believe because if he doesn't believe, then that invalidates God's knowledge.

God ceases to be God. So, therefore, there cannot be any exhaustive knowledge of the future on the part of God. And that, again, I've argued many times, is the only consistent Arminian position. Those Arminians, thankfully the vast majority, who recognize the Bible clearly teaches God's exhaustive knowledge of future events, not just simply what he's going to do, but what's going to happen all the time, I think are left in an utterly inconsistent position.

Because they can't answer the question of how God knows this. And so the results are fairly straightforward. But, anyway, you have these themes, once again, coming together here, do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom, personal, you, the Father, have given me inter-Trinitarian relationship here, for they are yours, God's, the Father, sovereign over all things, and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine.

Now, I've actually had the experience in a few of the debates that I've done with Muslims. For Muslims to read from John 14, John 17, this text specifically, and if you read through a couple of these texts really quickly, it sounds a little silly.

All things are yours and mine, and mine are yours, and they are me, and I am him, and I, but I, but I, but I, and they just, they're doing it knowing that at least their Muslim audience has no idea what the context is, and they don't really have any concern about finding out what the context is.

It's just meant to make it sound silly. Of course, you can do the exact same thing to the Quran, especially when the Muslims argue that, I've never ever understood this particular argument, but it's extremely common.

It's an argument the Quran itself uses, and that is, there's no other book like this book. This book is so obviously divine that no one can come up with anything else. Therefore, that's the greatest miracle and testimony that's the word of God, but because there's no other book like this book, it must have come from God.

I've just always sort of looked at that and gone, really? Because I can quote from the Carmen Christi in Philippians chapter two, and there's nothing in the Quran that even comes close to that, in my opinion, because it's all subjective argument, but there's also one short surah toward the end of the Quran called, I think it's called The Elephants, if I recall correctly, and it's nice and short, and it's just almost meaningless.

It really is. So I can compare Philippians two with that and go, okay, so you're saying that's just obviously inspired and this isn't, really? That's what you're saying? At least for folks who aren't necessarily raised in a Muslim context, that actually communicates with them fairly well, but when you hear this kind of text, it's real easy if you just want to go through it really quickly to not really follow what's being said and make it sound silly, but there's a reason why Jesus is saying what he's saying.

For they are yours and all things that are mine are yours. Well, that would be a given, right? I mean, for anybody, that would be a given. So why would Jesus say this? Well, keep that question in mind and then look at the next phrase.

And yours are mine. Whoa. Okay, once again, I know it's a broken record, I'm sorry, but for folks like Brick who's been here before this building was built, used to come on Sundays, even though this is an open field, just sit right there, didn't you?

I mean, it's just, and he's heard this so many times that it's been permanently imprinted on his brain, I'm sure, but we get new folks in. You have to hear the words of Jesus in their context and you and I assume we already know the deity of Christ, but you also have to step back and recognize how many things he says that could never be said by any of the other prophets because it would be a given for any of the prophets to say all things that are mine are yours.

Well, duh, everything that I possess I receive from God, and so God's the owner over all things, and so I don't exist separately from God, and so all things that are mine are the Father's, of course. But then, and yours are mine?

All things that are yours are mine. Immediately, you go, I can't think of Moses saying that. I can't think of Isaiah saying that. No mere prophet can speak of this kind of mutuality and equality of relationship that exists between the Father and the Son illustrated here in this prayer.

This couldn't happen. And what's more, that first phrase where Jesus says all things that are mine are yours, that's not just a duh statement because again, we're in John 17, which means we've already read John 5, and so we already have seen John 5 .18 calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God, and the concern shown in the rest of the chapter in John 5, that Jesus isn't some renegade deity out doing his own thing.

There is perfect unity between the Father and the Son. Here's where that theme now comes in to play in John 17. And so when he says all things that are mine are yours, I'm not some separate deity off doing my own thing.

I don't have my area of responsibility in the universe, and you've got yours over there. No, there's only one God. We don't have the finite gods of the peoples that surrounded Israel who were, you know, you had gods of cattle and gods of sheep and gods of the weather and all that kind of stuff.

All things that are mine are yours and yours are mine. And so the giving of a particular people that the Father sovereignly possesses to the Son is not the giving of a people to some secondary deity, someone else.

This is inter-Trinitarian relationship. The Father and the Son, it's not that they cease being the Fathers by being given to the Son. So what then is even being referred to when we talk about being given by the Father to the Son?

Well, once again, what are the themes that are being tied together here? John 10. My sheep hear my voice. I know them. I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of my hand. No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I am the Father. We are one. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit take different roles in bringing about the one purpose of God in the salvation of His people. And so we are united to the Son. This is affected through the power and work of the Spirit in light of the accomplished work of the Son on Calvary and His resurrection, all of which is the fulfillment of the will of the Father.

Why, again, I emphasize the fact that the Gospel is Trinitarian. And hence, when believers skip over doing the necessary work to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, thinking it's a secondary issue, a tertiary thing, something that's really not important to me in my everyday life, they are in essence limiting the depth to which they can go in understanding the biblical revelation of what the Gospel is because they're not willing to find out enough about God to see what God has done.

And that's why a lot of people are satisfied with a very surface-level, repetitious-style presentation because it just takes too much work to go beyond that. Ah, but the Gospel is simple. Again, put it in the right context.

Yeah, the Gospel is simple enough for a child to understand, but it is deep enough and God's revelation full enough to never be exhausted by the greatest minds of men. So that has to be kept in balance.

And so when he then says, all things that are mine are yours and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them, the them could refer to the things or could refer to the ones given by the Father to the Son.

But since that's included in the all things, it really doesn't matter which direction we go with that. The point is that in recognizing this mutuality of the Father and the Son and this unity that is theirs, Christ can be glorified in all those things without that detracting in the least bit from the glory of the Father.

Because to glorify the Son is to glorify the Father. Any glory that resounds to any one of the divine persons resounds to all three of the divine persons. And that is vitally important to keep in mind.

Incredible text, isn't it? I mean, every phrase is just... I had not until starting to prepare for this really seen John 17 as the hub of the gospel where all these themes are brought together. But that's what you've got.

It is an amazing thing to observe, it really is. So, all right. Our time is up. Let's close the Word of Prayer. And dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for its incredible revelation of your relationship to your Son and to the Spirit.

We are awed that we have the opportunity of considering these things. May we not just view this as interesting information, but may we recognize that to have this privilege definitely places upon us responsibility to live in light of these things, to ponder them, to handle them aright.

And so, we do thank you for this time. We ask that you be with us now. Lift up our hearts and our minds that we might worship you aright to your honor and glory. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.