Or, The Eternal Love of Easter
Scripture: John 17:24-26
Date: April 20, 2014
Speaker: Sean Higgins
It’s been a long time coming. What do I mean? What, exactly, have we been waiting for?
We’ve finally come to the end of Jesus’ prayer. It’s taken us seven weeks to work through these petitions of our High Priest. He started by praying for the finish of His ministry and return to glory (verses 1-5), then He prayed for the protection and sanctification of the apostles being sent on mission into the world (verses 6-19), and now He’s praying for the fruitful unity of generations of disciples (verses 20-26). It’s been a long time coming to get through the entire prayer.
We’ve also come to the end of the upper room discourse. It’s taken us ten months (28 messages) to work through this final night of instruction and encouragement from Jesus to His eleven disciples. Just a few hours earlier He washed their feet and commanded them to love one another just as He loved them (chapter 13), then He promised them a heavenly home (chapter 14), He invited their fruitful abiding and joyification (chapter 15), and He promised coming and guiding of the Holy Spirit (chapter 16). Now we’re at the end, not only of Jesus public ministry, but also of Jesus’ personal ministry. As soon as we turn the page on this chapter the story moves to His betrayal, arrest, trials, and crucifixion. It’s been a long time coming to get through this Maundy Thursday evening.
We have also come, finally and most crucially, to the climax of eternity. It took un-numerable years, plus around four to five thousand counted years (depending on how we count), to get to this stage of redemptive history. The final piece of Jesus’ prayer tips over the scale of Trinitarian love and it runs fast and strong though despised by many. The world doesn’t get Jesus. It doesn’t get what God is doing in Jesus. It doesn’t get what Jesus is praying to His Father. And that means that the world doesn’t get Easter. But from the Trinity’s point of view, it’s been a long time coming to get to the precipice of the Son’s death, burial, and resurrection.
The prophet Isaiah anticipated this day of rejoicing.
you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure…
He will swallow up death forever…
Behold, this is our God;
we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
(Isaiah 25:1, 8, 9)
In an Easter message a couple years ago I talked about Why the Trinity Couldn’t Wait for Easter:
We could sooner cause the sun to stop (or to shine in Washington state) than we could overstate the importance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. His triumph over death makes everything new, not just from our perspective, but from God’s perspective. No being in the universe had more eggs in His Easter basket than the Trinity. No one was more invested in or more excited about the risen Son than God Himself.
There’s little doubt that Jesus’ disciples breathed differently when they saw Jesus alive again. It’s difficult to imagine how fragile they must have felt all weekend, nor can we fully appreciate the spring in their singing by mid-morning Sunday. Christians since then, those who are alive to their depravity and mortality, are eager for worship on Easter. But no one looked forward to, or looks back at, the eternal significance of Christ’s resurrection as much as God. No matter how hard we try, we won’t outshine His delight in what this day brings.
No one had more on the line than the Trinity. From a human perspective, no one’s name or word or or honor was more at stake. His covenant promises had been spoken, repeated, and written down but not fulfilled. When God raised Jesus from the dead, His faithfulness and His promises [and His love] were proven like never before. God couldn’t wait to turn forgiveness for sin and fellowship with Himself from a promise to a reality for all who believe.
It’s been a long time coming to get to this manifestation of the love of God.
In considering an appropriate message for Resurrection Sunday, this last paragraph in the Son’s priestly prayer fits the occasion (from the preacher’s point of view). Besides, we’ll be at least a few more months considering the events of Good Friday and the joy of the risen Savior. Let’s consider our study position in John’s Gospel as an opportunity to extend Easter. This morning let us know the glory of God and the love of God revealed in the final verses of Jesus’ prayer. He prays with the cross in view, not only because He would soon be lifted up in the morning, but also because this was and is is eternal view. It was a long time coming, and we have a long time coming to view it, too.
Our oneness as disciples makes a great witness in the world. As incredible as that may seem, there is something coming more stunning.
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24, ESV)
The smooth sense of the ESV masks the ugly but emphatic word order of the Greek sentence. It starts, “Father, those you have given to me, I will that where I am myself also they may be with Me.” The ones given from Father to Son, the ones the Son came for and now prays for, those ones the Son wants with Him. He told the eleven about this same desire in chapter 14, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (verse 3). Here in chapter 17 Jesus means the eleven and all the given ones.
Jesus “wills” it; it is His desire . He speaks His want not because His Father doesn’t want it, but because they both do. They both willed it for a long time coming. The Trinity’s goal is the gospel of life, an eternal purpose to draw a people into their divine fellowship.
Jesus desires not just that we get out of hell, not just that we are no longer punishment risks, not just that we have bodies that work without pain, not just that we face death without fear, but (in order) to see my glory that you have given me . Jesus prayed for His return to glory in verses 1 and 5. Now He prays that we would get to see it, too. The word for see (from θεωρέω) has the nuance “to observe something with sustained attention” (BDAG), “to gaze upon as a spectator” (Lenski), and here with the sense of perception.
Consider what this desire means. First, this prayer means that Jesus desires our RESURRECTION. When He wants us to be where He is, He is speaking about where He will be after the cross, out of the grave, and ascended back to His place by the Father’s side in heaven. The eleven were already with Him and, while they saw His glory, they didn’t (nor do we) see glory in the raw. In order for us to see that glory, His resurrected glory, we too must be resurrected.
Second, this prayer means that Jesus desires our ETERNAL FELLOWSHIP. What a glory that will be and we will not get tired of seeing it. Seeing Jesus’ glory in heaven will not be like viewing a remarkable piece of art while visiting a museum. We will not get bored and go on to see other things. When Jesus goes, He stays. Once we go, and once we’ve been there ten-thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun!
The Son possesses this glory, the glory He wants us to see, because you loved me before the foundation of the world . Jesus prays for our eternity based on His eternal tenure as the beloved. Before the first day in Genesis 1:1, God loved. When the last day on earth’s calendar is crossed off, God will still be loving. Our future depends on the Father’s love for the Son and then for us (see verse 23 as well as verse 26).
See God’s salvation plan wrought in love
Borne in pain paid in sacrifice
Fulfilled in Christ the Man for He lives
Christ is risen from the deadAnd we are raised with Him
Death is dead love has won Christ has conquered
And we shall reign with Him
For He lives Christ is risen from the dead
(“Resurrection Hymn” by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend)
Now that Jesus is on the brink of finishing His mission, He knows that this was a long time coming. Time seems to spin so slowly during some seasons. But Trinitarian love moves every second toward the display of love in the glorious sacrifice of the Son.
As the petition in verses 20-21 is followed by 22-23 a description of His work, these final two verses are not another petition. They coordinate with His desire for us to see His glory. He has been working up to this point—and through the next 72 hours or so—toward the same end.
O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25–26, ESV)
For the last time, Jesus addresses His Father (as He did in verses 1, 5, 11, 21, and 24), but for the first time He calls Him righteous Father . It’s a surprising, and important, recognition in light of the unrighteous dawn.
From the beginning of John’s Gospel we’ve known that the world rejected the Word: “the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (1:10). It’s still true after all His ministry: the world does not know you . The world hated and hates in ignorance, even if they cloak it with sophistication. The world did and does need a witness, which Jesus was and His disciples are.
I know you . He is the revelation, the Word, the one who makes God known (as in John 1:18). And these know that you have sent me . “Believing in God” isn’t enough. Those who know God truly know Him as Father and Son. They know that the Father purposed to send His Son and that the Son submitted to come.
As in verse 6, I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known . Jesus came to tell us what God is like. Even more than that, He made God known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them . Is this saying that His love will be in us, as in, we will love like Him? Or is this saying that He love will be in us, as in, we will experience the fulness of His love for us? In other words, are we the subjects or the objects of God’s love? Both are true, but the emphasis here is our eternal reception of His love.
How would this love get in them ? How would they know it? They knew it by His explanation. They knew it by His example, as when He took up a towel. And they would know it by His sacrifice. So EASTER! Jesus will continue to make (His name) known . When? Certainly through the cross, since the nature of sacrifice comes from the nature of God.
Do you remember back to the beginning of the night? How did John introduce it? ” Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
It was a long time coming for the God of love to wait to show off the ultimate display of love. It was a long time coming for the crescendo of sending and serving and sacrificing to make true love seen. It was a long time coming to get to the cross so that the Trinitarian love could be known by us.
We know the Father’s love and we are united to the Son: that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them . This was also Jesus’ point in 14:20. If Jesus is in us, and the Father looks at us, what posture will He take toward us? The Spirit sheds God’s love abroad in our hearts and the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. The last thing recorded that Jesus said in front of His men before the suffering on Friday is His purpose for us to know the love of the Father through our union with Him.
Five times in verses 25-26 Jesus refers to God being known, or not known, or made known. The world does not know God. Only in Jesus can anyone know God. Do you know Jesus? Just from this passage we see that:
Jesus bore the sin and punishment deserved by all His sheep. He dies for all those whom the Father gave Him, all those who have and do and will believe. His prayer on Thursday night, followed by the pain on Friday, led to the joy of resurrected life on Sunday and forever. We who know Him share resurrection to eternal life. We will know His love for a long time coming.
So God loved Easter eternally. No one loves Easter more than the Trinity. It is the culmination of His revelation, a loving sacrifice to bring fellowshipping life to others. And we will love Easter eternally from now on. We will never forget, never neglect, never consider any other love by any other Savior.
Jesus prays triumphantly before triumphing. We worship/rejoice/believe before finishing our lap of loving sacrifice. This is no message for you to do better. This is a message for to love Easter for a long time coming.