Or, What It Means to Recognize the Only True God
Scripture: John 17:1-5
Date: March 16, 2014
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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If you had one word to describe our God, what would it be? If you could choose only one stone from the apologetic stream to sling at the giant of idolatry, which one would you select? How would you bowl over a pantheon of false gods or confront the many faces of unbelief with just one distinctive adjective?
I love that we aren’t limited to one. God gives us many terms, and some of them are real doozies. God is glorious! God is love. God is holy. God is almighty. We cannot take any words out of the inspired praise Book and have the same God. But before adjectives and verbal nouns, God is a verb (in one sense). Before God is glorious, God is.
When Moses asked God for a name to tell Pharaoh, God said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.‘” (Exodus 3:14) The name Yahweh is related to the Hebrew verb for “to be” so His very name means Being. Jesus picked up on this over and over in John’s Gospel. Every time Jesus said “I am the [fill in the blank]” He connected Himself with Yahweh. He left no doubt when He told the Jews, “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). In the beginning the Word was.
So if we could choose only one word to describe God and we wanted a little more teeth than “is,” how about the word living? The Old and New Testaments ring the believing bell with the living hammer. Moses said, in Deuteronomy 5:26, after giving the 10 commandments, “who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived?” David said, in 1 Samuel 17:26, when addressing the cowards of Israel who wouldn’t stand up to Goliath, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” David sang, in Psalm 42:2, “as a dear pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”. Darius cried out to Daniel, in Daniel 6:20, the morning after a night in the lion’s den, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” Peter answered Jesus, in Matthew 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Paul instructed Timothy, in 1 Timothy 3:15, to “know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God.” Worship happens where, in Hebrews 12:22, we “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.” John’s wrote of his vision, in Revelation 7:2, “I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God.”
The living God fills the pages of Scripture. And throughout his Gospel John tells us that Jesus was life (John 1:4). He is the bread of life (6:35, 48). He is the resurrection and the life (11:35). He is the way, the truth, and the life (14:6).
Those descriptions spill over from God the living to God the life-giving, especially as He gives life through Jesus. As we considered last week, the eternal nature of God the Father and God the Son means that God has always been living and life-giving. This is who God is, this is what God does, this is what makes our God glorious.
Jesus begins His prayer in John 17 addressing His Father and asking twice (verse 1 and verse 5) for glory. That glory cannot be separated from the Father and Son’s life-giving aim.
Jesus prays for Himself in verse 1-5 and He makes only one request, though He makes it twice. He prays for the Father to give Him glory.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. (John 17:1–2, ESV)
The prayer comes When Jesus had spoken these words , that is, after His discussion with the disciples at His final Passover meal recorded by John beginning in chapter 13. More attention is given to this night by proportion than any other day or any other event or any other teaching in John’s Gospel. Jesus lets His disciples listen in on His prayer to the Father because it is part of His preparing them for His departure. It encourages the eleven and us.
Jesus begins, Father, the hour has come . Remember all the times Jesus said that His hour had not yet come (2:4; 7:6, 8, 30; 8:20)? Then in chapter 12, when Philip told Jesus that some Greeks wanted a meeting with Him, He said that the hour had come “for the Son of Man to be glorified” (verse 23). This hour is not marked by a minute hand, but instead describes the appointed time for which He came.
Everything else in verses 1 and 2 amplify the one and simple petition: glorify your Son . To glorify is to praise, to sing the praises of, to honor. It is what happens when our opinion about someone, or better, when our affections for someone are raised. To glorify is to know and love and express another’s greatness. Jesus asks the Father to make His greatness greatly recognized.
Jesus wants glory from the Father so that He may give glory to the Father. Glorify your son that the Son may glorify you . This isn’t, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” Jesus isn’t making a deal with His Dad. The glory to the Son, especially when we recognize why the Son is so glorious, also causes us to know and love and express the Father’s great greatness.
Jesus doesn’t desire to be recognized as greatly great without reason, nor does He embellish or invent details about His Father. This is not a case where the emperor has no clothes but he does have a well-oiled guillotine. What reason, then, causes the Son and the Father’s reputation to be prized? The reason is that they give life.
Glorify your son…since (or, “in so far as”) you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him . The Father gave the Son two things: sovereign power and a special people. He gave His Son authority over all flesh , meaning that Jesus has freedom of choice among men. He has control and governing command over all people. The Father authorized the Son to rule.
The Father also authorized the Son to redeem, to resurrect the dead, to give eternal life . This group is within the larger group of all flesh, but not all flesh are given eternal life. John Calvin described it as follows.
it is only the elect who belong to his peculiar flock, which he has undertaken to guard as a Shepherd. So then, the kingdom of Christ extends, no doubt, to all men; but it brings salvation to none but the elect, who with voluntary obedience follow the voice of the Shepherd; for the others are compelled by violence to obey him, till at length he utterly bruise them with his iron sceptre. (Calvin, 165-166).
Jesus is Lord over all and every one (including goats). Jesus gives life to His sheep. This is the “work” the Father gives Him to do (see verse 4), and the life-giving is the reason for the glory-getting.
Both Son and Father get glory because both Son and Father give life. “[A]s the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” (John 5:21) The Father is a Father by definition because He gives life and His Son is a chip off the old Being, sharing the same life-giving nature. Jesus prays according to God’s personal Being and God’s purpose of life-giving.
Knowing God is a life or death issue.
And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3 ESV)
Verse 3 has a parenthetical timbre to it, meaning that it doesn’t seem to match the tone of the prayer around it. It clarifies something that Jesus said in verse 2, but verses 4 and 5 repeat the request for glory in verses 1 and 2. Yet verse 3 belongs because it is the central, resonating boom of glory.
No other gospel writer uses the phrase eternal life as much as John (Matthew x3, Mark x2, Luke x3, John x17). Think John 3:16 and John 20:31 if no others. By nature we think about eternal in time terms, meaning no beginning or end, or at least in the case of salvation, without end. Eternal life means unending life as opposed to death. This is true, but not doesn’t go far enough. Eternal life is God’s own life. God is eternal life, so knowing Him is knowing life. Knowing Him is living. More than long life, He gives abundant, glorious life. We have that life now, not later (see John 5:24).
So, this is eternal life , not this is just the way to get it. This is living, that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent . To know God is to recognize Him, to be able to identify Him in a lineup. “He’s the One!” He is the only God and, though many gods exist in unbelieving imagination, they are all false gods. Only God is the true God.
Jesus also makes it clear that we cannot know the only true God apart from Jesus Christ whom (the only true God) has sent . The true God is Father with Son. Any God not identified with Jesus is not the true God. Any Jesus who is not the Son of God is not the true Jesus.
Knowing is both being able to identify and identifying with Father and Son. It could also be described as believing, which could also be explained as depending, or also understood as loving. Life is more than filling in all the right bubbles on the divine scan-tron quiz with a #2 pencil. Life is fellowship.
There is no new request made here though Jesus does add clarification.
I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:4–5 ESV)
Jesus says, I glorified you on earth . How? He did it having accomplished the work that you gave me to do . Good, but what is the work ? Here comes the glory.
The work was to give life. What is life? To know God. How do we know God? Jesus! When the Word became flesh, men saw glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (1:14). Stated differently, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made him known” (1:18). The only way to know God is Jesus and He came to make God known. In making God known Jesus was giving life. He revealed that God is life-giving. Knowing the life-giving God is life and glorifies God as the Giver of life.
Everything Jesus did up to this point AND everything He would do over the next three days (His death, burial, and resurrection) made God known as loving, sacrificing, life-giver. That is the only true God. Knowing that God is eternal life.
Finally, Jesus prays And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world began . Glorify me is the only thing He asks for in verses 1-5. He expands here to call it the glory or renown or splendor from before His enfleshing humiliation (1:14; Philippians 2:5-11), a glory that couldn’t be questioned before Genesis 1:1. He wants to be in your own presence and with you , with His Father (see also Psalm 90:2).
I do not believe that this means that there are two types of glory as much as that glory is not always visible. Before the world existed the Son existed in full glory. The Trinity shared fulness of glory and no one doubted it. It wasn’t hidden. Clothed in flesh, however, the glory was veiled (and temporarily pulled back at His transfiguration). “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail th’incarnate Deity.” Jesus prays for the fulness of His glory to be lit again. Then He prays that the Father will get us to the place where we can see it (17:24).
What are the Father and Son doing together that makes them so glorious? What is the work that the Father gave for the Son to do? How does the work and what is glorious relate to the hour?
When Jesus asks for glory, He is asking to be known for who He is. When He is known for who He is, life happens. So Jesus does not ask for His glory instead of our life, He asks for His glory in order for us to have life. Life-giving is Him. Life-giving is His glory. Creation and re-creation reveal His great greatness of life. He is continuous Being. We are derivative beings. His life is essence. Our life is imitative.
What it means to recognize the only true God is 1) to identify Him for who He is and 2) to have eternal life and glorify Him.
When we say or pray that we want to glorify God, what do we mean? How are we doing that? It starts by how we answer, “What is the meaning of life?” We ought to know where our life comes from. We ought to give Him thanks for life. We ought to think about life as God’s essence and then think about death as separation from Him.
And when we think and thank and talk (in worship, around the dinner table, in answer to a friend at work) about God’s living and life-giving, we are evangelizing. We are bringing life to others as we make God known.