Focal Passage: John 17:1-9
God’s voice always leads us to glorify Him and accomplish His purposes. We can glorify God by honoring God in how we speak and live. But what specifically needs to be a part of how we speak and live that would honor God? In what has been called Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer on the eve of His arrest, trial, crucifixion, and subsequent resurrection reaches the zenith in what honors our heavenly Father.
Honoring God in the gospel (John 17:1-3). We honor God when we know, believe, and share the good news. While the entire prayer is remarkable, the first three verses is stunning. Jesus asked His Father to glorify Him in His death so that Jesus might glorify the Father through His obedience. The good news grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a demonstration of Jesus’ authority over all people, so that He might “give eternal life to everyone you have given Him” (v. 2).
These monumental truths set the stage for what John 17:3 states: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the One you have sent — Jesus Christ.” Jesus’ death and resurrection makes way for us to personally know the Father in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by this gospel that repentant sinners are given eternal life. We honor God when we know, believe, and share this gospel.
Honoring God by continuing His work (John 17:4-5). A gospel life is not a stagnant life. God doesn’t save us to sit. He saves us to serve. Just as Jesus obediently completed the work of His Father, we, too, are to obediently complete the work the Father has given to each of us. Jesus’ work makes salvation possible; our work expresses to others the salvation Jesus has made possible.
Shrum
Further, God’s redemptive plan is not Plan B. God’s plan of redemption goes back into eternity. The death and resurrection of Jesus was not a backup plan. It was THE plan from all eternity. This is why Jesus said the most amazing thing in John 17:5, “Now Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.”
This statement affirms not only the eternality of Jesus as God, but it reminds us that God’s glory is the ultimate purpose of the gospel. Jesus did not begin His existence in Bethlehem.
He has always existed as the co-eternal, divine Son of God, part of our great singular, Triune God — Father, Son, and Spirit. We honor God by continuing the redemptive work of God, begun in eternity past to the very present time and into the future.
Honoring God in prayer and discipleship (John 17:6-9). Just as Jesus reveals the Father to us through the Word, we, too, are to be part of revealing to others God’s good news. A true disciple knows where Jesus came from, why He came and where history is headed. A true believer knows that the good news is rooted in the past, powerful for the present and hope-giving for the future.
No wonder Jesus prayed for us as we live in the world. The world needs Jesus, but they don’t know it. Yet, as we share God’s good news the lost can come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord.
In sharing God’s gospel, we honor Him B&R
