“Father, I pray that all who believe in me can be one. You are in me and I am in you. I pray that they can also be one in us. Then the world will believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me. I gave them this glory so that they can be one, just as you and I are one. I will be in them, and you will be in me. So they will be completely one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you loved them just as you loved me." John 17:21-23 (ERV)
The joy of the Lord is our strength. Put another way, we are infused with divine strength as we are enjoyed by God. If we lose our strength, we will give up, or we may try to carry out God’s will in our own strength.
If we lose intimacy with God, we will try to build His Kingdom according to our own design instead of His. God has designed us to need Him because He wants sons who are creative partners, not just servants who are only duty-driven workers. It is impossible to maintain the strength to obey God without the joy of being with God.
If we could be entirely successful without being close to God, then we would not need Him at all for success. So, God has designed us so that we can’t succeed without being close to Him, because He originally created us as the objects of His joy. What good is it to create companions if they have no need for companionship? He will not deny Himself the pleasure of being close to us, but He has given us free will; we must choose to be close to Him. When we choose to be close to Him, His joy becomes our strength. Being filled with His joy gives us the strength we need to be His creative partner. Living then becomes an exciting daily adventure as the Holy Spirit leads us.
Jesus wants you to experience His joy, but how? By granting you access to the glory of the Godhead. Giving us full access to His joy is the central theme of His request as He prayed to the Father in John chapter 17. “But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13).
As Jesus continues to pray, He expresses His heart cry for the church at a critical time – at the end of His ministry on earth. His prayer to the Father shows us His highest priority as He is about to leave earth: to grant us full access to all the glory, love, and unity that the Godhead has been enjoying for eternity. What an awesome privilege for mankind! Jesus doesn’t want us to be left out of anything that He has been enjoying in His relationship with the Father.
At the time of His prayer, Jesus is looking forward to returning to heaven where He can again experience the original glory of an un-distracted relationship with His Father. In His earthly ministry, Jesus perfectly represented His Father, but the nature of their relationship was different. Jesus was focused on completing His mission on earth. In this prayer, we see Jesus expressing His desire to resume the former glory that He had with His Father before the world was created.
The glory Jesus is referring to in John 17:5 is not merely His individual glory, as King Jesus returning to His throne. “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”
The glory Jesus is talking about is the glory of the relationship between Father and Son. Something was especially glorious about their relationship, and it took both of them to fully display it. So, Jesus says, “Glorify me together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world was” (italics added).
This relational glory with the Father brings Jesus such joy; He desires the same level of joy for us. Jesus loves us so much that He refuses to exclude us from the supreme level of divine joy previously available only to the Godhead. So, Jesus prays for us, “that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13).
Jesus further asks the Father to give us the full, undiminished dose of glory and love that He has been receiving from the Father (John 17:22-23). Every shred of the love and honor that the Father eternally radiates toward Jesus now gets focused in our direction – because of Jesus’ prayer!
Jesus wants to position us toward Him so we can absorb all the majestic splendor that radiates from Him (John 17:24-26). This glory shines so brightly from Jesus that it illuminates anything in its path, imparting an equal and undiminished glory to us. We get to experience His full brightness, not a toned-down version.
The Godhead is like a solar system that attracts us into its gravitational field. Jesus grants us full access to a superior orbit. The Father, like the sun, is the origin of glory. The Father is forever beaming forth the full brightness and energy of His love and delight for Jesus.
Jesus is like a planet that rotates around His Father and absorbs the full glory of His Father’s light beam. Somehow, no energy is lost.
By absorbing the full glory continuously, the Son is equally as brilliant, majestic, and glorious as His Father. And finally, Jesus magnetically attracts us with His love and then focuses the full force of that love on us. Jesus effectively absorbs the entirety of His Father’s love and then directs an undiminished version of that love to us. Jesus says, “I have loved them (us) as You (Father) have loved Me” (John 17:13). How could Jesus have given us a more awesome privilege than to absorb the full glory of love that has forever existed in the Godhead?
Jesus’ foremost desire at the end of His ministry is to bring us into the relational bliss of the Godhead. He wants to provide us unrestricted access to the healthiest, most mutually delightful relationship that has ever existed.
Twice in his prayer, Jesus requests something that has existed from the age before time. He is referring to the eternal and original relationship between Father and Son. First, Jesus asks His Father to return the glory Jesus had “before the world began” (John17:4). Jesus had obeyed His Father’s will on earth, but now He longs to return to the unhindered state of relational bliss He has enjoyed with His Father for eternity.
Second, Jesus wants us to receive the glory He radiates to us and realize this glory had its origin in His Father’s love for Him. Jesus said, “That they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Our prayer for you today is that Jesus gets what He wants for us. What might that be? Jesus wants us to look at Him so we can receive the undiminished version of divine love that He has been continually absorbing from His Father.
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