Apr 10, 2022
Scritpture Reading John 17:6-11
Continuing in His glorious prayer, Jesus turns His focus from the glory of the Father and the Son to the needs of His disciples. He knows they are sorrowful and that their grief will increase the next day.
In this prayer, Jesus is clear that He is not praying for the world but for these men. The foundation of what Jesus says here is that the Father had given these men to His Son and Jesus, in turn, had manifested the Father to them (Jn 17:6). As Christ contemplates leaving the earth, He commits these disciples to His Father … "Holy Father, keep them in your name" (Jn 17:11).
The results of Christ's prayer are remarkable. These disciples recognized who Jesus was, namely that He had come from God the Father (Jn 17:7,8). They had received Jesus' teaching as from God and had been obedient to it (Jn 17:6,8). And though halting and weak, these men had honored Jesus when the world had summarily rejected Him (Jn 17:11). In this prayer Christ encourages our weak faith by commending us to the Father.
"The faith of the Apostles was weak. They had but a confused view of Christ’s Godhead and eternal generation. They knew little of His death, were filled with the thought of a terrene [earthly] kingdom and a pompous Messiah, and understood not His prediction of His death and passion. Though they knew Him to be the Redeemer and Savior of the world, yet the manner of His death and passion they knew not. 'We trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel.' Yet observe how Christ commends their weak faith! Certainly He loves to encourage poor sinners when He praises their mean and weak beginnings." (Thomas Manton in J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of John, 3:135).