Context No. 2917 of 4322 · John

John 17:6-19: in context

6“I revealed your name to the people whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours, and you have given them to me. They have kept your word. 7Now they have known that all things whatever you have given me are from you, 8for the words which you have given me I have given to them; and they received them, and knew for sure that I came from you. They have believed that you sent me. 9I pray for them. I don’t pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10All things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them through your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. 12While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. I have kept those whom you have given me. None of them is lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I come to you, and I say these things in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves. 14I have given them your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, even so I have sent them into the world. 19For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

In his prayer on the night before he dies, Jesus prays not for the world at large but for those the Father has given him. He has revealed the Father's name to them and kept them, and now, as he returns to the Father, he asks: Holy Father, keep them in your name, that they may be one as we are one. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. Sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth. As you sent me, I have sent them.

This is Jesus praying for his disciples, and for us, hours before the cross, and what he asks is deeply reassuring. He does not pray that we be spared the world's difficulty, but that we be kept through it, guarded from evil, made one, set apart by the truth. And he prays this as a sending: kept and sanctified not for our own comfort but to be sent into the world as he was. To know that Jesus prayed, and still prays, this for me is a steadying thing.

Does it steady me to know that Jesus prayed for me to be kept, made one, sanctified, and sent, not taken out of the world but guarded within it?

Sources

John 17:15: "I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one."
John 17:17: "Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth."
Hebrews 7:25: "He lives forever to make intercession for them."