John 17:6-19, What World did God Love? (4)

·       Jhn 16:8,11: The Holy Spirit will have a ministry of conviction in the world, that they are sinners, in need of Jesus’ righteousness, in the face of coming judgment. 

·       Jhn 16:20,21: “(Those to whom He is speaking) will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice (at the cross) …but your sorrow will be turned into joy.”

·       Jhn 16:28: Jesus “came forth from the Father … into the world.” Now “I leave the world and go to the Father.”

·       Jhn 16:33: “In the world you will have tribulation; but … I have overcome the world.”

(Which brings us to John 17, Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, in which the “world” is a hot topic.  It appears 18x in 15 of the 26 verses.)

·       Jhn 17:5: “… glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. (Before the created world.)

·       Jhn 17:6: “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. (This refers to the Twelve.)

·       Jhn 17:9: I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.  (He is not saying He never prayed for the world, the sinful people of this earth.  He is saying at this point, in this prayer, He is praying for the Twelve whom the Father gave to Christ as the beginning of His people, the Church, taken out of the world.)

·       Jhn 17:11: “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world,  (This is what is going on in John 13-17: Christ is preparing His disciples to continue living in the world after He leaves this world.)

·       Jhn 17:12: “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.

·       Jhn 17:13: “But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.

·       Jhn 17:14: “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. (Both the Twelve and Jesus were born into this world, the world He created.  But He and they are not “of this world” as to what it has become as 1 Jn. 2:15-17 describes.)

·       Jhn 17:15: “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. (In v14 and 16 Jesus notes they are not “of the world” in that they are not the product of what the world produces.  But in v15 He does not ask the Father to take them out “of the world,” meaning the created world and the people, the mass of humanity, that occupy that world.)

·       Jhn 17:16: “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.