John 17:17-26

       Jesus has prayed for Himself (17:1-5).  He has prayed for His disciples (17:6-9).  And now, praise the Lord, He prays for those who will believe in Me through the word of those same disciples.  He is praying for believers today!

            His request for them is, in essence, the same as for the disciples.  He prays for oneness that the world may believe that the Father sent the Son (v21).  But the way Jesus refers to this oneness is by saying, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one” (v22).

            This may be a little surprising.  After all, God will share His glory with no one (Isa. 42:8).  So what does this mean?  It does not mean that we become gods.  We know this because in the very next verse (v23) Jesus explains that His sharing of glory will be accomplished by His indwelling in the believer while the Father indwells the Son.  It is His glory but is given to us through His presence in us.

            Christ shares His glory by the presence in us of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).  Or as Paul said, Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20).  Consider the following scriptures to understand how important this truth is to the believer.

P Rom. 5:3:  in our trials we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  In other words our hope is to someday fully realize the glory He gives us.

P Rom. 8:18:  the sufferings of this life cannot be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.  Again, this is our hope.

P Rom. 8:29:  God predestined believers to be conformed to the image of Christ.  The extent of our likeness to Christ is the extent of our experience of His glory.

P Col. 1:27:  Christ in you is our hope of glory.

P 1 John 3:2-3:  at Christ’s coming we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.  This hope of Christlikeness purifies the believer.

P 2 Cor. 3:18:  “But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”  We become like our obsession.  If Christ is our obsession we are transformed into His image.

P 2 Cor. 4:17:  “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”  It is in the context of the trials of life that this change best takes place.”

            Do you see the consistency in all of this?  To share Christ’s glory is to be conformed to His image which is to be one with Him, especially during our trials.  In the future our hope is that the deep longing we have of likeness to Christ will be realized when He returns to take us to be with Him.

            There is one other truth to be seen in verse 20.  Jesus notes that believers today come to Him through the word of the apostles or disciples.  And where did that word come from?  It came from Christ (v8).  The same word that brought the disciples into this oneness is the word that will bring us to the same oneness.  We are thus reminded again of the need to faithfully preach and teach the word of God found in the Bible.

            Let us rejoice in hope of the glory of God.