With Dale Ratzlaff
John 17:6
I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
Contemplating this prayer of Jesus to the Father reveals much.
I have manifested Your name…
The name of God stands for all that God is. He is the self-existent One. When Moses asked for God’s name, here was His answer:
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14).
Throughout the Old Testament, God’s name was revealed, and these revelations further describe and identify “His name.”
Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided” (Gen. 22:14).
And He said, “If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the LORD, am your healer” (Ex. 15:26).
Moses built an altar and named it The LORD is My Banner (Ex. 17:15).
Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and named it The LORD is Peace (Jud. 6:24).
In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in safety; and this is the name by which she will be called: the LORD is our righteousness (Jer. 33:16).
The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe (Pro. 18:10).
In the Gospel of John, not only do we have manifestations of the name of God, but we find that this “Name” either saves or condemns.
He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn. 3:18).
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM (Jn. 8:58).
Keeping the word of Christ, which is the same as the word of the Father, will be the result of our love for God and allow us to participate in the mutual indwelling of God.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (Jn. 14:23).
Allowing the word of Christ to dwell in us is the secret of answered prayer.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (Jn. 15:7).
What is said of Jesus’ name can also be said of the Father’s name as well as the name of the Holy Spirit.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name [singular] of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Mt. 28:19).
When Jesus prays to His Father and states that He had “manifested” His name to the eleven, He embraces all that the divine name entails. Did the disciples fully understand what Jesus communicated to them regarding the divine Name? Certainly not; yet under grace, however, their knowledge is considered to be complete.
Jesus states that the eleven disciples were given to Him “out of the world.” Here we see the sovereignty of God and the internal working of the Trinity. The Father gave these men to Christ. However, Jesus stated:
Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil? (Jn. 6:70).
“The world” can mean several things in the Gospel of John. It can mean the natural world.
He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him (Jn. 1:10).
The world and all the people of all the world are an object of God’s love.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (Jn. 3:16-17).
The world is often seen as a force aligned against the truth and the message of Christ and His followers.
If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you (Jn. 15:18-19).
As one reads through chapters 12-17 of the Gospel of John, it will be seen that what is said of Christ and His relationship to the Father, will often be said of the disciples and their relationship with Christ and/or the Father. The relationship between Christ and His Father becomes a pattern, not an identical model; nevertheless, a close resemblance. Here is an example regarding obedience to the Father’s word.
Of Jesus we read:
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love (Jn. 15:10).
And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him (Jn. 8:29).
Of the disciples, we read:
…they have kept Your word.
Here is a glorious truth. Had the disciples actually kept the word of Christ? In their own experience, they had failed miserably. Only a day or two before, the disciples were arguing who of them was the greatest.
And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest (Lk. 22:24).
When the Jewish mob led by Judas came to arrest Christ in the garden,
And they all left Him and fled (Mk. 14:50).
Peter, the leading disciple, will soon deny that he knows the Lord.
Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” He denied it, and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” Peter then denied it again, and immediately a rooster crowed (Jn. 18:25-27).
The crucifixion seemed to have extinguished their last hope. On their way to Emmaus on Resurrection Sunday, the two unnamed disciples said,
But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened (Lk. 24:21).
Later, when these two disciples reported that they had seen the Lord, the other disciples responded in unbelief.
After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. They went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either (Mr. 16:12-13).
Therefore, when Jesus prays to His Father for His disciples, He does so from the standpoint of grace. He is looking ahead to how things will be after He dies for the sins of the world and has risen from the grave for our justification. He sees His disciples as Paul stated in Colossians 2:10.
…in Him you have been made complete (Col 2:10).
The behavior of the disciples did not measure up to what Christ had taught. However, they loved their Lord.
Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” (Jn. 6:68-69).
“I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father.” His disciples said, “Lo, now You are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech. Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (Jn. 16:28-32).
Therefore, it seems to me that when Jesus said, “They have kept your word” He was evaluating them as seen through the grace and righteousness of the new covenant.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).
Application
- In our last lesson, we saw that eternal life is equated with knowing God.
This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (Jn. 17:3)
- In this short lesson, we have only scratched the surface of the names of God. It would be a useful exercise to research all the names for God in Scripture. Do this not as merely an intellectual activity, but as a spiritual, learning experience. Each name gives additional insight into God’s character and thus deepens the basis for faith. One source I looked at said there were 951 names for God in Scripture.
- Jesus states that the Father gave Him the eleven “out of the world.” He also states,
If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you (Jn. 15:19).
- By believing the word of Christ, we are positionally moved out of the world of death into the realm of grace and life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life (Jn. 5:24).
- Jesus said His immature, forsaking and denying disciples had kept His word. We can glory in this. We who are sinful and continually fall short of God’s glory are counted as if we had fully kept His work. We can never read the passages of grace too many times. When we fail of perfect obedience, which is often, we can look away from our behavior to who we are “in Christ.”
- The mutual indwelling foreshadowed in John 12-17 becomes the basis for the new covenant gospel. We are “in Christ,” and Christ is “in us.” He obeyed and lived the righteous life “for us.” Not only this, but we obeyed and lived the righteous life “in Him.”
Prayer
Father, like Moses at the burning bush, show me your name. I know you are gracious and long-suffering. Help me to discover more of who you are and more of your character of love. Thank you for sending Christ into the world to make your name known. Help me in my devotional life and Bible study to come to know you more.
In Jesus name.
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