John 17:6-9

⁶"I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me and they have obeyed Your word. ⁷Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You. ⁸For I gave them the words You gave Me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me. ⁹I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given Me, for they are Yours."

Again Jesus takes hope in God’s faithfulness to Him through the doctrine of election. The Covenant of Redemption is what brought Jesus to do the work God had for Him. There were a specific people Jesus worked for – not one less. And Jesus completed this work to perfection. He speaks in prayer here as if His work is already done. In fact, the active part (life) is done. Only the passive part (death) remains. We see a glimpse here of the ordo salutis – the order of salvation. First comes election. Second comes regeneration. Third comes faith and repentance; faith cannot be genuine apart from repentance. Fourth comes justification. Fifth comes adoption. The list goes on. Sixth comes sanctification; seventh is perseverance. Eighth is death and ninth is glorification.

V9 is challenging to many. Jesus asks nothing but what is agreeable to the will of the Father, because He pleads with the Father on behalf of those only whom the Father Himself willingly loves savingly. He openly declares that He does not pray for the world, because He has no concern in salvation for the world – only for His own flock, which He received from the hand of the Father. But this might be thought to be absurd; for no better rule of prayer can be found than to follow Christ as our Guide and Teacher. Now, we are commanded to pray for all, (1 Timothy 2:8) and Christ Himself afterwards prayed indiscriminately for all, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). The prayers we offer for all are still limited to the elect of God. We ought to pray that this man, and that man, and every man, may be saved, and thus include the whole human race, because we cannot yet distinguish the elect from the reprobate; and yet, while we desire the coming of the kingdom of God, we likewise pray that God may destroy His enemies.

There is only this difference between the two cases: we pray for the salvation of all whom we know to have been created after the image of God, and who have the same nature with ourselves; and we leave to the judgment of God those whom He knows to be reprobate. But in the prayer here related, there was some special reason, which ought not to be reproduced as an example; for Christ does not now pray from the mere impulse of faith and of love towards men, but, entering into the heavenly sanctuary, He places before His eyes the secret judgments of the Father, which are concealed from us, so long as we walk by faith. God chooses out of the world those whom He desires to make co-heirs with His Son of life and all creation, and this distinction is not made according to the merit of men, but depends alone on His good-pleasure and purpose. For those who think that the cause of election is in men must begin with faith. Now, Christ expressly declares that they who are given to Him belong to the Father; and it is certain that they are given so as to believe, and that faith flows from this act of giving. If the origin of faith is this act of giving, and if election comes before it in order and time, what remains but that we acknowledge that those whom God wishes to be saved out of the world are elected by free grace? Now since Christ prays for the elect only, it is necessary for us to believe the doctrine of election, if we wish that He should plead with the Father for our salvation.

After laying out the basic intent of His prayer, Jesus begins to give the reasons for His praying in this way, and for these specific persons – and the fundamental reason goes back to the Father’s will, together with the effects that it has produced. Now, what has this will accomplished? First, as the Son is One with the Father, and always in perfect agreement with Him, the will of the Father has been brought to concrete reality through the effectual working of the Son. Remember in the prologue how Jesus, the “Word of God,” brings to reality God’s intention? So here, when God planned to redeem a wayward people to Himself, it was Jesus who actually redeemed them, and brought them back to a true knowledge of God: or, in His own words, He “revealed” the Father’s name to them. Within the Trinity there is always perfect unity – and so the Father’s will inevitably finds its concrete expression in the Son’s activity. So God’s will flows into Jesus’ life and death. The effects of the Father’s will do not stop with the Son’s ministry; for flowing down, from the Father through the Son, is the effect of this sovereign will on the people He has chosen. The Father selected a people, Jesus revealed the Father to them, and now they know that everything Jesus has done came from the Father. The words of God were in the Father’s heart and revealed through the Son’s ministry on earth; and now, they are received and held fast by the people God has chosen. We could sum this wonderful reality up by saying that everything good, in this life and the next, is from the Father and comes down through the Son, because of His work of redemption about to be accomplished on the cross. And this work is so powerful that it cannot fail to secure eternal life, which is nothing other than the true knowledge of God, for everyone for whom it was intended.