John 17:2 I. Perhaps the first thought which arrests the mind in this wide-circling verse is the connection of power and mercy power all subordinate to mercy. Three gifts, you will observe three gifts are separately mentioned, and these three gifts comprise everything. The whole truth, as it is in... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:4 I do not think that here in this text our Lord intended to refer to the final and completing act the blood-shedding which was remission. I believe He reviewed His life the subjection, the pain, the obedience learned by the things He suffered, the teaching and the trial, the subjection to i... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:11 I. The Author and maintainer of Unity. "Holy Father, keep." Unity wherever it exists flows from God. He is the cloud whence the drops of peace distil first upon crowning Hermon, and then flow down to all the lower heights. And as He is the exclusive author, so is He also the exclusive ma... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:12 Christ's Care for His Disciples I. Observe, first, what a comforting thing it is to know that Christ would sooner work a miracle to restrain the enemies of His servants, than leave those servants to an encounter too great for their strength. The disciples, we may believe, would have bee... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:15 There are two reasons why God does not take His people out of the world, but rather keeps them in it and preserves them from the evil. One reason respects themselves the other, the world. I. And first, it is for a good and salutary work on themselves that they are thus brought into conta... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:16 Christian Separation from the World I. Its nature. The unworldliness of Christ is our model. The separating line which marked His life from the world's life is the line which is to mark our own. Christ's separation was not an outward separation from the world, but an inward separation f... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:17 I. Revelation, or, as our Lord terms it solemnly, the truth, sanctifies us first of all by putting before us an ideal of sanctity. The man of action, like the artist, needs an ideal. It is, in fact, his first necessity, and outside the sphere of revelation there have been such ideals; but... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:19 Sanctification I. The sanctification of which our Lord speaks in this place, is the consecration of the whole creature, of the whole being, to the spiritual purpose of the service of our heavenly Father. To give up everything in order that His will may be accomplished, to do that will to... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:21 The Unity of the Race What a vision Jesus must have had of the essential oneness of the race. Man is one continuity of the race throughout all the ages. Bird and beast are always beginning; they are what bird and beast were thousands of years ago. Man is the exception. In his life today... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:24 Christ's Wish for Man This must always be the first joy of any really good life, its first joy and its first anxiety at once, the desire that others should enter into it. Indeed, here is a test of a man's life. Can you say: "I wish you were like me?" Can you take your purposes and stand... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:25 The Religion of Daily Life I. These are the words of the greatest man that ever lived; of the founder of our religion, even of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They were spoken the night before His death, concerning His followers on earth; and, I presume, He knew what He was saying. But tho... [ Continue Reading ]
John 17:26 The Eloquence of the Cross Christ was standing, when He spoke these words, on the very margin of His death, with little or nothing beyond except His crucifixion; and then He says, evidently pointing to His suffering, "I will declare Thy name." The declaration could be taken in no other... [ Continue Reading ]