PRAYING IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS
Three ministers were talking about prayer in general and the appropriate and effective positions for prayer. As they were talking, a telephone repairman was working on the phone system in the background.
One minister shared that he felt the key was in the hands. He always held his hands together and pointed them upward as a form of symbolic worship. The second suggested that real prayer was conducted on your knees. The third suggested that they both had it wrong--the only position worth its salt was to pray while stretched out flat on your face.
By this time the phone man couldn’t stay out of the conversation any longer. He interjected, "I found that the most powerful prayer I ever made was while I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended forty feet above the ground."
Jesus prayed often. Many times we read that he went off by himself to pray, but we don’t know what he prayed. One time his disciples asked for instruction on how to pray. But in the shadow of the cross, hours before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed a lengthy prayer that his disciples heard, and we too have the privilege of hearing.
What does a man pray before facing his own death? Perhaps he prays for mercy. Jesus would do that later in the Garden prayer, but also for God’s will. Perhaps he prays for his loved ones who will be left behind to fend for themselves. Jesus does this too, and the bulk of the prayer is focused on this theme.
However, for Jesus, as he faces certain death, he prays first for God’s glory to be revealed. Before anything else, Jesus prays not for relief or reprieve or for himself in any selfish fashion, but that this event would make much of God.
How strange and yet how marvelous. What does it mean for God to be glorified in the death of Christ? What does it mean for us who follow Jesus to imitate this attitude?
1. The time has come to be glorified
This prayer of Jesus is part of a sequence of events beginning back in John 13. From this point on in John’s gospel, eight chapters will tell us what happened in the hours leading up to Jesus’ death.
Jesus wanted to celebrate a meal with his disciples as was the custom of the time. John writes, “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father” (John 13:1a).
Then Jesus gets up from the meal, perhaps in the middle of it, and takes on the role of a servant washing his disciples’ feet. Then he predicts Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial. Somewhere in the course of the evening Jesus teaches them about the coming of the Holy Spirit and what he will do when he comes.
At the end of chapter 14, Jesus concludes the teaching saying, “Come now; let us leave” (14:31). Where are they going? Leaving the Upper Room and the Passover supper they had just shared, Jesus led his little group back to their camping spot. Since they were not from Jerusalem it is likely that they had rented the so-called “Upper Room” which is why they were camped out in the olive grove.
On their way back to the site Jesus continues to teach them about the Holy Spirit and other things to come. It must have been a bit of a walk since Jesus is able to tell them a great deal and answer questions as well.
Suddenly Jesus begins to pray in their hearing. Obviously he wanted them to know what he was going to pray. Perhaps it was a way of blessing them before the big event. Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the time has come…” (17:1).
It is amazing to me how perceptive Jesus was of the events in his life. He knew what was going to take place, even how it would take place. Of course, we say, he is God. Yet his humanity was one hundred percent a part of his reality too. We scarcely know what is going to happen to us. Jesus knew perfectly how his life would play out and in what timing.
Early in his ministry, even before his ministry began, his mother wanted him to help out the hosts at a wedding he was attending. Mary said to him, “They have no more wine” (2:3). Jesus’ reply was akin to “what do you want me to do about it?” Actually, he said, “My time has not yet come” (2:4), suggesting that somehow this miracle of turning water into wine was a bit too revealing.
Contrast this foreknowledge with the beginning of this prayer and we see that between the Father and the Son, time is in their hands. How many times did people want to kill Jesus and he replied, “Not yet…this is not the time”? Now Jesus declares “the time has come.” It’s in his power, his authority, and his carefully directed control of the events that he should die.
This was his plan from the beginning. Make no mistake about this, the tragedy of killing the Son of God, God made flesh, was planned long ago in ancient times, before the world began.
“Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (17:1b).
You know what he’s talking about here, right? The cross! Glorify your Son on the cross. In street language we would say, “That’s messed up.” That’s psychologically sick in the world’s perspective. How does the death of my son make me look good? What glory is there in giving up one’s own flesh and blood on a gruesome cross?
John’s gospel talks endlessly about God’s glory. Connected to God’s glory, Jesus constantly refers to the cross as the being the vehicle through which God is glorified.
So it is appropriate that Jesus would pray in the shadow of the cross, “Dad, get your glory on! Let’s do this thing.”
What is the glory of God on the cross?
2. The Glories of the Cross
There are three glories of the cross in this passage. How do we see the glory of Christ revealed on the cross?
a) Making known eternal life – When we think of eternal life we think of life after death. This is our hope as Christians as we face death in our later years, or as loved ones die suddenly who have known the Lord.
Three different ways in the past weeks I have been surprised at how little people think of eternal life, or life after death. At his evangelistic crusades Billy Graham used to ask, “If you were to die tonight do you know where you would end up?” That question used to scare us into making a decision for Christ. Today that question is the wrong question it seems.
- In talking to someone recently I asked him if he thought about what would happen if he died. He didn’t seem concerned.
- In a video about abortion an interviewer asked several young people about heaven and hell. The answers ranged from indifference to flippancy that hell was a party.
- In a magazine, Christianity Today, the question arose again and for many the prospect of life after death was seemingly irrelevant for them.
Perhaps if the question is about life now and life later, most people are concerned about what happens right now in their lives. Eternity is just too far away. So does eternal life matter?
Jesus prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (17:3).
Here is the definition of eternal life – knowing God. Eternal life is not so much everlasting life as it is knowledge of the Everlasting One. We were created to experience this and when we don’t have God we are unsatisfied. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” We have that God-shaped hole in our lives that only he can fill.
“If one defines eternal life in terms of “knowing God,” then one can hardly think of eternal life in static terms, but rather in dynamic terms. Eternal life is not just a moment in time when one trusts in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Eternal life begins with the moment of salvation and continues throughout eternity, as one comes to know God. And since God is infinite, infinitely wise, infinitely loving, gracious, and so on, then we will never come to know Him fully in this life. Thus, it will take all eternity to know Him fully. This is why we are not only called to faith, but also to discipleship. We must trust Him for our salvation, and we must follow Him as His disciples.”[i]
We have eternal life now. Eternal life is knowing God. And knowing God takes us into eternity. So the right question to ask is “Do you know God?”
b) Completing the Work – The second glory we see in the cross is in the perfect obedience of Christ.
Jesus prayed, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (17:4). What work is Jesus talking about?
The interesting feature of this passage is its structure. While we tend to think in linear thought – one thing following another (1,2,3…or a,b,c) – John’s thought was circular. That’s how most of the biblical writers wrote – in circles. We call this a chiastic structure. So these five verses are circular in thinking (see diagram) which means the beginning thought comes around in the conclusion.
When Jesus says he completed the work in v. 4 we need only to look back to v. 2 for clarity. What was the work Jesus completed? “For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him” (17:2). The work was “giving eternal life;” eternal life is then explained in the next verse.
Earlier in this gospel Jesus declared, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (6:29). If, as we said earlier, that eternal life is knowing God, and Jesus is God as this gospel of John states, then our coming to a place of faith and trust in Jesus is the signal that his work is effective and complete.
On the cross, while Jesus was dying, he spoke his last words, “It is finished” (19:30). The word “finished” means to “bring to completion.” On the cross Jesus finished the work of bringing eternal life to all who would believe.
This work is the life of perfect obedience from birth to death in the person of Jesus. He was perfectly righteous, perfectly compliant, and perfectly obedient to the Father’s plan. It had to be this way. If Jesus had not gone all the way to the cross then God’s love would be imperfect and there would be a limit as to how far God would go for the sake of love. The glory of the Cross then is that there is nothing God would not do in Christ for love and to redeem those he calls his own.
c) Revealing his true identity – Now Jesus in his prayer returns to his opening theme of glory.
Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (17:5). This echoes his first words of prayer, “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (17:2).
If we can put this in different words I would say it this way, “Reveal your Son, so that your Son can reveal you.”
The glory of the cross is that it reveals God in the person of the Son. John began this gospel by saying, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14b). And later in this gospel Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9b).
What we see on the cross then is Father and Son in complete harmony. The Son obeyed the Father by dying for the sins of humankind thereby acting as a perfect representative of the Father. What the Father commands the Son does. What the Son does tells us everything about the Father. Who the Son essentially is, is the Heavenly Father in the flesh.
What Jesus prays for is this revelation of the glory like the Father’s which Jesus had before the creation of the world. For the Father’s glory and the Son’s glory are the same. Jesus set aside his glory to put on flesh and dwell as one of us. But now, for our benefit, Jesus wanted us to see that on the cross God died for humankind. His full glory would be seen after the resurrection in visual form, but it is his love and righteousness that we see spiritually on the cross.
Some cannot see this. Paul said, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the glory of Christ who is the image of God…For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4&6).
The eyes of the world at large still cannot see that God was on the cross. They still believe they killed a man from Nazareth, a good teacher, a prophet perhaps, and nothing more.
You see him and you know him and you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. This all may seem elementary to you at times but it is extremely confounding to those who have no faith. You know that Jesus is God. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” (Heb 1:3).
Therefore, the glory of the cross is that the very person of God, Jesus Christ, reveals the character, power, passion, and purpose of God. God is love. The cross will forever be the revelation of that glory for us.
Glory is a dominant word in this text. It is not a dominant theme in our daily toil however. What is our response to the glory of God as we have studied it?
Let me ask another question:
What would Jesus do? That has been a catch-phrase for over a century. It’s a good question in terms of decisions and choices in life. What would Jesus do?
Jesus would do what brings glory to the Father. What do we mean when we say that? I believe we bring glory to God when we remember that as His children we represent him to others. What we do as Christians reflects our God. Our goal then is to weigh carefully the actions, words and impressions we leave with others. Or even if we are not being watched under the world’s microscope, we want to bring glory to God by what we do in private too.
Do you agonize over some decision in your life? Are you seeking to know the will of God in some particular matter? Our first response should be to ask a simple question: “Will it glorify God?” The answer to this question just might provide you with much of the guidance you are seeking.
What would Jesus pray? He would pray for the glory of God to be revealed in his life. That is our prayer too. When we pray we have our lists and our requests. But do we seek the glory of God first? Put this at the head of your prayers when you pray: Glorify yourself in me. Or if you prefer, “Reveal yourself in me so that others may know you through me.”
Consider Paul’s prayer a guideline in this respect: “With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 1:11-12). AMEN
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