Co-Lovers with Him of One Another

We're going to continue today is a second part in this well-known chapter.

And we're going to look at verses 20 through 26, or at least that will be the scripture reading.

John 17, verses 20 through 26.

John 17:20–26

Jesus is praying here, and we're kind of diving into the middle of this prayer.

But he says, beginning in verse twenty to his father, I do not ask for these only, for my disciples only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.

The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and love them even as you loved me.

Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, even though the world doesn't know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.

I made known to them your name, and will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Here ends the reading of God's Word.

Well, as we uh as we looked at last week, uh John chapter 17 is a very important passage in Scripture.

John 17 · chapter mention

It's one that records uh a prayer of Jesus, and one of the uh by by far the longest prayer of Jesus that we have in Scripture.

And uh as we pointed out that what makes this prayer so significant and unique is that uh here in this passage we have a glimpse, uh just a little window, into the Trinity.

For it's here we have the eternal Son of God who became flesh, Jesus Christ, praying to his Father.

And uh so there is a marvelous glimpse into the Trinity of God that is here for uh for our encouragement.

Last week we raised a question about um about the kind of being that God is, and we we really focused on this idea of does it matter whether God is a solitary single person God, uh, as many think, in fact, or whether he is, as scripture describes him, and as we see in this chapter, whether he is a union of three equally divine persons in one being, a trinity.

Um we looked at a number of different uh things last week, and we heard from a number of different authors, and here are just some glimpses of some high points from what we considered.

That the Trinity actually turns out to be not some kind of problem as hard as it is for us to get our minds wrapped around this mystery.

In fact, the Trinity is the source of all that is good in Christianity.

The triune being of God is the vital oxygen of the Christian life and joy, as uh as one author puts it.

Another put it this way: in the deepest mystery of his being, God is an intimate relationship.

He's a fellowship, he's a community of love.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are engaged, as someone else tried to just get their mind wrapped around this, they're engaged in an eternal dance.

And all of that, as amazing as it is, um, leads us to even something more amazing.

That not only is this triune God, this amazing fellowship of love, but uh, as we have considered as well, this God, at the greatest possible cost to himself, he hasn't just saved us in the sense of forgiving us, his image-bearers who have been rebels, but he's made a way for us to come into fellowship with him and to enter into the very us-ness of the Trinity and to participate in that.

And we read something of this in 2 Peter 1, for example, when Peter reminds us that we've been called to God's own glory and excellence, and that we've been made partakers of the divine nature, using exalted language to describe the amazing privilege that we have as Christians, and that the hope that is ours of being united to this trinity.

Well, today we're gonna build on that.

That has to be in place to some degree, but we're gonna build on that and um return to John 17, and we're gonna ask another question.

How does the truth that God is a trinity impact how we treat one another?

It impacts our walk with God, we know that.

It impacts the hope that we have, we we have that pretty clearly laid out.

But how does the truth that God is a trinity and not a solitary God?

But that God is a loving union of three intimately equally divine persons at the center of the universe, how does that impact how we treat one another?

And so that is the question we're going to look at today.

We want to start navigating this question with um with a uh with another question.

What is the real heart cry of Jesus for his people in this prayer?

I loved what Michael Reeves in the video had to say.

He said, we get in John 17 a glimpse into the Trinity, and what are they talking about?

They're talking about us.

And uh and so we want to know what is the heart cry of Jesus for his people in this great prayer of his?

And um, were you to look into John 17 and to look through the chapter, there's a number of things that emerge here.

And uh one of the things that we see as we begin to get into this, we find that Jesus, first of all, he's praying for his people.

Um he says here specifically, he's not praying for the world.

Jesus loves the world, he came to save the world.

But in this prayer, what is on his heart here, on the eve before his arrest, and for he's heading to the cross, is his people.

That is what is on his heart, or who is on his heart.

And he wants his father to keep them in his name, he says in this prayer.

He wants his father to keep them in his character and in his power.

He wants his people to see his glory, the glory the Father had given him before the foundation of the world.

That's what's on the heart of Jesus.

He wants his people to have a joy that overflows, the very joy of Christ himself.

And he goes on to say that he wants the love which the Father had loved the Son to be in them.

These are all really very high and amazing things that's on the heart of Christ.

But Jesus makes it plain in this prayer that he doesn't want his people to just hang out in this kind of place where they come to know this amazing love that God has for them.

He doesn't want them to be maybe like some of the desert fathers of bygone centuries who went out into the desert and lived lives in isolation and just reflected and contemplated on this amazing love of God.

Jesus makes it very clear he's got other things on his mind and on his heart for his people.

He tells his father in verse 18 that he doesn't want the father to take them out of this world.

Did you notice that?

I'm not praying that they leave the world.

I'm leaving, but I don't want them to leave the world right now.

In fact, he actually prays and says that he is sending them into the world just as the Father had sent him into the world.

He goes on and he asks the Father that on this mission that they're going to be on, that he's sending them into the world with this sense, with this knowing of God and of the love that God has for them, uh, to take that out into the world, they're going to need protection from the evil one, and that they would remain people of the word.

And finally, one of the most remarkable things that uh he says here in this prayer, and he actually repeats it three times, it's in verses 13, 20, and 22.

Jesus prays that his people might be one, even as we are one.

So one of the things you learn when you're studying the Bible is that when there's repetition, there is something important, right?

And so three times in this short prayer, may they be one, even as we are one.

And he even gives a reason for this, so that the world may believe that you have sent me and love them even as you loved me.

The Lord wants his people to have a unity, he wants us to have a palpable, visible unity.

There's a lot that could be said about what is involved in that unity, right?

And how that unity can be achieved.

But I think we could say readily that the kind of unity he's talking about here goes far beyond, though it includes a core doctrinal unity.

Uh the Lord wants us to be the people of his word and to be unified in the gospel, certainly.

But he wants us to be a people who are unified in love and in character and in purpose.

And one of the ways you see that is because the very reason that he says he wants this is so that the world would know that I have loved them and that I have loved Christ and that I have sent them, that the world would know something of the character of God by watching the people of God as they interact with one another.

Another way we could actually put this, and I'm and I'm using in actually pretty much everything I've said in the past two weeks, um, have come from authors that have just blessed me.

You know, I feel like uh like a dairy farmer who's just milked a lot of cows here.

And uh I'm trying to make some butter here, and I hope I made it my own.

But but really, you know, one of the things when you get to teach, one of the things that happens is often you're on the, you know, you're kind of on the cutting edge of your own learning.

And um, you know, you have to stand up here and you have to speak like you've been digesting this for 20 years, you know, and the guy that spoke up here on the video, uh yeah, that guy has been digesting that for years.

You know, he wrote an amazing book about the Trinity, and it just flows out of him.

But uh, so anyhow, having said all that, it's just uh I love using their words, I love uh getting their milk all over my face and uh just bringing it out here to you guys.

This is how uh this is how one of them put this.

Christ is sending his people into the world to be co-lovers with the triune God of one another and of the world.

You see, it's not just that God invites us into the usness of the Trinity to be co-lovers of God, right?

We're called, we're brought in through Christ, we're joined to Christ.

And we're we're brought into the Trinity to love the Father with the love that Christ has for the Father, to love the Spirit and to love the Son with the love that the Father and the Spirit have for the Son.

And in some amazing, miraculous, divine empowerment, we are enabled to do that as believers now in a little way by faith, but then face to face and in its fullness.

But it doesn't stop there.

We're not just called to love, to be co-lovers of God with God.

We're called to be co-lovers of one another with God.

We're called to love each other with the same love that God loves his people with, and we're we're really participating in a sense with God in loving one another as we are around the throne of God.

And then God says, Wow, as this happens, there would be an amazing result that will happen as my people do this.

Is that there's going to be something compelling.

There's going to be something life-giving, something palpable in this community that is going to allure and draw people to it.

There's going to be something powerful in love.

Powerful in love that is going to have way more power to draw than mere words and to mirror right thinking, as important as those are.

When there's been a special sense of the love that God puts in our hearts for one another, and we've seen it, and we've received it, and we've tasted it, and wow, we know this is something outside of human experience.

Honestly, I had a taste of that this very week.

I've been thinking about an event that happened this week.

It was something that just, it was one of those things that God orchestrated.

It was a prayer meeting in someone's house.

And this individual asked for some leaders of the church to come and some others on really short notice to pray for someone, for a young person who is in a really hard place in their life right now and is going off to get some treatment, and a person who has struggled in their walk with God.

And a little small room full of people gathered from this church.

And I was blown away by the mood of this gathering.

This gathering was a the mood in this room was a bunch of people who had come together, who many of whom barely even know, and some of whom never even met this young person.

But they had been praying for this person for a long time because their parents had asked for it.

And there was a love for this person, a love for them, that they prosper, and that in the days ahead that God would lay hold of this person, and that they would lay hold of God, and that and that something amazing would happen, that this person would be lifted up above the stranglehold and bondage that they were in.

And to just watch what happened in this room as people loved this individual.

But you've tasted things like that as well, haven't you?

I dare say that if I wasn't a believer and I had been in that place, that, wow, I would have been drawn to God.

I would have said, there is something different happening here tonight that doesn't often happen in the gathering of God's people.

But I want to lead us on now to kind of tease this out in a more practical way.

I want to raise another question here of are we really able to do this?

Are we really able to love one another in this kind of way?

And if so, how I was uh at a concert this week and I noticed once again that uh in our public schools here, and I am thankful for this, that the kinds of things we put on the walls in our public schools, but I noticed there were there was uh these these phrases and slogans and banners that called students essentially to love each other, right?

To respect each other and to treat each other with dignity and with kindness, and just these key words up there that were calling students to love each other.

But I really got to thinking about, you know, I wonder what kind of love that really is.

And surely it's that would be a human love that they're calling students to, a kind of behavior that expects something in return, right?

That's really all we're capable of, naturally, is a love that expects something, whether it's a recognition, whether it's a benefit of some kind, but to treat people with kindness because something's going to come our way.

We'll be better for it in one way or another.

But the call to love our brothers and to be at one with them is of a different order altogether.

This is a call to love each other with no return on our investment, at least in this life.

It's a call to self-abandonment and to self-love, to selfless love.

I'd like to put just a little bit of skin on this for us as we um kind of thinking about what it what would this really look like?

What Jesus is asking us here to love one another and to be at one with each other so that the world would know that uh I have loved them.

Um I'd like to read from 1 Corinthians 13.

This is a well known love song that God gives, in which he personifies love and um he lays out in a way that shows like love is a person, actually.

With power, actually doing things in community.

And here's what he says: he says, love is patient, love is kind.

Love does not envy or boast.

It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable or resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

And you know, as you read that, you think, wow, that is a that is an amazing call to love.

But when you read that command, I wonder, is there power just in the command to enable us to actually love each other in that kind of way?

I think we sometimes slip into this as Christians.

We we put so much effort on the idea that it's our duty and obligation to love, that we somehow think that because we know it's our duty and we can go out and try to do it, that we're going to be able to do that.

And as I look at that list, I think, wow, what a colossal failure I am, and I think all of us are when it comes to actually putting these things into practice on a day-by-day basis.

Yeah, we can see here that the love God calls us to, there's an ideal here in 1 Corinthians 13.

It's given even in absolute terms, right?

But we are called to somehow practice this, but we know that there's no power just in the command.

There has to be a power from somewhere else.

And this is what Jesus really wants us to get at in John 17.

I wished I had more time here.

I'm on a short time today to flesh this out a little more deeply.

I was just thinking of that list that I read in 1 Corinthians 13.

I just picked one that struck me.

Love doesn't resent.

Love does not resent.

It doesn't keep a record of wrongs.

And I thought about the power that resentment has in my life so often.

Have you ever felt that power?

You can't get it out of your mind, the wrongs that people have done to you.

You wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

You go into the shower first thing in the morning, and it's on your mind and on your heart.

You just bring it up.

Your memory won't release it.

And why?

Well, there's a number of reasons why.

And it's a great book on this.

It's uh Lewis Smeeds wrote this book, Love Within Limits.

By all means, get this book and read it.

It's an old book, but he talks about the benefit that we have in our flesh from resentment.

There's something that makes us feel superior to the person we resent.

And we nurse that, we we nurse that grudge really deeply.

And uh we need something more than a command to let go of that resentment.

What we need is the power of love itself.

What we need is to be people who have tasted what it is to be loved by God, to be brought into the us-ness of the Trinity, to be forgiven of our sins, and to know what that is.

That's what we need to be able to be people then who can love.

And we need the Spirit of God, God Himself, who lives in us and who enables us to know this love and to actually live it out in the presence of one another.

There's only one way to conquer resentment.

There's only one way to conquer all the different aspects of unlove, and that is by love itself, by the power of the Spirit.

Well, I want to bring this to a close with, again, just some practical sense of how do you cultivate this.

We know that when we lose sight of the love that God has for us, that our love for Him grows cold.

We know that.

But it's also true that when we lose sight of the love that God has for us, that our love for one another will grow cold also.

Maybe the thing for us to do is to learn to practice envisioning one another in the very bosom of the Trinity.

Maybe the thing that we're being called to do in this passage is to realize is that God loves each of his children with an amazing, irresistible love, and that he's invited all of his children, even those that we resent, and even those that we have a hard time loving and liking and forgiving.

He's invited them into his presence, and we're called to be co-lovers of them with him.

That's the Christian life.

That is the Christian life, and there is amazing freedom in that.

Is it any wonder that the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself?

So, yes, a right understanding of the Trinity, it's a game changer for our walk with God, but it's also a game changer for how we treat one another, which in turn will either repel a watching world or will allure them to Christ.

Will you join me as I lead us in a closing prayer?

Our Father.

And yet, Lord, we're always drawn to you and how amazing it is that you love us so richly and that you've given us such a bright future.

Lord, we ask that in this congregation today, Lord, we're not looking for a highfalutin request here.

We ask, Lord, that you would do practical things, that you would reconcile young people and men and women to one another in ways that only you can do.

That you would demonstrate that love is the most powerful force in the universe and that love is stronger than evil because you are love.

Father, do a work in our midst.

We pray it in Christ's name.

Amen.