The communion of the Lord Jesus with His Father in heaven was unclouded and constant. Specific instances of Jesus' praying are mentioned always for some special reason. When face to face with a crisis in His work and career, we see Him praying. Thus, when He came up out of the waters of baptism, as Luke tells us, He came up praying (Luke 3:21). When He must choose His apostles, He spent all the night before in prayer (Luke 6). At Caesarea Philippi, before putting the great decisive question to His disciples (Matt. 16:13-20; Luke 9:18-20) He prayed. On the mount of Transfiguration, where the great demonstration of His power, His coming, His majesty, honor and glory was to take place (2 Peter 1:16-18) He prayed, "He went up into the mountain to pray;" and "as he was praying he was transfigured before them."

      "Intercession" is prayer on behalf of others. The outstanding Old Testament example is the intercession of Moses on behalf of guilty Israel who had brought condemnation on themselves by flagrantly breaking the solemn covenant which had been ratified only six weeks before, when they made and worshipped the golden calf. It is evident that but for Moses' prayer on their behalf, the whole nation would have been consumed in the fire of the wrath of God. He said to Moses, "Go get thee down, for thy people that thou broughtest up out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed unto it. . . . And Jehovah said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold it is a stiffnecked people; now therefore let me consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation" (Exod. 32:7-10). Moses' quick ear caught the invitation implied in this speech. 'The fate of the nation, he saw, depended upon him: if he would "let God alone," their doom was sealed. Instantly he set himself not to let Him alone (Ps. 106:23). When judgment is due and there is no intercessor--when no man qualified and acceptable to stand before God could be found to avert that judgment, the judgment must fall (Isa. 63:5, 6; Ezek. 22:30, 31). Moses had access to God. "Thou hast found favor in my sight, and I know thee by name" (Exod. 33:17). And he pressed more and more for a perfect knowledge of God in order that his intercession might be right and effective (Exod. 33:13, 18). How much the intercession of Moses for his people availed, how he not only saved them from destruction, but step by step regained for them all their forfeited privileges will be seen in the narration of Exod. 32-34. [52]

      If the intercession of Moses availed wonderfully--how much more should not the intercession of the Son of God avail when He lifts up His prayer before the Father's throne on behalf of His people? "Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." (Heb. 7:25.)

      One instance of Christ's intercession for His own while on earth is found in Luke 22:31, 32: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren."

      The hour and power of darkness was near at hand. Satan had gone in before God (comp. Job 1, 2) and had asked to have Christ's disciples that he might "sift them as wheat." The demand was not refused. ("Satan has obtained you by asking." R. V. margin.) The Lord Jesus, foreseeing the test and trial that was about to befall His disciples, prayed most particularly for one of them--the key-man, against whom He knew Satan would launch his fiercest attack. For Simon especially did He make supplication: not that he should not be sifted and tried; nor even that he should not fall, but that his faith fail not. Simon (he didn't call him Peter this time) did fall badly. Under the ruin of such a failure, a man might easily lose all hope and sink into spiritual paralysis and despair. But there was the intercession of Jesus. Simon rallied. His faith revived, and it was a humbler and much chastened disciple that three times confessed his loyal devotion to the risen Lord, and was reinstated that day on the shore of Lake Tiberias (John 21).

      The great prayer of John 17 is chiefly a prayer of intercession. The long-looked-for hour when the Son should be glorified had come. With holy satisfaction, the Lord Jesus reviewed His work. "I have glorified thee on the earth," He said to His Father, "having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Then He prays, not for those only who had come to Him during His earthly ministry, but for all those who should afterward believe on Him through their word (v. 20). He prays not for the world, but for His own (v. 9). And what does He petition for them at the Father's throne? Two things:

      1. That they might be kept. "I am no more in the world, and these are in the world. . . . While I was with them I kept them in thy name, and I guarded them. . . . But now I come to thee. . . . I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one." (Vs. 11-15.) These are those whom [53] Jude calls the "kept for Jesus Christ" (Jude 1).

      2. But the object of that keeping and of all the prayer is that they might be one. Four times (five times in the King James Version) this petition recurs. "Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are" (v. 11). "That they may all be one; even as thou Father art in me and I in thee; that they also may be (one) in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them that they may be one even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me" (vs. 21-23).

      Many questions may arise here. But without attempting to answer them, let us simply observe what the Lord said in His prayer. Let us note,

      (1) Who it is that is to be thus united.
      (2) What kind of unity it is that He speaks of.
      (3) How that unity is to be effected.
      (4) What the effect of it is upon the world.

      The answer to item (1) at once eliminates the idea of a federation of religious sects and bodies, although no doubt the world would (and will) hail that as the long desired "Christian Unity." It cannot be a union of all sorts. It is the oneness of those mentioned in vs. 2, 6, 11, 14, 20--the men whom God gave Him out of the world. Only those are included in Christ's prayer.

      2. The answer to item (2) shows that the oneness contemplated is a vital and essential oneness--like that of the Father and the Son (vs. 21, 22); Christ in them, the Father in Christ, that "they may be in us" and may be "perfected into one" (vs. 21, 23). This is something more than doctrinal agreement. It evidently means more than having their names on the same church-book.

      3. In looking for the answer to item (3) we find that this unity is effected by the Father's keeping of them (v. 11), through Christ's prayer (vs. 20, 21), and by Christ's bestowing His glory upon them (v. 22).

      4. Finally--as to the effect on the world--it does not say that the world will behold the unity of Christ's people, and will thereby be convinced of the Divine mission of Jesus Christ. That has never been the case, nor ever can be. The eyes of the world will not behold such a unity. So long as the enemy can sow tares among the wheat, so long as there are erring children of God and children of the devil mingled in the congregation of Christ, some division is [54] inevitable (1 Cor. 11:19). It was so in the days of the apostles. "They went out from its," says John, "but they were not of us," (1 John 2:19). There was division. The world would not be able to judge between the one side and the other. The world would look on and say that "they are divided among themselves." More evil than those who went out, were those who "crept in" (Jude 4)--"false brethren, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 2:4). And these cause division. Nor does the inspired apostle hold out better prospects for the future. "I know that after my departure grievous wolves shall enter in, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:29, 30).

      Far from justifying the divided state of Christendom--these passages are given simply to set forth the facts as they have been, are now, and will be, until "the time of the harvest." Never till then will the world see the spectacle of the church united in Christ Jesus, in such a unity as the Lord described and prayed for. But if so, how can the world be brought, by the oneness of Christ's people, to believe that God has sent Him? Not by seeing their unity, but by the spiritual force and power of those, be they few or many, who are thus united one with another and with Christ.

      In this unity, every faithful child of God can and ought to have a share. Into this we must enter, for this we must work and strive. And whether they be few or many, the Lord knoweth them that are His. Those who maintain this ground in faith and love are in God's sight united, whatever may be the respective pretensions of prestige or number of the sects and parties of Christendom.

      Two other features of the great prayer we must note, both concerned with the men whom the Father had given Him.

      (1) They were chosen and called out of the world--"sanctified"--i. e. separated and set apart from the world unto God. The words which the Father had given the Son, He gave to them (v. 8). The immediate result was that the world hated them because (by the reception of the word) they were set apart from the world: "they are not of the world even as I am not of the world" (v. 14). Yet He prays not that the Father take them out of the world: He has a work for them in the world. "As thou didst send me into the world so sent I them into the world" (v. 18, see also 20:21).

      (2) The great work of Jesus toward His disciples was to reveal the Father to them (John 1:18). "I have made known unto them thy Name." That work was not finished, for He goes on to [55] say, "I will make it known." The outcome of this gracious work would be twofold: (1) that "the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them;" and (2) that "I (may be) in them." (v. 26. Comp. Eph. 3:14-19.)

      His love for His own is such that the present absence cannot endure forever. "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world" (v. 24). The full, final fulfillment of this petition is seen in 1 Thess. 4:14-17.

      Because the attitude of prayer is the attitude of humble dependence upon God and a man's acknowledgment of his own emptiness and inability, and represents his coming to God to be supplied out of God's infinite fullness, therefore the attitude of prayer is fit and proper and becoming to man. It is in the Gospel of Luke that the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ is most especially emphasized. It is in Luke who occupies himself specially with Christ's mother, the miraculous conception, Christ's birth, his childhood, his natural growth and development; who relates the one incident of His boyhood that is given. In short, Luke treats on His human descent and humanity. The Gospel of Luke is the gospel of the Son of man. It is eminently fit, there, that Luke should also be the one to tell us most of the prayer life of our Lord; for as man ("in the days of his flesh"--Heb. 5:7) it behooved him to walk in constant and humble dependence on the Father, and therefore, to pray. He came up praying from the water of baptism. (Luke 5:16.) And as if it were directly the result of that night's earnest communion with God, it is stated a few verses below: "All the multitude sought to touch him; for power came forth from him, and healed them all." (Verse 19.)

      It is Luke alone that records that on the occasion of the memorable question, and Peter's great reply. "He was praying apart" (Luke 9:18), and that His direct purpose in going up into that exceeding high mountain was "to pray"; and that "as he was praying" the fashion of His countenance was altered and His raiment became white and dazzling. In all of the Gospels His prayer life is touched upon--how He prayed all night, or "at even," or in the morning "a great while before day"; but in Luke most abundantly. For Jesus the Lord, having emptied himself and taken upon himself the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and took a man's place, which is the place of obedience and service, of dependence on and communion with God, filling His emptiness from the Source of all power and grace. [56]

[CTOP 52-56]