“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7
Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.8
For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10
All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11
And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12
While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.13
But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14
I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15
I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18
As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19
And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Jesus is in prayer and is about to make certain requests of his Father on behalf of His disciples. He begins by making clear that He was praying for them specifically
and then why He was praying for them specifically. The disciples were part of the mass of sinful humanity, the world – just as sinful as the rest. But they were also chosen of the Father and had been given to the Son before Jesus ever came into
the world. To these few, Jesus revealed the Father and they responded in faith and obedience to his Word. Remember what Jesus had said earlier: “All that the Father gives me will come to me…” This is not the only place, by the way, where faith is
described as obedience in the New Testament. All people are obliged to believe the truth, to refuse to do so is not an honest mistake but an act of rebellion.
What we have revealed here is the difference between the church and the world and the opposition of the world to the church. This is world as John uses it
over and over again in his gospel: John means world as a term indicating the sinful mass of humanity in rebellion against God. There are no believers, no Christians in the world in this sense. Because, to become a Christian one must leave the world,
that is to leave the company or category of those who are in rebellion against God .
In order to live forever, someone must be called out of the world. That happens only if God the Father has given that person to the Son to save. Once a person
humbles themselves and submits to the Lord Jesus Christ, he or she lives in the world but no longer belongs TO the world. This person might even find that the world, those still in rebellion against God and His Christ, hates them simply because they have rejected
the world to follow the Savior. There is a vast gulf fixed between the true Christian church and the world. And even as we Christians leave the world we still have to live in it and make our lives in the midst of many folks who are still in rebellion against
the Lord. Christ’s prayer, in effect, is that the Father would enable his disciples to live in the world while not being of the world, to endure its scorn while still seeking to save it in Christ’s name. Or as so many like to say, “we are in the world but
not of the world.”
That is all very fine, but it is not as easy as all of that. For example, the world seemed at first to love Jesus. It crowded around him and sang his praises. Only
at the last did the folks reveal what was truly in their hearts.
And, in the same way, it can be difficult for us today to see the chasm that separates the true followers of Christ from the world. Sight seems to teach us that we
are as much in the world and of the world as anyone else. As one pastor put it: We look like the people of the world, we speak in many ways like them, we work as they do, live in similar homes, eat the same food, work at the same jobs, even entertain ourselves
with the same diversions. It is hard to believe and to remember that there are, really, these two warring kingdoms, these two utterly incompatible communities, and that a real Christian has no share at all in this world. He or she has come out of it, they
turned their backs on it, because the Father in heaven drew them out, and because the Son saved them out of the world.
We mix with people of this world quite easily. We have so much in common with those that John would say are ‘of the world.’ We even have some of those folks that we
admire, they are talented, they make us laugh, they actually do things that benefit other people. And if we are being honest, there are Christian folks who are much less admirable than many non-Christians we know! It isn’t for nothing that someone said that
“Christians are an acquired taste.” Many of them are frankly less impressive and less pleasing to us than some folk who belong to the world.
The Lord makes a point of mentioning Judas in verse 13 to remind us that not only does the church mix with the world, but sometimes the world mixes with the church!
Making it even more difficult to see the difference between the world and the church are those men and women of the world who live in the church and are taken by us to belong to her. For most of these years the world was among the twelve disciples in the
person of Judas and they didn’t know it or recognize it.
When Jesus says, in v. 14 that he was not “of the world” and that we who follow him are not either, He does not mean that He did not have association with the world,
that He did not have friendship with people of the world, and was not always trying to win the world. Rather, He means only that he did not partake of their unbelieving spirit and did not live by their principle of rebellion against God.
This is not a call for Christians to circle the wagons and live unto ourselves as if the world did not exist and as if we have no responsibility to the world. We,
like our Savior and like He prayed for us are not to be partakers of the unbelief that so characterizes those with the Savior. It is not easy to live among people who do not believe in Christ and who do not live their lives in submission to him while being
ourselves people whose entire life and living is dominated by our faith in and loyalty to the Lord Christ…but that is the entire point of the prayer and why Jesus is praying for His disciples…because temptations are everywhere! The grace and help and power
of God will be necessary if we are to live in the world without being of the world, if we are to be protected from the world while attempting to win the world and that is precisely why Jesus is praying this for His followers.
Look at your life. I guarantee you, if you are an earnest Christian, you will find rebuke, and summons and encouragement all compact in your Savior’s prayer.The rebuke
will come from this perfectly clear picture of what a Christian is to be and to do. Who among us is ready to say that he or she has lived in the world without being compromised by the world? Which one of us can say that as Christians we have not at times been
deceived, taken in by the allurements of the world or drawn away by the world from the true purpose of our lives? Who here is not rebuked by the way in which the Savior describes us as out of the world, not of the world, though in the world, and sent to the
world? Who here feels that that is a fully accurate description of himself or herself? If you are a Christian it is a description of you, to be sure, but how well have we lived up to that description? That is the question and in that is the rebuke.
The summons will come to us as we see how we are called to live so distinctly from those in rebellion against the Lord. But also, we see clearly our calling to be
the church distinct for the sake of the world! They are to see, hear and feel deeply the difference between themselves and those who are the Bride of Christ.
The encouragement should come to us that precisely because the Lord knows the difficulty of living as we have been called, that He prayed for us then and continues
to pray for us now. And of course, the Father will hear and answer His beloved Son, who was and continues to be so incredibly faithful to all that the Lord called Him to do and be. We are being prayed for, that we would have faith, endurance and power to and
for the Lord’s purposes and we are being prayed for by our Savior, God the Son!
This is what makes our life in the world one of joy, celebration and hope. We enjoy all the good that the creation was made to be and yet we are distinct from what
those still in sin want and desire and the Lord’s prayer for us is our confidence.
Prayer: Father, help me to see clearly who I am as well as my purpose that I would not be taken captive to the world’s wisdom, allure and power. Give me grace to
see my purpose in confronting the world with the claims of the Savior and living my life in joy and celebration that I am no longer in rebellion against my kind Father and that my Savior promises my full deliverance, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: Christ for the World We Sing
1 Christ for the world we sing;
the world to Christ we bring
with loving zeal:
the poor and them that mourn,
the faint and overborne,
sin-sick and sorrow worn,
whom Christ doth heal.
2 Christ for the world we sing;
the world to Christ we bring
with fervent pray’r:
the wayward and the lost,
by restless passions tossed,
redeemed at countless cost
from dark despair.
3 Christ for the world we sing;
the world to Christ we bring
with one accord:
with us the work to share,
with us reproach to dare,
with us the cross to bear,
for Christ our Lord.
4 Christ for the world we sing;
the world to Christ we bring
with joyful song:
the newborn souls whose days,
reclaimed from error’s ways,
inspired with hope and praise,
to Christ belong.