25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
INTRODUCTION
One aspect of good preaching is that the tone of the sermon will match the tone of the text. Hopeful passages should be preached hopefully. Passages of condemnation should be preached somberly; not as if we don’t know that Jesus is victorious, but in such a way that helps us best see what He gained victory over. Passages calling for specific action should be preached admonishingly. You get the idea.
What, then, is the tone of this passage? To really grasp it, we need to remember the backdrop. All of John 17 records Jesus praying to His Father in heaven. He was praying by Himself, but His faithful followers were within earshot. Jesus prayed fully aware of the fact that in a matter of mere moments, He will be betrayed and arrested. He prayed this prayer fully aware of the fact that within mere hours, He will be mocked and beaten. He prayed fully aware of the fact that in less than a day, he would be crucified and killed. But He also prayed this prayer fully aware that in four days He would rise from the dead, defeating death, bringing salvation to the world, and ascending back to the place of highest glory.
The tone, therefore, is weighty and reverent, but it is also confident and personal. It is both serious and compassionate; honest and hopeful; grave and peaceful. To preach well on these two verses, then, we all ought to consider the content with heavy, but hopeful hearts.
The content is the last few words of Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer”. He began, you may remember, by praying for Himself (17:1-5). He then quickly focused His prayers on His present (6-19) and future followers (20-24). In this final section of His prayer, Jesus turned His attention back to Himself and His relationship with the Father, His disciples, and the world. Here, once again, Jesus concluded by sharing His heart and mind with His “righteous Father” concerning His fulfillment of His time on earth. Jesus makes no requests in these two verses. He merely acknowledges certain truths that are critical to the next few days; critical both on earth and in heaven.
Within all of that, the big idea of our passage is that in Jesus’ life and ministry we find a perfect example of what it looks like to live fully in the light; to live fully consistently with the will and in the love of God—all the way to the end. That is, in these closing sentences of Jesus’ prayer, we can clearly see the essence of living in the light: (1) Knowing God for who He really is and what He is really like and (2) Conforming every aspect of our lives to that. In His prayer, Jesus acknowledged that He did that and taught His followers to do so as well, and both in order that the love of God may be in us as it is in Him.
THE FATHER’S THIRD NAME
I’ve broken the sermon into four main parts. First, we’ll consider (1) the “third name” used by Jesus in His prayer. And then, in the next three parts, we’ll consider the familiar truths that (2) although the world does not know the Father, (3) Jesus does, and (4) so do His true followers. First, the “third name.”
I’ve noticed that in general we don’t think a lot about the power of naming or the significance of names. For the most part, most of the people I know, including Gerri and I, name our kids based on what sounds good (and doesn’t remind us of someone we don’t like). But as you may have noticed, that’s not how things were in biblical times.
As many of the footnotes in your Bible indicate, names were given to tell part of a story (like Naomi wanting to be called Mara) or to indicate what part of a story someone would play (Like Simon’s name being changed to Peter). Biblically, names are more than what people call you, they are a declaration of who you are.
Even more significantly, the power to name is one of the most profound aspects of authority in the Bible. God alone truly possesses that power and authority, but He has also delegated it to some extent, primarily to parents.
As I’ve mentioned before, and as I should unpack at some point in an entire sermon, some of the greatest trials and tragedies in world history, as well as in the lives of individuals, especially today, come when people wrongly presume the power to name and others wrongly accept the names given by them.
Without getting too far into the weeds, the main point for us to see is that in the Bible names and naming matter a great deal. In this prayer, Jesus didn’t name God, of course, but it is significant that He uses three names for God: Father (1, 5, 21, 24), Holy Father (11), and (in our passage) Righteous Father. The significance is found in what each of the names indicates about God’s nature and relationship with Jesus.
The first name, “Father,” has two primary components. It means that Jesus is eternally begotten as the Son of God. That is significantly significant. You can read more on what that means in my sermon from June 9th. It also means that there is an indestructible bond of unity, warmth, love, purpose, and understanding between Jesus and the Father.
“Holy Father” adds an element to that. It highlights another aspect of God’s nature. Not only is He an eternal begetter and in perfect relationship with Jesus, He is also utterly unique as Father. One pastor says it like this,
“…most essentially [God’s holiness] consists in his absolute uniqueness and therefore the infinite value of his beauty and his excellence. He’s in a class by himself. He’s above all things… He’s distinct from everything that is not God, and therefore, he is of infinite and of absolute worth.” That is, He is truly set apart.
God is this in all things, but in His prayer, Jesus acknowledges that it is particularly true in His fathering. He is of infinite value in His beauty and excellence as a Father. His Fathering is of infinite worth. There are no other fathers who are like Him in the glory and splendor of their fathering. He is set apart from all common fathering.
That brings us back to our passage for this morning, and Jesus’ third name. “Father,” “Holy Father,” and, at the beginning of v.25, “Righteous Father.”
Like “holy,” “righteous” clarifies an aspect of the nature of God’s fatherhood. There is a lot of overlap between the holiness of God’s fathering and its righteousness, but there is a key difference too. The same pastor I quoted earlier notes that important difference.
“Righteousness doesn’t have the basic idea of being separate and distinct from what is common. Righteousness has the basic idea of conforming to a standard. When that standard is conformed to, the behavior, the thinking, the feeling is right — it’s righteous.”
God’s holiness is what makes Him righteous. It is because God is above all in glory and power and splendor and wisdom—His holiness—that He is the standard by which all things are measured—His righteousness.
He is the righteous Father in that He is the perfect father and in that all other fathers are meant to look to God as our example. He is the standard by which all other fathers are measured. He has everything and lacks nothing a father should have; perfectly proportioned and apportioned. He is the Father of fathers. He truly is the righteous Father.
Grace, please know, everything begins here. Everything begins with God’s name. That is, all reality is rooted in God’s nature. To get God’s name and nature wrong, is to necessarily misinterpret everything else.
Again, Jesus perfectly knew and experienced and loved God for who He is, Holy and Righteous Father. As we are about to be reminded, so did His followers in increasing measure, but the world knew none of that.
THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW THE FATHER
That leads us to the next aspect of Jesus’ prayer and the next section of this sermon. God is eternally the holy and righteous father, but the world does not see, understand, or believe that. They do not know God.
25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you…
Those who had persecuted Jesus and would soon persecute His followers, did not know God as Father. Indeed, He was not their Father in the sense Jesus prayed. And it is that lack of understanding, that sin-wrought broken relationship, that kept them of the world.
They did not know God, but, ironically the world (the Jewish leaders in particular) were supremely confident that they did. They actually believed they knew God as their holy and righteous father and that it was Jesus who was mistaken and/or lying. They were sons of the devil (8:44), but they believed Jesus was of the evil one (Matthew 9:34). They were entirely misguided, but they believed Jesus was the confused one.
Those who most adamantly rejected Jesus were close in many ways, but off in the most crucial one. They believed they knew God, but when Jesus, God’s own Son stood in front of them teaching, preaching, and doing the works of the Father, they proved they were mistaken by not recognizing Him and despising all that He did.
As Jesus said many times, to know the Son is to know the Father and to know the Father is to know the Son. And, conversely, to not know the Son is to not know the Father and to not know the Father is to not know the Son.
One of the more significant passages for me over the past 10 years has been 1 Corinthians 4:4, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.” Confidence and zeal are not necessarily connected to truth. Let that stir up humility in you, Grace.
JESUS KNOWS THE FATHER
Although the world does not know the Father, Jesus most certainly does.
25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you…
To know someone is to understand who they are, what they want, how they function, what motivates them, where they’re headed, and where they’ve been. It is to be in tune with their gifts and limits, their joys and sorrows, their likes and dislikes. It is to recognize their voice and their frame.
At the same time, knowing someone involves more than merely knowing these things about them. Because of the internet, we can know most of those things about almost every public figure, but that’s different than knowing them. To truly know someone is to experience the things we know about them, with them.
That’s what makes marriage so special. It is designed by God to be the place on earth that you are most fully know and most fully know. That’s why physical intimacy within marriage is euphemistically called “knowing” your spouse; for it is the place in which all of your knowledge about your spouse is meant to come together in the fullest sense.
The world possessed much knowledge about God, but they did not experience the things they knew with God. In the most meaningful way, they did not know Him.
And yet, even though the world did not know the Father, Jesus most certainly did. He perfectly knew the Father eternally. That is, He is perfectly and eternally one in mind, heart, and essence with the Father. Within the godhead—Father, Son and Spirit—there is perfect knowledge of one another. Nowhere else in all of creation do two people know one another more than the Son and the Father.
JESUS’ FOLLOWERS KNOW THE FATHER
What’s truly staggering, therefore, is the next part of Jesus’ prayer and this sermon; namely, that we are invited into this knowing and being known by God.
Jesus said it like this at the beginning of His prayer (v.3), “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 13(:12), “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
Grace, once again, knowing God is the beginning and heart of rationality and wisdom. It is also the very beginning and heart of what it means to be a Christian. And it is the very beginning and heart of the greatest treasure and the blessing of heaven. Ask the Lord to make this clear and amazing and desirable to you above all other things. Seek it with all you have. Sell everything to get it. If you are trusting in Him, He has and is and forever will answer that prayer and cause you to find what you seek.
In those ways, it is not an overstatement or oversimplification to say that knowing God is the chief end of man, for to truly know God is to glorify and enjoy Him forever. And in Jesus’ prayer we find that this is true of His followers.
Grace, you can know God in the fullest possible sense, even as you are known by God in the fullest possible sense. Praise God for this.
That brings up an interesting couple of questions, though. When Jesus describes the disciples as knowing God, we’re right to wonder what they know about the Father and how do they know it.
Of course, Jesus didn’t mean that His followers could believe whatever they wanted about God. They were certainly not free to concoct their own doctrine and “know” that about God—that’s what the world did. At the same time, He certainly didn’t mean that they knew everything about God either. No one, but the Son and Spirit, can know everything about the Father, for He is infinite and we are finite.
But that just brings us back to the original question. When Jesus describes His disciples as knowing God, what did they know about the Father and how did they know it? In this prayer alone, we see that the disciples of Jesus knew at least four things about the Father and they knew those things from one primary source.
They Know that Jesus Was Sent by the Father
The first thing to see concerning the disciples’ knowledge of the Father is a familiar one, they knew that the Father sent Jesus into the world and they experienced that in awesome ways.
25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
That means, as we saw earlier, that the disciples were fully convinced that in every way, Jesus was doing the Father’s work, according to the Father’s will, and for the Father’s glory. There was no confusion in Jesus’ true followers concerning the fact that Jesus stood before them representing the Father in all He said and did. Jesus’ words were the Father’s words. Jesus’ actions were all to accomplish the Father’s purposes.
Knowing that the Father sent Jesus meant that they knew that to follow Jesus was to follow God, to honor Jesus was to honor God, to love Jesus was to love God, to believe, obey, and imitate Jesus was to believe, obey, and imitate God.
Grace, to be a Christian is to know these things. It is to understand and believe that Jesus was sent to earth, by His holy and righteous Father to save us from our sins, to defeat death, and to bring in the kingdom of God. It is to know that Jesus was sent by the Father as the way, truth, and life. And to know these things is to trust in them and celebrate the Father and Son for accomplishing them in love; which leads to the next thing that Jesus’ prayer reveals about what the disciples knew about the Father.
They Know that the Father Loves Jesus
Jesus followers not only know that Jesus was sent by the Father, but they know that the sending and the going were in love.
26 … that the love with which you have loved me…
Far from a selfish sending or a cold obedience, both were done in infinite love.
On my best days as a kid, I would do what my parents told me to do, but I’d almost always do it without really believing it was for my good. Therefore, even when I did obey, I rarely did so with a happy heart. I knew my parents loved me, but I typically saw that as disconnected from what they expected and required of me. I’m sure their experience was similar. I know they knew I loved them, but it was probably pretty hard to see in the way I responded to their “sending” me to do anything.
Again, however, that was never the case for the Father and Son. In every instance, both knew and felt and shared perfect love for and from one another. Every command and obedience was given and performed in absolute and mutual certainty of its rightness and goodness. And the disciples knew this love between Father and Son.
More specifically, they knew that the love between Father and Son was such that all Jesus had done was the will of His Father and that the will of His Father was always for the absolute highest glory and good of the Son; that it was always willed in perfect love—even in every mockery, denial, betrayal, rejection, and scorn that Jesus was about to face. And even in Jesus’ betrayal, torture, crucifixion, and death.
They Know that the Father Loves Them
Equally so, the mutual and eternal love of Father and Son for one another poured out onto Jesus followers as well, and they knew that love. That’s the heart of the middle of v.26
26 … that the love with which you have loved me may be in them…
And that’s the heart of the most famous passage of all (John 3:16), “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Grace, Jesus came to earth in the love of the Father, to accomplish the salvation of the world, and His followers had come to know and experience that love as well. Those who trust in Jesus know the saving, redeeming, perfect love of the Father.
If you are a follower of Jesus, the Father loves you with the love with which He loves Jesus. Let me say that again, if you are a Christian, the Father loves you, continually, perfectly, and forever with the same love with which He loves His Son.
I wonder how much more freedom and unity and peace and contentment and courage and obedience we’d have if we really believed this. It’s true. God’s Word is clear. We know it conceptually, but we often forget or reject that and so we are anxious and fearful and selfish and confused and trapped and discontent and disobedient. If your hope is in Jesus, would you spend some time this week considering the nature of God’s love for you and asking the Spirit to help you live more fully in light of it?
They Know that Jesus is “In Them”
Finally, Jesus returned in His prayer to the reality that just as the love of God was in Him and His followers, Jesus Himself abided in His followers and they knew it.
26 … that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Though the world does not know the Father, Jesus does and so do His followers. In particular, they know that Jesus was sent by the Father, that the Father loves Jesus, that the Father loves them with that same love, and they know that Jesus is in them, abiding in them in friendship, imputing His righteousness to them, reminding them of the will of God, convicting them of sin, convincing them of His love for them, and persevering them in their faith. Indeed, He promised to be with them—in them—always, even to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
All of this leads to the final part of the sermon and a critical question.
They Know these things Because Jesus Made and Continues to Make these things Known
Jesus revealed in His prayer that His followers are defined, in part, by the fact that they truly know these things. But we ought to ask, how do they know them when the world didn’t?
We find the answer at the beginning of v.26.
26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known…
They know these things because of the revelation and continued revelation of Jesus. Jesus told the disciples all of this while He was with them and the Spirit would continue to remind them of these things and more (16:9-11) after the Son was gone.
We saw earlier that one of the most significant truths in all of reality is that all true understanding begins with the nature of God. Here we see another of the most significant truths: We can only know about God the things God has chosen to reveal about Himself.
In the broadest sense, God reveals Himself in His creation. Of this, Paul writes, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:19-20).
In a narrower sense, God has revealed Himself in His Word. All that He requires of us has been handed down to us in the Bible.
The fact remains, however, that countless billions have experienced creation and have had access to His word and yet continued in disbelief. In the most significant sense, therefore, which John has pointed out over and over in his Gospel, is that we can only know about God the things God has chosen to reveal about Himself in a supernatural, regenerating way. We need Jesus (through the Spirit He sent) to give us eyes to see and ears to hear or neither creation nor the Word of God will make any sense to us.
John 3:3 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 1:13 …who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.
This is still the case today, Grace. We can only know the things of God because God has chosen to reveal them to us; in creation, the Bible, and ultimately in the regenerating work of the Spirit. At the same time, if you will humble yourself and seek the sovereign grace of God, you will find it. May it be so among us.
CONCLUSION
These two verses mark the close of Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” (ch.17) as well as His “Fairwell Discourse” (ch.13-17). Now more than ever, in closing, it’s important for us to situate the prayer of John 17:25-26 in its larger context. In simplest and clearest terms, the entire history of the world has been funneling toward this point in time. Everything before pointed and was moving toward the events of the next few hours.
As we move into the final section of John’s Gospel, then, may God grant us the grace of seeing, understanding, believing, and celebrating the love of God displayed in the giving of His Son for the salvation of the world that would not and could not otherwise know Him. All glory to God forever.