Jesus Prays for All Believers

20 “I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in me because of their message. 21 I pray that they may all be one. Father! May they be in us, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they be one, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 22 I gave them the same glory you gave me, so that they may be one, just as you and I are one: 23 I in them and you in me, so that they may be completely one, in order that the world may know that you sent me and that you love them as you love me.”
In his extraordinary prayer in John 17, Jesus begins with his own eternal and purpose-driven relationship with His Father. What he knows and has experienced in that relationship is a gift he gives his disciples, his friends. In the last part of his prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed: “that they may be one, just as you and I are one: I in them and you in me, so that they may be completely one…”
And why is this so important? So necessary? Because if Christian brothers and sisters can’t get along, can’t pray and serve together, don’t have bridges for the widest chasms of difference, the world around us will simply dismiss us and our “religion” as irrelevant.
But when we are one with each other, in the same way that Jesus is one with the Father, then the world will know that the Father has sent Jesus. The world will know that Jesus has brought us into a new reality, a new creation, a new way to live and love that’s utterly transcendent and transformational. It’s what the world longs for.

Prayer

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the One true God, you dwell in eternal love. You have created us in your image, male and female, individuals with remarkable differences. Yet in you, Jesus, there are no divisive ethnic and economic differences—no Jews and Gentiles, no slaves of the market place, no rich, no poor. No divisive gender differences, not male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. Jesus, in your work on the Cross you have destroyed the dividing walls of hostility and made us one. Amen.

Going Deeper

When you see others, do you see them as objects of God’s love? Does God love them as much as he loves you? Or do you have something in your life that makes God love you a little more than he loves them? Ponder this: God loves the ones you hate more than you love the ones you love. In John 17, Jesus is praying for you. What is it in you that may be preventing his prayer from being answered?