What’s in a Name? — Part Two

I invite you to turn with me, for the final time in this series, to the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John and to the twenty-sixth verse, which I will read, and then I will pray, and then we will proceed.

John 17:26, and Jesus says to the Father, “I made known to them”—that is, to his disciples, both then and later—“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.”

Our Father, we pray now that the words of our mouth—my mouth—and the meditation of each of our hearts may be found acceptable in your sight[1] as we look to your Word together. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, for those of you who have been here routinely over the weeks, you know that we have spent significant time here in what we refer to as the High Priestly Prayer. It is, of all the chapters in all of the Bible, I think, one that brings us into the intimacy of the relationship of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and does so in such a way that it is, I think, in reading John 17, a sort of “sandals off” moment. What I mean by that is when Moses encountered God in the magnificence of the burning bush, God said to him, “Take your shoes off, because the ground on which you stand is holy ground.”[2] Now, all of the Scripture, that is equally so. But for us to be taken into the secrecy, if you like, of the communion between God the Father and God the Son has proved to be of immense significance. It certainly has been for me.

We considered 26 last time. We didn’t get very far. We stopped, really, immediately in a consideration of what it means to say, “I made known to them your name,” and we tried to understand that the name of God is actually an expression of who God is and that in reality, the name of God gives to us God. We then went on to understand that Jesus says, “It is this name that I have made known to them.” And that really was all that we took time for.

The totality of the prayer, of course, is precious to us. Jesus is praying for the preservation of his own. “Keep them,” he says. If you ever wonder why it is that you’re still a Christian, it’s ’cause Jesus prayed for you, and he continues to pray for you. He keeps us. “Sanctify them,” he says. “[Father,] sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”[3] That’s why we say to one another the importance of our own personal daily dipping into the truth of the Word of God: because it is one of the means that God uses in order to conform us to the image of Jesus. Jesus is also asking that his followers will be united. He actually says it in quite dramatic terms: that we might be “perfectly one,”[4] even as he and the Father are one.[5] It’s a high and a noble calling. And then he asks that we might enjoy the privilege of sharing his glory—the glory that he, Jesus, had with the Father before the creation of the world.[6] And we might actually say that he is saying to the Father, “Father, make them one, and remind them that they will all be with me in one place”—that we’re actually moving to an eternal destination. Remember, Jesus says to the disciple, “I’m going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again.”[7]

When you think about the vastness of all of this, and you realize how immense is the doctrine of the incarnation—that God, the creator of the universe, steps down into time—that is surely, intellectually, the most difficult part of the entire theological paradigm. But once, by the enabling of the Spirit of God, we have come not only to understand that but to embrace it and to be embraced by it, then everything else almost follows automatically. It is not as hard for me to believe in the return of Jesus Christ, having believed in the arrival of Jesus Christ. It is not so difficult for me to believe that Christ would triumph over death, he himself being Lord of heaven and earth and so on.

And the vastness of John 17 is such that we could actually very helpfully—perhaps with outside help—start it all over again. Because you feel that you haven’t really done a service to it. At least I don’t. I was gratified when I read J. C. Ryle. When he came to the end of his study, he said to his congregation, How much of our grasp of this amazing chapter, he says, “is nothing better than feeble conjecture.”[8] He’s not suggesting that the passage is feeble conjecture. It is authoritative truth. He says, “But our grasp of it, our ability to interact with it,” he says, “we have only scratched the surface.”

And so, last time we began to scratch the surface. And this morning, we scratch it a little bit further. Jesus is addressing, as we saw last time, his followers. They live in a world that doesn’t know God—verse 25. They live in a world that doesn’t know God. The world does not know God. And they are actually hated by the people in the world in which they live. We noted last time, actually, John’s statement, “We know that you came from God, and we know, too, that the whole world is in the power of the evil one”[9]—that the creator of the universe is the one from whom we are alienated on account of our sin.

And that came across wonderfully well last Sunday night (those of us who had the privilege of being present) as we went in a very unique way—you can’t say “very unique”—we went in a unique way from the garden to glory. You can’t qualify unique. Okay, sorry. I’m just having my own English moment here, out loud. “You shouldn’t be doing it.” I know! But if you knew everything that goes through my head while I’m trying to get the right stuff through my mouth, then we’d be here for about three and a half days. But anyway, what I’m saying is, last Sunday night was really special. And the summation of what God has done we tried to come up with by saying, when we think about the world, the story of God’s purposes in the world: God made it; we broke it; Christ fixes it. God made it. We broke it by our sin; we’re under his judgment; we’re in rebellion against him; we’re unable to access him on our own terms or in our own time; if we’re to know God, he must come to us. And that is what he has gloriously done in the incarnation: He has stepped down into time and made himself known.

And now, in that person, we have the privilege of listening as he, the incarnate God, one with the Father and the Spirit in all of eternity, is now addressing his Father, and we might say respectfully that he has us on his mind or in his heart. And he’s explaining, “Father, I made your name known.” And then he says, “And I will continue to make it known.” And this is where we pick up.

“I will continue to make it known.” That is an interesting statement. Because Jesus now, for quite a period of time—in the chapters’ time, from 14 at least—he has been preparing the disciples for the fact that he’s going to be gone: “I’m going away. I know that you could be unsettled by this, but the fact is, I will be gone.”

“Well,” you say to yourself, “if he’s going to be gone, how is he then going to fulfill this, ‘I will continue to make his name known’? If he’s not here, how will he make his name known?” I suggest to you in three ways.

Number one: in the immediate events that follow from John 17. In the immediate events that follow, he will continue to make the name of the Father known. Now, we’ll come to this this evening in John chapter 18. But, for example, in 18:11, in response to Peter’s attempt to prevent Jesus being arrested, Jesus says to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” Now, what Jesus is doing there is he’s continuing to make the Father known. The Father takes the initiative in this respect—not to the detriment of Jesus, because the Father takes the initiative, and Jesus takes the initiative, as we will see later on. But he is making God known. In the realm of redemption, he’s about to show all the way through to the cross that God is a God of love and a God of wrath—they’re not in antagonism against one another—that God is a God of mercy, and he is a God of judgment. And he’s going to make that known. So, first: in the immediacy of what follows.

Then, secondly: in the time between the resurrection and the ascension. If you think about it: If Jesus had risen from the tomb and gone immediately to heaven, things would have been vastly different, wouldn’t they? And purposefully, that has not taken place. And in that time between his resurrection and his final departure to heaven, recorded for us at the end of the Gospels and the beginning of Acts, what does he do? He makes sure that he makes the name of the Father known.

Now, let me just give you one cross-reference for this. You needn’t follow along by turning to it, but if you take notes, you can make a note and consider it at your own leisure. You remember the story in Luke 24: The fellows are making their way to Emmaus. They’ve decided that the journey with Jesus had been an exciting journey but had pretty well, you know, hit the skids, and it was all over. Jesus draws beside them. He’s in conversation with them. He keeps himself from them. It must have been relatively humorous, I would think, because they say, “With the things that have been happening in Jerusalem…” Jesus says, “What things have been happening in Jerusalem?” And they say, “Are you the only person in Jerusalem that doesn’t know what has been happening?”[10] Now, that’s funny, at least from where I’m standing. This is irony at its very best. And then, in the context of that, Jesus says to them, you know,

“[You] foolish ones, [you’re] slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.[11]

What an unbelievable Bible study! I mean, that is the great Bible study.

And then, of course, he follows it up, as we read, when he appears to his disciples later on, and he makes the very same point: “He said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms [might] be fulfilled.’” And “then he opened their minds” so that they might “understand the Scriptures.”[12] And he was, in that, continuing to make the purposes of the Father known.

So, one: in terms of the immediacy of the events that follow. Secondly: in the time between the resurrection and the ascension. And thirdly: post-ascension—after the ascension. Because what Jesus had promised them suddenly came to light. John 15:26. “I know that you are dealing with all kinds of things,” he says, “but you need to know that the Helper is going to come.” And “when the Helper comes”—that’s the Holy Spirit—“whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”[13]

If your Bible happens to be open there, you’ll see John 16:12, where he says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” It was impossible for them to be able to process the material that Jesus could have given them. What was the missing link, if you like? It was the coming of the Holy Spirit. So, verse 13:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all … truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and … will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Incidentally and just in passing, John 16:13 is an often-misused verse in local Bible studies. And this is it. Because they read the thirteenth verse as if it was written to us. It wasn’t written to us. It was written to the apostles: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” He did that. That truth was then inscripturated in the Bible. Therefore, “He will lead you into all truth” is something that he did for the apostles in order that we might in turn have the Bible so that the truth that we know is the truth that is contained in the Bible—not that some kind of esoteric experience of discoveries of truth is unique to us all.

Now, when you go out from here and you realize how his Word will continue to be made known, the fact is that the apostles will get out into the streets of Jerusalem, and they will understand and declare what previously they hadn’t known; so that Peter, who had a grasp of some good stuff and a grasp of some stuff that he could have left alone (with which many of us can identify)—how is it that then, after Jesus has gone, he is able to stand up in the streets of Jerusalem and explain that what we read in the 118th Psalm, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”… Now, he’s teaching the Bible. He’s teaching the Old Testament. He says, “That stone is Jesus, just so you know. And there is salvation in no one else under all of heaven. It’s not possible, because that stone is Jesus himself.”[14] And when that grips the church, then they want to make that known.

When I was in Australia at the beginning of the year, in Katoomba, at the CMS Conference for, essentially, evangelical Anglicans, I was struck by the fact that their core vision, in a phrase, is simply “A world that knows Jesus.” “What are you doing with your life?” “I’m living my life in order that, to some small degree, I may contribute to seeing a world that knows Jesus”—so, in other words, to continue to do what Jesus has done: “I made known your name. I will continue to make it known.”

And then we’re told why that matters: “so that…” And this brings us to the end of the study. It doesn’t say “so that…” It simply says “that…” The inference is, therefore, “so that…” “I will continue to make it known.” To what end? “That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” “The love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

Remember, in John 13, John tells us that Jesus, “having loved his own who were [with him] in the world, he loved them to the end.”[15] Here he is, loving them all the way to the end. And the love to which he refers here in the twenty-sixth verse is not our love to God. Notice: It is God’s love to us. “That the love with which you have loved me,” he says to the Father, might “be in them, and I in them.” That is dramatic, and it’s vitally important. I’m glad it doesn’t say that “their love for you” might be the key. Because if we’re honest, our love towards God and towards one another, actually, ebbs and flows on all kinds of bases. That is not the ground of our security. That is not the basis of our understanding of things. If that was the case, we could never have sung, “I Am His, and He Is Mine”: “Loved with everlasting love.”[16]

The love that the Father has for the Son is the love that is to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

What love? The love that the Father had for the Son has been manifested in Jesus so that we might know that love—that God is love and that the greatest assurance of his love has been in sending Jesus. That’s why we read, again, Psalm 118. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.”[17] God’s love is such that he doesn’t give up on us. Why has he kept us? Because he loves us! Why is he sanctifying us? Because he loves us! Why does he want us to be united? Because he loves us! Why would he want us to share his glory? Because he loves us! It’s so obvious. His love is unchangeable. His love is irreversible. “How deep the Father’s love for us”![18]

Listen to the voice of the Father for the Son at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”[19] God’s own love for his Son is then to be shed abroad in the hearts of those who are the followers of Jesus.[20] It is a love which, actually, is supposed to be suffused, if you like. It’s nothing less than the love among the persons of the Godhead. That’s why I say this is a “sandals off” event. The love that the Father has for the Son is the love that is to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (That’s Romans chapter 5; you can find it on your own.) God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Now, what makes this so vitally important to understand is that this love is unknown apart from Christ. This love is unknown apart from Christ. The love of God… Before you trusted in Christ, the love of God was towards you. It was an initiative-taking love. But it wasn’t a love that was in you. It is only in Christ that this love is manifested and known. That’s why when we say to one another as we study the Bible, “Are you in Christ?” (“Are you in Christ? Are you unreservedly caught up with Jesus? Have you trusted Jesus? Have you appropriated Jesus? Have you given yourself over to Jesus?”), the question is not about “Are you feeling like a Christian lately?” or “Are you involved in religion? Did you attend the membership class? Have you been baptized?” No: Are you in Christ? And if you are, then this love, for which Jesus prays, is shed abroad in your heart. It is a love that is unknown apart from Christ, and Christ is unknown apart from this love.

When Zechariah is speaking to the people of God and pointing them to the future—which is, of course, what prophets do—at one point in chapter 13, he speaks of a fountain being open wide that will produce cleansing for the people of God as they turn to him,[21] which is an amazing picture. It’s caught up in our hymnody very often: “There is a fountain,” a fountain. Perhaps we sing that tonight; I don’t know. But

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.[22]

Christ, he is the fountain,
The deep, sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted
More deep I’ll drink above.[23]

Because we have been entrusted with this immense privilege: “I in them.” “I in them”—“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[24]

A couple of weeks ago, Jonathan Holmes helped us when we were going through that study in Leviticus together. He helped us by saying, “Isn’t it amazing that the Father wants to be in our company? Isn’t it amazing that he would come and make himself known in the pillars of cloud by day and fire by night, that he would make it known so that his presence would be manifested in an ark, in a tent, in a temple?”—all pointing to the wonder of the final phrase of John 17:26, “I in them.”

Now, notice, as we draw this to a close, that this is not provided for us here as a datum in history. In other words, this is not something that Jesus is praying might be a sort of point along the journey. It is a reality in the present for which he prays, not a memory from the past. It is actually to be a lived experience. To be a lived experience! It’s to be existential. It has a historical origin, it has an eschatological anticipation, but it is to be an existential reality. He prayed for this.

Now, people say, you know, “I like such and such a hymn, and I don’t like such and such a hymn,” and that’s fine. I don’t like everybody’s hymns either. But one of the hymns that I have found people react strongly to—it’s more of a song than a hymn—is still worthy of consideration, I think. And people say, “Well, it’s like a country song,” or “It’s sort of sentimental”—maybe all of the above. It goes like this:

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks with me, and he talks with me,
And he tells me I am his own.[25]

That’s either a reality, or it’s a concoction.

Now, when you think about it, God’s love in Christ for us is the basis, is the ground of every other benefit that we enjoy. So, for example, if you take the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and we sing, “Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,”[26] that pardon for sin, that peace, that presence is all grounded in the love that Jesus is referencing here.

In other words, the love of God for us in this way, however we might understand it and know it, it means more than the gifts of God or the opportunities for serving God or favorable occurrences in the pathway of faith. It is to know God the Father in the depth of our being, by the Holy Spirit, so that when everything else is taken away, when everything else shuts down, when you’re alone by yourself with yourself and you realize, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And on earth, who really fills up the reality of my existence apart from you?”—it can’t be your spouse. It can’t be your kids. It can’t be your service in the community of faith. It has to be God. And that’s what Jesus is praying: that “the love, Father, that you have for me might be in them, and I in them.”

You see, the effect of God’s love for us will be seen in the fact that he keeps us. It’ll be seen in many ways, but it’ll be seen directly in that—the sense of God’s love. People, don’t confuse the reality of God’s promise being brought home to our hearts with whether we are “feeling it” on a regular basis. Because we know—and the hymn writer again helps us—“Days of darkness still come o’er [us]” and “sorrow’s paths [we] often tread.”[27] Of course we do! We don’t always have that abiding sense of his presence. But it is the perpetual residence of Christ in our hearts which conveys the sense of this love for us—the perpetual residence of Christ in our hearts.

I know I mention this all the time. I don’t apologize for it, because it made such a mark on me when I was twenty-three, in being in the early days of marriage and the early days of ministry, visiting the church plant in Wester Hailes, a housing scheme of Edinburgh, and encountering a young pastor there called Pastor Hardie, who was in many ways a very unlikely person to be effective amongst young people. He was almost blind. He had Coca-Cola glasses, and he wouldn’t have known a football if it came at him at a hundred miles an hour. But God was on this guy.

The effect of God’s love for us will be seen in the fact that he keeps us.

And it is in that context that, I’ve told you before, that he taught these young people to sing things like “Love is the flag flown high from the castle of my heart, for the King is in residence here.” Well, that makes sense. It’s not saying, “I’m a very loving person.” It says, “Love is a flag that flies from my heart because of the presence of the King.” It’s a picture from Buckingham Palace, really. When the royal standard is there, you know the king is present. If the standard is gone, he’s not present. Love flies.

And then he taught the congregation—many of them out of drug abuse and gangs—to turn and face one another, as I’ve told you before, and to sing to one another,

I love you with the love of the Lord;
Yes, I love you with the love of the Lord,
[Because] I can see in you the glory of my King,
And I love you with the love of the Lord.[28]

Well, that’s essentially what we need. And that’s the only way it actually works. It’s only this love shed abroad in a heart, this love shed abroad in a congregation, this very love—the love for which Jesus prays—that can actually make transformative impact in a world. Because the people look on and go, “I can’t believe these people actually love one another! Where did they get that love from? Do they love each other because of the same socioeconomic background? Do they love each other because they like to sing the same songs? No, I can’t explain it. I don’t really know why they should. Sometimes they don’t like each other, and sometimes they disagree with each other. But you know what? They love each other. Where did that love come from?” It’s right here: “The love with which you loved me may be in them, I in them.” The disciples needed to know that, and I need to know that. So do you.

Jesus says to them, “Hey, guys, I will take you to myself.”[29]

“Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry about where I’m going. I’ll take you to myself.”

I mean, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

“My Father will love you, and I will love you, and we will come to you and make our home with you.”[30]

There’s no place of neutrality in terms of the claims of Jesus upon our lives. In antiquity, when—and I know this doesn’t play very well in contemporary culture, but let me leave the illustration as it stands—in antiquity, when a men set his affections on a woman, he would often not make the first entrée himself, but he would send other men to the woman to explain to the woman that “Joe over here loves you, and he asked me to tell you that he loves you and to tell you that if you will accept his hand, you will enter into a relationship with him, and you will enjoy all the benefits that follow that relationship.”

That’s exactly the story of the Bible. God sends his messengers to say, “There is one over here who loves you. And if you will accept the offer of his love, you will enter into a relationship with him, and you will enjoy all the benefits that follow from it.”

I think that’s enough.

Let me pray:

Our God and our Father, we thank you that we’ve had the opportunity just to scratch the surface of this immense piece of the Bible. We thank you that the Word of God itself does the work of God. It’s not anybody’s ability to explain it. It is the very Word of God itself. And so I pray that the entrance of God’s Word, and this particular passage of God’s Word, might bring light into lives that are dark and that as the light shines, that they might see the glory of Jesus as a Savior, Lord, and King and accept his invitation, “Come to me.”[31]

I pray, too, Lord, for those who have listened through this series and yet remain just distant to the very things we’ve considered. Grant that we together might hear the call of Scripture: “Today, if you hear [my] voice, do not harden your hearts.”[32] And out of all of that, Lord, we pray that we might be filled with the immensity of your love towards us in Jesus—a divine love, an exceptional love, a love that is like no other love. And we pray that as we end our time in song, that you might even use our closing song as a means of stirring our hearts with a discovery of your grace or renewed affection in relationship to it. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] See Psalm 19:14.

[2] Exodus 3:5 (paraphrased).

[3] John 17:17 (ESV).

[4] John 17:23 (ESV).

[5] See John 17:22.

[6] See John 17:5.

[7] John 14:3 (paraphrased).

[8] J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1878), 3:207.

[9] 1 John 5:19 (paraphrased).

[10] Luke 24:18–20 (paraphrased).

[11] Luke 24:25–27 (ESV).

[12] Luke 24:44–45 (ESV).

[13] John 15:26–27 (ESV).

[14] Acts 4:11–12 (paraphrased).

[15] John 13:1 (ESV).

[16] George Wade Robinson, “I Am His, and He Is Mine” (1876).

[17] Lamentations 3:22 (ESV).

[18] Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (1995).

[19] Mark 9:7 (ESV).

[20] See Romans 5:5.

[21] See Zechariah 13:1.

[22] William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1772).

[23] Anne Ross Cousin, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking” (1857).

[24] Colossians 1:27 (ESV).

[25] Charles Austin Miles, “In the Garden” (1913).

[26] Thomas Obadiah Chisholm, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” (1923).

[27] Francis Harold Rowley, “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story” (1886).

[28] Jim Gilbert, “I Love You with the Love of the Lord” (1977).

[29] John 14:3 (paraphrased).

[30] John 14:23 (paraphrased).

[31] Matthew 11:28 (ESV).

[32] Psalm 95:7–8; Hebrews 3:7–8, 15; 4:7 (ESV).