Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                 Chapter Seventeen

                                                                                                                                               Verses 14-21

Jesus began to pray that His Father would protect His Church just as He had protected His disciples. Jesus let His disciples know that He had given them His Word by which He meant not only His preaching but also the New Testament that would be written. Jesus let His Church know that His Word and His Spirit would comfort them because the world would hate His Church and try to destroy it, just as the world had hated and tried to destroy Him. Jesus meant the demonic, evil nature of the world.

Jesus prayed that His Father would not take His Church out of the world, but He would leave His Church in the world to represent Jesus and to preach the gospel so that sinners would come to know Jesus as their Savior.

Jesus also prayed that His Father would keep His Church out of the evil of the world. Jesus did not pray that His Father would keep His believers out of sin because He knew that His believers would retain their fleshly natures which would cause them to sin. Romans 7:8-21. But the fact that Jesus prayed that His Father would keep His Church out of evil can only mean that there exists some differences between sin and evil. All evil is sinful, but sin itself may not be completely evil. The Old Testament teachings indicate that a difference exists between sins caused by weakness and deliberate and willful sins which are always evil. Numbers 15:22-36. God can bring some good out of a sinful system, but no good whatsoever out of an evil system. The evil nature inside of every human causes their living, good natures to sin. Romans 5:12. But if the living natures of humans repents and believes that Christ can cleanse and forgive their sins, then that means that God can abolish sinful systems and recreate them to be good systems. The Bible (KJB) is replete with stories of how God can transform sinful systems into good systems. But evil systems are different. God can never cleanse and forgive evil systems because evil never repents. Evil stems from the Devil's desire to be totally evil and never repent of it. Christ purged all evil systems, and the Devil himself, from all of His creations as He hung on the cross and as His Spirit descended into Hell. Matthew 12:31-32; Acts 2:25-31; John 16:11; John 12:31-32; I John 3:8.

Christ can never lose anything He has ever created, and His Love can never fail. Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8. This fact means that Christ will eventually cause every living human that He ever created and loves to repent of their sins and put their faith in Him as their Savior so that He can cleanse and forgive their living natures and recreate them all. Christ will save all repentant sinners by His grace when He cleanses them with His blood and water that He shed on the cross, and He will annul their spiritual deaths with the death of His broken body. Matthew 26:28; John 5:24; I John 1:9; Hebrews 2:9. The Old Testament sin offering symbolizes salvation by grace. Christ will also provide a lesser form of salvation for all living humans confined to the regions of death by the descent of His Spirit into Hell to leave behind there all of their sins and evil that He bore on the cross. I John 2:2; Acts 2:25-31. Christ will complete their salvation when He appears to them in a great worship service near the end of the world, and He will cause them all to repent and believe in Him as the Lamb of God who can save them from eternal death. Revelation 5:11-14. Christ will use His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve their systems in order to separate their saved, living natures that He will recreate from their dead and evil natures that He will cast into the lake of fire. I Corinthians 3:11-15; II Peter 3:9-13; Psalm 75:3; Matthew 13:36-43; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1-5. The Old Testament burnt offerings symbolizes this lesser form of salvation. Genesis 8:20-21.