Chapter Seventeen
Verses 22-26
Jesus gave to His disciples, and to His Church, the same honor that His Father had given to Him. God considers His Church to be a continuation of His Son's mission to the world. Jesus prayed that His Church would be unified by His Spirit just as He and His Father were unified by the Spirit. But Jesus meant that His Spirit would unify His Church within itself, not that it would ever be one in Being with God.
Jesus' disciples heard Him pray that the presence of the Holy Spirit within the Church would make each believer perfect. Each believer would possess the perfect righteousness of Christ Himself. II Corinthians 5:21. Only the presence of Christ in His Church makes it perfect. The Church is not perfect in-itself. When mankind observes the righteousness of the Church, they will know that God sent His Son into the world, although most of them will not admit it. Jesus' disciples and His Church, when they read the New Testament, heard Jesus pray that His Father would love His Church to the same extent that He loved His own Son. That truth happens to be too awesome for words!
Why did Jesus despise the shame of the cross? Hebrews 12:2. Because He knew that through His death, burial, and resurrection He would gain all power over sin, evil, spiritual death, and the Devil himself. Matthew 28:18; Revelation 1:17-18. Jesus knew that He had that power before He ever went to the cross. He just had to extend His power for the salvation of a humanity that had become subject to eternal, spiritual death because of sin and evil. God's Power, His Intellect, and His Love are Almighty. Humans give too much credit to the Devil by thinking that sin and evil can somehow limit God's Power to save. In His Almighty Power, Love, and Intellect, God knows exactly how to devise a plan that will cause every living human that He ever creates and loves eventually to repent and believe in the power of His Son to save them from eternal, spiritual death and all the sin and evil that causes it. I Timothy 4:10. Christ will save some living humans by His grace and give them His own righteousness so that His Father can accept them to live with Him in Heaven forever. John 17:24. Christ will save all other living humans when He appears to them within the regions of death in a great worship service near the end of the world, and He causes them all to repent and believe of their own free will that He is the Lamb of God their Savior so that He can raise all of their living souls and spirits from the regions of death and recreate them with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth with the same kind of righteousness that He gave to Adam and Eve before they sinned. Revelation 5:11-14; John 5:28-29; John 11:25-26; II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5. Christ holds all power over all sin, evil, spiritual death, and the Devil period.
Jesus then prayed that because of His Father's eternal Love for Him, that He would allow all of His believers saved by His grace to be with Him in Heaven forever. This prayer proves that Jesus will never lose any of His believers saved by His grace. He knows exactly how to cause all backsliders eventually to repent so that He can forgive them and return them to fellowship with Him. Ephesians 5:25-27.
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