Today's Devotion

Thursday, June 18, 2026 - John 17:1-26

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Jesus taught us to pray in the words known as the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9-13). But this is also a Lord’s Prayer, one that is His prayer and His alone, prayed as the High Priest addressing God the Father. We pray “our Father,” using the plural pronoun, acknowledging that the Lord’s Prayer is really every Christian’s prayer. But this “Lord’s Prayer,” is truly and properly the Lord’s, and it does not begin collectively with “Our Father,” but more intimately as “Father.”

The Son prays this priestly prayer to the Father on the verge of His going into the Holy of Holies, as both Sacrifice and Priest. And it is at the cross where our Lord’s prayer will be answered: “glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” Our Lord’s glory is in His cross, in His shedding of blood, in His priestly offering of His own flesh “to give eternal life to all whom [the Father] has given [the Son].” Eternal life is found in the Son whom the Father has “sent.” And Jesus prays for His glory to be brought to its fullness, even as it was “before the world existed.”

We Christians bear the name of Jesus (“God saves,”) being Christians (followers of the Christ, the Anointed One). We belong to the Father who created us, and to the Son, who redeemed us. For the Father gave us to Him for our salvation and redemption and re-creation through the cross. For we Christians know, have, and confess the truth. We believe in Him, and we believe the Father sent Him. And Jesus prays for us – not for the world, but for the church. This is His priestly intercession before the Father. Jesus goes behind the veil, situated on the Mercy Seat, in the midst of the cherubim, praying for us for whom He sacrificed and was sacrificed.

Jesus prays that we will remain in the Father’s name. For we were baptized into the singular name of the singular and yet triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the unity that the Son has with the Father is the Son’s prayer for us: “that [we, the church] may be one, even as [the Father and the Son] are one.” And our Lord reminds us in this prayer that “the world has hated [us] because [we] are not of the world.” Our Lord’s prayer is not to “take [us] out of the world,” but rather to protect us from the devil.

And the unity for which Jesus prays is not only to be found among the apostles, but also among those who will be converted by their preaching, and by all Gospel preaching for all time. The church is one, even when she spans many generations and all around the world – even in her sad brokenness and division. For we still confess “one holy catholic and apostolic church” even as we confess “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:5-6). This is what our Lord’s prayer is: that we “may become perfectly one.”

For the church’s true unity is not in bureaucracy or organization, but in faith, with Christ as our head (Eph 5:23), knowing the Father’s name, and experiencing the divine love of the Most Holy Trinity.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.