“Father, I will that they also whom thou hast
given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast
given me for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”
He prays for their glory. The end of this pathway of glory is to be
with Him to behold the glory of His humanity in exaltation. This is the
culmination of a life which was devoted to God, which brought honour to God on
earth, and now will be extolled in the heavens.
God the Father planned for this before time. In love for His Son, He decreed that He would
be glorified as man, and the men whom the Father gave Him would be there to
witness it and to enjoy it. In this, all
believers will also be glorified with Him as it says elsewhere “”When Christ
who is our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him
in glory.”-Colossians 3v4
“Oh righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I
have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and
will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them,
and I in them.”
He prays for their intimacy. He changes His address to God in
prayer. Previously He said “Father”,
when praying for Himself; “Holy Father when praying for their sanctification;
now He says “Righteous Father”, as He asks for the glorification of the saints.
As He brings the prayer to a close, He gives the
most perfect description of God. To help
us understand this, the Pulpit Commentary offers the following:
“The righteousness of God is a
more exalted perfection than His holiness, one that might seem more at variance
with the exercise of his paternal compassion; yet this righteousness is
conspicuously displayed in the redemptive love which Christ had thus
manifested, and the beloved disciple (1 John 1v9) declares that God
is faithful and "righteous" in forgiving the repentant sinner. The
blending of the idea of righteousness with Fatherhood is the sublime revelation
made by the Lord Jesus, and He gathers the two ideas together into an
indissoluble unity. Justice and mercy
are seen by the whole work of the Son of God to have been the outflow and
effulgence of the one all-comprehending and infinite love.”
God’s
holiness is His transcendence or eminence-that is He is apart,
higher, greater than all. This fact is
expounded throughout scripture from Genesis 1-Revelation 22. However this characteristic of God, on its
own, can only condemn us. His righteousness
is greater for it is His immanence; that on the basis of the finished
work of Christ, He can forgive us, He can save us, He can bless us, He can draw
us into intimate fellowship with Himself, as we are indissolubly united to
Jesus Christ the righteous. A righteous
Father will do the right thing by His Son who died to redeem them. The righteous Father, who always does what is
right, by His own standards, can now glorify sinful humanity because of their
association with His Son. He prays that
His beloved people will share the intimacy of love He knew from eternity, that
the Father will grant them the same. The
Father will be righteous to banish a rejecting world to eternal loss; He will,
however display His righteousness by blessing believers in His Son. Christ will continue to declare God’s name to
them, and as the unending ages of eternity unfold, so they will grow in the
knowledge of the infinite.
To recap on what is an important but difficult subject, the appearance
of Righteous (which means inflexible justice) alongside Father (which suggests
paternal compassion) seems incongruous, yet when spoken by Jesus Christ the
righteous, we can somehow grasp the wonderful concept. It is in the righteous life and death of
Christ that the Father can display, and does display all characteristics of His
being, including the exaltation of undeserving man. This is the high point for humanity, this is
the apex of all existence, to experience the unfettered righteous blessing of
God almighty, in all its fulness and never-ending dispensation. He will always do what is right according to
His own perfect righteousness, which is always in accord with His eternal and
unchanging character, and He will do right by those who have embraced His Son.
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