HOLY FATHER

In this chapter, which could be accurately entitled ‘The Lord prays for His own’, the Lord Jesus addresses His Father as ‘Father’, vv. 1 and 5, as ‘Holy Father’, v. 11, and as ‘Righteous Father’, v. 25. In the early part of the prayer, vv. 1-10, He addresses the Father in relation to the work which He had finished on earth. He prayed concerning the hour that had come and concerning the honour which He had brought to God because of the completed work. In the second part of the prayer, where He uses the title ‘Holy Father’, He is not praying concerning His work but rather concerning the world. He is leaving His disciples in an unholy world and therefore He prays to His Father that the disciples will be kept. He prays for their safety and for their sanctification.

The Lord asked the Father to ‘sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth’. The Holy Scriptures will not only make us wise unto salvation, 2 Tim. 3.14-17, but will also keep us sanctified, separated from a defiling world. When James wrote his epistle, he called God ‘the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning’, 1. 17. Lack of holiness is not consistent with light. Similarly, Paul called on the Corinthians to be separate from the world and then only would they know the reality of the promise, ‘I. .. will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters’, 2 Cor. 6.18. The writer to the suffering Hebrew believers reminded them of a Father who chastens His children in order that ‘we might be partakers of his holiness’, Heb. 12. 10.

However, the prayer is not just about sanctification. It is about security: ‘Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are’, v. 11. Every believer, whether Jew or Gentile, and regardless of background, has been ‘called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord’, 1 Cor. 1. 9. He prayed that the disciples might be kept from the seductive, sensual, materialistic world and its manner of life. ‘Know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself’, Ps. 4. 3.

Our sanctification is the purpose of the Father’s chastening and it is the prayer of the Lord for His own.