Daily Prayer Devotional for Women and Men | OnlinePrayerJournal

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For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.

Jesus Prays for All Believers 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.  26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

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Jesus’ prayer and the farewell discourses as a whole culminate in this petition for all who will come to believe in him (v. 20). That includes us! It’s a heady outpouring of love and glory, reminding us that even though we may never have known Jesus in his earthly person, we are no less ‘blessed’ than his immediate disciples.2 The focus of Jesus’ prayer is firmly and repeatedly for unity among believers: ‘that all of them may be one’; ‘that they may be one’; ‘that they may be brought to complete unity’ (vv. 21–23). I wonder whether we see unity within the church as such a priority. My experience is that people’s eyes tend to glaze over if I speak of ecumenical relations. However, to converse, work, pray, and worship with brothers and sisters who are different from ourselves is one of the joys of the Christian life. Unity in diversity is like a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom. (And while it might sometimes seem difficult to achieve, note that Jesus himself is praying for it.) Jesus makes a clear connection between the unity of believers and the intimate relationship between himself and the Father, which has characterized so much of this farewell discourse. The nature of God is for the Father to be in the Son and the Son in the Father (v. 21). The nature of God is for the Father to give glory to the Son and for the Son to give that glory to us (v. 22). The nature of God is for the Father to love the Son and for that love to be in us, as the Son is in us (v. 26). So for us to draw together in unity, despite our diversity, is to participate more deeply in the very nature of God.

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