“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 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.”

John 17:25, 26

Jesus, in these final hours with his disciples before his crucifixion, shares the ultimate truth, if that is an acceptable way to put it.  The point is in the question, who is this Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary and Son of God?

Jesus, in the stillness of the Upper Room, bares it all!  Jesus knows the Father!  At first this does not seem to have much life-changing meaning.  Jesus clarifies what he is saying by using a negative, “The world does not know (the Father).”  Jesus does.  And here on this night to be remembered Jesus reminds his disciples who he is, again.  He is pleased that his disciples know that God sent him to rescue us.

Then, Jesus reminds all of love, here the love of his Father that Jesus describes and proceeds to say that and will continue to do so.  The reason?  So that we know that God the Father loves Jesus and that same love is in us, by grace, to love our blessed Lord Jesus.   As God loves Jesus, we love Jesus so we are bound together by love.  Then Jesus said an amazing truth, “That I myself may be in them.”  Divine love binds us together in an eternal embrace of love.

John 17 should not be read hurridly, it is to be digested slowly and well.  Help me, Jesus to read it and to begin to comprehend its life-changing depth.  I stand, and kneel in awe.