What if you needed to go to God to have more of God revealed to you? You do not have do do religous acts or weird rituals but rather you can ask God to reveal Himself to you.
Jesus final prayer to His father is one of establishing His relationship with the Father, not so that the Father remembers but so that Jesus’ flesh remembers. What we must remember is that Jesus is one hundred percent human and one hundred percent God. Jesus faced the same struggles as we face today. Jesus gives us an example during His final prayer of the purpose of prayer. God did not need to be reminded of Jesus relationship to Him and the purpose of which Jesus came and all that Jesus did. Jesus had to remind His flesh of the purpose of what was about to happen and to meditate on Gods promises. Prayer is not to inform God on what He does not know but to focus ourselves on God, our dependance and our hope. Jesus is praying that He would be glorified as king of the world but this glorification would look like no other, and really would not look like a glorification at all and more like a death sentence. That is the paradox of this Gospel, the glorification of King of the World was by death on a cross, Jesus was exalted as king of the world by dying. Jesus death was a fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures and after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension “the age to come” that the prophets talk about in the old testament launched into reality and now we are living in the new age, “the time of new life, with a new quality (not just quantity, going on and on forever) . It would be, in our inadequate phrase, eternal life.(1)”
What this new life does is reveal God to humanity the bridge made from God to humanity once again Jesus reveals the father to humanity and once again humans and God may be in relationship as they were in the Garden of Eden. When Jesus says, “glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” Jesus is saying that reveal me for who I really am to the world so that I may reveal you for who you really are God to the world. “To give God glory is not to add something not present in God to God but to acknowledge something already present in God.(2)”
Jesus continues and prays in John 17:22-23 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” Jesus desires that we experience the reality of oneness with God, Jesus prays that we are revealed as who we were created to be and we see God for who He really is (which you can’t separate these two anyways). Jesus knows that what He is about to do on the cross is the act that will reveal to us the glory of God, which will launch the new creation. Jesus desires that we see the Kingdom of God among us and live as active participants of the kingdom. What Jesus does on the cross are the ultimate examples of how we are called to live in radical generosity. (3)
1) Wright, N. T. John for Everyone. Part 2. 2 vols. Westminster John Knox Press , 2004.
2) Talbert, Charles H. Reading John. Macon , GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing Incorporated , 2005.
3) Mackie, Tim, and Jon Collins, eds. “Watch: John 13-21 Bible Book Overview Video: BibleProject™.” BibleProject. Last modified 2016. Accessed June 7, 2021. https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/john-13-21/.
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