To Behold His Glory

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.  John 17:24

Christ’s Wish for Man

This must always be the first joy of any really good life, its first joy and its first anxiety at once, the desire that others should enter into it. Indeed, here is a test of a man’s life. Can you say: "I wish you were like me?" Can you take your purposes and standards of living, and quietly, deliberately, wish for all those who are nearest to you that they should be their standards and purposes too? Do not consent to be anything which you would not wish to ask the soul that is dearest to you to be. Be nothing which you would not wish all the world to be.
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So, then, we understand Christ’s longing for the companionship of His disciples. He wanted them to be with Him. That wish of His must have run through all the scale of companionship which we have traced, but it must have completed itself in the desire that they should be like Him, that they should have His character, that in the obedience of God, where He abode, they should abide with Him.

He wants His disciples to be with Him, "that they may behold My glory." Before these words can be cut entirely free from low associations and soar into the high pure meaning which belongs to them, we must remember what Christ’s glory is which He desires us to see. Its essence, the heart and soul of it, must be His goodness. It is Christ’s goodness then that He would have His people see. Think for a moment what prospects that wish of our Lord opens. Only by growth in goodness can His goodness open itself to us. What is He praying for then? Is it not that which we traced before in the first part of His prayer, the same exactly, that we might be like Him? So only can we see Him. It is His glory that He wants us to see; but back of that, He wants us to be such men and women that we can see His glory. The only true danger is sin, and so the only true safety is holiness. What a sublime ambition. How it takes our vague, half-felt wishes and fills them with reality and strength, when the moral growth, which makes a man complete, is put before us, not abstractly, but in this picture of the dearest and noblest being that our souls can dream of, standing before us and saying to us: "Come unto Me," standing over us and praying for us, "Father, bring them where I am."   (Phillips Brooks)

THE HIGH PRIEST'S PRAYER

​The remainder of this prayer reaches out to all generations of believers to the end. We may incidentally note that it shows that Jesus did not anticipate a speedy end of the history of the world or the Church; and also that it breathes but one desire, that for the Church’s unity, as though He saw what would be its greatest peril. Characteristic, too, of the idealism of this Gospel is it that there is no name for that future community. It is not called ‘church,’ or ‘congregation,’ or the like-it is ‘them also that believe on Me through their word,’ a great spiritual community, held together by common faith in Him whom the Apostles preached. Is not that still the best definition of Christians, and does not such a conception of it correspond better to its true nature than the formal abstraction, ‘the Church’?

We can but touch in the most inadequate fashion the profound words of this section of the prayer which would take volumes to expound fitly. We note that it contains four periods, in each of which something is asked or stated, and then a purpose to be attained by the petition or statement is set forth.

First comes the prayer for unity and what the answer to it will effect (Joh_17:21). Now in this verse the unity of believers is principally regarded as resulting from the inclusion, if we may so say, of them all in the ineffable union of the Father and the Son. Jesus prays that ‘they may all be one,’ and also ‘that they also may be in us’. And their unity is no mere matter of formal external organization nor of unanimity of creed, or the like, but it is a deep, vital unity. The pattern of it is the unity of the Father and the Son, and the power that brings it about is the abiding of all believers ‘in us.’ The result of such a manifestation in the world of a multitude of men, in all of whom one life evidently moves, fusing their individualities while retaining their personalities, will be the world’s conviction of the divine mission of Jesus. The world was beginning to feel its convictions moving slowly in that direction, when it exclaimed: ‘Behold how these Christians love one another!’ The alienation of Christians has given barbs and feathers to its arrows of scorn. But it is ‘the unity of the Spirit,’ not that of a, great corporation, that Christ’s prayer desires.
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The petitions for what would be given to believers passes for a moment into a statement of what Jesus had already given to them. He had begun the unifying gift, and that made a plea for its perfecting. The ‘glory’ which He had given to these poor bewildered Galileans was but in a rudimentary stage; but still, wherever there is faith in Him, there is some communication of His life and Spirit, and some of that veiled and yet radiant glory, ‘full of grace and truth,’ which shone through the covering when the Incarnate Word ‘became flesh.’ It is the Christ-given Christ-likeness in each which knits believers into one. It is Christ in us and we in Christ that fuses us into one, and thereby makes each perfect. And such flashing back of the light of Jesus from a million separate crystals, all glowing with one light and made one in the light, would flash on darkest eyes the luster of the conviction that God sent Christ, and that God’s love enfolded those Christlike souls even as it enfolded Him.  (Alexander Maclaren)
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Note: From Mr. Maclaren's comments, it causes me to envision a heaven inhabited with souls full of majesty, freedom, joy, and a bond of unity born from total commitment and love to Christ the Great Redeemer. A people of kindred spirits, with one focus, and one desire-to be united in Christ, and serve Him forever. Now in His presence forever, where no evil, or sin can reach them. This, is heaven.