I truly love these words written in red in my red-letter addition of the Bible. “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him Who sent Me. And this the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day” (John 6:37-38).
Let’s look more closely at Jesus’ words! If the reader believes, like me, that God says exactly what He means, that He never misspeaks, and that every word is placed exactly where He wants it to be….then, “all” means……well, all!
But in this case Jesus qualified the “all.” He did not mean all as in “everybody.” He put a gigantic monumental big water swell condition upon it. He said “all that the Father gives Me.” I am sure these words gave many people listening that day pause. I have meditated on this portion of God’s word for many years with the understanding that each and every word in the Bible matters. Every word!
The truth that it conveys at one point in my life gave me pause, but now it gives me praise. Since I have come to Christ by placing my faith in Him, His words mean that I am a gift given by God the Father to Him. Wow! Then I pondered this piercing question: Which came first, the giving by the Father or the coming to the Son? First came the giving! This means that those of us who have come to the Son by faith were first given to the Son. Again, we are gifts given to God the Son by God the Father. No giving, no coming! Jesus confirmed this truth in John 17. This is why the people were not believing. They missed the “spiritual.”
As miraculous as this may sound, this truth is verified by God speaking to God in prayer. Hold it! Did you understand that right? God praying to God! Yes! As my good friend Danny Forrest once said to me, when we read John 17, we are eves-dropping on a conversation of God talking to God. That entire chapter is a is a jaw-dropper of information.
The second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, is praying to the first person of the Trinity, God the Father. He said that He had given eternal life to as many as God the Father had given to Him. The exact same line from John 6. Of course, He was speaking in John 17 only of the disciples…… I thought? After all, He continued by saying that He had manifested the name of God the Father to as many as He (God the Father) had given to God the Son out to the world.
Speaking again of the disciples, Jesus made it crystal clear. “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.” We cannot deny this. Jesus confirmed this truth to them. He told His disciples,“You did not choose Me but I chose you out of the world” (John 15:16-19). I thought at the time, “That’s it! He just chose the disciples.” And then I thought, “Wait, do not underestimate the weight of this truth.” HE CHOSE THE DISCIPLES. HE WENT TO SPECIFIC ONES. HE CALLED THEM BY THEIR NAMES. HE KNEW THEIR PROFESSIONS. HE PERSONALLY CHOSE THEM.
Speaking of them, Jesus said, “They were Yours!” Note again meaning of the words, their tenses and their order. “They were (past tense) yours” means that they were always yours. They did not become yours at the moment or after I called them. Even before Jesus went to them and called them, they already belonged to the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ simply went only to God’s select group of men. He already knew their names, everything there was to know about them, every blemish of their skin and the number of hairs on their head. The second person of the Trinity also said that He had prayed for them and them only. “I pray for them (the disciples), I do not pray for the world but for those whom you have given Me!” The reason once again: “For they are Yours.”
And then He said, “I do not pray for the world!” That sounds strange, does it not? Are we not told to go into the world with the gospel and to pray for the unsaved of the world that they may hear the gospel and believe? Are we not to pray for the lost? Certainly! We are compelled! Why? Because there are many other “gifts” out there waiting for the good news. God has many waiting and wanting, hungering to hear, longing to learn the gospel! The Good Shepherd has many sheep waiting to hear His call. They will not recognize the voice of a stranger, but they will know His voice when He calls them by their own name (John 10:1-4; 24-31). Incredible!
Recall God’s words to Paul. God knew that Paul was afraid because of the treatment that he had received in response to the message God had given him to speak. “Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.’ And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:9-11). Paul was not to worry because God already had many in the city who were waiting for the truth of the gospel. They were already gifts.
Continuing Jesus’ prayer, we discover that it was not just the disciples whom He would call. Jesus said in His prayer, “I do not pray for these alone (the disciples) but also for those who will believe in Me through their word.” That’s us! This includes numerous people throughout history. As we will see later, the seed of the gospel will spread like spiritual seeds blown in the wind throughout the world, generation after generation. “That they may all be one; as You, Father, are in Me and I in You; that they may be one of Us and the world may believe that You sent Me” (Jn. 17:20-21). Amazing!