In John 17:26, Jesus prayed to his Father on behalf of his disciples “that I myself may be in them,” because this was how he could “continue making his Father known to them.”
This would be different too, because up to this point Jesus had made his Father known by “the Father living in me doing his work” (14:10). Which is why the Father had sent Jesus as a human and given him “the Spirit without limit” (3:34), so that everything about himself would come to life and reality in his Son. The same thing would have happened if Adam and Eve had eaten off the Tree of Life; they too would have received the Spirit who would make God come to life in all his wisdom and love in their lives too.
Because that’s what the Father had children for. In his love for Adam and Eve he would have filled them with himself, so that in them his wisdom and love would have come to life. And how do we know that? Because that’s what he did in Jesus. In his love for Jesus, John 3:35, the Father “placed everything in Jesus’ hands,” so that everything about him as the Father would come to life and reality in his Son.
No wonder, then, that Jesus, having experienced the Father making his life and love visible and real in his own life, prayed for the same thing to happen in his disciples’ lives. In John 17:24 he prayed: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory,” “the glory that you (Father) gave me” (22) – the “glory” being that “you loved me before the creation of the world” (24).
This is what Jesus knew of his Father from eternal experience: it was his love. What Jesus wanted for his disciples, then, was experiencing in their lives the same love his Father had always had for him. That’s why Jesus wanted to “continue making his Father known in order that the love you (Father) have for me may be in them (too)” (26).
But how could the Father’s love for Jesus be “in” the disciples? Jesus answers that in the last part of verse 26 in his request to his Father “that I myself may be in them.” Because if he could be “in” his disciples, re-living the life of his Father’s love for him in them, then he could continue making the Father and his love known in their lives too. But “How can Jesus be in us?”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 