John 17:6-10 I have manifested your name to the men which you gave me out of the world: your they were, and you gave them me… The High Priest now turns from himself to the special objects of his intercessory prayer. I. THE CALLING OF TEE CLIENTS. 1. They are separated from the world. Made a select and consecrated class, they are set apart from others in the prayer of the Lord. 2. They are the property of the Father. 3. They are the gift of the Father to his Son. The Father drew them with the bonds of love, and they became Christ's. II. THE MARKS OF THE CLIENTS. It is not to be supposed that there is anything arbitrary in the calling of God. Those for whom the High Priest here pleads: 1. Recognize the Divinity of Christ's works. 2. And the Divinity of his words. These they received, i.e. as from God through him who is "the Word." 3. And the Divinity of his mission. Christ came forth from God; God sent him. But this great fact, the greatest in the history of mankind, was by no means generally recognized. Its recognition became at once, and still remains, a "note" of Christ's people. The just estimate of the words and of the works of Christ leads to a true appreciation of Christ himself. III. THE SECURITY AND DIGNITY OF THE CLIENTS. 1. All Christ's are his Father's, and all the Father's are Christ's; therefore the clients who have the Savior for their Patron and Protector are doubly secure and doubly blest. 2. Christ is glorified in his friends. Wonderful is the condescension here displayed. The Lord of glory allows those, who by nature are so feeble and so helpless as men are, to add by their adhesion and their praises even to the majesty and splendor which is his by right. This is so in a measure even now; how far more fully shall Christ's ransomed clients glorify him when they are delivered from the infirmities of the body, and the sordid surroundings of time! - T. Parallel Verses KJV: I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. |
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