May We Be One | John 17:1-23 | Philip Anthony Mitchell

Jesus’ final prayer in John 17 carries His last will and desire for His people. John places that prayer after the upper-room words where Christ washed feet, spoke of the Spirit, gave bread and wine, and prepared His disciples for His departure. Christ lifts His eyes to the Father and declares that all authority belongs to Him, including authority to give eternal life. Eternal life, then, is not found through reincarnation, purgatory, religious effort, or a second chance after death. Christ alone gives life, and a soul must leave this life connected to Him.

Christ also says that He accomplished the work the Father gave Him to do. A life that glorifies God is not limited to microphones, stages, platforms, or public ministry. A life that glorifies God aligns its mouth, mind, heart, relationships, money, work, parenting, and private decisions with the will of God. Purpose is not reserved for the visible person. Purpose shows up at the kitchen sink, in the school car line, on a campus, in a locker room, in a business, and in the way a believer handles conflict. Christ calls His people to live full and die empty, finishing what God put inside them to do.

Christ’s prayer also reveals His eternal identity. The glory He had before the world existed proves that He is not a created being. Jesus borrowed a womb to take on flesh, so that He could break that body and spill that blood for sinners. He borrowed a tomb, but He did not stay there. Religion, dead traditions, and empty dogma cannot change a life, but the risen Christ can turn somebody from ratchet to righteous.

Christ gives the Father’s words to His disciples, and the Word becomes the instrument of sanctification. Sanctification is the slow transformation of a believer from the inside out through constant contact with God’s truth. Christianity is not finally about getting a bag, gaining a platform, or becoming famous. Christianity aims at spiritual formation and character, so that a believer looks like the Savior who saved them.

Christ then prays beyond the room for every person who would believe through the disciples’ word. His first request for the whole church is unity. Unity is not uniformity, since believers may hold minor disagreements while remaining aligned around what matters most. The world should see Christ through a church that refuses to let race, politics, fault lines, and secondary doctrines destroy its witness. Prayer becomes the place where divided people can lay down their differences and become one around the kingdom of God.

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Key Takeaways

• 1. Christ alone gives eternal life [12:41] Christ’s authority reaches beyond death itself. No religious alternative can secure a soul that remains disconnected from Him. The urgency of repentance comes from the reality that eternity is not theoretical, delayed, or reversible. Christ must be received while the heart still has breath to respond. [12:41]
• 2. Purpose fills every ordinary moment [18:40] A believer does not need a stage to live on purpose. God receives glory through faithful decisions in homes, workplaces, friendships, parenting, and hidden prayer. Ordinary moments become weighty when identity in Christ governs them. A life on purpose spends itself for what will outlast it. [18:40]
• 3. The risen Christ changes lives [32:33] Dead religion can regulate behavior while leaving the soul empty. The living Christ meets people in their mess, fills them with His Spirit, and gives them a testimony that arguments cannot erase. A transformed life becomes evidence that Jesus is alive. Gratitude for salvation must run deeper than desire for earthly gifts. [32:33]
• 4. Truth sanctifies from the inside out [50:35] God’s Word does more than offer information or temporary encouragement. Constant contact with truth confronts sin, exposes false patterns, and reshapes character. Every struggle must be brought under the question, “What does the Word say?” The goal is not comfort in sin, but likeness to Christ. [50:35]
• 5. Unity makes Christ visible [55:21] Christ prayed that His people would be one so that the world might believe the Father sent Him. Unity does not demand agreement on every secondary issue, but it does demand that believers refuse to make differences into idols. Prayer creates room for divided people to seek one King and one kingdom together. The church’s unity is part of its witness to an unbelieving world.
  
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Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [05:27] - One Thing to Rally Around
• [07:05] - Christ’s Final Will and Prayer
• [11:33] - Jesus Has All Authority
• [15:07] - Live Full and Die Empty
• [19:57] - Purpose Requires Intentional Boundaries
• [24:52] - Jesus Is the Eternal Creator
• [35:32] - Given to Christ and Thankful for Salvation
• [42:05] - Covered and Guarded in Prayer
• [45:21] - Conviction Brings Opposition
• [49:39] - Sanctified by the Truth
• [52:34] - Christ Prays for Every Believer
• [55:21] - The Call to Unity
• [60:09] - One Hour of Prayer
• [64:20] - Access and a Legacy of Intercession
• [67:50] - A Prayer for Healing and Unity

1. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” [11:37]
2. “Since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” [12:01]
3. “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
4. “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” [15:01]
5. “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” [15:09]
6. “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” [35:32]
7. “Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.”
8. “For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.” [40:20]
9. “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” [40:46]
10. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.”
11. “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” [42:05]
12. “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
13. “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
14. “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” [45:21]
15. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”
16. “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
17. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” [49:52]
18. “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
19. “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
20. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” [54:00]
21. “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” [54:06]
22. “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”
23. “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” [55:21]
24. “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
25. “O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these know that you have sent me.”
26. “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

1. Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him,
3. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God,
4. rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.
5. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. [09:58]
6. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?”
7. Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
8. Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.”
9. Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
10. Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
11. Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”
12. For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
13. When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”
14. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” [10:01]
15. “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”
16. “Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.”
17. “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” [10:04]

1. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” [01:00:09]
2. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” [01:02:44]
3. “Give us this day our daily bread,”
4. “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
5. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” [01:02:49]

1. In John 17, what does Jesus say He has authority to give, and how does He define eternal life in verses 2–3? [12:41]
2. What parts of life are included when Jesus says He “accomplished the work” the Father gave Him to do? Consider the examples of speech, relationships, work, finances, parenting, and private choices. [15:34]
3. What does Jesus ask the Father to do for His disciples while they remain in the world, and what threats or pressures do they face? [42:05]
4. According to John 17:17, what is the instrument God uses to sanctify His people, and what does sanctification look like over time? [50:42]

1. Jesus says that eternal life is knowing the Father and Jesus Christ whom He sent. What does this show about the difference between merely knowing religious information and personally belonging to Christ? [13:15]
2. Jesus had glory with the Father before the world existed. What does this reveal about who Jesus is, and why does His eternal identity matter for trusting His death and resurrection? [24:52]
3. Jesus does not ask the Father to remove believers from the world; He asks that they be kept from the evil one. What might faithful presence in the world look like without becoming shaped by the world? [45:21]
4. Jesus prays that believers would be one “so that the world may believe.” What is the difference between unity and uniformity, and which disagreements should not be allowed to destroy Christian fellowship? [56:36]

1. Christ alone gives eternal life. Is there any place where you have been leaning on good behavior, church involvement, family background, or future plans instead of resting in Christ? What would repentance and fresh trust in Him look like this week? [14:27]
2. A life that glorifies God is lived on purpose in ordinary places. Where are you most likely to treat your life as routine—at home, online, at work, in school, in traffic, or with family—and how could you bring Christ glory there in a specific way? [18:40]
3. Jesus served people by washing their feet even though He was their Lord and Teacher. Is there a practical act of humble service you have avoided because it felt beneath you, inconvenient, or unnoticed? [10:13]
4. God’s Word sanctifies believers from the inside out through constant contact with truth. What current struggle—anxiety, lust, bitterness, fear, conflict, money, or something else—needs to be brought honestly under the question, “What does the Word say?” [50:54]
5. Being thankful for salvation changes how believers see everything else God gives. What has been taking up more space in your gratitude or prayers than the cross of Christ, and how can you intentionally remember what Jesus has saved you from? [36:56]
6. Jesus prayed for His people to be one. Is there a person or group of believers you have allowed political differences, racial tension, personal offense, or secondary issues to make you dismiss too quickly? What is one humble step toward peace, understanding, or prayer that you could take? [57:05]
7. Prayer is a place where believers can lay down differences and seek one King and one kingdom together. Who could you invite to pray with you this week for your home, church, city, and the spread of the gospel? [01:02:33]