4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
Last Sunday we looked at the promise of eternal life which God gives to us through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Not that our finite minds are capable of fully grasping the concept of eternity, but as best we could, we tried to understand just something of the promise that we will live forever in the presence of God, and you’ll remember that it is the quality, rather than the quantity or length of time that is important. We were created by God and for God, and through Jesus, that wonderful promise is sealed.
Today, as we continue our study of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, we will be travelling in the opposite direction, as we try to go back in time to eternity past, “before the world existed,” as Jesus prayed in verse 5.
It is impossible for us to fully understand the true significance of the two brief verses we are looking at this morning. Jesus is not only standing in the shadow of the cross, where He would lay down His life for the sins of those who believe in Him, but in verse 5 He refers to the eternal plan of redemption. It is vital that we understand this. God not only decided to save us, but He chose to do so before the world existed. He was not caught off-guard by the fall of man in Genesis 3, nor was Jesus’ sacrificial death a contingency plan, just in case it was needed.
The setting of this prayer in John 17 is the night of Jesus’ arrest, and as He looks back over His earthly life and the task He was given by God the Father, Jesus says, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” Every moment of His earthly life was lived for the glory of God, and at no time did Jesus commit any evil or fail to do any good. He did not sin by commission or omission.
He was the spotless, sinless Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. His sinless life was perfect, which meant that God, who is perfectly just and lets no sin go unpunished, accepted Jesus’ sacrificial, atoning death as sufficient payment for all of the sins of all of His people. The resurrection of Jesus on the third day was the sign that God accepted the payment of the Son for the sins of His people.
As we saw a couple of weeks ago, this was all for the glory of God, which Jesus again refers to in verses 4 and 5. To better understand just how God the Father was glorified through the death of God the Son on this horrific instrument of unspeakable humiliation and torture, we need to go back in time - all the way back to when time didn’t exist. It’s a foreign concept to us, I know, because time and the passing days and years is something we understand. For us to step out of time, as it were, confuses us, but the Bible teaches that before the creation of the universe, before the very first second on the very first clock ticked into motion, God existed.
Even saying that God existed is a poor way of describing Him and His very essence, because the word existed is in the perfect past tense, which implies the concept of time. God has no past, present or future as we understand it. He just is, so it would be better to say that before the creation of the universe and the creation of man, God exists. Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 8:58, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Even a primary school pupil knows that’s bad grammar, but the theology in Jesus’ statement here is correct, because He is speaking of His eternal nature. We could carry on trying to understand eternity, but that would only confuse us more. Suffice it to say that God has no timeline, because He is eternal. We’ll be referring to a number of Scriptures today as we try to understand just something of the eternal plan of redemption and how all of this brings glory to God. The Bible contains the very word of God, and we need to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. As Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
So before man existed, God is. Before anything was made God already knew He would create man, He already knew that the first man would sin, He already determined that He would save those who are His, and He knew how He would save His own. The plan of salvation is an eternal plan, formed in eternity past. God the Father has saved a remnant of the human race to give to God the Son as His possession - His Bride.
This plan was promised and guaranteed by God Himself. In Paul’s opening greeting in his short letter to Titus, he writes, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in His word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Saviour.” (Titus 1:1-3)
Notice that phrase “before the ages began” in verse 2. Paul is taking Titus back to that point before time that we are also trying to reach today. What Paul is saying is that God’s plan of salvation was already in place in eternity past, long before man was created and sin first entered the world. This eternal plan is what Reformed theologians call the Covenant of Redemption, or the eternal covenant. Its Latin name, used by the early reformers is the pactum salutis.
The benediction at the end of the book of Hebrews says, “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-21)
The promise, this covenant, was made by God the Father to God the Son, because it was made before the creation of the world, and the creation of the people of the world to whom this covenant refers. This is an important point, which helps us to see that Jesus’ atoning death was not a quick fix in response to our wheels coming off. The cross was not God’s plan B.
The Covenant of Redemption was not only the very first covenant made by God, but it is also the most significant. As we know, the Bible contains many covenants. The most well known are those made by God with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, and there are others, but they are all between God and human beings. The Covenant of Redemption though, was made in eternity within the Trinity, which is what sets it apart as the most important, reaching its conclusion or fulfillment in the New Covenant, as Jesus went to the cross. 2 Timothy 1:9 speaks of God “who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” There it is again - before the ages began. Before time itself came into being, God chose His own people to be saved by His own Son.
The Covenant of Redemption is a tangible expression of the Father’s sovereign and eternal love for His Son. In Revelation 19 John was given a vision of a great celebration in heaven when this covenant would finally be consummated. “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure,’ for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” (Revelation 19:6-8)
The gift that Jesus has been given by the Father is His very own people, His Bride. This again reminds us that as wonderful and as indescribably glorious our salvation is and eternity with God will be, it is really all about God. He saved us, yes, but He saved us for Himself and for His own glory.
The Greek word in the New Testament for Church is ekklesia, which means the “called out ones.” This means far more than a gathering of the faithful called to come together to worship on a regular basis, just as we are today. As Christians, as the Bride of Christ, we are the remnant of all of mankind who have been called out by God and for God. We are God’s people. The chosen and the elect are presented to the Son as the Father’s gift, just as the Father promised before the creation of the world.
A great deal of fuss is made over a bride leading up to her wedding day, and that’s a good thing, because it is a wonderful day, not only for her and her husband to be, but also for the friends and family who celebrate and recognise Christian marriage as a gift from God.
The elaborate preparations for a wedding give us an insight into how the Bride of Christ has been prepared for Him. Revelation 21:2 says, “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” We prepare for our weddings days, weeks and months in advance, but preparations for the marriage supper of the Lamb, celebrating Christ and His bride, stretch back into eternity.
So when Jesus prayed in John 17:4, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do,” you’ll notice that this is in the past tense. The work of salvation was done and completed on the cross as Jesus paid the ultimate bride price for His Church.
The preparations for the wedding feast, begun before time began, were completed on the cross.
It took the Son coming to earth and dying on the cross to make His Bride spotless and pure, and through His sacrificial death and by His pure, sin-free blood, Jesus accomplished this saving work perfectly.
Just what was this saving work that Jesus accomplished? The eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity stepped into our time and space and took on a human nature. He lived every human experience with the one exception of falling into sin.
As He came into the world, the eternal Covenant of Redemption was played out on the cross, as Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4–5. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
There are a number of important points in these verses. When the fullness of time had come means that even the timing of the advent of Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, was not random. And because He was born of a woman, He was fully human while at the same time Jesus remained fully God, and as Paul teaches in Philippians 2, Jesus lowered Himself in humility, allowing Himself to be subject to the very laws He wrote. He was born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. That’s us. We are born under the law, but because we’re guilty of breaking the law, we deserve condemnation. So we need to be saved by someone who lived in perfect obedience to the law on our behalf. We need to be redeemed, which is what Jesus Christ, the God-man did on the cross.
His death is sufficient to pay the debt we owe to God, and it is on this basis that God adopts us as sons, as His own children, which is just one of many reasons that God is glorified as Christ saves us.
Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 5:17–18, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Now put that alongside John 17:4, and we can see just how the cross completes the saving work of Jesus. “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”
Once this had been done, after Jesus secured our forgiveness and the promise of eternal life for His people, He sent the Holy Spirit as He promised He would to apply our salvation through the new birth into saving faith, so we are saved by the grace of God alone. Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
This is why we can say that because Jesus came to earth in human form and lived a perfect life under God’s Law, His death can be counted as our death and His life counted as our life. Jesus accomplished all that the Father had given Him to do, and this is what saves us. Because Jesus accomplished all God gave Him to do, we are saved.
To secure our salvation, Jesus took on all of the sin of all His people. The Father’s wrath was poured out on Jesus to the extent that it would have been poured out on all the elect together. Every single sin of all those the Father gave the Son had to be paid for through wrath and judgment. This is why we can say the sacrificial death of Jesus was not a defeat or a tragic miscarriage of justice. It was the ultimate victory, when God received the greatest glory.
J. C. Ryle wrote, “He did what the first Adam failed to do, and all the saints in every age fail to do: He kept the law perfectly, and by so keeping it brought in everlasting righteousness for all them that believe.” Paul explained in Romans 5:19, “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”.
You might have noticed an important detail in John 17:4. “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” When speaking of completing the work the Father had given Him to do, Jesus included His sacrificial death on the cross, as though it was already done, even though it only took place the next day.
This speaks of how secure our salvation is in Christ. He was so sure of completing the work of salvation that He could pray for it even before it happened. It was as good as done.
When speaking of the cross, we often turn to Isaiah chapter 53, the clearest Old Testament prophecy of Calvary. Isaiah wrote his prophecy more than 700 years before the events at Calvary, yet, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wrote it in the past tense, as if the death of our Saviour was already done. “He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:5, 12)
This helps to answer the often-asked question, “But what about those who died before Jesus? How can they be saved if they lived before Jesus died?” The eternal Covenant of Redemption, by its very definition surpasses time itself, so God already has the answer to this question. The elect who lived and died before Calvary are as secure in their salvation as we are, who are on this side of the cross.
The fact that the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus’ atoning death and Jesus’s prayer in John 17 are in the past tense, assuming it had already happened is no coincidence, because it points us to the certainty of the promise that not only would God send His Son into the world to be our Saviour, but that He would accomplish the task given to Him before the creation of the world. This is how we can be certain of our salvation, and this is great news. Our salvation doesn’t depend on our faith, which is just as well, because we know how fragile our faith can be at times. We receive salvation through faith alone, because Jesus accomplished our salvation by His works, fulfilling a covenant with the Father that was sealed in eternity past.
There are, though, questions which many of us have. How do we know Jesus accomplished all that the Father had given Him to do? How do we know that Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life? How do we know that He always did everything the Father wanted Him to do, and how can we know that the death of Jesus on the cross really did pay the price of our sins?
Again, we turn to the Bible for the answers to those questions. There are three verses in the book of Romans which answers them for us.
Romans 1:4. Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 4:25. Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”
Romans 8:1. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
The resurrection of Jesus is the proof that Jesus lived a sinless life and proof that the Father was completely satisfied with both His life and His death on our behalf. Jesus lived the perfect life we have failed to live on our behalf, and He died to pay the price of our imperfect, rebellious, sinful lives by dying in our place.
And then God raised Him in glory. The historical, actual, bodily resurrection of Jesus, witnessed by hundreds of people before He ascended into heaven 40 days later, and documented by both Biblical and secular writings of the time is all the proof we need that Jesus did live a sinless life. He did do everything the Father sent Him to do. His death does pay our sin debt in full, and we can know all these things with absolute certainty because God raised Him from the dead. The resurrection is God’s seal of approval that all of the terms and conditions of the Covenant of Redemption, agreed upon between God the Father and God the Son before the creation of the world have been fully met.
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.’” (Romans 10:9-11)
So how do we respond to all of this? What difference should the Covenant of Redemption make in our lives? Quite a lot, actually.
Just as Jesus’ atoning death brings glory to God, as He completed the work given Him by the Father, we are to glorify God by doing the work that He has given us to do. We glorify the Father by believing the Gospel. We glorify God by pursuing lives of holiness in obedience to His Word. We display God’s glory by working together to build up the Church and obey the Great Commission, making disciples of all kinds of people through our witness to the Gospel. It is one thing to praise God with our lips, but quite another to praise God with our lives.
We close with this quote from James Montgomery Boice: “You cannot say as Jesus did, ‘I have completed the work you gave me to do.’ But you can say, ‘I am working at the work you gave me to do.’ If this describes your condition, if you can say that, then the message of this text is simply: Keep at it! Do not quit! Hold to that of which God has made you the custodian! Yours may be a glamorous work but one with heavy burdens, as is the case with many prominent works. It may be an unspectacular work. Most works are like this; but so was Christ’s work, at least from the world’s unsanctified perspective. Moreover, receive this encouragement: while it is true that you and I will never fully finish our work in the sense of having done it to perfection, we can nevertheless finish it in the sense of hanging on to the end, Christ helping us. ‘I have finished the work you gave me to do,’ says Jesus. ‘I am working at the work you have given me to do,’ we answer. God give us the grace to do that always.”