To be with Jesus. That’s the whole ball game, isn’t it? It’s what God made us for, it’s what was disrupted by the Fall (‘where are you?’), it’s what the prophets looked forward to (‘I myself will tend my sheep’), it’s what Jesus put at the heart of his relationship with his early followers: ‘that they might be with him’ (Mark 3:14).
And it’s where Jesus ends his remarkable prayer today: (v24) ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am.’
To be with Jesus. The means and the goal of the Christian life.
It’s a golden thread which runs throughout these amazing chapters (13-17) we’ve spent the last few weeks looking at. Jesus is leaving this world soon, and his ultimate plan is that we would be united with him eternally. That will finally be in heaven; until then, he sends his Spirit, his abiding presence, ‘that I myself may be in them’ (v26). This Spirit will empower us to live in the continual flow of the divine love which permeates the Trinity; in other words, ‘that the love you have for me may be in them’ (also v26). To be filled with the Spirit of Jesus is to be filled with his selfless, life-giving love: hence, at the end of his prayer, Jesus treats these two things as interchangeable.
To be with Jesus also leads to one other thing, another of the golden threads that run through this text: we will see his glory. In these last chapters, Jesus’ glory is supremely manifested through the cross. Here, however, Jesus is looking forward to his heavenly glory, ‘the glory you have given me before the creation of the world’ (v24). The first leads to the second: the cross to the crown.
Our destiny is laid out here in the simplest, but also the most beautiful, terms: to be with Jesus, and to see his glory. It’s a destiny we know in part, day by day, here in this world; it’s one we will know in full in the world to come.
As we draw this latest series in these wonderful chapters of John’s gospel to a close, let’s give thanks for the certainty of our future hope. And let’s also pray that this day, this week, this season, we would be with Jesus, and see his glory, maybe even in unexpected ways. Amen.