In Praying For Himself Jesus Prayed For Me

John 17

In viewing my inadequacy from the perspective Jesus had when He prayed that high priestly prayer, it is easy to recognize it is the very same inadequacy that every one who believes on Him feels. As believers, as His assembly on earth, His disciples, those that are His, Jesus prayed that high priestly prayer on behalf of His own body because of our inadequacy. We believers, those who believe on the Father because of His words, are the body of Christ (see Romans12; 1 Corinthians 6, 12; Ephesians 5; Colossians 3). He prayed that high priestly prayer knowing that everyone from John who recorded it at the first, to every preacher who ever preached about it, every person who ever read it, right down to my writing a meditation, my meditation on His prayer knew that inadequacy. Seeing those first two verses (as we know them today) looking at His life with God the Father, as equal with Him, then taking the part as indeed Jesus Christ, possibly on a very familiar topic of His prayers with the Father, the work He came to do. First and foremost He glorified the Father, and then He finished the work He came to do. This follows right along with how He saw Himself as was the Father's perspective, He had glorified the Father, and now desired to glorify the Son.

Jesus continues to declare the Father's name to everyone that the Father has given Him out of this world. And like back then we believers today must likewise recognize:

Now they know that all things whatsoever thou hast given me, are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou hast sent me.

John 17:7-8 GNV

Actually I cannot read and reread John 17 without seeing new perspective after new perspective. But no matter how this high priestly prayer is read it is always by Jesus Christ, from Jesus Christ on behalf of those disciples then and all those who would believe on the Father through their word that His Father would be glorified. He knew their inadequacy and knew what our inadequacies would be, yet He prayed for us that it wouldn't be our inadequacies, but rather the Father who would keep us and sustain us while in this world, that we would faithfully give forth the words Jesus had given them as He also received them from His Father, the entire purpose being that the Father be glorified. As one of those who later believed on the Father through their words wrote:

That we, which first trusted in Christ, should be unto the praise of his glory: In whom also ye have trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, even the Gospel of your salvation, wherein also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

Ephesians 1:12-13 GNV

And those who have heard and believe on the Father today from that word of truth from the Father, that "those" now includes me. Being of those Jesus Christ prayed for, praying for Himself, for His body, when He prayed that high priestly prayer I know His prayer then included me.