John 17:20-26
January 29, 2023
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“[Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else. And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing— … but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance…

~C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

~Immanuel Kant, ‘The Categorical Imperative’

“The apostle tells us that ‘God is love;’ and therefore, seeing he is an infinite being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing he is an all-sufficient being, it follows that he is a full and over-flowing, and inexhaustible fountain of love. And in that he is an unchangeable and eternal being, he is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love.”

~Jonathan Edwards, “Heaven is a World of Love”

“Since the love which binds the Trinity together is the same love which binds the church to the Son and the saints to each other, we can rightly conclude that the structure of relationship which constitutes the glory of God or God’s internal fullness is the same structure which constitutes the reality of the church…. The re-presentation of the societal and relational structure of God’s Trinitarian life in the community of the saints, is, in a manner of speaking, the visibility of the God in the world.”

~Krister Sairsingh, “Jonathan Edwards and the Idea of the Divine Glory: His Foundational Trinitarianism and its Ecclesial Import” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1986)

Sermon Passage

John 17:20-26 (ESV)

²⁰ “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 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. 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. 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, even though the world does not know you, I know 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.”