Prayer and Heaven
John 17:1-5
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
The Sacred Ground of John 17
John 17 records for us the only extended prayer of Jesus, and it’s the prayer that stands at the precipice of the parting of the ages. He’s completed all the works his Father gave him to do; he’s prepared his disciples for his departure; the only thing that remains, monumental as it is, is the cross.
His arrest was so imminent that while he prayed Judas was likely on his way with the company of soldiers. We must read these words with dual focus.
First, we want to approach this prayer as if we were there that fateful night to hear how Jesus speaks to his Father—how he speaks to him when there is absolutely nothing more important going on in the universe. This prayer is a window into the Lord’s heart, and any time we get to dive into the infinitely loving heart of the Savior, we’re on sacred ground.
Second, we want to approach this prayer eager to learn about prayer. That’s why we’re calling this series The Lord’s Prayer: Delighting in How Jesus Prayed.
Looking to Heaven
John 17:1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
Take a moment to reflect on those words.
Jesus came to talk to us about heaven. When it says, he looked toward heaven, what’s it referring to? The clouds? The troposphere? The stratosphere?
It refers to the universe beyond but not simply materially—although, it should not be lost on us that in looking toward heaven Jesus is pulling our gaze away from the earth, not because the earth is unimportant, but because the earth and earthly concerns are incomplete.
The most illustrious of human minds at most can only give us knowledge of the earth and the material world, but it cannot penetrate the realm that Jesus has access to, from where he comes.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Let’s look at some of what Jesus says heaven refers to.
The most encompassing category is the kingdom of heaven.
Heaven is the kingdom of his Father. It’s where his will is done in totality. This kingdom of heaven can be understood by analogy to things from the earth. Things of value like pearls (Matt. 13:45) Things that develop and grow like seeds and trees (Matt. 13:31).
There is greatness and there are rewards in heaven, and there are degrees of greatness and rewards in heaven.
There are angels in heaven, and joy in heaven, and names of earthlings (earth’s people) written in heaven.
Let’s look at two Scriptures from John about heaven, both from the lips of Jesus.
John 3:13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of man.
John 3:31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.
A Mental Map of Heaven
A mental map is simply a map that you have in your brain. It can be a map of places, people, events, and experiences you’ve had. This map gets more and more filled in and shaped by new information.
I lived in New York for a decade and have a fairly developed mental map of the city. I became a Christian, went to school, got married, and had my first child in NYC, so it was quite a formative decade for me. I can vividly see the NYC layout in my mind, where Central Park is, where key landmarks are. I know exactly what burnt pretzels at 5 pm smell like from all the pretzel stands throughout the city.
However, when I hear the word “Idaho,” the only image that comes into my mind is a potato, and I cannot tell you when I’m eating a potato if it’s from Idaho or not. My mental map of Idaho is just a potato, and it could be a potato from Wisconsin for all I know.
When it comes to heaven, our mental maps are very close to my mental map of Idaho, barely populated, barely colored in. There’s very little texture, understanding, or even emotion attached to heaven. Because “no one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven.”
But it’s not just that Jesus has gone into heaven, he says, “The one who comes from heaven is above all.” When it comes to heaven and earth, we only have mental maps of earth. Jesus has a mental map of heaven, and that map is better, more important, more glorious, more enduring than the seven billion mental maps of earth, combined.
There is a full world of endless life, joy, love, and meaning that we only have access to through Jesus. It’s another dimension. It’s heaven.
God-centered prayer fills our mental map of heaven.
In prayer you are connecting to God, who dwells in the heavens and who, through his Spirit and Word, begins to download into you more and more of his divine essence, thus making you more and more a citizen of heaven. And what’s being formed in you is an endless, vibrant, colorful, divine map of heaven.
The Glory of Heaven
John 17:1–5
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
God-centered prayer loves the glory of heaven.
Remember, Jesus is standing at the precipice of the ages. His death is the final, decisive blow to all the powers of evil, death, and corruption that do violence to the world “…The hour has come.”
What is Jesus praying about in this final, crucial hour? Glory and life.
He says, “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” (v 1)
He also says, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” (vv. 4–5)
There is so much about glory in John’s Gospel. Let’s look at just a couple of verses.
John 5:41 Jesus says, “I do not accept glory from human beings.”
John 5:44–45 “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God.”
We learn here that Jesus seeks the glory that comes only from God. He also invites us to seek this same glory but knows that we accept glory from one another instead.
Again, our mental map of earth has some very well-defined categories for glory from one another. How do we seek and accept glory from one another?
Glory is greatness on display. That greatness can be honor, prestige, splendor, etc. Our education, occupation, wealth (the car we drive, the neighborhood we live in), our connections, the achievements and awards we earn. We even combine them: a lifetime achievement award.
These are all ways we seek glory from one another.
This doesn’t mean that we should not go to school or have good jobs or that we should aim to be poor and so on.
But we need to recognize that none of those things improves our mental map of heaven, our citizenship in heaven. And, in fact, those things can and often do keep us from seeking the glory that comes only from God.
Part of the reason we do not have deeper prayer lives is that the glory we receive from one another keeps us amply satisfied.
The Glory of the Son
Jesus, by contrast, did not accept glory from human beings. He was not interested. He had played with the real gold of heaven; he had no use for the monopoly money of earth.
When Jesus says, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you…” he is saying, “My death on the cross, as you and I know and only you and I know, is the place where I will bring you the most honor and splendor. And you will bring me the most honor and splendor when you raise me from the dead and I will know that my death accomplished all your purposes. My death satisfied your justice.”
In verse 4 Jesus says, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.” Jesus’ whole mission was to bring heaven to earth—to bring the realm of God and the glory of God to earth, and in doing this, he brings glory to God.
Jesus continues in verse 5, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Look at the contrast: Jesus brought glory on earth to the Father by completing the Father’s work. Now, the Father will give back the glory to Jesus that he had in heaven before the world began.
What’s different between the glory Jesus had before the world began and the glory he will have again in heaven with the Father after completing his work? He returns to heaven with a human body, with a cross-scarred body, with the victory “it is finished” written across the universe.
There’s a new weight to his glory. His humiliation is over. His lowly state is over. The salvation of humanity is accomplished! The world can be remade, and evil is defeated.
And all God’s people for all eternity will ascribe power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise to the Lamb who was slain!
That’s what Jesus is praying for and that’s what we should pray for.
Think about it.
If Jesus is praying for the most worthy being in the universe—God the Father—to bring more glory to God the Son, what should lesser beings (we) pray for? The same.
No prayer will fill in your map of heaven more prolifically and accurately than praying for the glory of Jesus to increase, overflow, and multiply the universe over, in heaven and on earth.
Your Kingdom Come
Prayer is about bringing heaven to earth. Prayer connects us to the glories of heaven. It’s why Jesus begins the prayer he taught us in Matthew 6, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” That means sanctified be your name. Set apart as holy because holy it is. May I and the whole earth stand in awe of the God of Abraham, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Creator of all things.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus is about to go to Calvary, and his prayer is, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son.” His glory is his death and what it achieved for God and for humanity. He’s seeking the glory that comes only from God. He will not accept human glory, on human terms and values. He knows our values come from a culture of death that only his death will unravel.
Let’s love him with a deeper love. He did not bend or flinch or apologize for bringing the foreign world of heaven to us earthlings who have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear. Heaven to us is a foreign world in a foreign language.
And the only way for the gap to be bridged was for the Lord of Heaven to die at our hands and for our sins. Without flinching he did it. His name is love.
Let’s learn to pray for the glory of Father and Son.
Let’s fill our mental map with heaven by praying for the glories of heaven.
Father, glorify your son that your son may glorify you. He brought you glory on earth by completing the works you gave him to do. Let me delight in those works. Let me read the words in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the rest of the Scriptures, not as history or a chore, but as the story of heaven coming to earth and making me a citizen of heaven. And let me praise you with shouts of joy for each of those works, chiefly the suffering death of my loving Savior.”