Love and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World

From Gospel Translations

My generation was taught to sing:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love—
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

Apart from the effrontery of telling God Almighty that in creation and providence he got his ratios wrong, the song does not acknowledge other things we need: holiness, joy in the Lord, obedient hearts. It does not even call us to recognize our creatureliness, which is our first responsibility. Even in the realm of love, the song never descends to the level of specifics. Contrast the sentimentality of the song with Jesus’ robust insistence that the first commandment is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, while the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:28–34). The song has just enough fuzzy sentiment that we can feel good about ourselves, but not enough truth to reflect much on what God says about love, or how he himself has supremely shown us what love looks like. In short, the song is neither ethically nor theologically serious. By contrast, the five specific petitions found in John 17—petitions that Jesus, on the night he is betrayed, offers to his heavenly Father—though they are varied and interwoven, are all tied to some profound facet or other of the love of God. These prayers Jesus offers for his followers—and they are all bathed in the theme of love, not least the Trinitarian love of God. They are painted on a canvas of incalculable sweep.

Jesus’ thought in these prayers is not linear. He circles around, adding perspective and layers of understanding as he cycles through his petitions. It is not long before we recognize that although there are five specific petitions, they are all woven together, such that none can be removed without unraveling all of them—and together they are anchored in the love of God and the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

I shall begin by identifying the five petitions that Jesus offers for his followers, the ground on which each petition is offered or the reason the petition is put forward, its purpose, and the manner in which it is tied to the love theme of this chapter. Only then shall I focus on the supremacy of Christ and its connection to the love of God.

Jesus’ Five Petitions

Jesus Prays That His Father Will Keep His Followers Safe

First, Jesus prays that his Father will keep his followers safe. “I will remain in the world no longer,” he says, “but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. . . . My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it” (17:11, 15–16).^[1] The reasons why Jesus offers this prayer are that (a) he himself is going away, and so in his physical existence he will no longer be there to protect them (17:11); and (b) they, like him, do not belong to the world (17:16). Unlike him, of course, they once did belong to the world. But Christ had chosen them out of the world (15:19), and now, in principle, they belong to the world no more than he does, and so they will need protection from the world. The long-term purpose of this protection is (Jesus says to his Father) “that they may be one as we are one” (17:11). And such unity has as its aim, Jesus goes on to say, the display of the incredible truth that the Father loves them just as he loves the Son (17:23) and that the love of the triune