Holy Week.  

The triumphal entry.  

The betrayal.  

The Last Supper. 

The mock trial. The beating. The torture. 

Our Savior hangs, shredded and torn, bleeding on the cross. His dead body pierced. 

Jesus is buried. His friends mourn for days. 

Then. 

He is alive! 

Our faith is in vain if it were not for this. As Paul writes,  

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins… But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.” 1 Corinthians 15:17, 20 

Jesus’ death and resurrection was personal. It was for you. Do you know where He was right before He was captured? Do you know what He was doing? 

Each of the gospels narrates for us various details of Holy Week. But John shares one prayer of Christ we don’t see in the other accounts. Have you read it lately? In John 17, Jesus, our High Priest, prayed for himself, his disciples, and us. Jesus knew what was about to happen, what He was about to suffer, and his last words to his Father were for us. 

That we would be in Christ.  

That the world would believe.  

That we would be sanctified. 

That we would be glorified.  

That we would know the Father’s love and that it would be in us.  

He was praying for us, the ones whose sins would be on his shoulders. 

He prayed for me, knowing my sin held him there, knowing I was the cause of his death. 

Behold the Man upon a cross,

My sin upon His shoulders

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,

Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there

Until it was accomplished.

Songwriters: Chad Gardner, Zach Bolen, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”

When we meditate on what Jesus did for us, out of the Father’s love for us, there is no other response but praise him. Read it, knowing you were on Jesus’ heart in those last moments before He went to the garden where his captors would seize him. Dive into the resurrection accounts today before you walk into church on Sunday, and let it fuel your worship of the risen King Jesus! 

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 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.  

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,  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. 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. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 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.  

John 17:20-26