“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” - John 17:25-26
The world didn’t know God then and sometimes it feels like it doesn’t know him now.
Jesus gave one last prayer with his
disciples before he was taken away to be crucified, and the first
part of verse 26 basically sums up our mission as Christians: to make
God known to the entire world.
This is easier said than done. We live
in a cynical age where God more often than not is a punch line. With
so many terrible things happening everyday, it’s easy for the world
to say that God doesn’t exist or that he does exist, but he
certainly doesn’t care about us. How can you convince a
non-believer that God loves them if they’ve lost someone close to
them? What if they never seem to catch a break in life?
It’s through our lives that we reveal
God to the world. It’s one of those things that sounds simple and
yet is agonizingly hard because of the oppression we face.
Jesus couldn’t have given more
concrete proof of God’s love in his own life and still many refused
to believe he was the son of God. After feeding thousands of people
on a hillside, raising the dead, and curing the sick, it should have
been obvious who he was and that God was without a doubt a part of
this world.
Yet the very people he’s come to save
drove him out of the temple in Luke 4. All his blessings and miracles
didn’t stop the Pharisees in John 9 from nagging him about healing
a blind man on the Sabbath. Instead of thanking him for helping
someone in need or inquiring where he got this power from, the
Pharisees jump all over Jesus for doing something good! Would the
Postmaster General fire a mailman if he had the audacity to deliver a
package on Sunday?
People can argue for the existence of
God through Apologetics and Christians can hold as many revivals as
they want. But the world won’t truly believe in God until we show
them he exists by the way we live our lives.
In verse 26, Jesus states he “will
continue to make (God) known” to all the world. It’s a process
that never truly ends. We will constantly be challenged to show God’s
love and prove his existence to the Universe.
That doesn’t sound fun by any means
but when you remember the sacrifice Christ made soon after that
prayer in John 17, it reminds us that we have to give our all.