“THE PRAYER OF JESUS CHRIST FOR HIS PEOPLE”

These words spake Jesus, and  lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son that thy Son may glorify thee;  As thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given  Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on earth,  I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do: And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self  with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.

“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee for I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have rec­eived them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them; I pray not for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are mine; all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me; I have guarded them, and none is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them my word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that thou should take them out of the world but that thou should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As thou did send me into the world so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate my­self, that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who are to believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and has loved them even as thou hast loved me Father I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

John 17:1-26.