An Introduction: Understanding Acts through John 17

Do you remember when we examined Psalm 2, we saw God speaking to His Son: Ask of me, and I will give the nations as your inheritance. Jesus’s prayer in John 17 represents the Son’s response to His Father’s request. Jesus acknowledges his disciples, and all that he gave them while with them. And he prays for them.

In verse 20, his prayer changes focus:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

See John 17:20-23.

Jesus prays those who will believe in him through their message, that all of them may be one. First, we can turn to Acts 2:42: They (more than 3,000) devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. The “they” would be Jewish Christians.

But let’s quickly turn to Acts 13:46-48

Then Paul and Barnabas answered [the unbelieving Jews in Pisidian Antioch] boldly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us:

“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
    that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”

When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.

And note Acts 15:1-2:

Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. 

The nations are coming in, but over the objection of the Jewish believers. Peter struggled with this in Chapter 10, and he had to answer for visiting the Gentiles in Chapter 11.

That Christ’s prayer has not been fully answered does not diminish the importance of the lens into Acts it provides. I admire Luke for not shying away from exposing the obstacles we put in God’s path. Our prejudices and traditions are challenged in this book—and Christ’s prayer provides a microscope with which to examine our hearts. Where some of the other lenses have taken us into the very heights of heaven and His glory, this one is searing and incisive. as the light of the Word shines through it. While the previous lenses we have looked at should cause us to praise God for including us in such a great salvation, this one should bring us to repentance.

The Lord our God is one God. See Deuteronomy 6:4. But we have maintained divisions in the Body and have begged off bearing His image in that regard.

Even so, I am grateful that we have here another, albeit convicting, lens through which to understand the Book of Acts.