The doctrines of the Bible are not a checklist of what is to be believed to get to heaven. They are much more important than that. Bible doctrine is God’s revelation of who He is, and His explanation of what He has done to accomplish the salvation of His elect and secure their glory. Paul was fully persuaded of his own salvation (and the salvation of others) because God showed him how and by whom it had been obtained. Paul was assured of the church’s inseparable union with Jesus Christ because the Lord explained how it had been achieved.

Throughout this chapter the Apostle Paul has been comforting the hearts and encouraging the faith of the Lord’s people. He has done this by explaining the fulness of the gospel and the work of Christ in salvation. Paul has set before the church the everlasting love of God and all that God has done for us. He has spoken of foreknowledge and predestination, justification, conversion and the glory that awaits God’s elect.

In the opening of this chapter the Apostle insisted that the church of Jesus Christ is under no condemnation for sin because Christ died in our place. Paul wrote, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus’. God transferred the sin of the elect onto the body of Christ on the cross and condemned it in the flesh of His Son. The sin of all for whom Christ died was laid upon Him, atoned for in Him and carried away by Him. 

Some months ago we spent several weeks considering Paul’s teaching on election and justification in Romans chapter 8:28-32. We learned how covenant grace extends from eternity to eternity, founded on everlasting love and culminating in the saints’ eternal glory. We learned how ‘all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose’. We learned how Christ gave His life ‘a ransom for many’ and how with Him we have been given ‘all things’ needful for our spiritual and temporal good.

In our verses today we are presented with a clear statement of Christ’s will for His people. ‘Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory.’ Some argue that man’s ‘freewill’ should determine who goes to heaven. For our part we are content to accept that the will of Christ the God-man has primacy in such matters. Sovereign divine will has pre-eminence over fallen human will and we believe the Saviour’s good pleasure will not be denied.

It is the highest wonder known to man that the infinite God should condescend to join Himself to our humanity and take our nature into Himself. Five times in these few verses the Lord Jesus speaks of the oneness and union that exists between Him and His people under the terms of the covenant of grace. Here the Lord is telling us, in this High-priestly prayer, that all who have faith in Christ are united with Him and with His Father. We are loved by the Father with the self-same love as the Father loves the Son.