{"id":25944,"date":"2025-11-23T09:36:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T09:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/?p=25944"},"modified":"2025-11-23T09:36:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T09:36:49","slug":"not-for-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/2025\/11\/not-for-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Not For The World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many reasons render this prayer of the Lord Jesus precious to His people. Foremost among them is the frequency with which our Saviour differentiates between His Church and the ungodly in the world. Let there be no confusion in the minds of God\u2019s people. The Lord God distinguishes absolutely between those who are His own by everlasting love and those who are not; those set apart in the covenant of grace and those who are not; those redeemed by the blood of Christ and those who are not. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A people given by God<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

The blessed Son of God came into the world to save His own people from their sins. What made them His own people is revealed here. Speaking to His Father, Jesus says, \u2018I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me\u2019. Certainly the Lord is speaking about His own disciples here, the twelve, or rather the eleven, Judas now being gone. Yet, Christ\u2019s words cannot be restricted to the disciples alone but include all those given into His hand, set apart in the covenant of peace and ordained to eternal life.<\/p>\n

The revelation of grace<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Christ\u2019s obligation to represent and deliver these people was predetermined in the eternal council of the Godhead where their names were recorded in the Lamb\u2019s Book of Life. They belonged to the Father by electing love and were given to the Son as God-man to redeem. It is to these the Saviour reveals His Father\u2019s saving purpose in the gospel. God\u2019s name, spoken of here, is not a mysterious title or any particular one of the many names taken by Jehovah to reveal His nature. God\u2019s name is His person and encapsulates all the revealed attributes of His being and nature such as holiness and love, mercy and grace, power and knowledge.<\/p>\n

A prayer for us<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

This passage of holy scripture is called Christ\u2019s intercessory prayer because in it the Lord Jesus prays to His Father on behalf of His people. He intercedes for His own. He is explicit. He emphasises He is not praying for the world \u2018but for them which thou hast given me\u2019, His immediate disciples and those who would follow them and like them, believe in Him. Those false teachers today who insist Christ died for the whole world without exception need to explain to us how it is Jesus would die for the world but would not pray for the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Received and believed<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

To comfort and encourage us all the Lord Jesus uses every opportunity to recommend these men to His Father. Despite their many limitations, and ours, the Saviour never once mentions their shortcomings nor hints at their unworthiness. He does not refer to their sin because in the Father\u2019s eyes they are clean. Here we see the Lord\u2019s great love and tender care. Because we are His, everything is an endorsement. \u2018They have kept thy word.\u2019 They have known Thy name. They have received Thy word. They believe all the Father has communicated by God the Son. They believe the gospel of God as revealed by the Son, not merely in their head but in their heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The fulness of the Godhead\u2019<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Our Lord Jesus is Himself the Revelation of God the Father. We cannot know the Father except He be revealed to us by the Son. When a sinner hears the gospel and is given faith to believe and know the purpose of God in salvation Christ also reveals all the gracious blessings of which believers are heirs and joint heirs with Him. We hear and discover that \u2018all things whatsoever thou hast given me\u2019, belong also to us in Him. We trust and have faith that nothing will be withheld from those that are His. God is our Father, Christ is our Brother, the Spirit is our Comforter and heaven is our home.<\/p>\n

\u2018I have given\u2019<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

These blessings belong to all God\u2019s people because the Lord Jesus has given them to us. Our status as \u2018heir of all things\u2019 in Christ is a free gift from God. It is not an offer to be accepted or a proposal to be considered. It is bestowed grace: beautiful, powerful and enabling. Every spiritual blessing is freely given to God\u2019s elect in and by our Lord Jesus Christ. He stands for us as our Surety and represents us as our Substitute. He has taken all our sin and guilt and given us all His goodness and love. He takes our transgressions and gives us His righteousness. He washes us in His blood and makes us holy and pure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many reasons render this prayer of the Lord Jesus precious to His people. Foremost among them is the frequency with which our Saviour differentiates between His Church and the ungodly in the world. Let there be no confusion in the minds of God\u2019s people. The Lord God distinguishes absolutely between those who are His own by everlasting love and those who are not; those set apart in the covenant of grace and those who are not; those redeemed by the blood of Christ and those who are not. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":12757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1042],"tags":[1239],"class_list":["post-25944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-peter-meneys-scripture-meditations","tag-sovereign-grace"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25947,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25944\/revisions\/25947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}