John 17 and Romans 9 – Praying According to Election
From John 17 –24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.
From Romans 9 – 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my [a]countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises.
"God's people need lifting up," admits Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. Of us, Christian, from age to age he writes by experience, "They are very heavy by nature. They have no wings, or, if they have, they are like the dove of old which lay among the pots; and they need divine grace to make them mount on wings covered with silver, and with feathers of yellow gold."
It is from this place that Christ in John 17 and, secondarily of course, Paul in Romans 9 intercede. There is, as our hearts become more sensitive to God's sovereign purposes, an increased awareness that His elect are interspersed with the world, not distinguished by a genetic heritage or a geographic ZIP Code. His own, even, wrestle with the same concerns, sometimes to the extent of being distracted by them. We are, as Spurgeon confesses even with his lofty view of election, doves among the pots.
Given even a moment, then, to view God as He is in His Word and aware that not all of our sisters or brother and get even that, would we not plead as Christ pleads? Would we not be quickened by that intercessory impulse which He gave Paul? I want my brothers and sisters, Lord, to experience what You experience with Your Father, as You said was Your desire in John 17.
As tiny a fraction of that as I have experienced in my relationship with You, Lord, this is infinitely more than many of my siblings in Your grace, or many of those with thrones awaiting them in Heaven who don't know it yet. How dry must their experience be, and how wearying! We would not have a sibling according to the flesh doled out a mere existence in an orphanage. How much more so, should we be indignant at the idea that joint heirs in Christ should merely measure out today, as T.S. Eliot said, in coffee spoons?
We would, in contemplating passages like this, admit how fleeting is our concept of God's capacity to make, in the phrasing of 1 Peter 2:10, a people out of those who were not a people. We envision some of our neighbors taking on the label Christian along with the label Democrat, or Republican, or vegetarian. We don't, in all honesty, imagine them becoming altogether new, imagine them becoming siblings and countrymen in a way that those labels only foreshadow on Earth. Pleading alongside Christ and alongside Paul, then, we would have our prayers come into sharper vision, and our true identity, as a result, emerge.
From Romans 9 – 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my [a]countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises.
"God's people need lifting up," admits Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. Of us, Christian, from age to age he writes by experience, "They are very heavy by nature. They have no wings, or, if they have, they are like the dove of old which lay among the pots; and they need divine grace to make them mount on wings covered with silver, and with feathers of yellow gold."
It is from this place that Christ in John 17 and, secondarily of course, Paul in Romans 9 intercede. There is, as our hearts become more sensitive to God's sovereign purposes, an increased awareness that His elect are interspersed with the world, not distinguished by a genetic heritage or a geographic ZIP Code. His own, even, wrestle with the same concerns, sometimes to the extent of being distracted by them. We are, as Spurgeon confesses even with his lofty view of election, doves among the pots.
Given even a moment, then, to view God as He is in His Word and aware that not all of our sisters or brother and get even that, would we not plead as Christ pleads? Would we not be quickened by that intercessory impulse which He gave Paul? I want my brothers and sisters, Lord, to experience what You experience with Your Father, as You said was Your desire in John 17.
As tiny a fraction of that as I have experienced in my relationship with You, Lord, this is infinitely more than many of my siblings in Your grace, or many of those with thrones awaiting them in Heaven who don't know it yet. How dry must their experience be, and how wearying! We would not have a sibling according to the flesh doled out a mere existence in an orphanage. How much more so, should we be indignant at the idea that joint heirs in Christ should merely measure out today, as T.S. Eliot said, in coffee spoons?
We would, in contemplating passages like this, admit how fleeting is our concept of God's capacity to make, in the phrasing of 1 Peter 2:10, a people out of those who were not a people. We envision some of our neighbors taking on the label Christian along with the label Democrat, or Republican, or vegetarian. We don't, in all honesty, imagine them becoming altogether new, imagine them becoming siblings and countrymen in a way that those labels only foreshadow on Earth. Pleading alongside Christ and alongside Paul, then, we would have our prayers come into sharper vision, and our true identity, as a result, emerge.
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