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Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none, wrote Shakespeare. But who do you trust in a world of broken trust? Trust seems a scarce commodity in our times. Political leaders rise and fall. Public figures disappoint us. Institutions once thought solid seem to be shaking. Voices compete for our allegiance, and sometimes truth itself seems to be in question.
The disciples knew such a moment. We find them clustered around their master in the upper room. The tectonic plates are shifting beneath their feet. The rulers of Israel are plotting against their master. Judas is about to betray him. Peter will deny him. And St. John writes, and it was night. Darkness is rising. The cross is near.
And yet there is no confusion and panic in Jesus—no despair or bitterness. The disciples don't understand what is happening, but Jesus understands exactly what is happening. The room is filled with uncertainty, yet Jesus is not uncertain. In this darkest hour, he gives his disciples one of his most precious gifts: he lets them hear him pray to the Father. Not just the prayer of a high priest, not just the prayer of a prophet, but the prayer of a friend.
He's just said to them, "I have called you friends"—friends to whom he's entrusted all the knowledge he's been given by the Father, friends he's chosen to go and bear fruit that will last. What a title. What a privilege. What a wonder. The Lord of glory calls failing men friends.
I want to speak to you this morning about the wonderful friendship of Jesus Christ—why Jesus is the greatest friend you will ever have, why your trust in him is well-founded, and why this friend of friends will never fail you.
The first thing we see in our passage is that the friend of friends shares his inmost heart with his disciples. What happens here is unique. Jesus pulls back the curtain to reveal the most intimate life of prayer with the Father. No theatre curtain ever parted to reveal a more extraordinary scene—we're listening at the door of the Trinity.
Jesus opens the door and lets us overhear what has been going on in the very heart of God since eternity. He carries us into the very heart of God. Before, he taught his friends the Lord's Prayer; now his friends hear their Lord pray.
"There is no voice which has been heard either in heaven or in earth more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime than the prayer offered up by the Son of God himself." — Philip Melanchthon
Have you ever overheard a conversation that lifts you to a whole new level of understanding? We need to in these dark times. Douglas Brown, a preacher powerfully used by God in the Lowestoft revival of 1921, used to creep along the hall as a schoolboy to his father's study every Friday night as his father prepared for Sunday and prayed. He wrote:
"What I heard through that keyhole was more wonderful than what I heard from the platform on Sunday morning. I heard a big strong man telling Jesus that he was nothing, that Jesus was everything. I heard the agony of Calvary... I could not understand it all as a little boy, but it gripped me. I feel the aftermath of it today."
There are places in Scripture where we find ourselves standing on holy ground. Jesus's prayer for his friends here is one of them. We talk about searching for God, but God always reveals himself to us first—not because he has to, but because he wants to, as our friend. Jesus doesn't merely teach theology here as he prays; he welcomes his friends into intimacy.
This is very different from the friendships of the world. Most friendships have locked rooms, no-go areas, thoughts we dare not reveal. But Jesus fully opens his heart. What a beautiful display of friendship—one the disciples can hardly understand in their current confusion, but which they must have looked back on with wonder and awe in the years to come.
"I pray for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine."
Notice that what Jesus treasures is not power or earthly success—his treasure is his Father. Almost his very last act with his disciples is to share this treasure with them, inviting them deeper into relationship with the Father. Seven times in this prayer he uses the language of giving: the Father gives the disciples to the Son, the Son gives the disciples back to the Father—giving, gift, endless self-giving.
The gospel is far more than rescue. It is embrace, inclusion, adoption—being welcomed into the very life of God. Last week I sat at a dinner table for over two hours and watched a mother and father passing their three-month-old daughter back and forth between them with great love, with eyes of adoration—even devotion—on every side. Like us, being given back and forth between Father and Son.
Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Without a friend, thou canst not well live. But if Jesus be not thy friend above all, thou shalt be exceedingly sad and desolate." Those words described me as a young man—a touring theatre director, always on the move without faith. My relationships and friendships were transient; professionally successful, but inwardly sad and desolate. And then the friend of friends reached out a hand to me and drew me into a circle of love that I continue to find new depths in today.
An earthly friend can invite you into his house; Jesus invites you into his Father's home. An earthly friend can share with you his possessions; Jesus shares with you his very inheritance. Perhaps you're here today wearily, dutifully—your faith feels rusty, church feels like a tired ritual. No—church is a warm invitation into the tender embrace of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
"Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one."
Jesus asks his Father to keep them in the circle of his love. This is Jesus's primary prayer request for his friends—to know that they can rest secure in the heart of God's love even when Jesus has departed from the earth. Because this changes everything.
Listen to how Jesus represents his friends to his Father in heaven: they have obeyed your word... they believed you sent me... glory has come to me through them. What power of friendship. Jesus says nothing of their unbelief, their competitiveness, their imminent denial or betrayal, the way they'll soon scatter in fear at his arrest. No word of their doubts, their wrong assumptions, their illusions—nothing.
If we were describing them, we would begin with their failures. Jesus begins with their future. Augustine says that Jesus sees what grace will make of them. This isn't spin on Jesus's part—Jesus sees what the Father intends men and women to become. He sees the rock of the future church in Peter. He sees the Paul in Saul.
Like Michelangelo, he sees the angel in the stone, and he commits himself to chipping away every shard of marble in order to set that angel free. This is how the friend of friends looks upon us—not sentimentally or superficially, but truthfully. We see our weaknesses; he sees the glory that will be revealed. He's perfectly aware of our fractures, our flaws, our darkness. But he never lets darkness have the final word.
Brennan Manning says Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual, but for the wobbly and weak who know they don't have it all together. What a friend is Jesus Christ. When we despair of ourselves, he never despairs of us. When we lose sight of what we may become, his eyes are on that future horizon. And like the patient sculptor, he never abandons the work of his hands.
Now Jesus goes on to talk about how the natural outflow of love enjoyed with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will lead us out on mission into the world. As God's love propels us outward—the church doesn't have a mission; God's mission has a church. Jesus prays for a love in us that must be shared with others, because only this will change our world. Only this way will God's kingdom come.
"I'm coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them."
Jesus doesn't pray that his friends might discover joy for themselves. He doesn't pray that they might manufacture joy through effort. He doesn't even pray that they might receive joy from him. He prays that they might possess his joy—the very joy that filled his heart, that sustained him through every trial, that accompanied him in every sorrow. The joy that existed before the foundation of the world in the loving communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This joy he now gives to his friends.
Which of our earthly friends, however wonderful, can do this? A friend may cheer us on when we're cast down. A friend may lend us courage when our spirits fail. A friend may ease our burden for a season. But no human friend can take the very gladness in their heart and press it into ours. But the friend of friends can, and he does.
And this is no ordinary joy—not the joy of passing circumstances, health, or success. These things are uncertain, like sunlight flickering on water. You've known a day when the sky was bright and your heart felt light, but you've also known a day when grief has come uninvited and moved in to stay, when your prayers seemed unanswered and hope exhausted. These storms can cloud, cover, even crush our earthly joy. But this isn't the joy of which Jesus speaks.
This is a joy whose roots reach deeper than passing circumstances—a joy that remains when earthly comforts fail. And he gives us the full measure of his joy. Not a thimbleful, but the full fullness. The friend of friends is no miser. His hand is open, his heart is generous. He loves to give more than we can ask, more than we can imagine, more than we think possible.
His joy—the very joy that lit up the face of the man of sorrows. The joy that carried him through the cross. The joy that death couldn't bury in a friendless tomb. The joy that fills heaven even now with its fragrance.
"I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of it."
What sort of friend do any of us want? One who insulates us from reality, bubble-wraps us? Or one who holds us to life's complexities and equips us for that task? Notice what Jesus doesn't pray here—he doesn't ask for his friends to be removed from trouble or to have an easy life or to be spared pain. Most of us, if we're honest, would have prayed differently. If those we loved were walking into danger, our instinct would be to remove them from the battlefield. But Jesus doesn't do this—not because he's indifferent, but because he has a nobler aim: to make his friends capable of standing in the storms.
Sometimes, after a long while, I meet with old Christian friends and ask them how they are. "Still standing," they reply. Still standing is good. Jesus never promises a trouble-free life. He promises us his presence in the midst of our troubles.
When Jesus uses the word protect, he means: Father, preserve them in relationship with you—not keep them from suffering, but keep them through suffering, so that no suffering can wrench them out of that joyful communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
My dear friend Simon recently reminded me of the Grey Havens scene in The Lord of the Rings, when the elves depart by ship for their sea journey west. It's the end of a golden age. Gandalf has completed his assignment and is going with them. And Frodo, at last, after all his trials, is still nursing a wound he received along the way. Tolkien had fought in the Great War, and he knew that victory does not erase wounds.
You may have wounds today, but we don't need sentimental friends. What we need is the friend of friends, because protection comes only through his victory over Satan at the cross. And so we pray, deliver us from evil.
"Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified."
The word of God is truth. Jesus doesn't simply tell the truth—he is the truth. And this truth aligns us with the deepest structure of reality. We discover his truth through Scripture and through personal encounter, and these work transformation in us, because his grace is always transformative.
Maybe you have a friend who says no wrong of you, who covers you with any excuse, who even garlands you with flattery. Is this really the type of friend you need? You need the truth—and sometimes that comes through the powerful, penetrating words of a courageous friend.
At a certain moment in my early career as a theatre director, I'd hit a wall because of various obstacles. It was almost as if, having created successful artistic productions, I self-sabotaged and undid the good—but it was others that I blamed. A good friend wrote to me out of the blue, asking what this "self-destructive gremlin" was in me. It was a question I needed to be asked. I needed to wrestle with it and find an answer.
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." (Proverbs 27:6)
We don't need friends who flatter us to avoid conflict or make us feel good or serve their own agenda. We need the searing truth of a real friend.
But the friend of friends goes far beyond this. Jesus here consecrates his disciples, sets them apart, and dedicates them wholly to God—not because he's concerned for some minor moral improvement, but because he wants to see them radiant with the image of Christ. His grace releases the power that can make ordinary people holy.
Doesn't God's mission of love need this? People today are often suspicious of institutions, arguments, authority claims—but what they still find difficult to dismiss is a genuinely good person: someone shining with God's love, joyful, forgiving, unafraid. The friend of friends knows our world won't be reached by argument alone. We're grateful for the fine arguments of our apologists and evangelists, grateful for the beauty created by our songwriters, musicians, and artists—but the world especially needs to see transformed lives. Walking witnesses whom the embrace of the friend of friends has changed forever.
Perhaps you're here today exploring faith, and your question—a good question—is how can I trust these words of Jesus? Or perhaps you've taken a knife in the back from a friend, and for you, trustworthy friendship itself is in dispute. 90% of us have experienced a major fallout with a best friend.
Perhaps you've known a friend full of wise insight, who's made challenging suggestions for your personal growth—suggestions that will bear a cost—and yet who's never walked that walk themselves; who seeks to drive you through a narrow gate instead of drawing you lovingly from the other side. Well, Jesus doesn't do that.
"For them I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified."
Jesus consecrates himself before he invites us to it. He has to die to himself before we'll do the same. And the great proof of his friendship is the cross. There we see he doesn't merely speak of love—he demonstrates it. He doesn't merely promise faithfulness—he proves it. He doesn't merely say his friends matter to him—he lays down his life for them.
The friend of friends, hanging on that tree—beaten, betrayed, forsaken, mocked—taking our sin, taking judgment, giving himself fully. And the proof lies in the apostles' subsequent lives. On the night of the Last Supper, they're weak, frightened, confused, about to flee. No strategist would choose them. No government would want their vote. No military commander would trust them.
And yet these ordinary people, for whom Jesus prays, go on to extraordinary destinies. The fearful become bold. The weak become steadfast. The scattered become shepherds of the flock. And within 100 years the gospel has traveled to the center of the world, Rome itself. The New Testament has been written. Living churches have been planted throughout the Roman Empire, and a second and third generation of leaders has risen up to replace the apostles.
The prayer of Jesus Christ prayed here has held. His friends' grip on him proved weak; his grip on them proved strong. We're not saved by the strength of our own hold on Christ—we are saved by the strength of his hold on us. Our confidence rests not in ourselves but in him alone.
The friend of friends has never broken a single promise, never failed a disciple, never abandoned a single soul entrusted to his care—and he never will. And he's praying for you even today. Those curtains have never closed. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, we see the Lamb in heaven continually interceding for his people.
And blessed are we today who are the object of his prayers—not by our merit or our gifting or our strategies or by any other human competencies, but by one thing alone, for which we give all praise: the wonderful friendship of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
