Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3133
Delivered by C. H. Spurgeon, at Unicorn Yard Chapel, Southwark, on Wednesday Evening, August 29, 1855
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on Me through their word.” John 17:20.
IN the very opening of this subject one feels inexpressibly delighted to see the wondrous love of our Savior towards His people. He here promises that He will intercede for each of them before His Father’s Throne and He declares that this intercession also rises for those who are yet uncalled, unconverted and unregenerated! Mark the depth of His affection— He spends all His time in continually interceding for His people. I marvel at the condescension of Jesus Christ, that His people’s names are always on His lips. When we consider that notwithstanding all His exceeding Grace and affection towards them, they transgress and rebel, it appears amazing that He should mention their names, or that He should regard their persons! But when we remember that, day by day, in that land where there is no night, He who stands before His Father’s Throne bears perpetually on His breast their names deeply cut in the precious jewels and stones of the breastplate, and always with outspread hands, pleads for them, we cannot but admire His love for them and feel a deep veneration for that Divine Grace which makes Him declare, “For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest until the righteousness thereof goes forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burns.”
You must also note here the peculiar knowledge which our Savior, Jesus Christ, has of all His people, as well as His particular love for them, for He says He prays for those who are yet uncalled. Now, none of us who have faith in God, none of those called and led to believe in Jesus, are unknown to Him. He knows His redeemed as well in one condition as another. He knows which of two drunks shall turn and become one of His family. There are none so sunk in the depths of sin and wickedness that if they are His by the Covenant of His Grace, do not even now share in His intercession! He knows His Beloved when there is no visible mark by which to know them. He discerns His sheep when, to other people, they seem like wolves or goats. He recognizes His family when they are black as the tents of Kedar and He knows they shall be fair as the curtains of Solomon! He knows His children when they do not know themselves to be His, when they fancy they are lost beyond rescue, or when they foolishly conceive that they can save themselves. Yes, and when all hope fails them—when it seems that the Lord does not know them and the Gospel does not know them—when no Christian knows them and the minister can give them no comfort—Christ knows them even then, for it is still written, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom You have given Me out of the world; those who have not yet believed; but who shall believe through the word of those who are already called.”
Another thought before we pass to the subject, for we need to suggest a few of these thoughts just to start with, as they are in the text. The other thought is this—mark how Jesus loves all His people with the same affection. He could not pray for those few who, in His lifetime, had believed on Him without suddenly (to speak after the manner of men), recollecting that these were but a handful and, therefore, He stirs Himself up and says, “My Father, neither pray I for these, alone, but also for them who shall believe on Me through their word”—as much as to say, “These are not My special favorites because they are converted so early. I do not love these better than others. I pray also for those who shall yet be called. I pray as much for one of My people as for another.” It is well said by the Apostle Paul, “there is no difference.” And verily, Beloved, there is no difference in the affection of God towards His children! There is an elect out
of the elect, I will acknowledge, as to gifts and standing and as to the labor they may accomplish in this world—but there is no election out of the elect as for a deeper extent of love! They are all loved alike! They are all written in the same book of eternal love and life. They were all purchased with the same precious blood of the Savior. One was not purchased with His foot, another with His hand, but all with His very heart’s blood. They are all justified with the same righteousness, all sanctified by the same Spirit and they shall all enter the same Heaven! They are all saved by the same Grace, loved by the same love, heirs of the same inheritance—and Jesus Christ puts them all together when He says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them, also, who shall believe on Me through their word.”
I. Let us now proceed to the text. The first thing we learn from it is this, that GOD LOVES HIS PEOPLE BEFORE THEY BELIEVE ON HIM.