As Christians we talk a lot about grace. And one of the main ways we talk about grace is as a gift. But often this sense of grace and gift is limited to ‘the forgiveness of sins’ leading to ‘eternal life.’ These are no small things, obviously, but I wonder if God might have more in mind for us than just that — or rather, I wonder if we have too narrow a perspective on what that ‘eternal life’ looks like. Today’s Gospel reading suggests just that.
John 17.1-11 is a dense passage with a difficult-to-understand logic. (I think intentionally so.) But as we’ll see, the idea of gift — and therefore of grace — is all over it. In fact, the verb ‘give’ is found eleven times in these eleven verses:
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.“
Let’s look at the direction of this giving. First, there is giving from the Father to the Son:
- authority
- those who will be saved (x4)
- work to do
- words to speak
- a name
Essentially we see here that God has given the Son a mission, an audience, and the authority to fulfill that vocation. But that mission also entails giving: The Son gives to his people the Father’s words and through them, eternal life. In so doing, in a sense, he gives them back to the Father even as they offer themselves to him.
But the aim of all this giving is not just about ‘us’ and ‘God’, but also among ‘us’. Jesus’ mic-drop at the end of the passage is that the ultimate goal of all this is not unity with God, but that we ‘may be one’ just as the Father and Son are one.
If we think about this in Trinitarian terms, what this means is that our unity as Christians should be that same reciprocal, self-giving, perichoretic love that is the mark of the inner life of God!
This is a tall order to be sure. But it goes to show just how big the vision of grace in the New Testament is. Far more than ‘just’ forgiveness of sins and the promise of salvation, ‘eternal life’ is an invitation to participate as fully as possible in God’s gift economy.
What a wonderful gift indeed.
Matthew Root 