A Devotion from John Flavel

I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me.

—John 17:11

With what [final] arguments [does] he plead with the Father?

He adds [a fifth] argument in the words, “I am coming to you.” As his leaving them was an argument, so his going to the Father is a mighty argument also. There is much in these words, “I am coming to you”—“I, your beloved Son, in whom your soul delights; to whom you never denied anything. It is I who come to you, swimming through a bloody ocean. I come, treading every step to you in blood and unspeakable sufferings—all this for the sake of those dear ones I now pray for. Yes, the design and purpose of my coming to you is for them. I am coming to heaven in the capacity of an advocate to plead with you for them, my Father and their Father, my God and their God. Since I who am so dear come through such bitter pangs to you, so tenderhearted a Father, and all this on their account, since I now give them a little taste of that intercession work that I shall forever perform for them in heaven, Father, grant what I request. I know you will not deny me.”

And [sixth,] to close up all, he tells the Father how careful he had been to observe and perform that trust which was committed to him: “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction” (John 17:12).

And thus lies the argument: “You committed to me a certain number of souls. I undertook the trust and said, if any of these are lost, I will answer for them. In pursuing this trust I am now here on the earth in a body of flesh. I have been faithful. I have redeemed them” (for he speaks of that as finished and done which was now ready to be done). “I have kept them also and confirmed them until now, and now, Father, I commit them to your care. Do not let them fail now, do not let one of them perish.”

Thus you see what a muscular, argumentative, pleading prayer Christ poured out to the Father for them at parting.