Thumbnail Sketch on Devlin’s “Sexual Utopia in Power”

I Finished, F. Roger Devlin’s “Sexual Utopia in Power; The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization,” late last night.
 
Devlin, not a Christian, gives a book that amounts to an apologetic for men in the ongoing war between the sexes. Devlin takes note of the decline in marriage as well as the decline in the success of marriage in the West and lays the responsibility for that clearly at the foot of Feminism and its destructive ideology.
 
Devlin insists that the old bromides of generations past of women’s role in marriage, of stereotypes of women as naturally inclined to monogamy, of the sanctity of marriage held by women, of women needing protection, have all been exploded with Feminism and the old answers to cure these problems from conservatives no longer are valid and likewise are part of the problem.
 
Devlin offers a rousing approach to these problems inasmuch as he insists that women have to have a mirror held before them for their contribution to the current conflict of interests that exists between men and women. Devlin holds feminist women responsible for the shambles in which our marriage culture currently finds itself.
 
Along the way Devlin takes on the Divorce culture in the West and demonstrates that it exists as a money making enterprise for those cottage industries of the State that have sprang up around divorce and so now support divorce. Devlin rightly notes the absolute carnage that “Family courts” create. He notes the impossible demands that Judges and social workers make upon men who are ground up by these courts.
 
Along the way Devlin notes the tools used by Feminism to support the Monstrous regime of women in which we currently live. Devlin insists that matters like “date rape,” and “sexual harassment” are largely contrived crimes created in order to support doctrinaire feminism.
 
Devlin insists that women must be forced to live with the consequences of their choices, explaining that as matters stand now the irresponsibility of women is subsidized and winked at by our current feminist system. Devlin says that men who refuse to marry are merely playing the cards dealt them in terms of the feminist zeitgeist. Why should men marry when the norm in our culture is for men to be abused by women shaped by feminism? Devlin also intimates that no man who is a man will put up with this feminist behavior as coming from a wife or girlfriend.
 
Devlin freely admits at the beginning of this book that he is not interested in considering men’s problems in the current situation. He contends that there are plenty of others sources out there if people are interested in looking into that. Devlin insists that he is doing something that men refuse to do out of their inbred sense to “protect the woman” and that he is turning a light on how the women we are protecting are feminist hags that wish to destroy men.
 
One of Devlin’s better insights in my estimation is his noting how the failures of Feminism guarantee the success of feminism as each failure is explained by feminists as resulting because we are not feminist enough. Consequently, oddly enough, the more that Feminism fails, the more it succeeds.
 
Devlin sees this crisis as the death of the West unless something is done quickly to correct this state of affairs.

The Enlightenment Use of Passions as Vehicle for Control

Classical ethics proposes restraint as the means of freedom; Sade proposes vice as the way to freedom; indeed Sade’s political theory proposes freedom as a way of annihilating moral restraint, but ends by imposing another more severe restraint in its place, thus introducing the central paradox of the Enlightenment: freedom equals control. ‘As we gradually proceed to our enlightenment,’ Sade writes giving the standard physics of the enlightenment as his starting point.

‘we cam more and more to feel that, motion being inherent in matter, the prime mover existed only as an illusion, and that all that exists essentially having to be in motion, the motor was useless; we sensed that this chimerical divinity, prudently invented by the earlier legislators, was in their hand, simply one more means to enthrall us.’

In classical physics, all objects were at rest unless moved by some agent; in Newtonian physics, all objects were in motion unless halted by some greater opposing force. The same could be said of Sade’s politics, which he derived from Newton’s physics. In an inversion of both Plato and Aristotle, Sade saw ‘insurrection’ as the natural state of men, who are nothing more than machines made out of matter in which motion was inherent. Since the passions are the moral equivalent of gravity, the successful government is not on which stifles passion, but rather one that foster it, and then directs the subsequent motions to its own ends. The state, in other words, should foster vice as an instrument of control:

‘The Greek lawgivers,’ Sade writes,

‘perfectly appreciated the capital necessary of corrupting the member citizens in order that their moral dissolution coming into conflict with the establishment and its values, there would result the insurrection that is always indispensable to a political system of perfect happiness which, like republican government, must necessarily excite the hatred and envy of all its foreign neighbors. Insurrection, thought these sage legislators, is not at all a moral condition; however, it has got to be a republic’s permanent condition. Hence it would be no less absurd than dangerous to require that those who are to insure the perpetual immoral subversion of the established order be moral beings: for the state of a moral man is one of tranquility and peace, the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest that pushes him to, and identifies him with the necessary insurrection in which the republican must always keep the government of which he is a member.’

Sade’s politics is the classical tradition turned upside down. The key insight of both the Marquis de Sade and the Christian West is that the moral man is in a state of peace; he is, in other words, not in motion and so therefore impossible to direct and control from the outside. The revolutionary’s very restlessness, his very rebellion against the moral order, which is the source of his restlessness, holds within it the seeds of control because once in motion the state need only manipulate the revolutionary’s desire by controlling his passions, and it succeeds in manipulating and thereby controlling him. Sade is not slow in drawing this very conclusion. ‘ Lycugus and Solon,’ Sade tells us,

‘fully convinced that immodesty’s results are to keep the citizen in the immoral state indispensable to the mechanics of republican government, obliged to exhibit themselves naked at the theater.”

Lust in other words, is the force which keeps the citizenry of the republic from succumbing to the inertia of tranquility which is the fruit of adherence to the moral order. At this point we enter into something like a circular argument. Lust is good because it fosters the restlessness of republicanism, but republicanism is also good because it fosters lust. Either way what we have here is the rationalization of desire as an instrument of simultaneous ‘liberation’ and control; what was hither to deemed pathological is not to be seen as social norm:

We are persuaded that lust, being a product of those penchants, is not to be stifled or legislated against, but that it is, rather, a matter of arranging for the means whereby passion may be satisfied in peace. We must hence undertake to introduce order into this sphere of affairs, and to establish all the security necessary so that, when need sends the citizen near the objects of lust, he can give himself over to doing with them all this his passions demand, without ever being hampered by anything, for there is no moment in the life of man when liberty in its whole amplitude is so important to him.”

Liberty, according to this line of thought is the ability not to act according to reason, but rather th ability to gratify illicit passion, which means that in the very act of attaining his ‘liberty’ man becomes the thrall of the passion he gratifies. Before long, it becomes clear that Sade’s politics is in many ways just the physics he says it is. Man at the beck of passion is in many ways like a particle with no will of its own, since reason, especially morals, is the soul source of man’s ability to govern himself. And once gratification of passion becomes the definition of ‘liberty,’ then ‘liberty’ becomes synonymous with control because he who controls the passion controls the man. Liberty, as defined by Sade, becomes a prelude to the most insidious form of totalitarian control known to man. This was the genius of Enlightenment politics, which is in reality nothing more than a physics of vice. Incite the passion; control the man; this is the esoteric doctrine of the Enlightenment, one that has been refined for over 200 years through a trajectory that involves everything from psychoanalysis to advertising to pornography and the role it plays in the Kulturkampf. Sade clearly understands that sexual liberation leads to social control and sees this liberation and subsequent control of passion as the basis of permanent revolution that life in France would become ‘If You Would Become Republicans.’

‘No passion has a greater need of the widest horizon of liberty than sexual license,’ he writes, 

‘here it is that man likes to command, to be obeyed, to surround himself with slaves to satisfy him; well, whenever you withhold from man the secret means whereby he exhales the dose of despotism Nature instilled in the depths of his heart, h will seek other outlets for it, it will be vented upon  nearby objects; it will trouble the government. If you would avid that danger, permit a free flight and rein to those tyrannical desires which, despite himself, torment man ceaselessly: content with having been able to exercise his small dominion in ht middle of the harem of sultanas and yours whose submission your good offices and his money procure for him, he will go away appeased and with nothing but fond feelings for a government which so obligingly affords him every means of satisfying his concupiscence.’

There are a number of ironies here, some obvious some not. One irony is obvious: Once man is freed from the moral order, he is immediately subjected to the despotism of those who know how to manipulate his desires. This is the essence of the enlightenment regime; not to prohibit, but to enable, to encourage motion or restlessness, and direct the flow of that activity by manipulating desire. This is the political genius behind a regime that is based on advertising and pornography and opinion polls and the other instruments which control liberated man.”

E. Michael Jones
Monsters From the Id — pg. 85 – 88

 

Quotes from E. Michael Jones’ “Monster from the Id” (I)

“From the point of view of the Marquis de Sade there is nothing but nature, and whatever nature commands is right. The very fact that I have a desire is a sign that it exists in nature, and the fact that it exists means that nature wills it, and if nature wills it, it would be wrong — i.e., a sin — not to act on a desire which nature has implanted in us.”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg. 27

____________________

“Women… are nothing but machines designed for voluptuousness.”

Marquis de Sade
Justine

One desperately would have liked to ask de Sade, “Designed by whom (?).”

_____________

“Mme. Roland, the Girondist leader who eventually lost her head to the revolution described scenes in which ‘women were brutally violated before being torn to pieces by those tigers; intestines cut out and worn as turbans; bleeding human flesh devoured.'”

Jacques Barruel 
History of Jacobinism — pg. xii

_________________________

“If the object of classical politics was the tranquility of order, a kind of stasis, then revolutionary politics chose motion as its goal. Passion, which according to classical tradition, disrupted order was now seen as the engine of progress. Movement, for a revolutionary, was its own justification. What the revolutionaries failed to see was the direction movement was taking. Passion seemed to be a function of the will, but as the initial euphoria of the revolution was replaced by the Terror, it became obvious that passion followed no law but its own and that the trajectory that began with passion and ended in horror was pre-programmed from the beginning, no matter how the intentions of the revolutionaries protested to the contrary…. The French intelligentsia had embarked on the trajectory of emancipating the sexual impulse from the moral order some time before and were now entering the end phase of that trajectory as the revolution, itself a manifestation of the trajectory , engendered the Terror and an orgy of sadistic violence and murder.”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg. 37

______________________

“… the early phase of the Enlightenment (held) that releasing sexual passions from the confines of the moral order can be managed and its bad effects rendered harmless by technology (penicillin, the condom, etc.) or legislation (no fault divorce, sexual harassment statutes, etc.) What begins as sex emancipated from the moral order ends in murder and death.”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg. 38

____________________

“Msgr. Knox has written that when men get the upper hand in Utopian communities polygamy is the rule; but when women get the upper hand, the rule is celibacy. Once convention is eschewed in favor of revolutionary authenticity in sexual matters this sexual antagonism begins to assert itself.”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg. 41

_______________________

“Horror and Enlightenment are two sides of the same coin. Like Mary Shelley we too are the captive to two contradictory imperatives: We as a culture can’t disavow the Enlightenment, especially its commitment to sexual liberation, and at the same time, we can’t deny that people get hurt when they act on these imperatives….

The two monsters of the Enlightenment, now immortalized on cereal boxes, also portray two phases of the Enlightenment as it actually got implemented, as opposed to what it proposed. Frankenstein epitomizes Phase I of the Enlightenment project — the early, ostensibly altruistic, optimistic phase, when the revolution, no matter how horrific its execution, still seemed plausible as a way of bettering mankind. This is the electricity phase, the phase of youthful energy, captured in Wordsworth’s phrase, ‘Bliss was it that dawn to be alive. / But to be young was very heaven!’ Dracula symbolizes phase II of the Enlightenment — the syphilitic phase, the disillusionment phase, when blood has been not only shed but polluted, generally by venereal disease as the logical consequence of sexual liberation. By the time the Enlightenment arrives in Germany during the Weimar Republic, revolution is seen as a draining of the blood of the innocent, and the revolutionary leader is seen as the scientific Vampire, as Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu and the doctor in Dreyer’s Vampyr were viewed at the time….

Vampirism and disease are ultimately metaphors for lust, which is a perversion of sexuality into something not life giving but life draining. The trajectory of the Enlightenment then has Frankenstein as its terminus a quo and Dracula as its terminus ad quem.”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg. 62, 63

____________________

“The crucial step taken by La Mettrie and the Marquis de Sade was the transformation of man into a machine as prelude to manipulating him as the scientist would manipulate inanimate nature. Because Christianity posited a certain sacredness to life, it was also seen as the major obstacle to the fulfillment of forbidden desire. Christianity, as a result, was construed as the enemy by Shelley and his circle. Science was an essential weapon in the arsenal he used to attack Christianity, the family, marriage, property, and government…. ‘Oh!’ wrote the aspiring young chemist,

‘I burn with impatience for the moment of Xtianity’s dissolution, it has injured me; I swear on the altar of perjured love to revenge myself on the hated cause of the effect which even now I can scarcely help deploring.! — Indeed I think it is to the benefit of society to destroy an opinion which can annihilate the dearest of its ties … — Let us hope that the wound which we inflict tho’ the dagger be concealed, will rankle in the heart of our adversary….

The more Shelley became convinced that he was in possession of the secrets of nature, the more violent became his hatred of ‘unnatural’ conventions like the family, the state, and religion, in particular Christianity: ‘Yet here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that I will never forgive Christianity! …  Oh I wish I were the anti-Christ, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell to never rise again.'”

E. Michael Jones 
Monsters from the Id — pg.  69, 71

_____________

“Physical passions, are the only real pleasures … In regard to happiness, good and evil are indifferent, and he who gets greater satisfaction out of doing wrong will be happier than whoever gets less out of doing right…. We should not, on the pretext of avoiding remorse, refuse to nature what she demands, nor above all, repent for pleasure…. We may, then, rightfully conclude, that if the joys derived from nature and reason are crimes, men’s happiness lies in being criminals … he who has no remorse, because of so great a familiarity with crime that for him vices become virtues, will be happier than such another who, after a fine deed, is sorry he has done it, and so loses all its reward.”
 
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
French Philosophe

___________

Marriage Homily

I.) Opening Prayer — Mr. Mark Chambers

Father we thank you that we’ve been invited to participate in this joyous occasion, the uniting of Andy and Bernice in Holy Matrimony. We’ve come to witness the ceremony, to celebrate with them, and to ask for your blessings on them. We pray that you would strengthen them for all that lies ahead, especially in this day and age when the forces of darkness are being brought to bear on your church. We ask that their love for and commitment to each other would grow as it remains grounded in their mutual love and commitment to you. That you would own their hearts and minds all their days and ensure their fidelity to you and your holy purpose. That within the confines of the roles of marriage that You have laid out in your holy word they would place the needs of the other above their own. And finally that you would bless them with an abundance of Godly seed, that the church might be filled with Christian warriors who from their youth are dedicated to godly dominion and conquering this apostate nation for our Lord and King Jesus Christ.

II.) Marriage Homily

When God said that Husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and when our Sovereign God went on to command that wives are to submit to their husbands at that point God confirmed a law order for Marriage that had already been in place for a millennium among God’s people. What this means is that Marriage is not based on schmaltzy notions of sentimentalism and Harlequin Romance. Nor is marriage anchored in effervescent and mercurial feelings. Marriage is structured and ordered by a law structure ordained by God wherein husband’s are to serve their wives by leading them as that service is consistent with God’s law and wherein wives are to submit to their husbands wherein that submission required is consistent with God’s law.

Note that neither the Husbands service, nor the wife’s submission are absolutized. Both must exist and move in terms of God’s overall law order. Husbands have no authority to be either Tyrants or Wimps and wives have no authority to be either Shrews or Doormats. If Husbands operate outside of God’s law order in relation to his wife, his wife is duty bound to oppose him. The same goes in the other direction.

For centuries the short hand label for this biblical marriage social order has been “patriarchy,” which means literally “rule of the Father.” That Scripture everywhere supports patriarchy is seen from Genesis to Revelation. God who rules over all is described as Father and entrusts covenantal  representations with fathers and husbands.

Now Patriarchy has fallen on some hard times, what with the advent of feminism and egalitarianism. Indeed the Church in the West, in many quarters, is all in a tizzy to find some other paradigm that is more “fair” and is more “wise” than what God has provided. The consequence of this search to replace the God of the Bible’s authority for structuring marriage with a different god’s authority for structuring marriage has resulted in the wreckage of the family in the West with the residual flotsam and jetsam of broken marriages,  single parent families, and confused children.

The cure for all this breakage is found in a return to biblical  patriarchy. In Patriarchy we find that the Christian faith gives us structure that is characterized by Love, Hierarchy, and Suitability

I.) Patriarchy is defined by love (Ephesians 5)

Interestingly it is Christ’s sacrificial love for His Church that is used as the model here for husbands. Here the Lord Christ is said to have gave Himself up for the Church.

Of course this is a shorthand reference to Christ’s death on the Cross for the sins of His people. Just as the Lord Christ served the Church in solving the Church’s sin problem by His death, so Husbands are to so love their wives that they sacrificially surrender themselves for their wives.

We should find it fascinating that the inspired Apostle would invoke the death of Christ for the Church as a model for a husband’s love and service for  and unto His wife. The crucifixion is the integrative point for all of Scripture. This love of God in Christ, taking upon Himself, on the Cross, the wrath of the Father, as deserved by the Church, becomes the model for patriarchy.  In His Cross work for the Church Christ did not consider His own needs but the needs of his Bride. In the Cross Christ provided for His bride the approval with God that she did not have. In the Cross Christ received the hostility of God that would have otherwise have fallen upon His bride. In the Cross Christ answered all the demands of God’s law that His bride could not meet. In the Cross Christ brought His bride underneath the safety of His wings and provided shelter from the storm of a loving God who provided Christ to be the Church’s husband. Christ did for His bride everything that His bride could not do. The Lord Christ loved His Church and gave Himself for it.

This selflessness, this obedience unto death, this compassion to do for others what they cannot to for themselves is the model set forth for Biblical patriarchy.  And yet, we are still told that patriarchy is arcane, oppressive, and so must be shelved in favor of other marriage models that are reflections of the bizarre and unseemly.

II.) Patriarchy is defined by Hierarchy (Ephesians 5)

The hierarchy is found in the explicitly stated requirement that, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”

If modern man was not offended by what was already said he certainly has his knickers in a twist over this statement. Quit contrary to modernity’s lust for a Jacobin egalitarianism where everyone is equally the same thus assuring that each and all of us descend to a lowest common denominator sameness what  patriarchy teaches is that all of life, marriage included, has hierarchy. This hierarchy is not absolute but is governed by God’s law word. Husbands are to be the authority covering over the wife even as Christ is the authority covering over the Church.

That men have hierarchy authority over their wives and families is not based on the fact that men are innately superior to their wives. Such a view would be a sign of some kind of mental distemper. That men have authority over their wives is only based on the fact that men are better at being men then women are at being men and part of what it means to be a man is to serve one’s wife and family by exercising authority. This God ordained authority is wielded by the husband with a selflessness that is looking out for the best for wife and family.  It is to that authority that wives are to submit just as the Lord Christ submitted to the authority of the Father during the incarnation.

Notice the implied “harmony of interests” motif here. In patriarchy there is the presupposition of a harmony of interest. The husband and wife think not only of their own needs but of the needs of one another. As a minister for over 25 years now I can tell you that when marriages break down they most often break down when the “harmony of interests” is exchanged for a “conflict of interest” model where husband and / or wife begin to think the marriage is about themselves as opposed to being about the glory of God and the extension of the Kingdom of Christ.

III.) Patriarchy is defined by Suitability (Genesis 2)

This is what God said in Genesis
The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Now, it stands to reason that this woman who was to be suitable for Adam found an Adam that in turn was suitable for her. This is just to say that Adam and Eve were a fit. They were quite literally made for each other. First of course they were a fit in the sense that they understood that they were God’s creatures and were beholden to Him. In our language today we might say that they shared a common faith. No marriage should be entered into where man and wife do not share a common understanding of their shared Christian faith. Indeed Scripture forbids it for Christians when it forbids unequal yoking.
But the correspondence, — or suitability if you prefer — between our first parents of course only began with Adam and Eve’s common faith — a common faith that found each of them trusting in God at each turn.

But beyond this common faith were other commonalities. They were related and yoked in other ways. After all this was a woman who was, in Adam’s own words, “Bone of my Bone, and Flesh of my Flesh.” Adam and Eve mirrored one another. I suspect that Adam and Eve corresponded to each other in the way that they looked and in their mannerisms, in their likes and dislikes. They not only shared a faith and a bed but they shared common delights, common palates, common speech patterns, and common characteristics.
Rudyard Kipling caught something of what I am getting at in terms of the need for commonalities in uniquely Christian marriage that is never less than a common faith but is always more than a common faith when he wrote,

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face,  the eyes, the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

If this is true of a stranger within the gate how much more true of a stranger within a marriage?

Dr. Clarence Macartney, a well known conservative Reformed Minister from my Grandparent’s generation put this time-tested concept, if also time-worn idea, in a sermon he preached on Marriage and family life. Macartney preached,

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

I know that Andy and Bernice share the kind of commonalities that the Lordship of Christ anticipates for a uniquely Christian marriage. They are not strangers to one another in terms of suitability. They share a common understanding of their common faith. They share a worldview.

They each are

Christian
Reformed
Covenantal
Confessional
Theonomic
Reconstructionist
Presuppositionalists
Familial-centric

They come from similar family cultures and backgrounds and they share a common people group. They are suitable for each other.

May God and His Christ favor us with a return again of Biblical patriarchy in order to heal the brokenness in our families and our people. The West will only be rebuilt, one marriage at a time, as those marriages turn to Christ and embrace God’s family order of patriarchy.

John 17:9-26 — Christ’s Long Prayer

Text — John 17:9-26
Subject — The Lord Christ
Theme — The Lord Christ’s Long Prayer
Proposition —  Consideration of the Lord Christ and His requests in His long prayer will reveal to us the heart of Christ for His people.

Purpose — Therefore having considered the Lord Christ and the requests of His long prayer let us  take comfort and rejoice in the great salvation by which we have been saved.

Action — Therefore having considered the requests

Introduction —

Upper Room Discourse
Preparing His legates for their task
As we shall see His departure and looming  ascension is upon His mind I13)
Longest recorded prayer we have of Christ
Unspeakably shame, dishonor, and cruelty lies before Him and yet the Lord Christ’s time is spent asking for His company.

Great Johannine themes here — “Word,” “World,” “Truth,” “Joy,”

Background / Context

“World” — used 13 times in this text.

The word “world” here is used of mankind as it lies in Adam … as it is in opposition to the Lord Christ.

Herman Sasse rightly spoke of the word “world” here as

“the sum of divine creation which has been shattered by the fall, which stands under the judgment of God, and in which Jesus Christ appears as the Redeemer… The “world then is in some is in some sense personified as the great opponent of the Redeemer in Salvation History.”

World then does not have to do with locale or geographic setting but rather it has to do with opposition to God’s saving work. The “world” is a realm that is activated and motivated by the intent to cast God off and to arise to god’s place. Christ will speak, in John, of the evil one as “the prince of this world.” (12:31, 14:30, 16:11). This does not mean that Satan is over planet earth but only that Satan is the one who rules over that aspect of fallen creation that opposes God.

When Christ says, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He is NOT saying that His Kingdom does not impinge upon planet earth or the affairs of men outside the Church walls. What He is saying instead is that His Kingdom does not find its source of origin in this fallen world.

Having said that we know that John’s Gospel does not leave us with a picture of ceaseless enmity between God and “the world.” John makes it clear that the world is not interested in God’s agenda but it is not true that God therefore has no interest in “the world.”

God loves the world (3:16)
Christ takes away the sins of the world (1:29)
Christ is the savior of the world (4:42)
Christ gives life to the world (6:51)
This is at cost for Christ gives His flesh for the life of the World (6:51)

So, we see here that while the world hates God, there is, in the depths of God’s intent, the purpose of reconciling the world unto Himself.

So, as we deal with the world we deal with it as ones who were ourselves part of that world. A world that seeks to create itself by its own fiat word independent of God. We know that this world is opposed to us as disciples of Christ (John 17:14. cmp. 15:18-19) and yet for the sake of Christ we take that Hatred the world has for God’s people and hold out to to the world the command for all men everywhere to repent.

I.) The Work of Christ mentioned in this Prayer

A.) He exegeted the Father (vs.6,8)

The Son came to make the Father known. Much as a minister is required to break open the meaning of a text so that the text might be understood, so the Son was the one who opened the meaning of the Father that the Father might be understood. To say that the Son was the interpretation of the Father is much akin to saying that the Son is the the brightness of God’s glory or to say that the Son is the express image of the Father.

It remains even so today. If we want to know the Father we must needs see the Father in the character of the Son. And the only place that can be known is as found in the Scripture. It is only in the Scripture that we see the Son as the exegesis of the Father.  Apart from the Son no one ever gets to know the Father. The Father’s name … that is the Father Himself is not apprehended apart from the words and works of the Son. This explains why Biblical Christians have always held that there is no salvation apart from a known Son… no intimacy with the Father apart from the Son making the Father known.

We get in significant trouble today in the Church because we don’t spend time understanding the exegesis of the Father by the Son as communicated by Scripture. Instead we envision what we think the Father must be like.

“My God doesn’t haven’t wrath…”
“My God wouldn’t do that…”
“My God indiscriminately loves everyone … ”

The “God” the Church serves today is more often then not a god of their imagination. It is not the God as exegeted and made manifest by the Son.

In His work of manifesting the Father the Son was doing the work of someone who restores old paintings. Meticulously and with great care the restorationist cleans the original painting of all that has worked to mar it over the years, with the result that the painting is now seen again for what it originally was.

In the same way, the Son stripped off the accretions of dirt and filth put upon the character of God by the Pharisees and made the Father known in keeping with His original splendor and beauty.

Christ as Image of the Father’s face,
Bore the flesh of Adam’s race,
Yet, in that Flesh was manifest
The Character of God confessed

B.) He Kept and Guarded His people (12)

Here we must note the explicit language that belongs to the Biblical Christian… to the one called “The Calvinist.”

Note when He speaks of His men here he distinguishes them very clearly from those who are not His own. Christ makes a clear distinction between those who are His and those who are not His. Here is that stout Biblical doctrine of Election.

Article 7. Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, he hath out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom he from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect, and the foundation of Salvation.

Now the context here may have more to do with the idea of these disciples being elected to their office as disciples but the larger matter of election to salvation is not far removed when we consider the language when used as applied to Judas, as the Son of perdition.

In Christ insisting that He is only praying for His people we find the same impulse that we heard in John 10 when Christ could speak of “His sheep” and speak of those who do not believe, because they were not of My sheep.

Christ prays for His particular disciples just as He will die for a particular people.  There is particularity all over the Gospel. A Christianity that lack particularity is a different Christianity then the one expressed from Genesis to Revelation.

This particularity though is not only unto privilege but also unto mission (18).

The keeping and guarding that our Lord Christ

C.) He is One with the Father (10, 11)

Purpose and Essence

When the Lord Christ prays, “All thine are mine,” and “All mine are thine,” there is a clear expression of ontological unity being expressed. When the Lord Christ asks that His disciples would be kept by the Father and prays that they were kept by Him we see a “unity of purpose.” When the idea is communicated that just as the Father sent the Son so now the Son was sending His Disciples (Disciples who were given to Him by the Father) (cmp. vs. 18) there is the clear idea of this trinitarian perichoresis intimated in the text.

D.) He Consecrates Himself (19)

The Consecration (set-apartness) spoken of here is certainly a reference to His looming death. Christ sets Himself apart by His death so that they may be set apart for the purpose of being heralds of that death.

In His consecration we see the work of

propitiation, expiation, atonement, reconciliation, active & passive obedience, redemption, ransom,  substitution,

II.) The Requests of the Lord Christ For His Company In this Prayer

A.) Request #1 — The Lord Christ asks that His and the Father’s Disciples will be Kept (Protected) (11-12, 15)

B.) Request #2 — The Lord Christ asks that His and the Father’s Disciples might be One (11)

C.) Requests #3 — The Lord Christ asks that His and the Father’s Disciples May Have Joy (13)

Christ here speaks of the Disciples having His joy made full in themselves.

This idea of joy becomes a sub-theme in the upper room discourse. It is mentioned in 15:11, 16:20, 21, 22, 24 and here. Obviously our Lord Christ is concerned with His people knowing His joy.

It is interesting that our Lord Christ is on the cusp of the Cross work and yet He can ask that the Disciples might have His joy made full in themselves. Obviously, the kind of joy that He is speaking of has the ability to not be extinguished by either sorrow or trauma.

It is to be expected that the Lord Christ might ask for this joy for the Disciples since, per the OT, joy was to be characteristic of life in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom even,  the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose and those dwelling in the Kingdom shall go out with joy.

In contrast to the old Covenant that was characterized by fasting the presence of Christ now is the time of celebration (Mk. 2:19). There is joy unspeakable and the Lord Christ’s prays for His little company that they may have His joy in them.

Well, how might we assess this joy our Lord Christ speaks of? I think when we look at this joy our Lord Christ speaks of we needs to go out of our way to distinguish it from pleasure. This joy is not equal to giddiness or a lack of seriousness. Rather, we might say that this joy that the Lord Christ repeatedly speaks of arises out of the satisfaction that comes from a finished work. This is why, in the shadow of the Cross, the Lord Christ can speak of His joy being made full in His disciples. His joy is driven by His satisfaction in the completeness of His work.

In his commentary on John R. H. Strachan put it this way,

“The joy of Jesus is the joy that rises from the sense of a finished work. It is creative joy, like the joy of the artist. It produces a sense of un-exhausted power for fresh creation. This joy, in the heart of Jesus, is both the joy of victory (15:11) and the sense of having brought His Church into being.”

If this is accurate then the joy that the Lord Christ is interested in having is the joy that comes from a job well done.

It is the joy a parent finds in letting go of well trained children.
It is the joy that comes in the last few breaths of a life well lived.
It is the joy of a battle well fought.

D.) Request # 4 — The Lord Christ asks that His and the Father’s Disciples might be Consecrated (17-19)

Conclusion – recap