April 10

Read: John 17:9, 15-17

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).

I Pray For Them

On the eve of the Crucifixion, as Jesus entered into His sufferings, the deepest desire of the Saviour was for the sanctification of His disciples.

In those last precious hours in the upper room before Gethsemane, He talked to them of many things: of humility, of the betrayer, of His going away, of their fruit bearing, and of the opposition to be faced. But throughout that hallowed evening our Saviour kept returning to one topic again and again. “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever” (John 14:16). “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things” (14:26). “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you” (16:7).

Late in the evening the conversation was finished. There were no more words of instruction to be given. Our Lord ceased talking to men about God and began to talk to God about men.

Under the shadows of Gethsemane and of Calvary, in the hushed stillness of the night, the Saviour poured out His heart’s desire to the Father. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am

not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” My heart responds to the intercession of my dying Saviour:

Answer that gracious end in me For which Thy precious life was given; Redeem from all iniquity; Restore, and make me meet for heaven!

— Wesley’s Hymns