“I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.” (v. 11)

Here is a tender truth:

The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, prayed for His followers—including us! And, among His prayers, there is this one: that God the Father would protect us.

We cling to that, and rightly. We who are in the world are deeply comforted by the promised protection of Holy God.

There is, however, an element of it that we tend to overlook.

Read v. 11 again, and ask the question: “What did Jesus pray we’d be protected FOR, and not merely FROM?”

The answer:

We are protected for unity.

Jesus’ hope for His people is that, as a particular protection of His Father, they would be unified. They wouldn’t stumble into bickering. They wouldn’t be known for divisiveness. They wouldn’t bring the fractures of the world—the idolatry of many “truths”—into the church. Instead, they would be protected for the purposes of loving one another, of holding to the sanctifying Word, and of sharing the same Good News they have believed.

We are protected to pull together. We are protected to worship rightly. We are protected to proclaim the only Gospel.

Such a gift, this prayer protection! May we live into it.

— Tyler