Jesus prays for we who are “not of the world.”

John 17.13-19.

Jesus prayed his John 17 prayer before he went to Gethsemane, and prayed for his students because he was about to leave them and wanted his Father to protect them, same as he’d protected them. Because thanks to Jesus’s influence, they were now holy—they were uniquely set apart to serve God; they were no longer common or secular.

That’s what Jesus means when he says they’re no longer “of the world,” in the same way Jesus isn’t “of the world”—they don’t (or are certainly not meant to) follow the crowd anymore, but follow Jesus. And that’s gonna rub the world the wrong way. And rub fellow Christians the wrong way when they love the world, and wanna compromise with it and its godless politics, instead of prioritizing Jesus and his kingdom.

John 17.13-19 KWL

13“Now I come to you,¹

and I speak these things in the world

so they might have my joy fulfilled in them.

14I gave them your¹ message

and the world hates them,

for they’re not of the world

same as I’m not of the world.

15I don’t ask so you’d¹ take them out of the world,

but so you’d¹ guard them from the evil.

16They’re not of the world

same as I’m not of the world.

17Make them holy with the truth.

Your¹ message is truth.

18Same as you¹ send me into the world,

I also send them into the world.

19I make myself holy for them,

so they might already be holy with me

with the truth.”

We don’t pray Jesus’s prayer here as a rote prayer. But we can base our own prayers on it, and pray for the same things Jesus wants. He wants the Father to guard us from evil; Jn 17.15 he taught us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” He wants us to be holy with the truth; Jn 17.17, 19 we can pray that we steadfastly stick to what’s true, and recognize lies and falsehood.

Alienating ourselves from the world.

Note Jesus pointedly says he didn’t ask the Father to take us out of the world. We can’t love our neighbors, and help lead the world to Jesus, if we’ve left it!

Problem is, a number of us have left it. Deliberately. Christians throughout history believed they had to withdraw from the world, because its temptations got in the way of them following Jesus. And yeah, sometimes we initially have to do that; when we’re newbies and getting the hang of obedience, it helps a lot to withdraw ourselves from our usual temptations and work on self-control with the Holy Spirit’s help. But once we have acquired enough self-control, we’re meant to go back to the world and practice it. And that’s not what these Christians have done. They chose to withdraw permanently. They chose to shirk Jesus’s command to love our neighbors, by pointing out how well they’re following all his other commands now that these pesky neighbors are no longer tempting ’em.

So they went to the desert and became hermits. Or created monasteries and walled themselves off. Or created Christian communes where only the members of their church might live. Or created a special Christian subculture—people they can safely interact with in Christian clubs, Christian schools, Christian businesses, Christian-only gated communities. Or, when they gain any political power, actually try to create Christian nations and drive out everybody they consider not Christian enough.

In so doing, they violate Jesus’s intent. How are we gonna be the world’s light when we ourselves have hidden it under a bushel basket?

When I went to a Christian college, I met fellow students who grew up in Christian-only enclaves, who’d never interacted with pagans before. They knew—’cause their parents and teachers had told ’em so—“The world hates you,” same as Jesus says. Jn 17.14 But they never experienced this hatred for themselves, because they’d never been out in the world, so they didn’t know what it looked or felt like. They were terrified of it, because they weren’t sure they could bear it. But they were gonna have to encounter it… because our school required all of us to be involved in a ministry or mission of some form. Something which required us to leave the enclave of our Christian campus, go interact with the world, and share Jesus with ’em.

Like I said, terrified. But when they encountered pushback from pagans… they were fine. They imagined all these absolute-worst-case scenarios, and none of ’em happened! At most they heard an angry outburst. Nobody got arrested, nobody got beaten, nobody got lynched. Yeah, some pagans prejudicially hated us because we were Christian, and these pagans had bad previous experiences with Christians and presumed we were the same way. We weren’t, but they never gave us a chance. Still—because freedom of religion is legal, and everybody but the nationalists seem to know this—the worst they experienced were hurt feelings, and they could handle that.

Much harder in Jesus’s day, when freedom of religion didn’t exist. Yeah, the Romans claimed every religion was tolerated in their empire, but no it wasn’t. If you weren’t polytheist like them, they’d harass you, sometimes ban you, sometimes kill you. One day they’d tolerate Jews; the next, persecute them. Did it with Christians too. Jesus was fully aware sharing God’s truth would endanger their lives. So he prayed for his Father’s protection. Guard ’em from the evil.

And that’s still his prayer for us. And we should pray it too: “Deliver us from evil.” Don’t rapture us out of the world, but help us be holy, shed truth and light upon the world, and point everyone to Jesus. Amen.