Just hours before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus offered his famous High Priestly Prayer—one of the most intimate moments between Christ and his Father recorded in Scripture. John 17 has thus greatly encouraged Christians for millennia as it boldly affirms our connection to Christ. In this masterful, verse-by-verse exposition of Jesus’s words, renowned Bible teacher and preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones lays before us the richness, the depth, the wonder—and the assurance—of God’s plan of salvation.

THIS chapter is emphatically the Lord’s prayer. That which we commonly call the Lord’s prayer He taught His disciples, but did not use Himself. The petition, “Forgive us our trespasses,” could never have been uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ. This prayer, on the other hand, is His own—His disciples were not invited to unite in it; it was a prayer they did not and could not utter. Evidently the Lord spake so as to be heard, and the disciples listened. The Holy Ghost has provided that not one petition should be lost to the church of God. We often find our Lord teaching His disciples to pray, and we read of Him spending even whole nights in prayer; but we never find Him praying with His disciples. Indeed, there would seem to be something incongruous in Christ kneeling down with His disciples for prayer; there must always have been something peculiar in His petitions. At this time His work on earth was well-nigh ended: nothing remained for Him but to die: “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” (v. 4.) The Last Supper was over. The Lord had dispensed to His disciples the broken bread and poured-out wine, memorials of His dying love; He had expressed to them His desire, that in remembrance of Him, they should often gather together and thus show forth His death in this illustration and their union with Himself and with each other, until His return to them in glory. He had washed their feet; He had comforted them; He had opened His whole heart to them. He now opens it for them to Him before whom “all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid;” and having poured out His soul into the ear, and into the bosom of God, He went forth into Gethsemane. May God the Spirit be with us and give unction and understanding to our hearts, while we meditate on His most precious prayer.

In this study D. A. Carson illuminates Jesus's message to his disciples after the Last Supper, in which Jesus proclaims the coming of the Holy Spirit and prays for himself, his followers, and the world. D. A. Carson clearly explains what Jesus taught his disciples the night before his crucifixion. This exposition of John 14-17 helps students of the Bible appreciate Jesus's teaching on the coming and the work of the Holy Spirit, his high priestly prayer, and his commandment to love one another.

“If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

In this compilation of previously unpublished sermons, well-known pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones powerfully exhorts Christians to focus their affections on the God of the Bible, addressing issues such as prayer, the church, and evangelism.

This series by one of this century's most gifted preachers sheds new light on Jesus' prayer for His own in John 17, detailing and drawing out its timeless truths in four books. Here unfold the majestic themes of our assurance of salvation, our union with God and His loving care for the believer.

Life in Christ : Studies in 1 John