(Verse 20-21) - As we noted before, Christ is here praying explicitly for the disciples. We can take the principles put forth and apply them to God's dealings with us, but the object of His prayer to this point has been the disciples.

Here He widens that praying to pray specifically for those who would come to be redeemed as a result of their witness. This includes every believer in the church age.

We have seen a great emphasis on the sovereignty of God in salvation thus far. Here we see a marvelous marrying of that concept with the truth of human instrumentality. Because of underscores the human instrument part of the equation. she witness of the Apostles would be that God would use to bring men to Christ.

We Baptists are so afraid of making men not responsible for their sin and wickedness that we are willing to do all manner of violence to God's Word and outright ignore and deny the clear teaching of the Scripture. Pride enters in a little I think and we stubbornly hold on to our tradition and our perceptions despite all evidence to the contrary. In this we are quite like those in other, less Biblical forms of Christianity.

That being said, we need to note that the Bible does teach us that man is responsible before God to bear witness to other men and call them to believe and submit to the Gospel. God will use a human mechanism to build His Church. That mechanism began with the Apostles and continues through to us today. We are the means by which God accomplishes His plan and purpose in the world.

We must quickly add that this is all accomplished by His own power. He does the work. It is not our power, effort, or wisdom that can be said to be the real accomplisher of this work. It is His hand and not ours; His strong right arm and not our own that saves men. We are the means, the instrument by which God does His marvelous work of grace.

There is no passive idea here either. We are not dumb tools passively being used by God as inanimate objects. Many believe that any view of sovereignty does this. They think that if we believe that Salvation is entirely of God then men become passive robots entirely unresponsable for anything they do. This is simply silly! The two have nothing whatever to do with one another. Man is responsible and God is sovereign.

The Bible knows nothing of men as passive, unactive tools in God's hands being used regardless of their feelings or will. This is just not how God works nor is it how people work. God is far greater than a ruffian Who treads uncaringly over His creation. The problem is not that the Bible teaches this but that those who are more concerned with winning an argument on one side or the other are willing to wrest the Scriptures away to their "side" of the argument.

The Bible proclaims that God is sovereign in salvation, He alone determining the who and the how. Yet, the Bible also very clearly speaks of God's use of human means to accomplish His purposes. The two work hand-in-hand from God's point of view. This is true though they might seem, from mans point-of-view, seem to be contradictory. The trick is for us to see and understand that they are both true.

How do those facts apply to my life?:

It is a difficult thing to balance such grand concepts in one's theology without emphasizing one or the other side too heavily. It is a damaging thing to do one or the other. We must stand for the truth that the Bible proclaims as fully and as fervently as we are able.