"Therefore He again asked them, 'Whom do you seek?' And they said, 'Jesus the Nazarene.' Jesus answered, 'I told you that I am He; so if you seek Me, let these go their way,' to fulfill the word which He spoke, 'Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one.'” John 18:7-9
In John 17:1, the beginning of Jesus' most famous and profound prayer, he stated that the hour had come. To this point, it had all been about what was yet to come but now, the hour had finally arrived. Shortly after the conclusion of his prayer, Judas arrived in betrayal with a contingent of soldiers who desired to take him into custody. It was at this time that his salvific work began in earnest.
Beloved, most of those of us who call upon the name of Jesus know and understand why he came: to seek and save the lost. It was the very fact of our being lost that caused us to require salvation, which was not available through our own means. We know that Jesus loved, taught, healed, fed, encouraged and provided an example by which we are to live, but all of this would have been for naught had he not had the desire and power to reconcile us to the God who made us. He did this by literally dying the death that we deserved. He willingly took on destruction on our behalf that we might live.
When the soldiers came to collect him, his first thought was to protect those that God had placed in his care. That sacrifice not only benefited his contemporaries, but the righteous who had come before and all those who would come later that believed. That is us. The words he spoke are constantly being fulfilled. To the glory of God and the praise of the Lord, we are not lost but found in Him!
One,
Lee
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