John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Robert Eaton, John 14-17.

Robert Eaton: 00:07 Years ago I was asked to give a fireside on joy. This was in the pre-Gospel Library day, so I was using the topical guide, and I came across John 15:11. Jesus says, “These things I have spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full.” I thought, I’ll bite. What are these things? What’s the antecedent? I want to know. That’s changed the way I’ve viewed John 15:1-10. Again, the chapter breaks came after the fact, so it could be all of John. But let’s just read some of those and talk about how these bring us joy. Starting with verse one. John, would you mind reading for us and we’ll just dissect these as we go?

John Bytheway: 00:47 John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”

Robert Eaton: 01:03 Let’s pause there for a minute. Any thoughts about Jesus as the vine? This is the seventh “I am” statement that’s got a nominative predicate following it.

Hank Smith: 01:11 It’s a great analogy, isn’t it? If you’re a branch and He’s the trunk of the tree, that branch can have lots of fruit on it if it’s connected to the tree. But if you-

John Bytheway: 01:22 But that’s the only way.

Hank Smith: 01:23 Yeah. Yeah. If you want to be a branch that’s treeless, you’re going to be in trouble. You got to stay with the tree.

Robert Eaton: 01:29 Elder Talmadge says, “A grander analogy is not to be found in the world’s literature.” I love this insight from Thayer’s Greek Lexicon. “Christ calls Himself a vine because as the vine imparts to its branches sap and productiveness, so Christ infuses into His followers His own divine strength and life.” He’ll be in us.

Hank Smith: 01:50 Infuses, I like that.

Robert Eaton: 01:52 John. Keep going.

John Bytheway: 01:53 Okay. Verse three. “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”

Robert Eaton: 02:09 “I am the vine, and ye are the branches: He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

Hank Smith: 02:17 I have this talk from Elder Holland, Abide in Me, April 2004. Can’t believe it’s been that long. Sometimes when I go to look at these talks, I think, “That’s not 20 years old.” But he says, “Abide in me is an understandable and beautiful enough concept in the elegant English of the King James Bible. But abide isn’t a word we use much anymore.” We don’t text people usually and say, “I’m going to abide here for a while.” Elder Holland says, “I gained even more appreciation from this admonition from the Lord when I was introduced to the translation of this passage in another language. In Spanish, that familiar phrase is rendered, “permaneced en mi.” Like the English verb abide, permanecer means to remain or to stay. But he says, “Even Gringos like me can hear the root cognate there of permanence. The sense of this is then, stay, but stay forever.”

  03:13 I love the idea of you have to be connected to the Savior in order to have fruit. You might say, “I’m going to cut myself off from the trunk of the tree.” You might even go, “Look, I’m finally free. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I can go anywhere I want in the yard. I don’t have to be connected to that tree.” But it’s not going to take long before verse six comes along, “You’re cast forth as a branch and you wither.” Connected to the Savior? All grapes. But if you disconnect from Him, you’re raisins, soon-to-be raisins.

John Bytheway: 03:46 I love the last part of verse five. “Without me, ye can do nothing.” I always love to bring this verse into the discussion when we talk about 2 Nephi 25:23, “After all you can do.” Because I remember I sat next to an Evangelical minister once on a plane and he said, “You guys believe in the Jesus of the gaps.” I have to admit, my first thought was, “I don’t really know where Jesus shopped, but I don’t think they had a Gap back then.” But he said, “You think you’re going to do all of this and then Jesus makes up the gap.” It really caused me to think because I thought, “Oh, I think I know where we might get that idea.” “You’re saved by grace after,” as if it’s a sequence, “after all we can do.”

  04:36 It really set me out on a search for … In fact, I went to the index of the Triple Combination and found every reference to the word merits and I went through it. Do we merit our salvation? Type of a thing. Wonderful little journey it sent me on. We rely holy and only upon the merits of Christ. As we go through that verse with my students, what does after all we can do mean? Our friend Brad Wilcox did a talk called His Grace is Sufficient, where he took that phrase apart beautifully. But I always like to bring in this verse. Hey, Christ is there before, during, and after any effort we can make. Because without him, how much can we do? We can do nothing.

  05:20 I love that it uses that all we can do type. That phrase is right there. Put that with all of those other verses as you ponder and wrestle with this idea. I just wanted to throw that in there.

Robert Eaton: 05:32 My tag for this concept, John, is called Contemporaneous Grace. Every time I catch a reference like Brad’s and others, and there are plenty, by the way, that have helped address this issue, to help us overcome the notion, “I ought just do all the work I can, then collapse maybe a few yards short of the finish line and Jesus will drag me across.” But to help us see, “No. No, he’s promised to run the race with us, to be there.” As a young missionary, I had that old example of a little thing we drew with there’s a fall and two steps and then Jesus makes it possible. There’s a bridge, so Jesus built the bridge. My implication was, we’ve got to cross the bridge ourselves.

  06:15 But as I served in leadership positions in the church and matured in my understanding of the Gospel, I thought not only does He build the bridge, but He helps us walk across the bridge. I don’t think any of us could walk across the bridge without His help, and I don’t think we can help others effectively. I don’t think we can really do much of anything of eternal consequence without being plugged into the vine. I have found the more I ground my teaching, my service, my thinking in the Savior, the more power, the more effectiveness and the more joy there is for me.

  06:49 A year-and-a-half ago, Elder Stevenson gave instruction at a Regional Leadership Conference I attended. He said 20 years earlier, when he was in a stake presidency, Elder Nelson had visited his stake. In the Saturday evening session of Conference, he had someone draw a tree, complete with roots and branches, and reported to us that Elder Nelson had said, “My teenage daughters were asking lots of questions that I would call branch questions. I realized I was answering them with branch answers and the Spirit nudged me to say, ‘I need to answer them with root answers.'” Elder Stevenson encouraged us as leaders to teach root truths, core truths, like those found in the first two or three questions of the Temple Recommend questions.

  07:31 And then at the end of the Conference, Elder Carl B. Cook of the Presidency of the Seventy made a comment he didn’t even remember giving. Because I asked him, “May I use this on the podcast?” He said, “Sure, I didn’t remember I said that.” But I’ve loved it. When you focus on the leaves, you burn out. When you focus on the roots, the atonement of Jesus Christ, you are inspired. That’s true for me. When I do stuff for Jesus, I do it more joyfully and more effectively. But sometimes programs and success and even trying to do the best of things can take on a life of its own. And if it becomes about statistics rather than salvation, certainly if it becomes about our individual success rather than the Savior, we become unplugged and we lose that power.

  08:18 I wonder if that’s why Elder Uchtdorf has been so emphatic about making those connections to the Savior. “As teachers, we may speak with the tongues of angels. We may entertain delight, amuse and astound,” he said. “But if we have failed in keeping our focus on Jesus Christ, we have missed the mark and our teaching is only a shadow of what it ought to be. Always keep the focus on our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.”

John Bytheway: 08:42 We’re tinkling symbols and sounding brass otherwise; we’re meaningless noise.

Hank Smith: 08:49 I’ve wondered if the Savior would use this analogy today. These guys are living around these grapevines. This is something that’s part of their everyday life, and it’s not something that’s part of our everyday life. Rob, you just used the word unplugged. So I’ve used this analogy where Jesus might say today, “You are the phone and I am the charger. Without me, you are dead. Without me, you are nothing. But with me, you can do incredible things.” I’ve had students label their phone charger Jesus and it reminds them every night when they plug in, “I better be connected.”

Robert Eaton: 09:24 I love that.

John Bytheway: 09:25 Oh, Hank, that reminds me of there was an article about Jaren Hall, BYU’s quarterback who’s now coming up on the NFL draft. But he quoted a bunch of sayings of his father, Kalin Hall, through his life, and one of them was, “Plug into God before you plug in your phone.” Always make sure you plug into God before you plug into your phone. The other one that I just love that is not on topic exactly was about looking for a wife. He said, “I want you to find somebody who is so lost in the Lord that you have to go through Him to find her.”

Hank Smith: 10:01 That’s beautiful.

John Bytheway: 10:03 That is great.

Robert Eaton: 10:05 One Monday morning my assistants and my wife and I were reviewing the key indicators for the mission. Once again, we’d had far fewer people attend church than we had hoped and we are talking about how we could change that. Naturally, our minds went to tactics we could emphasize. Now, the missionary department had even kindly given us, back then, a Zone Conference to teach about ways to get more people to come to church. Clark Cannon, one of my wise young assistants said, “What if instead we taught them more about the sacrament and the Sabbath day?”

  10:38 You can get people to come to church by throwing the right-sized rocks at their windows. Too little, they won’t hear, too big, you’ve got other problems, jumping on their bed, by harassing them endlessly with texts, but that doesn’t lead to lasting change, abiding change. Abiding change comes from tapping into Jesus Christ and His doctrine. Too often, our instinct is to, as Elder Bednar said in one of his books, “We spend too much time talking in council meetings about behavior we want to change,” I’m paraphrasing here, “but not enough time talking about the doctrines that, if believed, would lead people to change that behavior.”

  11:15 I’m grateful for Clark Cannon teaching me in that instance about the power of teaching people about the sacrament and what that means. And then when they love the Savior more and know what it means to Him for them to attend this meeting, they’re more likely to choose on their own to attend. All right, verse seven. Let’s go back, John, if you could pick up there again in chapter 15.

John Bytheway: 11:37 “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

Robert Eaton: 11:43 I just love that phrase, “My words abide in you.” I can remember years ago when I had a manual labor job, but I got 10-minute breaks and I got to read something. Whatever I read in those 10 minutes would become my soundtrack. The question is, what’s my soundtrack? What do I read or watch that sticks with me? What am I choosing?

John Bytheway: 12:02 Treasure up in your mind. “My words abide in you.” It reminds me that Moroni, as he was closing out the Book of Mormon, quoted a couple of talks of his father and letters from his father, Mormon. In the Moroni 9:25, he said, “My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life,” listen to this phrase, “rest in your mind forever.”

  12:38 Now, let my words abide in you. What do you let rest in your mind? Because if you watch the news, if that’s going to rest in your mind, do you want the fruit of that? But let this rest in your mind forever. After he had just told him all these bad things were happening with the falling of this civilization, Mormon says, “But let Christ rest in your mind forever.” That sounds to me like, my words abide in you, isn’t it?

Robert Eaton: 13:02 What a wonderful link that I’ll be adding to my scriptures there, and a great question. What am I letting rest in my mind? Wow. Thank you. All this leads to amazing joy when we let the solemnities of eternity, the merciful plan rest in our minds. When we bind ourselves through ordinances and covenants to the vine, to the source of life and light, we have joy. Sister Jean Bingham taught, “Lasting joy is found in focusing on our Savior Jesus Christ, and living the Gospel is demonstrated and taught by him. The more we learn about, have faith in, and emulate Jesus Christ, the more we come to understand that He is the source of all healing, peace and eternal progress.”

  13:45 “Your sorrow shall be turned to joy, the Savior teaches in John 16:20,” which reminds me of Isaiah 61:3, “I’ll give you beauty for ashes.” “We’ll have hard times, but as the Savior says in chapter 16:22, ‘Your joy no man taketh from you.'” And then President Nelson has explained that, “My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. When the focus of our lives is on God’s plan of salvation and Jesus Christ and His Gospel, we can feel joy regardless of what is happening or not happening in our lives. Joy comes from Him and because of Him. He is the source of all joy.”

Hank Smith: 14:30 I’m noticing, Rob, in the two chapters we’ve covered so far, that love comes up over and over. John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Verse 21 of John 14, “He it is that loveth me that keepeth my commandments, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father.” Down to verse 23, “If a man love me, he will keep my words.” Verse 24, “He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.” And then he continues in John 15:9, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.” Verse 10, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I abide in the Father’s love.”

  15:09 Then more in verse 12, “Ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And then even later in this chapter, verse 17, “The things I command you, that ye love one another.” Verse 19, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Over and over, He talks about this love that He has for the Father and the love that He has for them, and the love that they can show to Him if they keep His commandments.

Robert Eaton: 15:42 47 times in the Gospel of John, He uses the word love. Again, that includes chapter headings. Only 12 in Matthew, seven in Mark, 13 in Luke. It’s just another beautiful theme laced mercifully throughout John’s Gospel.

Hank Smith: 15:57 You see how much He loves this group who has stuck with Him.

Robert Eaton: 16:02 We’re going to get to unity in just a moment with John 17, but that loving one another is key for them to do what He needs them to do. They cannot be pulling each other in different directions. They can’t be squandering their time quarreling internally to go take His Gospel message effectively to the world. Missionary companionship can’t be quarreling with themselves and have the Spirit with them and teach with power. This love for God, love for the Savior and love for each other creates the kind of unity that is needed.

John Bytheway: 16:35 You alluded to it before. Jesus is coming up on some of the most difficult things. I think if I knew I had something huge and horrible ahead of me, I’d be asking everybody to, “You guys got to help me.” Here, Jesus is trying to help them and teach them and prepare them for the fact that He’s going to leave. “But I’m going to send the Comforter with you. You guys are going to be okay.” I think I’d be thinking about myself.

Robert Eaton: 17:01 John, it’s still mind-boggling to me I would think, because there are times when the Savior goes up to a mountain and a place apart. I like to climb and hike, so I love all those nature references. I’ve got lots of tags about that justify my getting out and climbing and hiking. This seems like it would’ve been a good time to go out to a place apart, a mountain, for the evening. But instead, on this final evening of mortality with His apostles, Jesus is teaching and teaching beautifully, powerfully, selflessly, to those whom He has chosen to be His apostles.

  17:35 In verse 16 of chapter 15 in John we read, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, that your fruit should remain.” And then in the Great Intercessory Prayer that we’re about to come to, I’ll just jump ahead to verse 18 in John 17, Jesus prays to His Father, “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” As you know, one sent from is the meaning of apostle. While I read this, I think I want to know what those Jesus has chosen and ordained today have to say, and I’m going to give it great weight.

  18:16 Elder Hales told me this story and he told it in a talk. He wouldn’t have told it in a talk after he himself became a member of The Twelve. He was Presiding Bishop when he shared it. His father was an artist, and a member of The Twelve had commissioned a painting and was coming by to pick it up personally. It was wintertime and so Elder Hales went over there to see and maybe shovel the walks, but the walk was already shoveled. He came in, his father who had heart problems, who was not supposed to be shoveling walks, had shoveled the walk. Young Bishop Hales was chastising his father for shoveling the walks when he wasn’t supposed to.

  18:49 “Robert,” he said, through interrupted short breaths, “do you realize an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ is coming to my home? The walks must be clean. He should not have to come through a snowdrift.” He raised his hand saying, “Oh, Robert, don’t ever forget or take for granted the privilege it is to know and serve with the apostles of the Lord.” I just like the thought. I shovel the walk for apostles. I show up. They go somewhere to speak, I get a chance to hear them. I want to hear them. I want to underline what they say. I want to dissect it. John, I’m grateful for your blurb on the back of my book, but wow, what a blurb for anything the apostles do. “I have chosen you and ordained you.” That’s quite an endorsement, for me, for anything that these men teach and write.

  19:43 John 17, there are all these superlatives. It was Elder Hales, especially loved this, and 18, 19, he called that the perfect day. He just loved that chapter. But this Great Intercessory Prayer is remarkable. We won’t begin to do it justice, but let’s start with verse three. My question for verse three is, if we didn’t have John 17 and we are doing a prompt in a class, complete this sentence, “And this is life eternal that …” fill in the blank, I might’ve said, “That you get as much good done as you possibly can in any 24-hour period.” I would’ve had a lot of other things that I would’ve thought of before this, so I’m intrigued by the predicate for that.

  20:26 “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. What are your thoughts about that teaching from the Savior? Why does He say that’s what eternal life is? What does He mean by it? It’s a bit counterintuitive for action-oriented followers of Jesus, like most of His followers are.

John Bytheway: 20:50 It sure sounds like an invitation, doesn’t it? It’s not a “I’m unknowable, transcendent. You’ll never figure Me out.” It’s more of an invitation, and my mind went immediately to an Elder Holland talk in 2007 called The Only True God in Jesus Christ Whom Thou Has Sent, which I think is the greatest official explanation of our understanding of the Godhead that I’ve ever heard. This is a great talk, but the invitation to actually know Him and that’s what eternal life, this abundant life is. We have a God who wants to be involved. I think that’s what Come, Follow Me last year in Old Testament taught me. This is a God who wants to be involved in our lives and wants us to find Him and wants to be found, which was wonderful to me.

Hank Smith: 21:38 When the Savior says, “That they might know thee, the only true God,” I noticed that He doesn’t say, “That they might know about thee, the only true God.”

John Bytheway: 21:48 A few facts here.

Hank Smith: 21:49 Yeah. There’s a difference between knowing about someone and knowing them. I knew about John Bytheway, before I knew him, and there’s a big difference between knowing about someone, hearing about them, reading something they’ve written and getting to know them, becoming their friend. I think maybe that’s what the Savior was after there, “That they might know thee.”

Robert Eaton: 22:12 A relational invitation almost. By the way, in a marriage, when things are going great, it’s amazing what you can just let slide. This one spouse backs into the garage and does $500 damage to the door. It’s like, “Don’t worry about it. We all do that stuff. We haven’t used our insurance in a while. That’s what it’s for.” But when the relationship is not good, it’s amazing how small a thing can get under people’s skin and lead to an argument.

  22:40 Similarly, and I don’t mean at all to minimize legitimate questions and concerns and confusions and doubts people might have, but for me, I find the better my relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the more stuff that once concerned or troubled me just seems to fade into the background and not be that important. The better my relationship is, the more plugged in I am to the vine, the more likely I am to abide in them and walk their path.

  23:09 Joseph Smith said, “If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, it’s a hard matter to get right. There are a very few beings in the world who understand rightly the character of God.” And then in the Lectures of Faith, he or Sidney Rigdon or both of them said, “One of the three things we need to know in order for any rational and intelligent being to exercise faith in God unto life and salvation is a correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes.”

  23:35 When my wife and I attended the Mission Leaders Seminar in 2013. By the way, that’s like apostles and free chocolate milk. That’s got to be the Celestial Kingdom right there. It was just amazing. Elder Holland spoke, and I’ll never forget the talk partly because I was there, but it was just so powerful. He said, “There is no point in going on to the other truths we believe if we haven’t fixed in our minds and in the minds of those we teach the preeminent role of the Godhead in our doctrine and in our eternal destiny. We are to know these divine beings in every way we can. We are to love Them, draw near to Them, obey Them, and try to be like Them. We can be absolutely certain that it will not go well for the missionaries or for those they teach if we slide past our teaching of the divine. We must not point toward mortal leaders before we have taught and testified of celestial ones.”

  24:27 One of my other favorite missionaries, J.D. Cook, taught after his mission for a year at the MTC and emailed me that if he could do his mission again, he would do more to foster faith in Jesus Christ. He felt like maybe he’d glossed over that as you sprint onto other things, including behavioral changes that are necessary. But it begins, all great things begin with faith in Jesus Christ, President Nelson has taught us. And so I find this declaration of that truth in John 17:3 fascinating.

  24:58 I just want to highlight two misconceptions. There are so many that we could talk about. Anthony Sweat did on the Easter episode, a misconception about God maybe being somebody who always makes it easy for us. Elder Holland does, too, one of them from the 2000 talk to a women’s conference that John mentioned. “May I declare to you and all others who will hear me that one of the tragedies of our day is that the true God is not known. Tragically, contemporary Christianity has inherited a view of a capricious, imperious, and especially angry God whose primary duty is to frighten little children and add suffering to the lives of already staggering adults. May I unequivocally and unilaterally cry out against that sacrilegious and demeaning view of a loving and compassionate Father in heaven? I wonder if the Savior may not have known even in His mortal years that this would happen. Thus, his plea for the world to know the true God, the Fatherly God, the forgiving and redeeming and benevolent God.”

  25:53 But then, in a later talk, he addresses a countervailing misconception. “Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much. Comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat, but don’t even row it. Gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle and then tell us to run along and pick marigolds. I think we’ve got to avoid both of those extremes to have that accurate understanding of God, so that we love Him and it fuels what we do.”

  26:26 I love President Howard W. Hunter’s invitation. “We must know Christ better than we know Him. We must remember Him more often than we remember Him. We must serve Him more valiantly than we serve Him. Then, we will drink water, springing up into life eternal, and we will eat the bread of life.”

John Bytheway: 26:42 For our audience, what is intercessory? I think I know about … Why don’t we explain? This has been called the Great Intercessory Prayer. What is that?

Robert Eaton: 26:50 I think of the intervening, interceding on behalf of one. This is the prayer where Jesus intercedes for us, pleads. A beautiful example of His advocacy on the behalf of those who follow Him. Especially as later in this chapter, we hear Him praying for us, those who believe on Him because of His apostles’ words.

Hank Smith: 27:12 I have a reference from David O. McKay, said, “This is the greatest, most impressive prayer ever uttered in this world.” Wow. We could learn a lot about prayer here, I think.

Robert Eaton: 27:24 We can. What a treat, a privilege to get to sit in on this prayer, this sacred moment. As we read this, it helps us see that Jesus Christ are distinct beings. But Elder Holland has also said, “I now quickly stress that when we have made the point about the distinctiveness of their persons, it’s equally important to stress how unified they are and how truly one the Godhead is. I think I’m safe in saying that part of the reason we’re so misunderstood by others in the Christian tradition is because in stressing the individual personages of the Godhead, we may not have followed up often enough by both conceding and insisting upon Their unity in virtually every other imaginable way.”

  28:06 I think there’s one other danger in overlooking their unity in this prayer and in reality. Then, I think we overlook the significance of the Savior’s invitation, His plea for us to become one with each other and one with Them, even as They are one with each other. We get that in verse 11. “And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world. I come to thee, Holy Father, keep through mine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are one.” Now, I backtrack for just a bit to say, how are They one? Is it because They took a vote and found the middle ground between Jesus and the Father? They’re one because Jesus Christ submits Himself to the Father.

  28:52 Hank, you pointed this out. I was going to have to count, but you did it for me in your marvelous book about Living the Parables, but I think you said over 100 times in the Gospel of John. You said, “John also features Christ referring to the Father more than 100 times.” This is an interesting paradox. In the Gospel of John, we get a grander view of Jesus than in any other Gospel. We see His divinity more clearly, right from the outset. It’s what scholars would call high Christology. And yet, we also see His submissiveness to the Father more clearly than in any Gospel.

  29:29 In John 14:7-12, 28, 31, the message is, “My Father is greater than I. I do what He asked me to. I do what He sent me to do.” That is how we achieve unity with Him and the Father, is that we submit to Him in the very same way that He has submitted to the Father.”

Hank Smith: 29:47 Rob, I noticed about this prayer that again, I think we’ve hit this before today, but He prays a little bit for Himself. He starts out with saying, “The hour has come. I need the power that I had before the world was in order to finish this work and perform this atonement.” And then again, the rest of this prayer is about other people, where He prays for the disciples. He prays for those who believe on Their words, so any disciple of Christ becomes part of this prayer.

  30:19 Taught me a statistic that five of 21 verses are really about Him and the rest are about other people. It taught me a little bit about how to pray. I’ve had prayers before where it’s all about me and I think, “Oh, my word, maybe I should talk about someone else here for a second so I don’t seem so selfish.” But when I finish my prayer that it’s about me, I should say I’m about 20% done and I’ve got 80% left to go about others.

Robert Eaton: 30:47 Again, all this right before he’s about to undertake the most difficult thing. But that’s also all about others.

Hank Smith: 30:54 Yeah, it’s all about others.

Robert Eaton: 30:56 And then you and I show up in verse 20 and all the listeners. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.” I just love this verse. John, maybe there are others, but this is the clearest example I can think of where Jesus Christ’s immortality is praying for us and that just warms my heart, His advocacy there.

Hank Smith: 31:19 You become part of the prayer, the Great Intercessory Prayer.

Robert Eaton: 31:22 Now, I continue in verse 21. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” It seems to me the ultimate point of these beautiful chapters, this upper room discourse, is if we’re to realize our greatest potential as children of God, our latent divinity to become one with Him, one with His Son, there’s only one way to do it and Jesus is that way. We follow Him. We have faith in Him. We come to think and feel and act like him.

  32:13 We repent when we’re not like Him. We bind ourselves to Him as the vine through ordinances and covenants. We let His words rest in our minds and in our hearts. We come to know Him and His father and love Them so much, and we take the Spirit for our guide and submit our wills to Theirs that we become completely united with Them. We become one. 1st John 1:3, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” To be invited into that fellowship, that order, to be invited to become one with Them, that is sweet.

John Bytheway: 32:59 What I love about this, focusing on being one, is that one is the center of the word atonement, at-onement. How’s this oneness going to happen? It will happen through the atonement of Christ. We can be reconciled and be one. I love John 17:15. “I pray not that thou should take them out of the world, but that thou should keep them from the evil.” I think there’s a certain part of me that thinks, “Wouldn’t it be fun if we could just build a lodge for all of our friends and family and go up in the mountain somewhere and bring all of our favorite books with us?”

Hank Smith: 33:42 Just escape? Yeah.

John Bytheway: 33:44 And just hide. But we couldn’t bless anybody. “A city on a hill can’t be hid.” Jesus is asking us to be a light and not that we just go hide from this wicked world, but that we manage to live in it and to try to bless the world. I think it’s interesting that He would specifically mention in the prayer, I’m not saying take them out of the world, but please keep them from evil. Wow.

Hank Smith: 34:09 That’s awesome. I love how He compliments them in verse 16. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Using prayer to compliment and uplift someone. I don’t think I do that as often as I should in my family prayers.

Robert Eaton: 34:24 John, this is a reminder because sometimes when life’s hard and you encounter some conflicts, there’s a natural man, natural woman tendency to withdraw, to say, “Fine, I’ll just take my ball and go home.” Jesus needs us to stay and play, to help make the world a better place.

Hank Smith: 34:42 Rob, I look at these few verses of John 17:21, 22, 23. Five times the Savior is calling for His followers, any of his followers, to be one. To create, like you said, that kind of unity. I look then at the world, even in the church, even in my own ward, at the division that the adversary creates. It’s all about division. It’s all about making your point. What did President Nelson say? We demonize and malign people who don’t agree with us, and I would think that’s the adversary’s greatest goal, to create division. You can see it. I can see it even at the university. I can see it in, what major do you have, or where did you serve your mission? Or where do you live, or what kind of car do you drive? Or how many languages do you speak? It’s all division. What’s your political views? It’s the adversary creating division.

  35:39 I thought of this talk from President Eyring, Our Hearts Knit as One. It’s just a simple analogy that he gives, but I think it could be so, so helpful. He says, “Suppose someone asks you what you think of a new bishop. As we get better and better at forging unity, we might think of a scripture when we hear that question. ‘And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye should judge, which is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge, ye shall be judged.'” And then he says this, “Realizing that you see others in an imperfect light will make you more likely to be generous in what you say.”

  36:17 “In addition to that scripture, you might remember your mother saying, mine did, ‘If you can’t say anything good about a person, just don’t say anything at all.’ That will help you look for what is best in the bishop’s performance and character. The Savior, as your loving judge, will surely do that as He judges your performance and mine. The scripture and what you heard from your mother may well lead you to describe what is best in the bishop’s performance and his good intent. I could promise you a feeling of peace and joy when you speak generously of others in the light of Christ. You will feel unity with that bishop and with the person who asked your opinion.”

  36:57 “Not because the bishop is perfect or because the person asking you shares your generous evaluation, it will be because the Lord will let you feel his appreciation for choosing to step away from the possibility of sowing seeds of disunity.” I’ve always remembered that. I hear, this talk is 15 years old and I can still hear him giving that. “The Lord will thank you for choosing unity.”

Robert Eaton: 37:23 He is intentional about unity and in his talks, invites us to be intentional about unity. What are the little things that we do that lead us away from that? What are the things that we do that can draw us to that? What an example.

John Bytheway: 37:40 I’ve got, in my margin, Doctrine and Covenants 38:27 “Be one, and if ye are not one, ye are not mine.” I like to ask my class, if we’re not His, what are the alternatives? Because none of them are good, right?

Hank Smith: 37:58 Yeah. Rob, I’m a big fan of verse 24 where the Savior is finishing His last prayer before going to the garden. He says, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou has given me,” it seems like He’s talking about the apostles and the disciples of whoever believes on Him through their word, any of those who choose to follow the Savior, “be with me where I am.” The Savior is asking His Father, “It won’t be heaven if these people are not there with Me. So let them come with Me.” If you’ve ever wondered about your own worth, John 17:24, the Savior wants you with Him and prays for that. And I think the Father’s going to honor that prayer.

Robert Eaton: 38:40 “Be with me where I am.” Hank, I’ve not focused on that phrase before. I’m highlighting that. I love that notion. Not just post-mortally, but just, where do we stand? Jesus wants us to be standing with Him in turbulent times and always.

Hank Smith: 38:58 Rob, before we let you go, I think our listeners would be interested in your journey as an educator, as a scholar and a faithful Latter-day Saint. What’s that journey been like for you?

Robert Eaton: 39:09 My journey’s been especially a winding road and eclectic, just in terms of my professional career path. A very strange one. A lawyer, an executive, teaching seminaries and institutes. And then being an academic leader over pathway and online. And then being over on online learning and then getting to teach again. What’s remained constant for me throughout that, has been that I’ve tried to make God’s cause my cause. God does not need 17 million religion professors or seminary teachers. I have to be so careful to say this is not the path of the righteous, or all 15 of those we sustain as prophets here and revelators would be former religious educators. They’re not. But for me, I’ve been blessed to get to do this and it’s been so gratifying to do things of eternal consequence. Along that path, I was really blessed to work with Elder Hales on Return and President Eyring and his biography.

  40:05 My brother asked me after that, “So you’ve worked closely with two of these men. Do you think people overestimate how much inspiration there is in leading the church, how much the Lord is involved?” I said, “Well, I met this one guy in Mexico who’s testified that the First Presidency met daily with Jesus in the temple.” I said, “I think he might.” I haven’t heard that and nothing to suggest that. But I said, “I think most of us underestimated it.” As I’ve worked closely with them, I think we underestimate that we’re too quick to assume, “Well, that’s just a relic of their social upbringing, of their culture, of their biases.” I have been amazed at those two men, the late Elder Hales and President Eyring. And then I got to interview all of The Twelve and everyone but President Monson. With each of them, I felt the same thing that I feel and that anyone can feel listening to them in General Conference.

  40:58 They are chosen and ordained. They are sent from Christ. Even when there are questions I don’t have the answer to, I know where I want to stand. I want to stand with Jesus and those He’s called and ordained.

Hank Smith: 41:12 Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. John, what a great day we’ve had in the Gospel of John.

John Bytheway: 41:18 Yeah, a lot of notes.

Hank Smith: 41:19 Yeah, a lot of notes in my Gospel library app. I loved all the tools Rob showed us there. We want to thank Professor Rob Eaton for being with us today. What a treat. Thank you, Rob.

Robert Eaton: 41:30 Thanks so much for having me. What a privilege for me.

Hank Smith: 41:34 It’s been just a treat for us. We want to thank our Executive Producer, the amazing Shannon Sorensen. We also want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And we, of course, remember our Founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’re going to talk more about the New Testament on followHIM.

  41:52 Today’s transcripts, show notes and additional references are available on our website, followhim.co, followhim.co. And you can watch the podcast on YouTube, with additional videos on Facebook and Instagram. All of this is absolutely free, so be sure to share with your family and friends. To reach those who are searching for help with their Come, Follow Me study, please subscribe, rate, review or comment on the podcast, which makes the podcast easier to find. Thank you.

  42:19 We want to thank our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts and Ariel Cuadra. We also love hearing from you, our listeners.

Alicia Hawks: 42:31 Hi, my name is Alicia Hawks. I am a faithful listener of the followHIM Podcast. I love it so much. I’m a busy mom to five little boys, ages 11 to two. And because I’m in such a busy season of motherhood right now, I don’t have a lot of time to dive into the scriptures the way that I used to prior to having kids, the way that I would like to. The followHIM Podcast has been a huge help in gaining insights into the scriptures each week that I wouldn’t otherwise have time to gain.

  43:01 I feel like it’s a really good example of the way that Christ comes to women, just the fact that I can plug in this podcast and listen to it and gain such powerful insights. I’ve had so many aha moments and so many moments where I’m running to grab my journal to write down the things that have come to my mind. I feel like this has been a true godsend and I’m so grateful for the work that you all do on this podcast. Thank you so much. Bye.