Here Jesus is thinking of His disciples and says “I will” or “I want” but when speaking of Himself He said “not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42). His final petition is for them and not Himself. Oh, that we were more like Him!

Mark 14:36  “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Luke 22:42  “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

He wants His disciples to be where He is and He has already said that He was no longer in the world (17:11). He is asking that His disciples be with Him in heaven and see the glory that is His there. Notice that He is talking about those the Father has given Him. This includes not just the twelve but all of us who follow Him. This prayer is immediately for His disciples but is also for us.

John 17:11  I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one.

We are indeed going to be with Jesus (John 12:26; 13:36; 14:3; Rom 8:17; 2 Tim 2:11). We will be able to see Him and His glory when we get to heaven (1 John 3:2).

John 12:26  Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.

John 13:36  Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

John 14:3  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Romans 8:17  Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

2 Timothy 2:11  Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him;

1 John 3:2  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Note that heaven is the place where Jesus will be, but heaven is also just being with Him. His presence would make any place heaven! (Php 1:23)

Philippians 1:23  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;

His glory in heaven is much different than the glory of His cross (John 12:41, Rev 21:23).

John 12:41  Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.

Revelation 21:23  The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

The Father loves the Son (John 5:20).

John 5:20  For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.

Barclay makes the interesting observation that “It is a precious thing to remember that before these terrible hours his last words were not of despair but of glory.”

Our view of the spiritual is still vastly limited by our living in the present physical world. We think of this world as being reality when the “real” reality is in heaven. An example of this is when a loved one dies we think of them as “departed” when in fact we should think of them as “arrived.” For them this prayer of Jesus that they be with Him has been fulfilled, because, for the Christian, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8). “We weep, but they rejoice.” (Maclaren)

2 Corinthians 5:8  We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Now our communion with Christ is imperfect because of our flesh, sin, circumstances, distractions, worries, and work, but some day all of those will be stripped away and we will be with Him forever! What a day that will be!

On a side note, God always prioritizes the spiritual over the physical. An example is Adam. God told him that if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would die (Gen 2:16-17) and when he did eat of it, Adam did die. First his intimate relationship with God died (Gen 3:19) and eventually his physical body died, too (Gen 5:5). We have been delivered from both of Adam’s deaths which were a result of his sin. We have been delivered from spiritual death through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross for us and we will be delivered from physical death when we eat from the tree of life in heaven (Rev 22:14).

Genesis 2:16-17  And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

Genesis 3:19  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 5:5  Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.

Revelation 22:14  “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

God deals with the spiritual first and then the physical unless He needs to deal with the physical to accomplish His goals in the spiritual. So why do we prioritize the physical over the spiritual?