John 17 - The NIV Application Commentary on the Bible: One-Volume Edition

Jesus Prays for Himself (17:1–8). This section of the prayer finds Jesus talking to his Father about his efforts on earth to glorify him and to be obedient to his will. Now, with the work of the incarnation complete (which assumes Jesus’s descent from heavenly glory), Jesus anticipates his ascent, his resumption of the glory he had before creation.

Addressing God as “Father” was Jesus’s habit, and in this prayer it occurs six times. Such intimate language for God was a hallmark of Jesus’s spirituality. Jesus says that the “hour” (Gk. hōra) has come (v. 1), which points to the hour of glorification we have anticipated throughout the Gospel. For Jesus the cross is not a place of shame, but a place of honor. His oneness with the Father means that as he is glorified, so too is the Father glorified. This unique connection with the Father finds further explanation inasmuch as Jesus also possesses a divine authority over all humanity so that he may distribute to them eternal life.

Eternal life comes through knowing God (v. 3). The Hebrew notion of knowing encompasses experience and intimacy, and for Christians this means obedience to and love for God. Moreover, such knowledge must include a commitment to Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

The first accomplishment of the incarnation was Jesus’s display of God’s glory for the world. Now Jesus says that he has accomplished this task God has given him to do. But does Jesus say that he is finished at this point in his life? It is best to see this finished work as including the hour of glorification in which Jesus is now engaged. This work includes his death, resurrection, and return to the Father, as much as it includes his revelation of the Father to the world.

What then is Jesus’s summary of the work he finished in his ministry? Jesus has revealed God’s “name” (v. 6, NIV “you”). It is no accident that throughout the Gospel, Jesus not only refers to his work as empowered by God’s name but also that people should believe in “his name.” Jesus bears the name of God. Thus, in revealing himself he has disclosed the personhood (the name) of God to the entire world.

But this revelation has not been distributed without purpose. While it has been offered to the entire world, only those who have faith have truly understood what was happening in this divine revelation. They know that Jesus has come from God and his words are divine. Jesus’s disciples can be described as followers who belonged to God—a remnant, whom God delivered to Jesus. Of course, this at once sets in place a theological tension that we must examine (see below). How are we to interpret this divine sovereignty and human response?

Jesus Prays for His Disciples (17:9–19). The thought of this leads Jesus to pray for them specifically. They are precious because they belong to the Father and are now Jesus’s responsibility. The failure to read these verses in the wider context of John’s theology has led many to misrepresent them. God loves the world and entered the world in his Son for the sake of the world, to save it. Now Jesus’s work in the world is near completion, and he is praying exclusively for his immediate followers who will be left behind as he departs. Like a shepherd about to lay down his life for his sheep, he prays for his flock whom he has led and who now must persevere in the wilderness.

Note the similarity between Jesus’s prayer in 17:10 and that in 17:1. The pattern of glorification is now complete: God is glorified through his Son, and the Son is glorified through his disciples. Therefore, those features of Jesus’s life that brought glory to God may likewise be the characteristics of discipleship that bring glory to Jesus. When a disciple’s life bears fruit, God himself is glorified directly. Jesus is describing a pattern of divine life, of indwelling and mysticism, in which God and Jesus share an interiority that leads to this sharing of glory; he also anticipates that disciples will enjoy a similar unity with God and one another.

Jesus’s first petition for his followers is that they remain united. Remarkably he desires that his disciples enjoy an intimacy and oneness that are analogous to the intimacy and oneness he shares with the Father. The reason for Jesus’s concern is that his service, providing leadership and unity, will end with his departure.

His disciples, however, remain in the world. This is the environment not just of unbelief and cynicism but of abject hostility. The mission of the church, the task of Jesus’s followers, is to challenge this world, to draw out those who love the truth and bring them into the flock.

Jesus’s next point concerns his disciples’ sustenance and strength in the world. Their assignment is dangerous, and so he prays for their equipment and protection. Jesus has given them his word, and the Spirit will recall it and keep it secure. This word, this divine revelation, will become essential equipment in their testimony and survival in the world.

Jesus also prays for their protection. He recognizes the power of evil, for he lost one of his disciples to Satan, and he understands that representing God in this world is an invitation to genuine battle. His disciples must contend with these powers since they remain in this world. God’s “name” will be a refuge (v. 11).

Jesus’s next concern has to do with holiness. They live in the world, and yet Jesus can say that they are not “of the world” (vv. 14, 16). This points not to their location geographically but to their position spiritually.

Jesus prays that his disciples might be “sanctified” (hagiazō) in the truth (v. 17). This Greek word refers to something made holy, but the means to achieving this holiness is through separation. To be holy, then, is not in the first instance a description of perfection (though this is included). It refers to a life that is so aligned with God that it reflects God’s passions completely.

Jesus likewise was set apart for a divine mission. Sanctification is always for mission since it is God’s activity in the world, bringing it truth, light, and salvation. Thus, the disciples have a mission similar to that of Jesus. They too should see their purposes for living as not their own, but as shaped by the mission God has for them.

Perhaps verse 19 is one of the key verses in the prayer. When Jesus says that he sanctifies himself (hagiazō), to what does this refer? Jesus is recommitting himself to the mission assigned by the Father. This priestly mission of service involves his sacrifice. Through his death on the cross, the disciples will experience something never known before. His death will enable them to experience a new holiness, an identification, a deep attachment with God.

Jesus Prays for All Believers (17:20–26). Jesus is aware that those who stand with him will also depart to be with him in his glory. This will leave those whom they disciple, the church, to represent the kingdom in the world. Therefore, Jesus next turns to pray for these followers whom he has not yet met, men and women who will follow the apostles, indeed the church today, which carries the mission set down by Jesus during his final week.

He first prays that they will have a unity like that of his first disciples. This unity must be visibly based on love so that when the world sees them, it will know immediately that they represent Jesus. This love is an outgrowth of the union Christians will enjoy with Jesus himself, a union modeled on the oneness of the Father and the Son, a union born when the Father and the Son indwell the believers when they are given new birth.

Jesus was the bearer of God’s glory, and now the church bears that glory. The thought is of the glory of God passing to Jesus’s followers, indwelling them. The confidence of the church’s mission rests here: if it lives in the Spirit (and thereby in the Father and Son), if it reflects God’s glory and love, if it shows a unity in its ranks born by a shared knowledge of God, then its testimony will astonish the world. Jesus prays that someday his followers will see the true glory, the true love, that has existed in heaven since the beginning of time.

This anticipated glory, however, finds its counterpoint in the prayer’s last sentences. Jesus addresses God as “righteous Father” (v. 25), reminding us that it is God’s righteousness that has led to his upright judgment of the world. The problem is not the world’s access to the knowledge of God but that the world refused to acknowledge that God had sent Jesus.

Yet all those who accept the Son, who embrace him and the Father, will experience the ineffable love known only between Father and Son. These are the last words Jesus prays before his arrest: “that I myself may be in them” (v. 26). His last desire is to love his followers and indwell them, to fill them with the glory and joy he has known, so that their knowledge of God will be unsurpassed and overwhelming.