John 17 - Cornerstone Biblical Commentary

17:1-26 The outline I use, which topically divides Jesus’ prayer into four sections (17:1-5, 6-19, 20-23, 24-26), is also utilized by Schnackenburg, Morris, Carson, Comfort, Whitacre, and Köstenberger. Yet there is another possibility, used by Brown, Burge, and Blomberg: three sections (17:1-8 [personal prayer], 17:9-19 [[disciples],17:20-26 [future followers]), with each section containing parallel themes—each begins with the basic request (17:1, 9, 20), followed by a theme of glory (17:1-5, 10, 22), an address to the Father (17:5, 11, 21), an emphasis on disciples given to Jesus by the Father (17:2, 9, 24), and Jesus revealing the Father to his disciples (17:6, 14, 26).

17:3 the way to have eternal life. Many have believed this to be a parenthetical verse, perhaps a midrashic exposition of 17:2 by John himself (Barrett, Schnackenburg, Witherington, Blomberg), but it flows naturally from 17:2 and is better seen as Jesus’ own commentary on the meaning of eternal life (so Carson, Whitacre).

17:4 completing the work. It is common among scholars to believe that 17:4 refers to the work Jesus had completed up to this point and to include the future work on the cross in 17:5, but that is not the best way to understand the statement. As Burge says (2000:463), “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 the revelation of the Father to the world.”

17:4-8 Michaels (1989:294) understands 17:4-8 (apart from 17:5) not as a series of requests but as a summary of Jesus’ earthly mission, “a kind of last report to the Father of what Jesus has done on earth in the course of his ministry.”

17:11 you have given me your name. Some mss (D1 copsa) replace the dative relative pronoun hō [TG3739, ZG4005] with the accusative (of the same) hous, thus changing the meaning of the phrase to “you have given me these [disciples].” The better mss (60 66vid 107 א A B C et al.) have the dative—thus, the reading found here.

by the power of your name. Scholars are divided as to whether it should be instrumental (“by your name”), intimating that his powerful name is the means of protecting his people (so Bultmann, Bruce, Köstenberger) or locative (“in your name”), making this a prayer that God keep them faithful to his name (so Schnackenburg, Lindars, Beasley-Murray, Carson, Ridderbos). It may be that both are correct (so Brown, Keener), but of the two, the instrumental may be favored as the power that protects the disciples. While they are certainly kept “in his name,” the emphasis is on the power that provides the protection.

17:12 by the power of the name you gave me. The same textual variation as that found in 17:11 with the dative and the accusative occurs again here, and for the reasons stated in the note above, the preferred reading is the dative hō [TG3739, ZG4005] and the reading found here.

17:13 I told them many things while I was with them in this world. There are three possible interpretations of the “many things”: Jesus’ teaching throughout his time with his disciples, the farewell discourse itself, or the prayer of ch 17 in particular. The most likely is the second, for Jesus throughout this discourse had been preparing the disciples for his final departure from this world.

17:23 that you love them. Does this mean that the world will know of God’s love for itself (Bernard) or for the community of disciples (Brown)? God’s love for the world is expressed in 3:16, but according to 15:19, the world hates the disciples, and in 17:9, Christ says he is not praying for the world. Moreover, throughout John, the love of God and Christ for the believer is manifest. Therefore, the love of God for believers is the more likely meaning here.

17:25-26 the world doesn’t know you. The verbs in these verses are aorist and probably sum up the past situation (so Westcott, Whitacre)—“the world hasn’t known you, but I have.” Also, the difficult syntax (kai . . . de . . . kai [TG2532/1161, ZG2779/1254]) is probably best understood this way: “Although the world hasn’t known you, yet I have known you, and these have come to know you sent me” (so Beasley-Murray).

This has often been called “the high priestly prayer” on the grounds that Jesus was interceding for his disciples. Yet some (Westcott, Hoskyns, Witherington, Keener) prefer to call it “the prayer of consecration” due to Jesus’ dedication of himself to God in 17:1, 19. Both aspects are present in the prayer. Jesus was concerned for the glory of God, for his final righteous deeds, and for his disciples.

Jesus concluded his farewell discourse with this powerful “high priestly prayer,” a feature that is congruent with Old Testament and Jewish parallels (Gen 49; Deut 32–33; Jubilees 22; 4 Ezra 8; 2 Baruch 48) but is at the same time unique because it was uttered by the “one and only Son,” the incarnate Word of God (1:14). This is the longest prayer of Jesus in the Gospels, and it is also the deepest theologically. Though Jesus was praying from the perspective of this world, he was also praying from the perspective of the eternal realm, as if he was already with the Father (17:11, lit., “I am no longer in this world,” so Brown, Whitacre). It is linked thematically with the rest of the discourse and indeed functions almost as a summary of the fourth Gospel as a whole, addressing Jesus’ obedience to and glorification of his Father, Jesus as the revelation of God, his death and resurrection as glory, the choosing of the disciples and their mission to the world, their unity as modeled on the unity of the Godhead, and their destiny to be in the presence of Jesus and God (so Carson, cf. Black 1988). At the same time, this is more than a prayer—it was also meant as final teaching and preparation for the disciples so that they could understand the true significance of the Passion events (so Beasley-Murray). There is a very interesting parallel between this and the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 (so Blomberg following Walker 1982), with only one element (“forgive us our sins”) omitted:

Note that Jesus does not bring a grocery list of requests like most of us do. His prayer for himself is very simple in 17:1-5 and is stated in 17:1, “Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you.” Jesus asked his Father to fulfill his promise and the imagery of all the “lifted up” passages (3:14; 8:28; 12:32)—namely, to turn the shame of the Cross (lifted up on the cross) to glory (lifted up to glory). John is unique in his constant emphasis on the Cross as the time of Jesus’ exaltation. “Glory” means “praise, honor, veneration.” God was elevating Jesus on the cross to the place of honor (so Burge; Carson—“clothed in splendor”). Yet even here, Jesus’ main concern was not for himself but for his Father, that his glory might bring glory to God. The glory theme of the whole Gospel culminates here. The glory shown in his sign-miracles (2:11; 11:4, 40) was but a foretaste of this glory. As Jesus is glorified by God (5:44; 8:54), he glorifies God in himself (7:18; 13:31-32).

The basis of Jesus’ glory is the “authority” God has given him (17:2). The “authority over everyone” (lit., “over all flesh”) is similar to “all authority in heaven and on earth” in the great commission (Matt 28:18) and means universal, cosmic authority. This undoubtedly refers especially to the authority over life and judgment that God gave Jesus (5:21-23; cf. Dan 7:14). There is a strong grammatical symmetry between 17:1-2, as the references to both Jesus’ glory and his authority are followed by purpose clauses (so Carson, Burge). Jesus sought glory so that he could return that glory to his Father, and he received authority so that he could bestow eternal life on his followers. In fact, the two verses are intimately bound together, for Jesus’ glory is especially seen in his power to bestow life. Certainly he has authority “over everyone”—the unsaved as well as the saved—but his power over the unbeliever is seen in judgment, while the saved experience his redemptive power. Moreover, the gift of life necessitated his death on the cross, and the Cross was his moment of glory, especially because it is the atoning sacrifice that brings life. Note also the emphasis on divine election (17:2); these are those the Father has “given” the Son (Cf. 6:37, 39; 17:6, 9, 24).

Jesus expanded on the meaning of this new creation, which the Cross made possible (17:3). The “way” to eternal life is “to know you, the only true God,” and the Son, “Jesus Christ,” who was “sent to earth.” As elsewhere in John, knowledge is synonymous with belief and indicates salvific knowledge. As Hendriksen says (1953:350), this “refers not to merely abstract knowledge but to joyful acknowledgement of his sovereignty, glad acceptance of his love, and infinite fellowship with his person.” The phrase, “the only true God,” emphasizes the fact that he alone is God (cf. 1 Thess 1:9, 1 John 5:20), the only source of eternal life. To know God, moreover, is to know “Jesus Christ”—unusual on Jesus’ lips but not unprecedented in Scripture (cf. the Heb. of 2 Sam 7:20, where David calls himself “David” in his prayer). Since Jesus is the only “way” (14:6), people must have saving knowledge of him in order to have eternal life. We cannot know the Sender without knowing his Sent One (1:18; 14:7).

Then Jesus returned to the theme of glory (17:4-5), reversing the order from his statement in 17:1. First, he reflected on the earthly glory he brought to the Father “by completing the work” that the Father gave him to do. Every moment of his life from the Incarnation onward had been a moment of glory (1:14, “we have seen his glory”), and Jesus’ “work” refers not only to his miraculous works but to all of God’s work that he had been sent to accomplish. As he said in 5:17, “My Father is always working, and so am I,” and in 5:19, “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” The work God gave Jesus was primarily the work of salvation, and it implicitly included the Cross and the Resurrection, when that work would indeed be completed. Verse 5 moves from Jesus’ earthly work of glory to the preincarnate glory he shared with the Father. Jesus was asking that this glory be reinstated to him in his exaltation after his earthly work was done. This indicates that the Incarnation to some extent involved a forfeiture of that glory (so Haenchen, Carson, Cf. 6:62; Phil 2:6-7). During his life, he did possess “glory,” but that was the glory of the incarnate Son (1:14; 2:11; 8:50, 54), a glory given by the Father and recognized by his followers. After his exaltation, he returned to the complete glory of the Godhead, a glory that is beyond human experience and knowledge, entailing his transcendence over the world (so Schnackenburg).

The centrality of God’s gift continues in 17:7-8. In 17:3, the disciples are said to “know” God, and here they “know” (the perfect tense here indicates a continuing state of knowledge, so Carson) that every aspect of Christ’s life is a divine “gift” (17:7). They recognized the basic fact of Jesus’ message, that at every level he was tied to the Father. This is another reflection of Jesus’ subordination to God while on earth, but it also means that behind every single thing Jesus says and does is the authority of God. This is the great mystery—Jesus is at the same time one with God (10:30) and completely dependent on God. This is at heart the mystery of the Incarnation. The primary area in which this is true is Jesus’ teaching. God gave the message to Jesus, and he passed it on to the disciples (17:8). Moreover, the disciples “accepted” that message and believed that God had indeed “sent” Jesus. This is another aspect of their obedience (17:6). This is the path we all must follow—belief, acceptance, obedience. We are at least as imperfect as the disciples, but again God has chosen us as his own and given us to Jesus—we are jars of clay with God’s treasures within (cf. 2 Cor 4).

As imperfect, yet divinely chosen, instruments, the disciples desperately needed Christ’s intercession, so he prayed especially for them (17:9). When Jesus said, “My prayer is not for the world,” he hardly meant that he would never pray for the world. The world is the object of divine love (3:16) and Jesus’ salvific work (4:42)—indeed, of the mission of the triune Godhead (cf. “Mission” in the Introduction)—but the disciples are the true people of God, those chosen from the world to “belong to” God and to be given to Jesus (17:9b-10; Cf. 17:6). They are the ones who most need the divine protection and power. Literally, 17:10 says “All that is mine is yours, and all that is yours is mine,” very similar to the words of the father to the prodigal son in Luke 15:31, and this implies that the disciples are participants in Jesus’ relationship with the Father and have all they could ever need, similar to the idea of Matthew 6:11: “Give us today the food we need” (so Blomberg). Moreover, they are the ones who “bring [Jesus] glory” (17:10), just as the Father does. They perceived his “glory” (2:11) and worshiped him as “the Holy One of God” (6:69), and they would proclaim his name in the world as his sent ones (17:18; 20:21).

Finally, the disciples needed prayer because they were “staying in this world” while Jesus departed to the Father (17:11a). He had already told them of the terrible opposition they would experience (15:18–16:4), and they would have to face it without their Lord there to undergird them. In fact, Jesus was actually saying, “I am no more in the world.” While he was speaking to them, in his heart he was already with the Father (so Schnackenburg). Their hour of terrible isolation was already in process. Of course, he had already told them he would be back for them (14:2-3) and would send the Spirit to them in their time of need (14:16-17), but they would still be without him in their imminent troubles.

Jesus addressed his prayer to his “Holy Father,” a title found only here but reflecting Jewish prayers to God, the Holy One (cf. Isa 49:7; 54:5; Hos 11:9; Hab 1:12; 1 John 2:20; Rev 16:5). Holiness is the key characteristic of God, and his whole being flows out of it. Here, the title prepares for Jesus’ prayer that the Father “make [the disciples] holy” (17:17), as Jesus would give himself as a “holy sacrifice for them” (17:19). He prayed that God’s holiness might radiate through his sacrifice on the cross and through the life of holiness that would result for the disciples. The basis of the prayer is “the name” God had given Jesus, which was God’s own name. In the Bible, the “name” of God is the means by which he reveals himself to his people. As God, Jesus partook of God’s holy name and is the final revelation of God. This is further reflected in the phrase, “as we are one” (17:22; Cf. 10:30). Jesus asked that the very holy name he shared with God would now protect the disciples by its power (17:11; lit., “keep them in your name”). The disciples would not be left alone. They would have the Spirit and the powerful name of God watching over them. Their lacking strength would be undergirded by the very power and might of God (cf. Eph 1:19-20). The goal of Jesus’ prayer was unity—“that they will be united just as we are” (17:11). This prepares for the major teaching in 17:20-23 and builds on the earlier statements of 10:16 and 11:52. Unity in the church is a fragile state that is often disrupted by self-centered leaders, as proven by most of the Epistles in the New Testament that address fractured churches. In this sense, the prayer for protection may have in mind not so much the danger of persecution from without but the danger of schism from within; the disciples needed protection from themselves and the human tendency toward conflict.

Jesus then reflected on his past protection of his followers (17:12). Up to this time, he had been there to protect them, but he was soon departing, so they would need his Father’s power behind them. In fact, “not one was lost” except Judas, who was “headed for destruction” (lit., “the son of perdition”) in accordance with prophecy. In this case, “son of” refers to Judas’s divinely appointed destiny—damnation and destruction. The “Scriptures” probably refers to Psalm 41:9, “Even my best friend, the one I trusted completely, the one who shared my food, has turned against me.” Jesus had used this of Judas (13:18). There are a few passages cited by New Testament writers as fulfilled in the life of Judas: Psalms 69:25 and 109:8 in Acts 1:20; Zechariah 11:12-13 in Matthew 27:9-10. This is Jewish typology at its best: the events in the Old Testament are analogous with and ultimately fulfilled in the life of Jesus. The point here is that Jesus’ power had always been sufficient; even though Judas did betray him, Jesus knew about it all along, and his power was sufficient even there (Cf. 6:64, 70-71; 13:10-11, 21, 26-27).

Jesus’ departure to the Father was imminent; soon he would be “coming” home to the Father (17:13). He turned from reflecting on his past protection of his disciples to his past teaching of them, particularly in the farewell discourse beginning at 13:31. Interestingly, six of the seven occurrences of the Greek noun for “joy” (chara [TG5479, ZG5915]) in John occur in this discourse, with the list culminating in 17:13 (15:11; 16:20, 21, 22, 24). There Jesus said his teaching was intended to impart his joy to them—so “your joy will overflow” (15:11)—promising them that their grief at his departure would be turned to joy in all its fullness (16:20-24). The basis of this joy was not only communion with Jesus but the fact that he had “given them” God’s “word” (17:14)—that is, the truth about God and his plans for the world. Here is the basic problem: because the world is darkness and therefore hates the light (3:19-21), the world by necessity hates Jesus and therefore his disciples (15:18–16:4); this is because the disciples no more belong to this world than Jesus does. The difference is that Jesus understood this while his followers did not (the same problem Christians have today). All who belong to God are “temporary residents and foreigners” (1 Pet 2:11; cf. 1 Pet 1:1, 17) who have been chosen out of this world (15:19) and do not belong to it.

Since they were no longer a part of this world but understood this only partially, they needed God’s protection (17:15; Cf. 17:11b). At the same time, it was God’s will that they remain in this world. This is the classic definition of holiness; as in the modern proverb, “We are apart from this world and yet a part of this world.” Jesus was not asking God to remove them from the world; they would become the next stage of God’s mission to the world (17:18; 20:21). Rather, Jesus prayed that his Father would “keep them safe from the evil one,” possibly in a reflection of the Lord’s prayer (Matt 6:13; cf. discussion above). Christ had conquered the “ruler of this world” (12:31; 14:30; 16:11), but Satan is still the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4; cf. 1 John 5:19) and so seeks to sift the disciples like wheat (Luke 22:31) and “devour” (1 Pet 5:8) Jesus’ followers. They would only be victorious by focusing on Jesus (Rev 12:11), so Jesus asked his Father to protect them against Satan. Again, the reason is that “they do not belong to this world” (17:16; Cf. 17:14). The world is controlled by Satan, so to be victorious over the world means to conquer Satan as well. Carson concludes (1991:565), “But if the Christian pilgrimage is inherently perilous, the safety that only God himself can provide is assured, as certainly as the prayers of God’s own Son will be answered.”

When God protects his people, he does so by sanctifying them, making them holy (17:17). The “Holy Father” (17:11) enables his chosen followers to share his holiness. In the Old Testament, this concept is often used of consecrating or setting apart people for God’s service (Witherington takes this as the meaning here), whether the nation as a whole (Exod 19:6) or a priest (Exod 28:41) or prophet (Jer 1:5). Those sanctified are in a sense sacred vessels in God’s sanctuary. Following the holiness code (Lev 11:44; 19:2; 20:26), the command is “You must be holy because I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16). It may well be that the emphasis is both on the sphere of holiness (i.e., in the truth) and the means by which it takes place (by your truth, 17:17; Cf. 17:12). Since Jesus is “truth” (14:6), holiness takes place in union with him and his word (i.e., in obedience to his teaching). As Jesus was set apart and sent into the world (10:36) so are the disciples (17:18). Therefore, the process occurs as Jesus asks the Father to “teach them [his] word, which is truth” (17:17). There are three stages in this: Jesus leads them into truth (14:6); then the Spirit of truth leads them into truth (14:17; 15:26; 16:13); and finally they live by the truth of the Word and obey it (8:32; 14:15, 21, 23). Holiness is more than just being set apart from the world; it is more about being set apart for God—that is, thinking as God would have us think and living as God would have us live.

Holiness also involves mission (17:18). A further transfer from Christ to his followers occurs here: Earlier it was glory (17:1-5), then name (17:6-11), unity (17:11), and the life of holiness (17:17). Jesus transfers his mission to his followers: “As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world” (17:18). The sending of the disciples is actually stated in the aorist tense in Greek, meaning that their mission began when Jesus chose them, though it would attain its peak at Pentecost. So, they too were “sent ones” (see commentary on 3:17), God’s agents or envoys to the world. This prepares for the more fully developed theology of mission in 20:21-23 and builds on the divinely ordained three stages: Jesus’ mission to the world as sent by God in 3:17, 34, and throughout John; the Spirit as sent into the world in 14:16-17, 26; 16:7-8; and the completion of the process when the disciples are sent out in mission (17:18; 20:21; cf. Köstenberger 1998a). Carrying on the ministry of Jesus in the world, they were to be his voice and presence in the world as the Spirit of Christ indwelt and empowered them.

Finally, Jesus turns from the sanctification of his followers to the sanctification of himself, saying literally, “For them I sanctify myself” (17:19). Elsewhere it is said that God has set Jesus apart for his mission (10:36), but here Jesus sets himself apart. His mission centers on his sacrificial death, thus the NLT translation, “I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them.” He was consecrating himself as a sacrifice (cf. Exod 13:2; Deut 15:19, 21) and thus saw his death as a sacrifice for their salvation. This parallels his saying at the Last Supper, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19, so Hoskyns, Beasley-Murray, Whitacre), and evokes the image of atonement (Köstenberger). The process by which the disciples were to be made holy was built on Jesus’ own sanctifying work. The process by which we give ourselves over to God follows Jesus’ supreme example and is made possible only by his supreme sacrifice. Jesus’ death is the only thing that could make a world mission possible, as seen in 10:15-16, 18 (lay down his life), 12:24 (the seed dying), and 12:32 (lifted up to draw all people to himself).

The basis of oneness among the believers is the oneness between the Father and the Son, which is the major Christological theme of John’s Gospel (e.g., 1:1, 18; 5:17, 19; 10:27-30, 38; 14:10, 11, 20; 17:11, 21-23; see Staton 1997). If the Son does everything on the basis of his unity with the Father, how much more are we dependent on that same unity! As Ridderbos says (1997:561), “The dominant thought of Jesus’ prayer is that the church’s unity may be controlled by, and find its criterion in, its unity with the Father and the Son, that is, in Jesus’ coming into the world and his work in the world in keeping his unity with the Father.” Kysar (2001:374-375) goes even further, calling the church a new household in which the believers share in the communion and relationship of the triune Godhead. The purpose of it all is “so the world will believe you sent me” (i.e., rest their faith on the fact that Jesus is the Sent One, the final revealer of the Father). The church, empowered by the Spirit (15:26, 27), is a witness to the reality of God in Jesus. In this sense, there are four dimensions to this unity—God with Jesus, the Godhead with the believer, believers with one another, and a united mission to the world (cf. the excellent charts in Schnackenburg and Whitacre).

Next, this unity consists of a shared “glory” (17:22). God has showered his glory on Christ (1:14; 8:50, 54; 11:4; 12:28; 17:5, 24), and now Christ was sharing that glory with his followers. He bore the glory of God, and now the church is the glory-bearer. The shekinah glory of God first moved from the mountain to the Tabernacle and dwelt among the people of God shortly after the Exodus (Exod 24:16; 40:34). In Jesus, that shekinah glory became incarnate (1:14), and now the glory was passing to Jesus’ followers as they were indwelt by him (so Burge). This glory demands unity—“so they may be one as we are one” (17:22). To have the glory of God, we must exemplify the unity of God. Obviously, this is not meant in an absolutist sense, otherwise all the dissenting denominations and church traditions (e.g., Reformed vs. dispensational vs. charismatic; Arminian vs. Calvinist; high church vs. low church) would be entirely emptied of the glory of God. It does, however, mean that the church’s glory is diminished and is not what it could be and should be.

Thus the need is for “perfect unity,” the complete oneness between different factions in the church that can only come from Christ—“I am in them and you are in me” (17:23). The mutual indwelling of the Godhead with us can overcome the many differences—temperament, theological outlook, worship style, etc.—that tend to fracture the church. When we are one with the Son, who is one with the Father, we can rise above petty conflicts to attain a higher, perfect unity. Then the world will know not only the nature of Christ but also the love of God for his own—“You love them as much as you love me.” In Revelation 3:9, we read Christ’s promise to the beleaguered saints at Philadelphia that he would make their persecutors “come and bow down at your feet. They will acknowledge that you are the ones I love.” As Keener notes (2003:1061), “The way believers treat one another is an essential component of proclaiming Jesus to the world . . . the same kind of witness concerning Jesus’ origin as the raising of Lazarus.” (Both 11:42 and 17:23 present actions as testimonies “that [God] sent [Jesus].”)

Jesus turned from the present to the future, asking his Father for two things for “these whom you have given me” (17:24; referring back to their election in 6:37, 39). First, he prayed that his disciples might be “where I am,” which could mean he wanted them to be beside him as he was going through the terrible events to come. They were clearly not with him through the Passion events, however, and the context here does not really support this reading. Most likely, Jesus wanted them with him in his final glory in heaven. In 12:26, Jesus told his disciples and the Greeks that “my servants must be where I am.” Then in 14:2-3 he said he was going to heaven to prepare a place for them and would return for them so that they would always be with him. The prayer of 17:24 is toward the fulfillment of that promise. While in this world the disciples would experience constant trouble and opposition, but they would be in union with the Godhead now and have the promise of eternal life in heaven afterward.

Second, Jesus prayed that the disciples might “see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began,” (17:24b) a reference back to 17:5, where Jesus asked to be restored to “the glory we shared before the world began.” As Comfort says (1994:146), “Jesus lifted the veil to give us a glimpse of his eternal, preincarnate relationship with the Father.” Jesus’ glory, resulting from the Father’s love for him, was observable from the start (1:14; cf. 2 Cor 3:18; 4:6), seen even in the first miracle at Cana (2:11) and culminating in the Lazarus miracle (11:4, 40) and even moreso in the Cross and Resurrection as a “lifting up” to glory (3:14; 8:28; 12:32). That was Jesus’ glory shining through his incarnate state, but as no one has ever seen God (1:18), so no one has ever seen Jesus’ true celestial glory. That will await the eschaton and eternity, when we will “see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2). This passage promises the reality of that future hope. Throughout eternity, we will see and share in his final glory.

Finally, the prayer concludes with a summary of the themes in Jesus’ prayer and a further promise (17:25-26). It begins with “righteous Father” because every aspect of the prayer (the gift of Jesus to the world, the mission to the world, the condemnation of the world) was the result of God’s righteous acts. This is also the foundation for Jesus’ appeal here (so Köstenberger). First, Jesus summed up the situation of the world: it “doesn’t know” God (17:25; Cf. 1:10-11; 7:28; 8:19, 55). The ignorance and rejection of the world is overcome by the fact that Jesus does indeed know God and therefore has made him known (1:18). As Jesus has revealed the Father to the disciples, this enabled them to know that God had sent him. Note that Jesus did not say they came to know the Father (which they did) but rather that they recognized the mission that the Father had “sent” Jesus to accomplish—namely, to reveal God to the world. Within the parameter of this mission, Jesus promised that he would continue to reveal God to them, undoubtedly through the Paraclete (14:26; 16:12-15). This is the process of revelation: from the Father to the Son to the Spirit to the church, which is then enabled to reveal God to the world (Cf. 20:20-23).

There is a twofold goal in this continuing revelation: First, that “your love for me will be in them” (17:26)—an incredible promise. The love of the Father for the Son is an eternal force, deeper than any human being can ever know, and this love will be both experienced by us and lived out among us. The love of the Father can be known to us only via the Son, who demonstrated that love on the Cross (Rom 5:8). We experience divine love on the basis of the mutual indwelling of the Son in us and us in him (15:4-7). Moreover, this provides the basis for the community love that so characterizes the farewell discourse (13:34-35; 15:12, 17). Love for one another is a reflection of experiencing God’s love in ourselves, and in fact it is impossible without the enabling power of that deeper love. As we experience his wondrous love, it drives us ever more deeply into a living relationship with him and makes it possible for us to love each other. The second goal/promise of Jesus’ revelation is that “I will be in them,” summarizing not just the mutual indwelling theme but the central theme of Scripture, the promise of Exodus 25:8 (cf. 2 Chr 6:18; Ezek 48:35) to be fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth: “God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them” (Rev 21:3). Jesus inaugurated the fulfillment of this promise by dwelling within the believer (6:56; 15:4; 17:23; 1 John 2:24; 3:24; 4:15) as a foretaste of the final reality to come. This was his final comment before his arrest—that his deepest desire is to love and indwell his followers!