John 17 - CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible

17:1-2 Cyril of Alexandria: When an occasion calls us to prayer, it is fitting for us to pray for that which increases God’s glory before we pray for that which concerns ourselves. . . . The Savior indeed spoke these words to show how very necessary his own glory was to the Father so that he might be known to be consubstantial with him . . . for the Father is glorified in the glory of his offspring. Commentary on the Gospel of John 11.3.

17:3 Theodore of Mopsuestia: The cause of eternal life is steadfast faith, and to believe in one God, and to not attribute to others the title of God but to believe not only in the Father but also in the Son who was incarnated for us and was sent for the salvation of humankind. This doctrine expels the lie of the polytheistic error. It admits only one God while also surpassing the Jewish belief—inasmuch as the Jews worship only the Father. They surely do not understand that from the Father, by means of an unspoken word, his Son was born. It also teaches Christians to worship both the God begotten from the Father and the Spirit that is provided from the Father through the Son and is in its own existence consubstantial with the Father and the Son—the very one who is perfect life and the cause of eternal life. Commentary on John, Fragment 132.17.3.

17:5 Hilary of Poitiers: [H]e had not abdicated his own position. And yet, he had taken ours. [Christ] prays, then, that the nature that he had assumed may be promoted to the glory that he had never renounced. . . . This Son, now incarnate, prayed that flesh might be to the Father what the Son had been. He prayed that flesh, born in time, might receive the splendor of the everlasting glory, that the corruption of the flesh might be swallowed up, transformed into the power of God and the incorruption of the Spirit. On the Trinity 3.16.

17:10 Chrysostom: “And I am glorified in them,” [means] either that “I [that is, Jesus] have power over them” or that “they shall glorify me, believing in you and me. And they shall glorify us alike.” But if [Christ] is not glorified equally in them, what the Father has is no longer his. For no one is glorified in those over whom he has no authority. Yet how is the Son glorified equally? All die for him equally as they do for the Father. They preach him as they do the Father. And as they say that all things are done in his name, so also are they done in the name of the Son. Homilies on the Gospel of John 81.2.

17:13 Cyril of Alexandria: Showing himself to them simultaneously as God and man, Christ induces his disciples to reflect that he would work to accomplish their salvation in God whether present or absent. And that as he had them in his keeping while he was with them on the earth in the form of man, so also would he keep them while absent from them as God. . . . For that which is divine is not bounded by space and is not far from anything that exists but fills and pervades the universe. And though it is present in all things, it is contained by none. When addressing his own Father, Christ says [in V. 11], “Holy Father, keep them,” referring . . . to the universal working of the power of the Father. And at the same time showing that he does not stand apart from the nature of the Father but being in it and proceeding from it, Christ is indivisibly united with it, though he is conceived of as independently existing. Commentary on the Gospel of John 11.9.

17:18 Augustine: [N]ow he still goes on to speak of the apostles, for he proceeds to add, “As you have sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” Whom did he send in this way but his apostles? For even the very name of apostles, which is a Greek word, signifies in Latin nothing more than, those that are sent. God, therefore, sent his Son, not in sinful flesh but in the likeness of sinful flesh. And his Son sent those who (born themselves in sinful flesh) were sanctified by him from the defilement of sin. Tractates on the Gospel of John 108.4.

17:21 Chrysostom: This is similar to what he said earlier, “By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” [Jn 13:35]. And how will they believe this? “Because,” he says, “you are a God of peace” [see Rm 15:33]. And, if therefore the [disciples] keep that same peace that they have learned [from Jesus], their hearers will know the teacher by the disciples. But if they quarrel, people will deny that they are the disciples of a God of peace and will not allow that I, not being peaceable, have been sent from you. Do you see how he proves his unanimity with the Father to the very end? Homilies on the Gospel of John 82.2.

17:24 Cyril of Alexandria: [Jesus] shows that to live with him and to be considered worthy to see his glory is something that belongs only to those who have been already united to the Father through him and have obtained his love—a love that he must be conceived to enjoy from the Father. For we are loved by God the Father as children inasmuch as we are like him who is actually the Son of God by nature. For although it is not dealt out to us in equal measure, it still is a complete resemblance of the love the Father has for the Son and, intersecting with it, images forth the glory of the Son. Commentary on the Gospel of John 11.12.