Joh 17:1-8 | KingComments | STEP | This chapter is unparalleled in depth and range of vision. It breathes perfect holiness, devotion and love. We may listen to the Son opening His heart to the Father at the moment He is about to die and leave His own, to go to Heaven. Because we hear the Son speaking to the Father, we cannot speak of a ‘high priestly prayer’, because then we would hear Him speaking as Man to God. If we can speak of a prayer, it is in the sense of a confidential asking of the Son to the Father and not begging the Father for anything. We hear the Son asking the Father to glorify Him, then to care for His disciples when He will no longer be with them, and finally to give the disciples a place with Him in glory. These are questions that are not really a request, but a sharing with the Father of things that live in the heart of the Father in exactly the same way. The Lord knows all that, but He wants us to know that He intercedes for us with the Father. This prayer shows us how He is Helper. In His prayer, which forms a beautiful unity, we can roughly distinguish two sections: 1. In the first section, , the Lord speaks to the Father in view of His glorification and His connection with His disciples. 2. In the second section, , the disciples are the subject, in which He clearly distinguishes them from the world. We can also make a somewhat finer division into seven parts: 1. In the Lord Jesus asks the Father for His glorification as Man on the basis of the work accomplished by Him. 2. In He speaks to the Father about what the disciples mean to Him. 3. In He asks His Father to keep His disciples in unity. 4. In He entrusts His disciples to His Father in order to keep them in the world. 5. In He extends His prayer and asks the Father for the unity of all the believers on earth. 6. In it is about a unity that still lies in the future and that will become visible at His revelation. 7. In it is about being with the Son in the Father’s house. After these introductory words we now want to focus on the prayer. I will express myself as limited as possible because speaking about this prayer makes you feel as if you want to illuminate the sun with a flashlight. When reading this chapter it is especially important that the Holy Spirit can work in each reader the feelings appropriate to this chapter. I hope that this is the case with me and that I can pass something of it in this explanation. I myself have also been helped by what others have discovered of beauty in this prayer. When the Lord addresses Himself to the Father in His prayer, He does so while lifting up His eyes to heaven. Similarly, He raised His eyes at the tomb of Lazarus ( ). There He asked the Father for the resurrection of Lazarus. Here He does not ask for the resurrection, here He asks for the glorification of Himself. Yet the question of His glorification is not about Himself. He immediately adds that with His question He is aiming at the glorification of the Father. With this question the Lord places Himself behind the work as accomplished by Him. That is why He says that “the hour has come”. By this He means the hour that He will go back to the Father. When He asks for His glorification by the Father, it means that He asks this question as a result of the work He has accomplished. And when He asks for His own glorification with a view to the glorification of the Father, it means that He continues to glorify the Father after He is glorified in heaven. He has glorified the Father both on earth and on the cross and He does the same in heaven. He does this glorification of the Father in connection with the power over all flesh that He has received from the Father based on His work. He always remains faithful to the place He has taken and does not exercise power according to His own right. He will exercise the power over all flesh when He returns to judge Israel and the world. In the present time He uses this power to give eternal life to all He has received from the Father. Now that the Son is in heaven, He glorifies His Father by giving eternal life to those He receives from the Father. He still glorifies the Father every day in every sinner who comes to faith.

‏ John 17:1-8

The Glorification of the Son

This chapter is unparalleled in depth and range of vision. It breathes perfect holiness, devotion and love. We may listen to the Son opening His heart to the Father at the moment He is about to die and leave His own, to go to Heaven.

Because we hear the Son speaking to the Father, we cannot speak of a ‘high priestly prayer’, because then we would hear Him speaking as Man to God. If we can speak of a prayer, it is in the sense of a confidential asking of the Son to the Father and not begging the Father for anything.

We hear the Son asking the Father to glorify Him, then to care for His disciples when He will no longer be with them, and finally to give the disciples a place with Him in glory. These are questions that are not really a request, but a sharing with the Father of things that live in the heart of the Father in exactly the same way. The Lord knows all that, but He wants us to know that He intercedes for us with the Father. This prayer shows us how He is Helper.

In His prayer, which forms a beautiful unity, we can roughly distinguish two sections:

1. In the first section, Jn 17:1-8, the Lord speaks to the Father in view of His glorification and His connection with His disciples.

2. In the second section, Jn 17:9-26, the disciples are the subject, in which He clearly distinguishes them from the world.

We can also make a somewhat finer division into seven parts:

1. In Jn 17:1-5 the Lord Jesus asks the Father for His glorification as Man on the basis of the work accomplished by Him.

2. In Jn 17:6-8 He speaks to the Father about what the disciples mean to Him.

3. In Jn 17:9-12 He asks His Father to keep His disciples in unity.

4. In Jn 17:13-19 He entrusts His disciples to His Father in order to keep them in the world.

5. In Jn 17:20-21 He extends His prayer and asks the Father for the unity of all the believers on earth.

6. In Jn 17:22-23 it is about a unity that still lies in the future and that will become visible at His revelation.

7. In Jn 17:24-26 it is about being with the Son in the Father’s house.

After these introductory words we now want to focus on the prayer. I will express myself as limited as possible because speaking about this prayer makes you feel as if you want to illuminate the sun with a flashlight. When reading this chapter it is especially important that the Holy Spirit can work in each reader the feelings appropriate to this chapter. I hope that this is the case with me and that I can pass something of it in this explanation. I myself have also been helped by what others have discovered of beauty in this prayer.

When the Lord addresses Himself to the Father in His prayer, He does so while lifting up His eyes to heaven. Similarly, He raised His eyes at the tomb of Lazarus (Jn 11:41). There He asked the Father for the resurrection of Lazarus. Here He does not ask for the resurrection, here He asks for the glorification of Himself. Yet the question of His glorification is not about Himself. He immediately adds that with His question He is aiming at the glorification of the Father.

With this question the Lord places Himself behind the work as accomplished by Him. That is why He says that “the hour has come”. By this He means the hour that He will go back to the Father. When He asks for His glorification by the Father, it means that He asks this question as a result of the work He has accomplished. And when He asks for His own glorification with a view to the glorification of the Father, it means that He continues to glorify the Father after He is glorified in heaven. He has glorified the Father both on earth and on the cross and He does the same in heaven.

He does this glorification of the Father in connection with the power over all flesh that He has received from the Father based on His work. He always remains faithful to the place He has taken and does not exercise power according to His own right. He will exercise the power over all flesh when He returns to judge Israel and the world. In the present time He uses this power to give eternal life to all He has received from the Father. Now that the Son is in heaven, He glorifies His Father by giving eternal life to those He receives from the Father. He still glorifies the Father every day in every sinner who comes to faith.

This Is Eternal Life

The eternal life that every sinner who comes to faith in the Lord Jesus receives is a new life within him. It is a new birth, a new nature. It is life within the believer, life given to him (Jn 10:28; 1Jn 5:11), it is life that he has (Jn 3:16 ; Jn 5:24 ; Jn 6:47 ; 54; 1Jn 5:13). He has that life because the Son is his life (1Jn 5:11; Col 3:3-4). But here the Lord Jesus speaks about eternal life in a different sense. He is not talking about eternal life within the believer, but about eternal life as the sphere of life into which the believer enters. We hear the Son talking about eternal life as an environment, a sphere of life, a life in which is lived.

So there is a difference between the life that is within someone and the life in which someone lives. On the one hand we talk about plant life, animal life, human life. By this we mean that something or someone lives as a plant or an animal or a human being. But we also speak, for example, of city life, outdoor life, a difficult life. By this we mean the state of life, a way of life, an environment in which people live. It is the same with eternal life. It is both a principle of life within us, a life through which we live, and a way of life in which we have entered, a life in which we live. This second is what the Lord Jesus indicates when He says here: “This is eternal life.”

Eternal life is knowing Him Who is addressed by the Son as Father (Jn 17:1) and knowing the Son as sent by the Father. He is the only true God. In that way He was also known in the Old Testament. What is new now – and that is also eternal life – is to know that one true God personally as Father through a living connection with Him and to know Jesus Christ as sent by Him, through which the Father can be known.

The Son speaks of Himself as “Jesus Christ”. ”Jesus” is the name of His humiliation. ”Christ” is His name as the Chosen One by God and of His glorification. This goes far beyond knowing Him as the Messiah. It is to know Him as the Father knows Him through a personal relationship with Him. Knowing eternal life is about a living relationship with Divine Persons. This knowledge brings us into the atmosphere of eternal life, the atmosphere in which eternal life is enjoyed.

In short, perhaps we can say that eternal life is this: fellowship with the Father and the Son, i.e. enjoying the same part as the Father and the Son, together with Them.

The Request to Be Glorified

The Lord Jesus glorified the Father on earth, this little planet in the immeasurable universe, where He was and still is dishonored by the sin of man and his generation. The Son can say this from the absolute knowledge that He has done the will of the Father in everything and thus glorified Him. An ordinary person could never say that because what man does is never perfect. The Son can say this even in advance, for He is the eternal Son, even though He has accomplished the work as Man. The work of which He speaks here is the entire work of the Father’s revelation.

Before we could enter into a life connection with the Father, the Father first had to be revealed. The climax of that revelation is the cross. Here it is not the cross as the solution to the need of our sins, but as the complete revelation of the Father’s heart for His own. Based on that glorious work, the Son, as the resurrected Man, asks for the glory that He, as God, possesses eternally. He asks for a glory He never lost. He has become Man, but has not ceased to be God and thus His glory has not vanished.

His question is to receive that glory in a new way, that is as Man. As Man He never possessed that glory because He was not always Man. He became Man and will remain this forever. Now He asks for the same glory as Man that He as Son possesses eternally. That is because He wants to share that glory with us, men. If He had not become Man, He would never have been able to share His glory with us, because we cannot become God.

Given by the Father to the Son

The Lord Jesus now explains how mortal people could be brought into such close relationship with the Father. First He mentions the manifestation of the Name of the Father. This manifestation can only be given to people who no longer belong to the world. Therefore they have been taken out of the world by the Father and thus given to the Son. Those who now belong to the Son are thereby clearly distinguished from the world.

The world has become completely revealed in its hatred of the Father and His Son. On the other hand, the greatest possible contrast is the manifestation of the Name of the Father to those who are the object of the Father’s love. To them the Son has manifested the Name of the Father in order to make them know the Father.

This manifestation of the Name of the Father was done through His life, His words and His works. The people the Father gave to the Son belonged to the Father. This indicates the Father’s eternal purpose and election to give them to the Son. This is completely separate from any connection with Israel and with Him as Yahweh. They have been given to Him by the Father.

That they belonged to the Father and now belong to the Son is evident from their keeping of the word of the Father. The word of the Father is everything the Father has spoken about the Son. The Lord Jesus sees His own as a precious treasure that the Father has given Him. He ignores all the incomprehension that they had and revealed. They have kept the word of the Father – and in fact, that is the Son Himself.

However, they have not only kept the word of the Father about the Son. They have also acknowledged that the Father is the source of all that has been given to the Son. The fact that the Father has given everything to the Son does not mean that the Father has lost it. The Lord Jesus does not say ‘was Yours’, but “is Yours”. The Son has received what is and remains of the Father.

He speaks to His Father as a recommendation that His own not only kept the word of the Father concerning the Son, but that they also received and accepted the words of the Father through the Son. The words of the Son were no other words than those of the Father. By accepting the words of the Son, they have truly acknowledged that the Son came forth from the Father and they have believed that the Father sent Him.

However little they have understood of all that He has said about this, He sees their heart in it. They have received His words and with them everything that was expressed in those words, however much that exceeded their thoughts. By receiving His words, which are the words of the Father, they have accepted the whole relationship in which the Son stands to the Father.

That He came forth from the Father means that He, as the eternal Son, revealed the Father. The fact that the Father has sent Him means that as a dependent Man He has done everything the Father commanded Him to do.