Jesus Christ · On the World
In the World, Not of It
It may be the most quoted sentence Jesus never quite said — the phrase is a compression of four verses of His last prayer. And the prayer is sharper than the slogan. “Not of the world” is said twice, with a staggering measure attached both times: even as I am not of the world. But the petition built on it refuses the conclusion everyone expects. He does not ask that His people be taken out. He asks that they be kept — in place, in danger, on assignment — because the world is not the church’s hazard. It is her mission field, by His own sending.
Not of the World, Even as I
— John 17:14, 16 — the double 'even as'Twice in three verses Jesus says of His disciples, “they are not of the world,” and both times He adds the measure that keeps the phrase from being a lifestyle slogan: even as I am not of the world. Their non-belonging is patterned on His — not a subculture’s distance from the mainstream, but the otherness of people who carry the Father’s word and have been claimed by it. The world’s hatred (v. 14) is the receipt.
I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.He says that He Himself is not of the world, and that we are even as He is, since His Divine Word has taken up its abode in our hearts. Furthermore, He declares that as the world hated Him so will it also hate them.
Cyril of Alexandria· Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 11 (444), on John 17:14
The Lord speaks to his Father in the Gospel as follows: "They are not of the world, as I am not of the world." … No one can understand the truth and force of this except one who has gone through the trials of what [Jesus] was talking about—one who has been under the teacher of experience.
John Cassian· Conference 1.7 (435), on John 17:16
The Refused Shortcut
— John 17:15, 18 — the prayer He did not prayTHE PRAYER HE DID NOT PRAY
that thou shouldest take them out of the world
the shortcut every persecuted heart wants — evacuation. Named in the prayer only to be declined: “I pray not…”
THE PRAYER HE PRAYED
“that thou shouldest keep them from the evil”
John 17:15 →kept — in place, in danger, in mission — from the evil one. Protection without extraction.
THE REASON
“As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world”
John 17:18 →the world is not the church’s hazard to be escaped; it is her assignment. The pattern of the sending is His own incarnation.
That thou shouldest take them out of the world - Though they were going into trials and persecutions, yet Jesus did not pray that they might be removed soon from them. It was better that they should endure them, and thus spread abroad the knowledge of his name. It would be easy for God to remove his people at once to heaven, but it is better for them to remain, and show the power of religion in supporting the soul in the midst of trial, and to spread his gospel among men.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on John 17:15
Sanctified by Truth
— John 17:17 — how the kept are kept distinctIf the disciples stay in the world, what keeps them from dissolving into it? The prayer’s answer is neither walls nor rules but a consecrating agent: “sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Set apart — the word carries the temple’s sense of consecration to an office — and made progressively clean, by the same instrument, God’s own word. The church’s distinctness is not geographic. It is worked in by truth.
Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.Sanctify - Consecrate them by the anointing of thy Spirit to their office, and perfect them in holiness, by means of thy word.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on John 17:17
Sanctify them - This word means to render pure, or to cleanse from sins, 1Th 5:23; 1Co 6:11. Sanctification in the heart of a Christian is progressive. It consists in his becoming more like God and less attached to the world; in his getting the ascendency over evil thoughts, and passions, and impure desires; and in his becoming more and more weaned from earthly objects, and attached to those things which are unseen and eternal.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on John 17:17
We are made sons through Christ by adoption and grace, partaking of his Spirit. For "as many as received him," he says, "to them he gave power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name." And therefore, he is also the Truth, saying, "I am the Truth," and in his address to his Father, he said, "Sanctify them through your Truth, your Word is Truth." We, by imitation [of this truth], become virtuous and sons.
Athanasius of Alexandria· Discourses Against the Arians 3.25 (373), on John 17:17
Sent, As He Was Sent
— John 17:18 — the incarnation as the church's job descriptionThe verse that explains the refused shortcut: “as thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them.” The pattern of the church’s presence in the world is Christ’s own — He did not shout salvation from a safe distance; He came in, ate at the tables, touched the lepers, and was crucified locally. A church taken out of the world would be a contradiction of the One who prayed this sentence on His way to a garden He could have avoided.
As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world.The Balance the Apostles Kept
— loving the world's people, refusing the world's systemThe apostles held the prayer’s two clauses without letting either eat the other. John — who recorded this prayer — writes “love not the world”; Paul tells the Corinthians that avoiding immoral peoplealtogether would require leaving the planet, which is precisely not the assignment. The “world” the Christian refuses is a system of desire and pride; the world the Christian is sent to is people, whom God loved to the point of John 3:16.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.the world as system — refused.
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.the world as people — never abandoned: 'for then must ye needs go out of the world.'
Where It Points
— kept, consecrated, and on assignmentThe phrase’s popular uses — as a warrant for withdrawal, or as a shrug about compromise — both lose the prayer. Jesus asked for neither an evacuated church nor an assimilated one, but a sent one: in the world by assignment, unlike it by consecration, safe in it by the Father’s keeping.
Closing
One verse holds the refused prayer and the prayed one. Not taken out; kept in. Not of the world — even as He is not — and sent into it, even as He was. Every faithful Christian life since has been lived inside that sentence’s tension, on purpose.