John17chapter 17

John 17:1

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: the hour named as not yet come at 2:4, 7:30, and 8:20 is here declared arrived, and the bench reads the whole prayer as offered on the threshold of the cross, the upper room discourse finished and Gethsemane still ahead. Glorify thy Son that thy Son also may glorify thee states the request and its purpose in one breath, the Father's own glory the goal of the Son's, never the Son's glory sought for itself.

John 17:2-3

As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him: the authority claimed is universal, all flesh, while the life given is particular, as many as thou hast given him, the bench reading the two clauses together as the Father's gift of a people to the Son standing behind the Son's own gift of life to them. This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent: eternal life is defined here not as unending duration but as a relationship, personal knowledge of the Father and of the Son named alongside him, and the bench notes the verse's own testimony to the deity of Christ, the only true God distinguished from every idol and named in the same breath as Jesus Christ whom he sent.

John 17:4-5

I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do: spoken hours before the cross, the perfect tense claims a work already complete, the bench reading it as the Son's own settled confidence rather than a boast made too soon, since what remains is suffering already accepted rather than any part of the mission still uncertain. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was: the request reaches behind creation itself, asking not for a new glory but the restoration of one already possessed in eternity, a claim to pre-existence and to deity that the prologue's In the beginning was the Word makes good.

John 17:6

I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world, thine they were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word: the prayer turns from the Son's own glory to the disciples he is about to leave, and manifested names the whole ministry as a revealing of the Father's character rather than merely the delivery of information. The bench reads gavest me out of the world as the same election named in 15:19, the disciples drawn out from the world's own before being handed to the Son, their keeping of the word offered as evidence the gift has taken.

John 17:7-8

Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee: the disciples' grasp is credited generously here, further than their own bewildered questions in chapter 16 might suggest, the bench reading the prayer as speaking of what will shortly be true of them once the Spirit and the resurrection have done their work. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou didst send me: the chain of transmission runs from Father to Son to disciples, and the twin verbs, known surely and believed, name the settled conviction the prayer is about to ask be kept.

John 17:9-10

I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine: the prayer's scope is deliberately named, not a blanket intercession for humanity in general at this point but a particular petition for the disciples the Father has given, the bench noting this does not contradict 3:16's love of the world but distinguishes the specific burden of this hour from the Son's mission to the world as such. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them: the mutual possession states the same unity of Father and Son claimed throughout the Gospel, and the Son's glory is said to rest even now in these ordinary, soon-to-scatter men.

John 17:11

And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee: the Son names his own departure and the disciples' remaining exposure in the same breath, the prayer's urgency rising from that gap. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are: the petition asks preservation by the Father's own name, the same name the Son has manifested in verse 6, and the unity requested, as we are, is set at the highest possible standard, the Father-Son relation itself, a request the bench treats as devotional and doctrinal weight together rather than mere organizational agreement.

John 17:12-13

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name, those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled: the exception is named without softening, Judas already gone out into the night, and the bench reads the phrase against Psalm 41:9 and 109, the scriptures John himself has already cited at the supper, the betrayal falling within prophecy rather than outside the Father's knowledge even while the perfect tense none of them is lost credits the Son's own faithful keeping of the rest. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves: the prayer is spoken aloud, in the disciples' hearing, precisely so its comfort becomes theirs to keep after he is gone.

John 17:14-15

I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world: the hatred named already at 15:18-19 is restated as an accomplished fact even before the resurrection, the disciples already marked by their difference from the world's own. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil: the petition explicitly rejects removal in favor of protection, the bench reading ek tou ponerou as either the evil one or evil in the abstract, both readings held, and either way the shape of the prayer sets the pattern for every disciple's mission afterward, sent into the world rather than withdrawn from it.

John 17:16-17

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world: the identification with Christ's own separateness from the world is repeated for emphasis, the bench noting the prayer circles back to restate its ground before moving to its next request. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth: the petition names the means of the disciples' setting-apart directly, not an emotional experience but the word itself, and the truth thread the patterns brief marks across the Gospel, grace and truth at 1:14, the truth that makes free at 8:32, reaches here its own definition, thy word is truth, the standard by which every other claim to truth in the book is measured.

John 17:18-19

sent me into the world: As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world: the Son's own commission becomes the pattern and the ground for the disciples' commission, the sending language that has run the Gospel since John the Baptist's introduction now extended past the apostles to the church that follows them. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth: the bench reads the Son's self-sanctification as his setting himself apart wholly for the sacrifice about to come, a consecration undertaken for their sakes, so that their own sanctification through the truth of verse 17 rests directly on his.

John 17:20-21

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word: the prayer's circle widens beyond the eleven to every believer of every age reached through the apostolic testimony, the bench noting this clause includes the reader of the Gospel directly in the Lord's own petition offered the night before he died. That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me: the unity asked for is again modeled on the Father-Son relation and given an evangelistic purpose, that the world may believe, the church's visible oneness named as evidence bearing on the world's own faith, a request whose precise fulfillment across denominational history the bench leaves to the reader rather than adjudicating.

John 17:22-23

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one: the Son shares his own glory as the means of the disciples' unity, a startling gift that the bench reads as already granted rather than merely promised, given in the perfect tense. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me: the indwelling Trinity extends to the indwelt church, and the astonishing final clause, loved them as thou hast loved me, sets the Father's love for ordinary disciples at the same measure as his love for his own eternal Son, a claim the bench treats as among the highest in the New Testament for the security of the believer.

John 17:24

before the foundation of the world: Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world: the verb I will, thelo, carries an authority the bench distinguishes from the ordinary petitionary language of the rest of the prayer, closer to a sovereign wish than a request, the only such note in the whole chapter. The glory to be beheld is traced back before creation itself, the Father's love for the Son already active before the foundation of the world, and the disciples' promised sight of that eternal glory anchors the whole prayer's hope in a reality older than the universe.

John 17:25-26

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me: the prayer's last movement sorts the world's ignorance against the Son's own knowledge of the Father and the disciples' derivative knowledge, three states of knowing named in one verse. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them: the prayer closes on the same request its whole arc has been building toward, that the Father's own eternal love for the Son might come to indwell ordinary disciples, and I in them, the last words of the high-priestly prayer naming the abiding presence that is both its final petition and its lasting gift.