John 17 - Preacher's Commentary

The Prayer

John 17:1–26

I have read Jesus’ moving prayer scores of times and have even tried to pray it! But never, until now, have I caught the depth and tenderness of it—more because of a beautiful time of prayer with our church leaders than because of my attempt to ferret out some worthwhile comments that might be of some help.

We had been going through one of those “flat” times in our church life—no major crisis, but a time of dullness and spiritual apathy, it seemed. So after some weeks of pondering our situation and a bit of conversation with Roger Fraley, the chairman of our Diaconate, I sent out a pastoral letter inviting about seventy or eighty of our people to come together for a time of prayer and open conversation. I made the invitation as gentle as possible so that no one would feel guilty if they were not able to come. People were asked to come at 7:00 A.M. on a Saturday, not the usual time for prayer in our church.

As I drove down to the church that snowy morning, a quiet spirit of anticipation came over me. “There may be only a handful because of the snow and the early hour,” I thought, “but we’ll have a good time together.” But as I drove into the parking lot there were more cars on hand than I had expected.

And there was a good deal of laughter and friendly banter going on about the time and the snow as I walked into Fellowship Hall. Eventually, fifty-six people showed up, almost all of them on time. It was obvious they were eager for something. So after a few minutes of coffee and rolls we settled down for our meeting, which turned out to be a surprising affair. I shared with these dear people my burden for our church. We were not in a noticeable crisis, but we seemed to be in a time of spiritual lethargy and indecisiveness, spending too much time on peripheral, institutional matters. Surely the Lord had something deeper and better for us.

A hush seemed to come over the group as we turned to John 17 to spend a few moments with Jesus’ prayer for Himself and His church. I am certain it was my own struggle in those last few weeks to lay hold on the meaning of this prayer that had given me a sense of dissatisfaction with ordinary church life, but also a renewed vision of what the Lord expected the church to be. Could we not have a renewed understanding of Jesus’ will for our church in the light of His prayer? The glory He longs to manifest among all His people? The Name we have been given to bear as we keep His word? The mission for which He has sanctified us by His own sacrifice? And that holy unity He calls us to which reflects the oneness of the Father and the Son?

There were some comments, made very briefly, because people were eager to pray. So we divided up into groups of fours and fives to praise God, to ask for His forgiveness, and to ask that Jesus’ prayer for our particular church might be answered. It was a holy, cleansing, and joyous time, like quiet music filling the air to the glory of God. Following this there was some further discussion and another time of free, open prayer. People left with shining faces, drawn together in the love of the Father and the Son. I know now as never before it is in praying, not simply in discussion, that we learn the meaning of Jesus’ prayer for the church.

17:1-5

The Glory of the Father and Son

In the closing words of His discourse Jesus has made it clear that His disciples will be scattered, leaving Him alone. But He will not be alone, for He lives in constant communion with His Father. And His disciples will not be lost permanently. Jesus will have victory over the world, which they will share with Him, and they will return to be a continuing community of witness through whom Jesus will be glorified.

So between His teaching and His death, Jesus prays. He enters into holy work, offering Himself to His Father with all His people, those present and those to come, that glory may come to His Father.

This is an intimate prayer. When Jesus lifts His eyes upward toward “home” to commune with the One who sent Him, He uses a tender family greeting, “Father” (v. 1). The whole prayer is spoken out of that living union which He has had with the Father throughout eternity.

This is a word and a deed offered up at a particular time and place in the presence of His disciples, but it is also a continuing priestly intercession for all His people for all time.

In this final hour, an hour which has been anticipated all through Jesus’ ministry (John 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25; 7:30; 8:20) He will share in the glory of God. That glory is always initiated from above. It moves from the Father through the obedience and love of the Son to those who believe in Him, that it may return to the Father. All through Jesus’ earthly ministry men have seen that glory revealed through His teaching and signs.

In His Incarnation the Son of God has been given authority over all flesh. So He has touched and transformed the common and the earthy—water has been turned into wine, a stormy sea has been quieted, the eyes of a blind man have been opened, and Lazarus has been raised from the dead. Through these signs, these acts of power in which the majesty of God has been revealed,¹ the disciples have come to know and trust the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. In verse 3 is a simple definition of faith in the midst of prayer. It is those who know that Jesus has come from God who receive eternal life. They are a gift from the Father to the Son.

Jesus has finished this work through which the glory of the Father has been revealed. But often it has been seen partially and dimly because the glory has been hidden, veiled in flesh.

So now Jesus makes a simple request—that the glory which He has had with the Father throughout all eternity might now be revealed in Him directly and openly; that in being broken open on the cross and being raised from the dead, the majesty and splendor of His Father might shine forth in power, not through signs, but in the reality of Himself! And this request is not made for His own sake, but that He might share this glory with His Father and manifest it among His disciples.

17:6-19

The Men with a Name

Now these disciples who are with Jesus are drawn into His prayer. They are affirmed and blessed as a people in whom Jesus is glorified. For they are men who bear a name. The Father has called them out of the world and given them to the Son. As Jesus has received and kept them, He has given them the Father’s name and revealed to them the nature of God.

Jesus has held nothing back. All the things His Father has given Him, the Son has shared with the disciples. As they have received His word and known it is from God, they have believed He was sent by God. As they have come to know Jesus is “Bread from heaven” and “the Light of the world,” the “Water which springs everlasting” and “the Resurrection and the Life,” they have been given His name, “I AM,” Yahweh, the Lord Himself!

It is through these men the Father has chosen to reveal His glory. And it is for the circle of believers, this cleansed and believing “little church,” that Jesus the Lord now prays.

He prays for these eleven men He is leaving, not for the world. He loves the world and came to save it (John 3:16) and neither His love nor His purpose has changed, even though the world has turned away and rejected Him. It is as these men faithfully manifest His glory and love that the world will be confronted and called to believe.

The Son appeals to His Father to keep this body of men in His name, lest they abort the mission. Addressing the Father as “Holy” here emphasizes His divine separation from the world. It is in bearing this name that these men are marked off from the world. They are to be holy as He is holy (Lev. 19:2). Sharing this relationship with the Father and the Son is the basis of this unity, not a common human interest or way of thinking. While Jesus has been with these men He has been able to keep all of them in this unity except for the one who is lost, the son of perdition (v. 12). Even here Scripture is fulfilled because it is through the betrayal of Judas that Jesus has come to His hour of glory!

For Jesus to ask that these men be full of His joy (v. 13) does not mean they will escape tribulation and hostility. This would mean taking them out of the world. No, they will remain and be hated, just as Jesus has been, because they are “not of this world.” To bear the name, to be with Jesus, marks them as aliens in the world. And this provokes trouble; for when they are faithful to the word Jesus has given them, the world reacts with hostility.

So Jesus asks that they be kept from the evil one (v. 15). For he will break in as a thief and destroy this small band, stealing them one by one, unless they continue to be guarded by the word of Jesus.

These men are being sent into the world. As Jesus has been sent by the Father, so they are sent by the Son. His mission will be their mission. So Jesus asks that they be sanctified, set apart, and consecrated for their special task (v. 17). It is the truth of Jesus’ word, which is the whole message of God’s love and glory as it is revealed in the words and teaching of Jesus, which will equip them for this mission. They have already been called and made clean by that word. Now they are sanctified by it; they belong to Jesus. Union with Him gives them authority and power for the mission.

Now Jesus sanctifies Himself, offers Himself to the Father as the Victim for the sacrifice (Heb. 10:10). He is the perfect Lamb, the only One who can take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). So He offers Himself for those whom God has given Him. The Victim becomes their Priest. The sanctification of the disciples for their mission rests in the completion of Jesus’ work on the Cross. “The power of Jesus’ words to His disciples in sanctifying them is grounded in the efficacy of His own death.”²

17:20-26

His Prayer for the Coming Church

Jesus’ prayer is not only for these who are gathered with Him. He reaches out and includes all those who will come to believe in Him through “their word,” that they may know the glory and love of the Father and the Son. This is His prayer for the church that is to come.

He prays that all His people throughout all time may be one. Jesus asks that their unity may be rooted in “Us” (v. 21), reflecting that eternal oneness which the Father and Son know in dwelling in one another. This unity of His disciples is not institutional or organized, but a living, organic oneness which flows from the action of the Father.

This gift of unity is not a forced conformity, but an expression of the creative diversity within the Godhead. As there is only one “true God” who manifests Himself through the differing functions of Father, Son, and Spirit, so the loving unity of the body of believers is expressed through a rich variety of gifts and ministry. The whole family of God is a beautiful montage of differing cultures and temperaments, colors and gifts, offered to God in worship and ministry that He may be glorified.

This unity is not simply mystical and spiritual, but it is revealed in a particular fleshly company of disciples. As the love of Christ is perfected among God’s people in a deepening unity which is visible, the world is challenged. The church then becomes God’s call to the world. All men will come to know Jesus has been sent by God through the witness of a fleshly company of forgiven sinners who love one another as the Father loves the Son and as He loves His people. This is Christ’s body in the world. And “what the Incarnate Son of God had once been to the Jewish people, the church is now to the world—the incarnate love and glory of God.”³

This unity of Jesus’ people is a gift, a living place, into which believing disciples are called. But there are particular times when its meaning stands out with sharp clarity.

None of us who were present will ever forget—every detail is etched in my memory—the service of reconciliation between First Baptist and Metropolitan Baptist churches more than twenty years after an angry division. Fellow believers, some of whom had not met together or spoken to one another in years, had come together to worship. And as we sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” that night four years ago and turned to greet one another in the crowded sanctuary, many people embraced and their tears of joy and gratitude were mingled. Surely the angels sang at this defeat of the evil one. And the next day on the street people stopped some of us saying they had heard the “good news.” The message we proclaimed had become more credible.

As Jesus prayed for His original disciples (v. 6) and then for those who would come to believe through their word (v. 20) so now He anticipates the coming of those who will be with Him forever in glory (v. 26). Jesus “desires” that the church militant, God’s people on mission, may be with Him in glory. In this final place, this eternal mone¯, all his disciples will behold in all its fullness the glory He had with the Father before “the foundation of the world” (v. 24). The faithful disciples will be united with Jesus in the love of the Father because they have been united with Him on earth. The church on mission has become the church eternal.

Even here as Jesus prays, “O Righteous Father,” we become aware that there are those who have never known Him (v. 25). They have rejected the overtures of a loving God who now has become their Judge. But the final doxology is that those who know Jesus now apprehend His love and are “transformed from glory to glory.”⁴