John 17
Big idea: He stops speaking to them and starts speaking to the Father, out loud, while they listen. The prayer moves outward in three widening circles — himself, the eleven, and everyone who will believe through their message — and the request that dominates the last circle is unity, asked for on the pattern of the Father and the Son.
The prayer ends and the garden begins in the next verse. Everything chapter 17 asks for is about to be tested by a torch-lit arrest and a courtyard fire.
17:1–5 — Glorify your Son
The hour that has been approaching since chapter 2 is now addressed directly, and what is asked for is glory — which, in this Gospel, is a request to be crucified. Inside the request sits a definition that stops the reader: eternal life is knowing God and the one he sent. Not receiving, not achieving; knowing, in the sense of acquaintance rather than information.
1 Jesus said these things, then lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may also glorify you; 2 even as you gave him authority over all flesh, so he will give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ. 4 I glorified you on the earth. I have accomplished the work which you have given me to do. 5 Now, Father, glorify me with your own self with the glory which I had with you before the world existed.
17:6–19 — Keep them in your name
The middle circle is the eleven, described with a repeated phrase — those you gave me — and a report on how they have done: they have kept your word, they know, they received, they believed. It is a generous account of men who are hours from running away. The requests are specific: keep them, that they may be one; give them joy; sanctify them in the truth.
6 “I revealed your name to the people whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours, and you have given them to me. They have kept your word. 7 Now they have known that all things whatever you have given me are from you, 8 for the words which you have given me I have given to them; and they received them, and knew for sure that I came from you. They have believed that you sent me. 9 I pray for them. I don’t pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them through your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. I have kept those whom you have given me. None of them is lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I come to you, and I say these things in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves. 14 I have given them your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, even so I have sent them into the world. 19 For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
17:20–26 — That they may all be one
The third circle takes in everyone who will ever believe through the disciples' message, which includes the reader, and the request is the same one, enlarged: that they may all be one. The pattern given is not organisational but personal — as you, Father, are in me and I in you — and the purpose is evangelistic, twice stated: so that the world may believe, and may know.
20 “Not for these only do I pray, but for those also who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me. 22 The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one, 23 I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may see my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 Righteous Father, the world hasn’t known you, but I knew you; and these knew that you sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and will make it known; that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).