John 17:6

“I openly revealed your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”

He points out that He has revealed to the Apostles what the Father essentially is. He has revealed ‘His Name' to them, that is, His very nature (compare John 14:7). And these are the men whom the Father has ‘given Him out of the world'. They are the elect from among the world of men.

He describes them as men who ‘belonged to the Father' and had been ‘given to Himself'. That ‘They were yours' refers to their condition before they were given by the Father. The natural reading of this is that they responded to Christ because God had already in some way made them His own by sovereign choice prior to making a gift of them to His Son.

They were men who had ‘kept the Father's word', which included the words that Jesus had given them (v. 8). The idea is that they have believed them, treasured them and held them fast. They had also fully recognised Jesus' uniqueness as God's Son. In this we see clearly that their response is due to their ‘election' by God Who has set them aside as His own before time began (Ephesians 1:4), something which is finally revealed by this response to His word.

They had been given to Jesus ‘out of the world'. From among mankind in its rebellion and subjection to the Evil One the Father had taken them and given them to His Son.

To them He has ‘openly revealed the Father's name'. In Jewish thought the ‘name' was seen as signifying the whole of what a person was. Thus when there was a great change in a person's life they could be renamed. Consider for example Simon who became Cephas/Peter, and Saul who became Paul. Here then Jesus says He has made known to His disciples as far as was humanly possible the whole nature and being of God as expressed in His name.

This includes His name as the ‘I am'. This Greek phrase is used without a predicate in John 8:24; John 8:28; John 8:58; John 13:19. It depicts the One Who acts in history and the eternally existing One. See for this name Exodus 3:14. It is the name on which the name YHWH (‘the One Who is') was based.

It is surely significant here that He speaks of the disciples, not as they are, but as He knows they are in embryo and surely will be. There is no thought here of their lack of understanding or soon to come failure, for He knows that their hearts are steadfast notwithstanding, and that soon they will know all (John 14:26; John 16:13).

We must not see in Jesus' use of the term ‘the world' any suggestion of antagonism towards the world. Indeed God loves ‘the world' (John 3:16). Rather it is that the world that has taken up a position of enmity against God. What He is against is the attitude of the world, the very attitude with which He has come to deal.