John 17:1-5

PRAYER FOR HIMSELF

Text: John 17:1-5

1

These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee:

2

even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, he should give eternal life.

3

And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.

4

I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do.

5

And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

Queries

a.

What hour had come?

b.

Does John 17:2 teach predestination-divine election?

c.

What glory did He have before the world was created?

Paraphrase

When Jesus had said these things, He lifted up His eyes toward heaven and prayed, saying, Father, at last the hour which You have set to culminate Your plan of redemption in Me has arrived. I pray that by My death, resurrection and ascension You will glorify Me with deity before men in order that I may glorify You in all the earth; for this is in harmony with Your giving Me authority over all people in order that I may give eternal life to all whom You have chosen to grant eternal life through their relationship to Me. And the way in which they shall receive eternal life is to know You by submitting to Your will and coming into intimate fellowship with Him whom You sent, even Jesus Christ. I have glorified You on earth having completed the task which you gave me to do. So, now Father, glorify me in Your own presence with the glory that I knew with You before My voluntary humiliation, yea, even before the world was made.

Summary

Jesus prays for the Father to glorify Him through the events of His passion about to be enacted. This prayer for personal glory is, however, entirely selfless for its end is to be the glorification of the Father and eternal life to believers.

Comment

Just where Jesus poured out His heart in this prayer is not certain. The references in John 14:31 and John 18:1 seem to indicate some place between the upper room and the city gate that leads across the Kidron valley to Gethsemane. Some commentators think He remained in the upper room until this prayer was ended. The place is not important. The content of the prayer is.

Christ, by saying, Father, the hour is come. reiterates for the eleven disciples then present, and for all believers, His omniscient awareness that there are stipulated times and seasons which the Father has set within His own authority concerning the divine plan of redemption. The Son knows these times because the Father has shown them all to Him (cf. John 5:19-24). Hour is not used in an absolutely literal sense here. That is, Jesus did not expect to be crucified within that very hour. In fact, many hours would transpire before the actual crucifixion occurred but the hours of darkness were now beginning. The time for teaching and pleading with men was over. Jesus was aware all along just how much time He had to accomplish His task on earth (cf. Jn. 24; John 7:6; John 7:8; John 7:30; John 8:20; John 12:23; John 13:1). What a burden to bearknowing the very hour that He must die. What agony to know not only the hour but to know also that He must die alone. What love and majesty that He should bear it willingly, knowing that He had the power to forego it.

In the New Testament the word glory (Gr. doxa) is used to denote honor in the sense of recognition or acclaim (cf. Luke 14:10), and of the praise and reverence the creature gives to the Creator (cf. Revelation 14:7). It denotes majesty (Romans 1:23) and perfection, especially in relation to righteousness (Romans 3:23). In the O.T. the Hebrew word for glory, kabod, gives the idea of being laden with riches, power and position. All of these help explain the glory for which Christ prayed.

Jesus prays first that He might be glorified (honored with majesty, perfection, righteousness, etc.) by the hour that is come. The overall tone of this prayer shows definitely that it is far from being a death knell. It is a victory shout! The hour includes not only the cross but also the resurrection and the ascension. The time has come for the Son who for a little while became lower than the angels (cf. Hebrews 2:5-9), to be exalted above every name (cf. Philippians 2:5-11). The time has come when His divine majesty must, without question, be unveiled. It is almost as if Christ prays, Father, at last the hour for which I have eagerly waited. Now, glorify thy Son! But this is not a selfish request. The reason the Incarnate Son desires to be glorified is twofold. First, as He prays in John 17:1, He wishes to be glorified only that the Father may be glorified. Both the Father and the Son are in complete harmony. What One wills the Other wills; what One works the Other works; what One loves the Other loves. There are no separate interests or aspirations between God the Father and God the Son. Even when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, it will be to the glory of the Father!

In John 17:2 Jesus explains the means by which He was to glorify the Father. The Son was to glorify the Father in giving eternal life to all those whom the Father should give to the Son. The authority over all flesh which the Father gave to the Son no doubt has reference to the same idea Jesus taught in John 5:19-29. Into the hands of the Son the Father committed authority and power over all flesh. Not only flesh but power over all the elements was committed to Him also. John 17:2 is one of the verses in the Fourth Gospel which becomes a frequent battlefield for Calvinistic predestinarians. The Scriptures teach a divine election, but not the extreme view advocated by Calvinists. It ought to be plain to every reader here from verse three that God gives to the Son for eternal life all men who are willing to know (intellectually and experientially) God the Father as He is revealed in God the Son. It seems to us that the N.T. teaching on election is clear enough in one aspect. All men have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. God has not recompensed man with divine justice but has, from divine love, chosen to have mercy and save all who will be saved by grace. God has arbitrarily elected to save whosoever will in Christ Whose body is the church. We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). We have access into the grace of God through faith (Romans 5:2). We are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus and as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ (Galatians 3:26-27). The election is provided in Christ. God has provided His divinely inspired revelation, the Bible, to invite and instruct men into His election. But men, created with self-sovereign wills, must respond and surrender their will to His will in order to appropriate this election. Faith which issues in obedience to revealed truth is the response God demands of man.

Of course, divine foreknowledge in all its mysterious ramifications is beyond the comprehension of the finite mind with its limitations. Just how God knows the beginning from the end, how He knows all things before they come to pass, is inexplicable to the human mind. How God knows our destiny ahead of time and still elects us to salvation upon the condition of our response is also unfathomable. All of this we accept by faith in the omnipotence and omniscience of God on the basis of His revelation of Himself in Christ, in time and in Space to the senses of men. See our comments on John 10:1-42 for a further discussion of divine election. We recommend a careful and thorough study of Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36 and Ephesians 1:1-23; Ephesians 2:1-22; Ephesians 3:1-21 in connection with the subject of election.

But how may we know that we are of the elect or not? Some religious teachers say that a person who has fallen away after an initial response to the preaching of the gospel was never saved in the first place. Thus, they say, we may know that such a person was never elected to salvation but has very evidently been elected to damnation and this before he was ever born and apart from any choice he might wish to make after his birth. Such a perversion of the Scriptures makes them worse than useless. What purpose does the Bible serve, with all its exhortations to hear, believe, repent, obey, make one's calling and election sure, if men are elected apart from any response on their part. Our salvation is conditioned upon our response and our response is faith in Christ which issues in obedience to His revealed will, Let us also direct the reader to a thorough study of John's First Epistle. There is not in all the New Testament a more lucid discussion of the certainty of salvation in response to the revealed will of Christ (especially 1 John 3:1-24; 1 John 4:1-21; 1 John 5:1-21).

When Jesus said that eternal life is to be found in knowing God and the Son sent by God, He meant more than an intellectual knowledge of God. But He meant at least that knowledge for it is impossible to know God experientially without knowing Him through the intellect. Paul wrote in Hebrews 11:1-6 that any one who comes to God must believe that He exists. There are many exhortations for men to come to an experiential knowledge of Christ (cf. John 7:17; Philippians 3:8-11), but there is only one way to experience any of the love and other characteristics of the nature of God and that is to let His Spirit be born and grow in us through the Word of the Spirit in the Bible. See our comments on the Holy Spirit in Chapter s 14, 15 and 16.

Jesus speaks in the past tense in John 17:4 and, as Hendriksen says, He has a right to speak as if also this suffering (of the cross) has already been endured, so certain is it that he will endure it! The Cross was not an accident nor an isolated event; it was the climax of the work Christ came into the world to perform. That is why the cry of Jesus, It is finished, has always been such a wonderful word to sinful men. It speaks peace to men because it announced the sealing of the covenant of grace, and became the sure foundation upon which to rest their salvation. The work of the Cross, of course, had to be validated by the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the tomb.

The Son has potentially accomplished on earth the Father's will and mission perfectly; and now what is uppermost in His mind is the continuance of that work in glory (the sending forth of the Holy Spirit; His reigning upon the throne of David; His High-Priestly mediatorship), because in John 17:5 He goes on to ask the Father to glorify Him with the glory that was His before the Incarnation. To go into detail about His pre-incarnate glory would be to speculate idly. But the scriptures are plain enough that the Son enjoyed equality with the Father; the Son, though rich, became poor that we might become rich; He emptied Himself of divine glory and became obedient even unto death. All creatures and all creation sing and shout His praise; all creatures and all creation serve Him.

While on earth His magnificent glory was veiled by the form of flesh, but in Heaven all of His magnificent glory shines forth. In Heaven, the Lamb, standing as though it had been slain, is worshipped and praised as, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and the riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and blessing. for ever and ever, (Revelation 5:11-14).

Quiz

1.

What does Jesus mean when He says, the hour is come?

2.

What does the word glory mean?

3.

Is Jesus-' request to be glorified out of harmony with God's plan?

4.

By what means is Jesus to glorify the Father?

5.

How does the Father give people to the Son? Is Calvinistic predestination taught here? If not, why not?

6.

How do men know God and the One He sent?

7.

What glory did Jesus know before with the Father?