John 17:14,15

“ I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world. 15. I ask not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. ”

The word of Jesus, which they have faithfully received, has made them strangers in the world, as Jesus Himself was. They are become thereby, like Him, beings antipathetic to purely earthly humanity. Jesus might therefore easily allow Himself to ask of God to withdraw them from the world with Himself. But no; for He has separated them from the world for the precise purpose of preparing them to fulfil a mission to the world. It is necessary that they should remain here to fulfil this task; only it must not be that the line of demarcation which He has succeeded in drawing between the world and them, by placing His word in them, should be effaced.

While remaining in the world, they must be kept from the evil which reigns therein. Jesus thus closes this passage by presenting again the petition which was its text. The limiting word τοῦ πονηροῦ, it seems to me, must be taken here in the neuter sense: from the evil, and not: from the evil one; for the preposition ἐκ, out of, refers rather to a domain, from the midst of which one is taken, than to a person from whose power one escapes. It is otherwise in the Lord's Prayer, where the preposition ἀπό and the verb ῥύεσθαι are used, two expressions which rather refer to a personal enemy (Matthew 6:13). It is wrong, therefore, for Reuss, Weiss, etc., to explain here: “ from the power of the devil.” Hengstenberg observes that the form τηρεῖν ἐκ does not appear again except in the Apoc. (John 3:10).

From the prayer: Keep them, which has rather a negative aim (to prevent their return to the world), and which especially refers to their own salvation, Jesus passes to the second petition, which has a positive end in view, and which refers rather to their mission: Sanctify them. It is prepared for in John 17:16, stated in John 17:17, then justified and developed in John 17:18-19.