John 17:22-23

“ And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one, 23, I in them and thou in me; that their unity may be perfect, that the world may know that thou hast sent me and that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me. ”

In this whole prayer, Jesus rests His petitions on the fact that He has already begun that of which He asks the completion. Hence the ἐγώ, 1, placed at the beginning.

What is the glory of which Jesus has already made a gift to His own, and by means of which He has laid the foundation of the unity which He asks for? Chrysostom and, at the present day, Weiss understand by it the glorious power of sustaining their apostolic ministry by miracles. But this outward sign has nothing in common with the inward sphere in which the thought of Jesus is here moving. How could a result like this, which is expressed by the following ἵνα, that, proceed from a miraculous power, an external, passing and individual phenomenon? Hengstenberg refers this term glory to the participation of believers in the unity of the Father and the Son; but this explanation leads to a tautology with the following clause. De Wette, Reuss, Meyer, apply this term glory to the kingdom which is to come, and the word give to a property only by right; but this is to anticipate the meaning of John 17:24. Jesus starts, on the contrary, in John 17:22 from a fact already accomplished, in order to make it the point of departure for a coming good (John 17:23) which will precede the final glory (John 17:24). We read, John 17:24, that the glory of Jesus consists in being the eternal object of the Father's love; the glory which He has communicated to believers is, therefore, the becoming by faith what He is essentially, the objects of this same divine love; comp. John 17:23 (that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me) and John 17:26. This glory, which is that of adoption, Jesus has communicated to His own by bringing things to this point, that God can, without obscuring His holiness, convey to them the love which He has for Jesus Himself. By this means we understand the following clause: that they may be one, as we [are] one. This love of the Father, of which they are all the objects in common, unites them closely among themselves and makes them all one family of which Jesus is the elder Brother (Romans 8:29, Ephesians 1:10).

The first words of John 17:23, in a clause which is simply placed in juxtaposition with the preceding: “that they may be one as we are,” remind us of the mode of this unity: God living in Christ, Christ living in each believer, and this to the end that the limit of a perfect unity may be attained, and that the organism of humanity consummated in God may appear.

The aim of this admirable unity is that the world may know. This word is undoubtedly not the synonym of believe, John 17:21. The term know includes with the faith of believers (John 17:21) the forced conviction of rebels. For how could the word κόσμος, the world, designate only the believers? The question is of the universal homage, voluntary or involuntary, rendered to Christ such as is described in Philippians 2:10; Romans 14:10-12. The whole universe renders homage to the divine messenger who, by transforming believers into His own image, has succeeded in making them loved as He is Himself loved.

Thus is the way prepared for the pointing out of the final end of the ways of God towards the Church of Christ, its participation in the glory of the Son of God: