John 17:26

Ver. 26. No doubt the light which has dawned in the hearts of the disciples through the revelation of God in Christ as yet only begins to appear. But Jesus pledges Himself to communicate to them for the future the fulness of the knowledge of the Father which He Himself possesses.

The future: I will make known, does not refer to the death of Jesus, as Weiss supposes, but, according to the preceding Chapter s (John 14:21; John 14:26, John 16:25), to the sending of the Holy Spirit and the entire work of Jesus in the Church after the day of Pentecost. Reuss well renders the admirable thought contained in the words: And that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them: “The love of God which, before the creation of the physical world, had its adequate object in the person of the Son (John 17:24), finds it, since the creation of the new spiritual world, in all those who are united with the Son.” What God desired in sending His Son here on earth was precisely that He might form for Himself in the midst of humanity a family of children like Him, of which He should be the elder Brother (Romans 8:29).

Jesus adds: And that I myself may be in them. Connected as it is with the preceding words, this expression must mean: “And in loving them thus, it will still be myself in them whom thou wilt love, and thus thy love will not attach itself to anything that is defiled.” Its object, indeed, will be Jesus living in them, His holy image reproduced in their person.

What simplicity, what calmness, what transparent depth in this whole prayer! “It is indeed,” as Gess says, “the only Son who here speaks to His Father. Everything in these beautiful words is supernatural, because He who speaks is the only Son who has come from heaven; but at the same time everything in them is natural, for He speaks as a son speaks to his father.” The feeling which is the soul of this prayer, the ardent zeal for the glory of God, is that which inspired Jesus throughout His whole life. His three petitions that for His personal glorification, that for the consecration of His apostles and that for the glorification of the Church, are indeed the sentiments which must have filled His soul in view of the blow which was about to put an end to His earthly activity. In the details not a word has been met whose appropriateness and fitness to the given situation has not been proved by exegesis. Can it be possible to hold, with Baur, that, at the distance of more than a century, a Christian should have succeeded in reproducing thus the impressions of Jesus? This would be to say that there existed then another Jesus than Jesus Himself.

Weiss and Reuss hold, as we do, that this is the composition of an immediate witness. But they find in certain passages in John 17:3 for example the proof that the disciple has reproduced the thoughts of the Master after his own fashion. The second asks whether John had, then, in his hands tablets and pencil to take down word for word the prayer of Jesus.

But, if John truly regarded Jesus as the Logos, we ask once again how could the respect which he must have had for His words have permitted him to make Him speak, and especially pray, according to his own fancy? He undoubtedly did not have his pencil in hand; but the memory is proportionate to the attention and the attention to the interest; now must not that of John have been excited to the highest degree? On the other hand, the words of Jesus, simple, grave, earnest, were of a nature to impress themselves more deeply and distinctly on the heart of John than any other words. Moreover, it is not impossible that, at an inconsiderable remove of time from that evening, John should have felt the need of committing to writing what he recalled to mind of these last conversations and this prayer. Or again, the unceasingly renewed meditation upon these words engraved upon the tablets of his heart and ever refreshed by the action of the Spirit, may have supplied the place of any external means. This inward miracle, if one will call it so, is far less improbable than the artificial composition of such a prayer.

But is the profound calmness which reigns in this scene compatible with the agony in Gethsemane which immediately follows it in the other Gospels? Keim asserts that John by this narrative annihilates the Synoptical tradition.

The conflict in Gethsemane has the character of a sudden crisis, of a violent shock, in some sort of an explosion, after which calmness was re- established in the soul of Jesus as quickly as it had been troubled. This passing crisis has a double cause: the one natural, the singular impressibility of the soul of Jesus, of which we have seen so many proofs in our Gospel, particularly in ch. 11 and John 12:27. By virtue of the very purity of His nature, Jesus was accessible, as was no other man, to every lawful emotion. His soul resembled a magnetic needle, whose mobility is only equalled by the perseverance with which, in every oscillation, it tends to recover its normal direction. Gethsemane must have been for Jesus, not punishment, but the struggle with a view to the acceptance of punishment; and thus the anticipatory suffering of the cross. Such an anticipation is sometimes more painful than the reality itself. The supernatural cause is pointed out by Jesus Himself, John 14:30: “ The prince of this world is coming. ” Comp. Luke 22:53: “ This is your hour and the power of darkness. ” The extraordinary character of this agony betrays itself in its suddenness and even its violence. St. Luke had closed his narrative of the temptation in the desert with the words: “ The devil withdrew from him, ἄχρι καιροῦ, until another favorable moment.” The hour of Gethsemane was that moment which Satan judged favorable to subject Jesus to the new test which he was reserving for Him. There is nothing here which is not in perfect accord with the normal development of Jesus' life.

The sacerdotal prayer is, as it were, the amen added by Jesus to His work accomplished here on earth; it forms thus the climax of this part, which is intended to trace out the development of faith in the disciples (chs. 13-16), and corresponds, notwithstanding the difference of forms, with the passage in John 12:37-50, in which John gave his reflections on the history of Jewish unbelief (chs. 5-12).