Commentary - John 17:1-5

Bird's-eye view

John 17 is the Holy of Holies in the New Testament. Here, the Lord Jesus, having concluded His farewell discourse to His disciples, turns His attention fully to His Father. This is not a prayer of petition born of neediness, but a sublime, Trinitarian conversation in which the Son reports on His finished work and anticipates His coming glorification. The veil of the temple is pulled back, and we are permitted to overhear the eternal Son speaking with the eternal Father about the eternal plan of redemption. The prayer naturally divides into three parts: Jesus prays for Himself and His glorification (vv. 1-5), He prays for His immediate disciples (vv. 6-19), and He prays for all subsequent believers (vv. 20-26). The first section, our focus here, sets the stage for everything that follows. The central theme is glory, a glory that is shared, given, and received between the Father and the Son. This glory is not for its own sake; it is the engine of our salvation. The cross, which from a human perspective is an instrument of shame, is revealed here as the very means of this glorification. It is the climax of the Son's work on earth, the prerequisite for His return to the glory He had with the Father "before the world was."

In these opening verses, the entire gospel is encapsulated. We see the sovereignty of the Father in giving a people to the Son, the authority of the Son over all flesh, the nature of eternal life as a true and personal knowledge of God, the finished work of Christ's perfect obedience, and the eternal pre-existence of the Son in glorious fellowship with the Father. This is the theological bedrock upon which the church is built. It is a prayer that secures the salvation of the elect and reveals the ultimate purpose of all things: the mutual glorification of the Father and the Son.

Outline

Context In John

This prayer comes at a pivotal moment in John's Gospel. Jesus has just completed the Upper Room Discourse (John 13-16), where He washed the disciples' feet, predicted His betrayal and Peter's denial, gave the new commandment to love, promised the Holy Spirit, and prepared them for His departure. He has systematically laid out the foundational truths for the church that will exist in His physical absence. Now, standing on the precipice of His passion, with Gethsemane and the cross just hours away, He does not turn inward in anxiety but upward in communion. This prayer is the great hinge between His earthly ministry to His disciples and His atoning work on the cross. It functions as His final testament, His high-priestly intercession for His people before offering Himself as the sacrifice. Everything in John's Gospel, from the declaration that the Word was with God and was God (John 1:1) to the statement of purpose that we might believe and have life (John 20:31), finds its theological center in this prayer.

Key Issues

The High Priest in the Holy of Holies

When the high priest of Israel went into the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement, he went alone. No one was permitted to see or hear what transpired there as he made intercession for the people. But here, in John 17, our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, allows us to enter with Him. We are listening in on the most intimate of conversations, the Son speaking to the Father. This is not a prayer like our prayers, which are filled with petitions for needs and confessions of sin. This is the prayer of a co-equal, a partner in the divine plan, reporting on a mission accomplished and anticipating the next phase of that plan.

The central theme is glory. We tend to think of glory in terms of brightness or honor, and it is that, but in the Bible, glory is weightier. The Hebrew word is kabod, which means weight, substance, reality. The glory of God is the manifestation of the sum total of His perfections. When Jesus prays for glory, He is not asking for a reward in the way a man might ask for a bonus. He is praying for the consummation of the redemptive plan, in which the true nature of God, Father and Son, is put on full display for all creation to see. And the shocking thing is that the path to this glory leads directly to a bloody Roman cross.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You,

Having finished His instructions to His men, Jesus now turns from them to His Father. His posture, lifting His eyes to heaven, is one of direct and intimate communion. "Father" is His characteristic address, not a formal title but the expression of a unique, eternal relationship. "The hour has come" is a crucial phrase in John's gospel. Throughout His ministry, Jesus had indicated that His hour had "not yet come" (John 2:4, 7:30). Now it has arrived. This is the appointed time, the climax of all redemptive history, the hour for which He was born: the hour of His suffering, death, and resurrection. And what is His request for this dreadful hour? "Glorify Your Son." This is a prayer for the Father to vindicate Him through the cross and resurrection, to display His true identity. But this is no selfish request. The purpose is immediately stated: "that the Son may glorify You." The glory is circulatory. The Father glorifies the Son, and the Son, in turn, reflects that glory back to the Father. The cross, seen by the world as the ultimate shame, is in the economy of God the ultimate glorification of the Son, because in it, the perfect love, justice, and mercy of the Father are perfectly displayed.

2 even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.

This verse explains the basis and purpose of the glorification. The Son's glorification is tied to the authority the Father has already given Him. This is a staggering claim: authority over "all flesh," meaning all of humanity. Jesus is not a localized tribal deity; He is the sovereign Lord of all. But notice the specific purpose of this universal authority: it is exercised to give eternal life to a particular group. Who are they? "All whom You have given Him." Here is the doctrine of election in its clearest and most beautiful form, spoken by the Savior Himself. The Father, in His sovereign love, has chosen a people and has given them to the Son as a love gift. The Son's universal authority is the means by which He ensures the salvation of this specific, chosen people. His authority is total, so that His saving purpose cannot fail.

3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

What is this "eternal life" that He gives? Jesus defines it for us, and it is not what many people assume. It is not merely endless existence or a ticket to a celestial theme park. Eternal life is a qualitative reality, not just a quantitative one. It is to know God. The word for "know" here is ginosko, which speaks of a personal, relational, intimate knowledge, not just an intellectual grasp of facts. It is the kind of knowledge a husband has of a wife. And who is it we are to know? "You, the only true God," which sets Yahweh apart from all idols and false gods, "and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." This is crucial. No one can know the Father except through the Son. To know God rightly is to know the Triune God. It is to know the Father through the Son He has sent as the Messiah, the Christ. Eternal life is to be brought into the loving fellowship of the Trinity, a relationship that begins the moment a person believes and continues for all eternity.

4 I glorified You on the earth, having finished the work which You have given Me to do.

Jesus now presents the basis for His request to be glorified. He has already glorified the Father during His earthly ministry. How? By "having finished the work." From a chronological perspective, the cross is still a few hours away. But from the perspective of divine purpose, the work is as good as done. Jesus speaks with the certainty of one who has never failed and cannot fail. The "work" is the sum total of His incarnate obedience: His perfect life, His authoritative teaching, His powerful miracles, and climactically, His substitutionary death. He did not come to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. By perfectly accomplishing this mission, He put the character and righteousness of the Father on display for all to see. That is what it means to glorify God.

5 Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

This is the capstone of His prayer for Himself. He asks the Father to restore Him to the glory He possessed in eternity past. This is one of the most powerful and explicit statements of Christ's deity and pre-existence in all of Scripture. Before there was a creation, before time began, the Son shared in the full, unmitigated, intra-Trinitarian glory of the Godhead. He "had" this glory. It was His native environment. The incarnation was a voluntary veiling of that glory, a condescension of unimaginable proportions. Now, with His earthly work complete, He prays to be glorified "together with" the Father, to return to that state of unveiled splendor. But He will not return as He was. He will return as the God-man, the victorious Mediator, bringing many sons with Him to glory. His glorification is our glorification.

Application

This prayer is not simply a theological treatise to be dissected; it is the living word of our Savior, and it has profound implications for our lives. First, it teaches us the true meaning of glory. Our culture seeks glory in fame, power, and self-aggrandizement. The gospel shows us that true glory is found in obedience to the Father, even when that obedience leads to a cross. Our purpose in life is not to glorify ourselves, but to glorify God by finishing the work He has given us to do.

Second, it gives us unshakable assurance. Our salvation does not depend on our own feeble grip on Christ, but on the Father's sovereign gift of us to the Son, and the Son's omnipotent authority to keep us. He has been given authority over all flesh for the express purpose of giving us eternal life. He will not fail in His mission.

Third, it reorients our understanding of the Christian life. The goal is not simply to get our sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. The goal is to know God. Our daily lives, our work, our worship, our relationships, all of it should be oriented around this pursuit of knowing the Father and the Son more deeply, more intimately. This is not a dry, academic exercise; it is the very substance of eternal life, a life we begin to experience right now. We are invited into the very fellowship that Jesus speaks of in this prayer. We are brought into the circle of divine love. And so, as we listen in on this prayer, we should do so with awe and gratitude, recognizing that He is praying for us, and the glory He requests is the very glory He has secured for all who are His.