And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
I have glorified *thee* on the earth, I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it;
In John 17 the Son prays to the Father about His own work, and verse 4 is His report on it. Two questions press on the reader: how could He say this before the cross, and what was the work He calls finished?
Here the Son reviews His own service in the Father's hearing. Older translations word the verse "I have glorified you on the earth, I have finished the work," and one writer counts how often that "I have" sounds through the chapter:
Ten times over in this chapter Jesus says the words "I have," declaring the fullness of all He had accomplished. The first two are in verse 4, where He presses the completeness of His work in support of His request for glory... The work of the most eminent servants of God has been fragmentary and incomplete. And even if it were otherwise, not one of them would have dared to come to God, who searches hearts and ways, and pronounce on their own work. To declare its finished perfection would have been the worst kind of presumption. But here the Son is speaking, and for Him it was no presumption.
He glorified the Father not in heaven but "on earth." That place is the whole point:
What had the first Adam done? He had refused to recognise either the power or the goodness of God; he had denied all that God was towards him... What is precious is that it is man who has perfectly glorified God: He set out to do it, and He has done it. It needed to be done in man, for it is in man that God was dishonoured. It is there that Satan reigns and governs. It is there that the image of God is spoiled. It is there that God has been dishonoured in front of the angels. But it is there too that He has been glorified in Jesus — man — not by avoiding the evil but by placing Himself in the middle of it all.
When He prayed these words, the cross was still ahead of Him. He speaks of the work in the past tense anyway.
The work is viewed as already accomplished, and He says so... He had done all that He had come to do on earth. This is the position He takes. When He spoke these words He still had to accomplish the mighty work of redemption. The bitter cup was still full to the brim, and He had to drink it. But it was as certain to be done as though it had been done.
Most readers take the finished work to include the cross. One writer argues for a narrower reading, and admits it is not the common view:
What had He finished? Compare this last clause with the words "the works that the Father has given Me to finish." We take it to be His life-work in service, which had now come to an end. It does not include His death, which was not yet accomplished. We are aware, of course, that this is not the view commonly held. We put it before the reader, with the ground for our conclusion, so that he may judge for himself.
Others read the same words as resting everything the Son gives on Calvary:
If the Son gives eternal life, He gives it righteously... He gives it on the basis that He has glorified the Father here on earth and has finished the work the Father gave Him to do; that would take us to the cross... Here, being in His own spirit beyond the cross and looking back, as it were, taking account of some of the blessed results of it, He said, "I have glorified you on the earth; I have finished the work that you gave me to do."
Verse 4 leads straight into the request of verse 5. He puts forward the finished work, and the benefit does not stop with Him:
Here the whole path of Christ on earth, giving Himself up to obey and please His Father, is summed up. That is why it was all the more necessary to state its completion: "having finished the work which You have given Me to do."... And on that basis He asks the Father to glorify Him. He asks it not only because of His personal glory and relationship, but because of the work completed to His glory here below. In this way He might lay a valid and sure title for us to join Him in the same heavenly blessedness.
Look at where His service reached, and at what actually marked it:
The distinguishing feature of His service was not its extent. The sphere could hardly be smaller — Galilee of the Gentiles, Jerusalem, Samaria — while its effects take in the heavens, the earth, and all creation. But the great feature of it was that He always did the things that pleased the Father. He would not leave His place with the Father except to do His will, and could not return to it without having accomplished that will.
- Given. The Father handed the Son the work: "the work that you gave me to do." So finishing it was something to report, not to boast about.
- Done. He calls the work complete while the cup was still full and the cross still ahead. With Him, certain and finished are the same thing.
- Here. A man gave God glory on earth, the one place where God had been dishonoured. Evil did not drive Him out of the scene; He glorified God in the middle of it.
- Disputed. Commentators differ over what "the work" covers. Some limit it to His life of service up to that hour; most read it as reaching through to the cross.
- Ours. The finished work is the ground of His request for glory, and it lays a title for us to share that glory with Him. What made that work great was never its size, but that the Father gave it.
and now glorify *me*, *thou* Father, along with thyself, with the glory which I had along with thee before the world was.
This prayer reaches back before creation, asking the Father for something no creature could ever ask for. Two questions press on the reader: what is this glory the Son says He had, and why must He ask for what was already His?
The writers quote an older translation here: where the ESV has "in your own presence," it reads "with Your own self." One writer notes that the prayer itself settles who this Speaker is, because of what it dares to ask:
The eternal Son prays to the eternal Father. His making Himself equal with God was blasphemy in the eyes of the Jews, and deserving of death. As He prayed, "Glorify Me with Your own self," He declared Himself equal with the Father. What mere creature could look for that? What mere creature could ask for that in solemn prayer to the Father? But He could, and He did. He had a history before the world was. He had His part in essential divine glory before time began.
The wording rules out two ideas: that this glory began at some point, or that the prayer would create it.
The wording of this prayer will not let us think that the Speaker's glory was anything but eternal. It is not a glory He began to have at some point in the past. It is not a glory He would have for the first time when this prayer was answered. It is the glory which He "had" before the world was.
If He held glory before the world existed, then He existed before the world did. Another writer tells of a man whom that short phrase set free:
"'Before the world was,'" he cried, "settled the matter for me." May it settle it for the reader. If Christ had glory "before the world was," He existed "before the world was."
The Greek word behind "with" means alongside. The Son asks for glory at the Father's own side:
The Speaker asked the Father plainly and with emphasis ("You, Father") that He Himself might be glorified "along with [para] Yourself," at Your own side. And this glory was the very same glory the Speaker had "along with [para] You," at Your side, "before the world was."
The glory was His by right. But He had taken a servant's place, so He asks instead of taking:
He was Son before time began. So of course He had glory with the Father before the world was. But on earth He had taken the place of a servant as man. Now He asks the Father to glorify Him alongside Himself, with the glory He had with Him eternally. Man for ever, He would receive everything from the Father, though He is Son from eternity. And when He is glorified, it is so that He may glorify the Father. Such is perfect love and devotion.
The opening verses of the chapter give two reasons why the Son may ask for glory — one from who He is, one from what He has done:
He says, "Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You." That is the title which His Person gives Him to this glory. And the other is, "I have glorified You on the earth"... "And now, O Father, glorify Me"...; that is, the Lord presents these two grounds on which He is asking for His glory as man. He is glorified in virtue of His Person, and then glorified in virtue of His work.
One writer draws attention to what the Son never says, even at this height:
He has just the same glory as the Father, but He never steps out of the place of humiliation on His own... So here He says, "I have glorified You," and now, "You glorify Me." But He never says, "I have glorified You, and now I will glorify Myself." He receives everything, and will take everything as receiving it from the Father.
The same writer separates two glories in this chapter. Only one of them is shared with us:
In John 17 there are two glories, so to speak; the glory as God and the glory as Man, and it is the latter He gives to us... It is a glorious thing to be God and to be one with the Father. But all that He has as man, we have. There is His unity with the Father, and we cannot have that. But as it is shown in man, we have it all.
- Before — the glory did not begin at some point, and this prayer does not create it. He had it. So He was there before the world was.
- Beside — the glory is at the Father's side. He does not ask for glory apart from the Father, but for glory with Him.
- Below — He came into manhood and the servant's place, so what was His by right He now asks for as a gift.
- Because — He asks on two grounds: who He is as Son, and the finished work by which He glorified the Father on earth.
- Beyond — He receives all from the Father and never glorifies Himself. Of the two glories in this chapter, His unity with the Father stays His own. What is His as Man He shares with His people.
I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. They were thine, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word.
Here Jesus turns from praying about His own glory to speaking about His friends. He sums up His whole life among them in one line: a name made known, people given to Him, a word kept. Each phrase raises a question. Which name? Why these people? And in what sense did they "keep" the word?
The name He made known is not a title of power. It is the name of a relationship.
"I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me." The whole of this chapter speaks of the Father's name. It is not the Almighty, Jehovah, or Most High, the names He will bear in the millennium, "most high over heaven and earth." It is the Father, putting us in the place of sons.
The verse says He manifested the name, not that He declared it. One writer draws out the difference between showing and telling.
What is manifested is meant to be seen. What is declared is meant to be heard. Jesus both manifested and declared the Father's Name. What He did showed what the Father is, making visible what His Name represents. Those in whom the Spirit has worked can appreciate the heavenly grace of God made visible in the Lord Jesus.
The verse names these people by where they came from and who they belong to. Nothing about it was accidental.
They are described as "the people whom you gave me out of the world." So from the very start they stand clearly apart from the world. The Father took them out of it and gave them to the Son. They were the Father's according to His purpose before time began. But He gave them to the Son, so that the Son might bring them to know the Father by manifesting His Name to them.
By the world's standards these men were nobodies. The Father valued them differently.
They were poor and despised and of little account in the world. People despised them all the more because they had been drawn to Christ. They were not the great and noble of the earth, but the Father considered them a good gift for His Son. Their being drawn after Jesus was no mere accident. The Father had drawn them to His Son and had given them to Him, and He had received them. He loved them and gave Himself for them, and He never intended to part company with them.
They were the Father's before they were given to the Son. That short phrase also widens the circle beyond Israel.
The revelation of all that the Father is, as expressed by His Name, and these communications, are not given to the world. Nor are they given simply to a Jewish remnant out of Israel. They are given to the men that the Father gave to Christ "out of the world." Such belong to the great company of God's elect, for the Lord can say "Yours they were." So the language He uses leaves the way open for others, besides the godly remnant of Israel, to come into all this blessedness.
That is a bold thing to say about the disciples. One writer explains what the words do and do not measure.
Though they had been the Father's possession, only the Son had made the Father known to them. Of them He says, "they have kept your word." He is not speaking of how fully they kept it, but of the fact, which is true of every believer.
Jesus ties their obedience to the Father, not to Himself.
"And they have kept" — not My, but "your word." All this is the grace that ties the disciples to the Father, and shows Him as their Servant… This was not Christ, the Son, acting apart from or separate from the Father.
There was a purpose behind all this showing and telling.
He showed the disciples the Father in all His attributes, and passed on the Father's words. His aim was to bring them into the same position before the Father that He as a Man enjoyed. So the Lord makes it possible for us to walk knowing the Father's love, revealed in the Son. He also makes it possible for us to share the mind of the Father through what the Father told the Son.
- The Name — What Jesus revealed was God as Father, not Almighty or Most High; that name places believers as sons.
- The Gift — These men were the Father's first, then given to the Son out of the world. The Father counted them a good gift, and the Son will never part with them.
- The Showing — Declaring is for the ears, manifesting is for the eyes. Jesus did both, so His life showed what the Father is.
- The Word — "They have kept your word" states a fact true of every believer, not a score for how well they did. And it is the Father's word, for the Son is never separate from Him.
- The Point — All of it brings us where the Son stood as Man: sure of the Father's love, and let in on His mind.
Now they have known that all things that thou hast given me are of thee;
At the heart of this verse is a small phrase that could look like a repetition: what the Father gave is from the Father. Commentators press on the word to show it carries the whole weight of relationship.
At first glance this looks like a repetition, but the thought is "from you" as Father. Martha had said, "even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you," but now He had declared the Father's name, and they were to know that all He had was the Father's gift: relationship was brought out.
Others watched the same life and drew other conclusions. They did not learn new facts. They learned where everything came from.
They had entered into the secret of which the world knew nothing: the Father was the source of all that was given to the Son. Some wondered at His works and His words. Others hated Him, and said that what no man could do came from Satan — a blasphemy. The disciples had learnt that all these things were from the Father, as the Son wanted them to.
Knowing Jesus as the promised King was not the whole of it.
This is more than knowing Him as Messiah. They knew the Father, and Christ the object of the Father's heart, and all the counsels of God about Him.
Darby weighs what that knowledge was worth.
They saw the Father's glory in the hands of the Son. The Father was shown to them, and that was enough. Nothing more could be, except the actual glory itself. They knew that they were really the Father's. It was glorious knowledge.
They did not work this out for themselves. It came through the words the Son passed on, and it reaches to everything Christians enjoy now.
When they received the Father's words from the Son, the disciples knew that the Father was the source of all the things given to the Son. The Son came to carry out everything for the Father. He came to carry out all the wonderful things in the Father's heart for the blessing of those the Father had given Him. All that we have been called to enjoy at the present moment springs from the Father's love; He is the source of all.
Nothing was held back. What the Father communicated to the Son in that relationship, the Son handed over.
"I have given them the words that you gave me." He had put them into the same place and relationship He Himself was in as a man on earth with the Father. So whatever the Father had told Him in that relationship, He passes on to them. He brings them into all the blessing — into all the brightness of the hope — and brings us now into the full awareness of that relationship.
The words handed on were not a set of rules.
The Lord handed over to His disciples the intimate communications of grace that the Father gave to Him. It was no longer a question of the ten commandments given through Moses — the measure of man's responsibility, given to prove his sin and ruin, which he neither admitted nor felt.
There is a gap here between what they knew and what they could say.
They were able to trace things to their source, however little they might have been able to put their knowledge into words. They had received the words that the Father had given to the Son, and had known for certain that He had come from the Father, and that the Father had sent Him. This the Lord could say of them, though they might not have been able to say it of themselves.
This was deliberate on His part, not an oversight.
It is true that before they received the Holy Spirit they gained little from what He told them about the Father. But what they might have gained from was there in front of them. Sadly, they never once understood what the Lord said to them. He does not speak here of how little they understood. He speaks of the revelation itself that He had made to them, and He credits them with all its value.
- Source. The verse turns on one word. What the Son holds is from the Father — a gift inside the Father-Son relationship, not a general gift of God.
- Secret. The world watched the same works and either wondered or blasphemed; only the disciples traced them home to their source.
- Beyond Messiah. Knowing Him as the promised King is less than this — they knew the Father, and knew the Son as the object of the Father's heart.
- Passed on. They learned it through the words the Son gave them, so that everything Christians enjoy today still springs from the Father's love.
- Credited. The Lord says of them what they could not say of themselves, speaking of the revelation given rather than of how little they grasped.
for the words which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received [them], and have known truly that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou sentest me.
On the night before the cross, Jesus tells the Father what He did with what He was given. The Father's own words He passed straight on to His disciples — and they received them, even though within hours they would fail Him.
The verse says "words," in the plural. The "word" and the "words" are not the same thing.
Not only had the Lord declared the Father, but He had given to His disciples the "words" which the Father had given Him. He shared with them the messages He had received from the Father. So they learn not only who the Father is in all His love and holiness. Through the "words" they also learn the Father's mind. If the "word" reveals who He is, the "words" reveal His mind and thoughts.
These sayings came to the Son inside His own relationship with the Father. He did not treat them as private property.
Notice in verse 8 how far He goes with us. "I have given them the words that You gave Me." That is, He had put them into the very place and relationship He Himself was in as a man on earth with the Father. So whatever the Father had told Him in that relationship, He passes on to them. He brings them into all the blessing — into all the brightness of the hope. He brings us now into the full awareness of that relationship.
"They have received them" sounds like a report of complete success. Kelly reads it as grace counting what is real, not how much was grasped.
Since He had given them the words the Father gave to Him, the disciples did receive the truth, though no doubt imperfectly. So they came to know for certain that Christ the Son came out from the Father. And they believed as well that the Father sent Him. This is how grace reckons: it does not measure degrees, but makes much of what is real. He can well do this, for His love gives, deepens, and secures from first to last.
Within hours these same men would show cowardice and deny Him. That makes the Lord's description of them all the more striking.
This was very touching, for think what these men had been, how slow, how dull, how unresponsive! And think what they were on the point of showing themselves to be. What cowardice, what denials, in a few hours! But the Son saw them in the light of God's purpose. He knew that the Father had power in the end to bring about in them all that He had purposed. So He credited them with having in fullness what they as yet realized only in a very feeble measure. And does He not treat His saints today, and pray for them, in just the same way?
The verse names knowing and believing as separate steps, with different objects. Grant hears two sides of one truth in them.
They had received them. In some cases this came with confusion and questions, yet they had done so in real, living faith. That gave them absolute confidence that Christ had come out from the Father (v. 8). Notice that this wording shows the Son's own energy and initiative in coming forth. Then He adds, "they have believed that You sent Me," and this shows the Father's initiative. Both are true, for Father and Son are One.
Kelly adds why the second half matters.
To know for certain that the Son came out from the Father does not satisfy His heart. That alone would prove no more than His own love in coming. But the disciples believed the further truth that the Father sent Him — the proof of His own love to them.
Everything the Lord goes on to ask for His people rests on one simple thing.
It is most comforting to us that our Lord bases all these glorious desires for the saints on one thing alone. They had received the Son's testimony about the Father, and they had firmly believed in the Father's love.
What began as sharing words does not stop there.
Our blessed Lord would have us share with Himself "the words" — the divine communications — which the Father gave Him. He also gives us His own peace — that calm, untroubled state which always flowed from confidence in the Father's love… And, to crown it all, He will share His glory with us.
- Given. The Father gave the Son words; the Son gave those same words away rather than keeping them.
- Opened. The "word" shows who the Father is. The "words" open His mind and thoughts, so that the disciples stand where the Son stands.
- Received. Faith took them in — imperfectly, but really. Grace makes much of what is real and does not measure degrees.
- Credited. He describes men who would deny Him hours later by what the Father purposed for them. He treats His people the same way now.
- Result. On that reception alone He bases all He asks — and the sharing widens from His words to His peace, His joy, and His glory.