John 17:1-5

¹After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed: ²"Father, the time has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. For You granted Him authority over all people that He might give eternal life to all those You have given Him. ³Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. ⁴I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do. ⁵And now, Father, glorify Me in your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began."

John, by declaring, “After Jesus said this,” is showing us that the proper course to follow upon learning doctrine (as Jesus had taught in this Upper Room Discourse) involves prayer. Knowledge is worthless apart from the blessing of God. Thus this prayer serves as a seal or ratification of the information He has revealed to His beloved disciples. Jesus prays first for Himself in v1-5. In v6-19, Jesus prays for the disciples, and in v20-26 Jesus prays for the people of God everywhere at all times – including us!

Notice that Jesus looked to heaven. This could be to note the grandeur of creation, but we shouldn’t be caught up with the outward posture so much as with the inward posture. Jesus has set His heart on things above. In v2, notice that Jesus has authority over all people, but this authority is not for His sake. Think back to John 5:21. Jesus has authority, so that He may give eternal life to the elect, those whom God has chosen to give to His Son to win to glory. Calvin says, “The kingdom of Christ extends, no doubt, to all men; but it brings salvation to none but the elect, who with voluntary obedience follow the voice of the Shepherd; for the others are compelled by violence to disobey Him, till at length He utterly bruise them with His iron scepter.”

In a sense, Jesus’ prayer summarizes everything that has gone before it. We see Jesus’ unswerving obedience to the Father; His oneness with the Father; His death that would bring glory to the Father and also to Himself; His role as the only One who truly reveals the Father to men; the fact that there is a certain group of people, called out from the world, whom God has chosen to give Him; the need for love and unity among the disciples; their mission to the world; and their final destiny in the Father’s presence. But I think it’s wrong to call this a summary. A summary is what an author does when he wants to review all the points that he has made; but in this case, it is quite the opposite. Here, Jesus is not reviewing anything, but pouring out His soul long before John ever wrote the gospel. The fact that all of Jesus’ specific requests, as to what precisely His imminent death and resurrection should accomplish, are things that John’s gospel has emphasized tells us that John must have considered this prayer so important that he intentionally designed his gospel account around fleshing out the truths which he had heard in Jesus’ prayer. This chapter is not the John’s summary; it is his foundation.

Jesus begins by requesting glory to result for both the Father and Himself from His giving to the people whom the Father had given to Him “true life” – which is “intimate knowledge of and fellowship with the Father.” Back in the Garden of Eden, this fellowship is what man was created for; and until man has regained the purpose for which he was created, his life is just a state of living death – we are dead in our sins. True life, eternal life, is nothing but a restoration of that original purpose of knowing God – and this is what Jesus’ death would accomplish. If you remember from John 3, eternal life does not mean everlasting life, though it does last forever. Rather, eternal life speaks of the quality of life being true and perfect.

Notice first that this whole process did not add glory to God, as if He were only somewhat glorious before, and He became more glorious after – no, Jesus prays that God would glorify Him with the glory that He already had before the world was created. God’s glory would not be added to, but the glory He already had would be displayed. Thus the purpose of redemption with respect to God is connected to the purpose of redemption with respect to man: man’s life, his eternal joy, and everything good consists in knowing God; and God’s glorification consists of His making Himself known for who He is, as the already infinitely glorious God. So, before we move on, let us briefly reflect on how this event displays who God is. First, the essential nature of God is complex and interpersonal; God is a Trinity, and within that inter-Triune relationship, the different persons of the Godhead are constantly fellowshipping with each other, loving each other, and bringing each other glory – but each in different ways. Humans cannot understand that abstract (but unimaginably beautiful) relationship without the help of some example; and the perfect example of how the Trinity naturally relates to each other is the practical outworking of their different roles in this central event of history, the redemption of man: in this work, we see how the Father relates to the Son, planning for Him a perfect work, which will bring great glory to Him, and promising Him, in exchange for that perfect work, a magnificent reward – namely, that He would give to Him a special people, and also bring all created things under His feet, as their Master and Lord (Psalm 2:6-8; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:18-20; Ephesians 1:10,20-23). We see how the Son relates to the Father, always in perfect accord with His will, and always obeying Him exactly. We see how the Spirit relates to the Father and the Son, proceeding from Them in order to bring to life those whom the Father and Son have chosen (John 5:21; 15:26). All of these actual realities mirror for us precisely what the triune God is in His essential nature. Without such a concrete example, we would never be able to comprehend the nature of God. And so, in the work of redemption, the triune God displays Himself for who He is, in all His glory – and we who have been called by Him get the unspeakable joy of seeing His glory in the accomplishment of this great work!

And, besides the relationship of the persons of the Trinity, we can see innumerable attributes of the all-glorious God as we could never have seen them in any other way: we can see His wrath against sin, and His unyielding justice – for God was pleased to crush His own beloved and sinless Son, rather than turn His back on the terrible affront to His holiness which sin constitutes. We can see the depths of His love and mercy and grace in that God would be willing to undergo the horror of divine wrath, the consternation of inter-Triune separation and break of fellowship, the indignity and shame and reproach and pain of being numbered with sinners and suffering as a sinner deserves to suffer – all to bring back to God men who deserve nothing but what Jesus, undeserving as He was, actually underwent. And so we will continue for all eternity to marvel at the mystery and wonder of what God displayed of His glorious character when Jesus died.