Jesus prays for His team of disciples (17:1-20)

Apart from a few glimpses into conversations between God the Father and God the Son, which occur in the Psalms (and are quoted in Hebrews), there are very few places where Jesus directly addresses His Father. Mostly his conversations with His Father were in solitary prayer. So this chapter is by far the longest account we have, of Their communication. It is right that we approach these verses with holy awe: we are being allowed to eavesdrop on the communication between the eternal Father and His Son

Within the Godhead, all three members are in perfect harmony at all times: there is no need for them to debate or discuss what they're going to do. Jesus is "in the bosom of the Father”, so close that He could hear His Father's heartbeat. But as a Man, He prayed just as He wants us to pray – like a little child sitting on its parents lap, asking, trusting, knowing it is loved. Though God is addressed as father of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, there is nothing remotely like this personal intimacy - in which Jesus addresses God Almighty as ‘Abba’, ‘Daddy’.

Most commentaries approach this chapter from an analytic stance, comparing this prayer with the Lord's prayer, or Jesus's prayer in Gethsemane; and breaking it down into three sections – Jesus praying for himself (vs 1-5) Jesus praying for the apostles (vs 6-19) and Jesus praying for the church down through the ages thereafter (vs 20-26). Counter-intuitively, they view the Cross as the point at which Jesus was glorified; and they see Jesus’s prayers for the unity of the church, and its vision of Christ’s glory, as being fulfilled only when Jesus comes again in glory.

Such approaches sterilise Jesus’s prayer of all relevance to our present-day lives, both our spiritual experience and our struggles to love each other within our local churches. They miss the mood of His prayer, which is one of joy rather than the agony He will experience in Gethsemane. They divorce His prayer from its context - His teachings about the disciples’ coming union with the Godhead; their ingrafting into Christ; and the sharing in His sufferings and mission, which that will bring. And they overlook the fact that nowhere else do we ever hear Jesus praying for anything for Himself - even on the Cross.

In what follows, I’ve tried to explain how I understand what Jesus was praying - followed by paraphrasing each section to try and convey His heart:-

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Vs 1

The emotional tenor of Jesus’s prayer in this chapter, is the key to understanding it. He knows He has completed His mission of glorifying the Father through the miraculous ‘signs’ and through His teaching (v4). He is praying not in desperation or sadness, but with a sense of joy (v13) and purpose. Why and how could that be, when His crucifixion is only hours away?

Hebrews gives us the answer:

“Jesus endured the Cross, despising its shame, for the joy that was set before Him” (Heb 12:2).

Isaiah prophesied, ““When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.” (Isa 53:11, NLT)

By faith, Jesus was looking beyond the Cross - and was filled with joy at what He saw. He was looking at His Bride-to-be, and how she would need to be prepared for their wedding.

Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.’ (Eph 5:25-27)

Having taught His disciples how to love one another as He has loved them, how they would come into living relationship with the Father and the Spirit, how to abide in Him and how to rely on the Holy Spirit under persecution and tribulation,He also sees what they will need the Father to do for them in His absence.

I believe His whole prayer, is in fact a
prayer for the Church.

This then makes perfect sense of Jesus going on to pray for the men who will be the foundation stones of the Church, and all those who will later become living stones in it. The theme of Jesus’s prayer throughout, is the Church He is about to die for - His beloved Bride, and the means of the Father’s being glorified on earth throughout the future.

This also explains why there are so many echoes of the beginning of the Book of Ephesians, whose theme is the revelation of the mystery of the Church. The Church is the vehicle for ‘displaying the manifold wisdom of God to the principalities and powers in the heavenly realms’ (Eph 3:10). The Church is how the Son will glorify the Father, after Pentecost.

Most commentators see Jesus’s prayer to be glorified as referring to the Cross - which is counter-intuitive to say the least, and doesn’t fit with what Jesus is saying. He’s asking specifically to be restored to the glory He had with the Father before the world began (v5). The seven ‘signs’ had already manifested the glory of His character (2:11): that was not what He was asking. Rather, He was asking for the shekinah glory, the magnificent outshining that John later records seeing (Rev 1:13-17). This was the glory He had laid aside when He became Man (Phil 2:5-7).

Given this, when was this prayer of Jesus answered by the Father?

Not at the Cross, for sure. Not at the Resurrection either, for although it ‘declared Him to be the Son of God with power’ (Rom 1:4), that was only recognised after Pentecost. The only event that fits as being the answer to this prayer, is the Ascension.

Paul writes of Jesus, “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3).

And again, “But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:9).

And again, “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men. (Now this, “He ascended”—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph 4:8)

The ascension was when Jesus’s pre-incarnate glory was restored: it was His coronation. And just as when a new monarch is crowned in Britain, they become Head of the Church of England, and appoint bishops and archbishops, so the immediate result of Jesus’ coronation was that He appointed apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists and teachers - to build the Church.

So we might paraphrase the meaning of this verse, as follows:-

“Father, we both know that we’ve reached the pivot point of Your plan of salvation. I’ve completed all the miracles & signs, all the witnessing and teaching You gave Me to do. I’ve taught these dear men the kernel truths of everything we’re about to achieve; and they’re about to go through hell, just as I am. But the thing that keeps Me steady is that beyond all this apparently pointless suffering, I see something wonderful. Just like Isaiah prophesied, I can see that My death as a sin offering will bring life to multitudes. They will become My Body, and I’ll be their Head, and through them I’ll work out Your heart’s desires, and the Church will display Your incredible wisdom to the powers of darkness. All the shame and the agony will have been worth it, for the joy of seeing My Betrothed - My Bride-to-be.

“But for that to happen, I need You to restore the glory I shared with You, before the world began. Ever since I took this human body I’ve displayed the glory of Your character - Your grace and truth, Your holiness and love - in all My words and deeds. But I consciously laid aside the unapproachable magnificence of Our Throne, so that men could see what God looks like in the flesh. Now I need You to restore that glory; not ‘just’ raising Me from the dead, but seating Me at Your right hand again and authorising Me to pour out the Holy Spirit. Only He can fill these men so full of power and authority, that Your plans will prosper in My hands. I’m not asking for My own sake, but so that I can glorify You further. It’s the formation of the Church that will really really grind the devil’s gears, and declare Your deep wisdom - that You’ve turned what he thought was ultimate victory and freedom to throw off Your restraint, into his ultimate defeat.

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Vss 2-8

Jesus recalls the history of the Church so far. He says repeatedly that He is praying for ‘those whom You (Father)) have given Me’ (vss 2,6,9,10,11,12,24). Though He has been given authority over all flesh (v2), only a select few have been given to Him in this special sense. They have been given Him, ‘out of the world’ (v6). To as many as have been given Him, to each and every one of these, He will give eternal life. To the rest, He will execute judgement (5:21-30).

The essence of true spiritual life is not that it is eternal and carries on beyond death, but rather in our experiential relationship with the one true God, and His first missionary, Jesus Christ (v3). Union with the Father and the Son, by the Holy Spirit - just what He has been teaching throughout the discourse.

The Church is the Father’s gift to the Son. These men (and women) ‘were Yours, then You gave them to Me’ (v 6). The Father chose us to be Christ’s, in eternity past:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:3-6)

Jesus repeatedly taught that salvation was entirely determined by God's sovereign choice.

‘No-one can come to Me unless it has been granted to Him by My Father’ (6:65).

This teaching was what so angered the Jews, who thought that they were guaranteed a place in heaven by being sons of Abraham genetically. But as Paul proves in Romans 9:6-13, Abraham's family tree showed covenant blessings were passed down only to ‘the child of promise’ (Isaac v Ishmael) and by God’s election (Jacob v Esau).

The Father has given Him an exact number, everyone of whom will come to Him - because the Father causes them to be attracted by Him:-

“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me” (Jn 6:44-45). That is why Jesus now says, ‘They have obeyed Your word’ (v6).

Christ will never reject anyone whom the Father gives Him; and they will never be lost or fall away, for He will keep them.

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. … This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”(Jn 6:37-40)

Having chosen to leave their careers and families, and by faith follow Jesus through thick and thin, these eleven disciples had gradually come to know what God was like (v6). They’d realised that everything Jesus did and said, came directly from God (v7). They had accepted His teaching even when they couldn’t understand it - such as when He had spoken about being the Bread of Life. Unlike others who’d taken offence, they’d stuck with Him. And now, minutes earlier, they had finally grasped that He shared God’s nature (16:30), and had been sent by His Father on a mission to save those who believed (v8).

So we might paraphrase the gist of these verses like this:

“Father, I know You’ve given Me full authority over all mankind - authority to raise the dead and give eternal life to some, and authority to judge all those who reject Me. You’ve told Me to give eternal life to every single one of those you’ve chosen for Me - to bring them into Our union as a Trinity, so that by the Spirit they will know both You and Me experientially, not just intellectually. Now is the time, Father! Glorify Me, so that I can do just that.

“I’ve demonstrated Your nature fully to these men whom You selected to be redeemed from this present darkness. You had chosen them and pre-destined them way way back, to be moulded into My likeness through fellowship with Me. You somehow spoke to them, and attracted them to Me just as the prophet foretold when he said ‘They shall all be taught of God’. They opened their hearts to Your voice, and followed Me. They’ve recognised that everything I said and did came first-hand from You. I stuck exactly to what You told Me to say, and they accepted all My teaching - they didn’t stumble or fall away like so many others. Little by little, they’ve grasped that I came from You: that You and I are actually one and the same in being, though We are separate Persons. Boy was that a struggle! But they finally got it, just a few moments ago. And they’ve also believed that I am Your personal Envoy, expressing Your mission of love to the world.

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Vss 9-19

Jesus prays three things for His disciples, in view of His impending departure from them:-

1. To be kept in God’s Name (vss 11-12). Modern paraphrases have, ‘in the power of Your Name’ instead of ‘in Your Name’. But Jesus says that hitherto, He has kept them in the Father’s Name; that being kept in the Father’s Name is essential if they are to be one; and that only Judas, who was destined for perdition, has been lost. It seems that ‘being kept in God’s Name’ means being kept loyal to Jesus and to each other. Given how the enemy tries to turn Christians against each other, and how persecutors often seek to get believers to betray each other, this kind of protection will be badly needed.

Earlier, Jesus said that He had manifested God’s Name to the disciples (v 6). As we’ve seen, this means He manifested God’s character; His grace and truth, His patience and love. So this petition may also mean, keeping them from falling back into worldly character traits.

2. To be kept from the Evil One, despite remaining in the world. It is vital to Jesus’s mission that they ‘go into all the world to make disciples’, and He sends them just as the Father sent Him (v18). He knows that since they no longer conform, the world will hate them as it hated Him.

They no longer “walk according to its course or according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind’’ (Eph 2:2)

We have previously seen that ‘the world' is the system of opposition to God in human society, driven and shaped by the Devil - but also empowered by our own fallenness. John later expands on this theme:

“Love not the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world.” (1Jn 2:15-16).

3. To be sanctified by God’s word of truth (v 17). Sanctification means both being set apart for holy purposes, and the practical holiness that is necessary for this. It is a gradual process, from the moment we are born again till the moment we die. Peter later writes,

“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2Pet 1:3-4). And he goes on to outline a step-by-step sanctification programme starting from faith and adding virtue, knowledge, self-discipline, perseverance, godliness, kindness, and love.

Jesus has previously spoken about how the Father lifts and prunes each branch of the vine (15:2) to bear more fruit. And earlier, He spoke about continuing in His word, in order to know the truth and for the truth to set them free (8:31,32).

This process of being sanctified by God's word is painful: the word of God actively separates between our souls and spirits, discerning the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Much that we thought was spiritual, is shown up as being fleshly. We find our inner selves naked before God’s Presence, and needing to confess and repent.

The good news is, we can ‘approach Him boldly for grace to help in time of need’, because we have a wonderfully sympathetic High Priest. (Heb 4:11-16)

In fact the whole process of sanctification is only possible because ‘there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared’ (Ps 130:4). Without this, the utter purity of God’s Presence would condemn us to despair. That is why Jesus vows to to sanctify Himself for God’s use as our ransom-sacrifice, so that we may be sanctified by the truth (v 19).

Paraphrasing once again, the unabridged version of Jesus’ prayer might have sounded like this:-

“I’m praying just for them: not for the whole mass of humanity. Though You’ve given them to Me, they are still Yours as well; and they are the evidence of my character, just like Yours. So it’s in Your interest as well as Mine, I know, to hear My prayer for them.

“Coming back to glory means I’ll no longer be here to protect them Father, and the hatred I faced from the world will be redirected towards them. Your holiness, Your antipathy towards sin of every sort, is why the world has such a problem with them. But You are their Father as well as mine: keep them sheltered under Your Name, Almighty God. They’re going to be scattered in the next few hours, and will badly need Your protection if they are to regroup afterwards. While I was on earth, I safeguarded every single one You gave Me: not one of them was lost except Judas, and as the scriptures foretold, he was always going to desert. Keep the others loyal and true, both to Me and each other, just as You and I are One.

“I’m praying like this while still in their hearing, so that they’ll catch the full measure of My joy Father. I’m so deeply elated at what I see they will become, and they are so precious to Me, that I will willingly endure all the shame and humiliation of crucifixion for their sakes.

“The world hates them because Your word which I gave them has changed them to be like Me. So it hates them just as it hates Me. I’m not asking You to take them out of that hostile environment, to become monks or hermits or anything like that: otherwise how would the world continue to hear the Good News? No, I’m asking however that You keep them from the Evil One, the spirit who operates behind the scenes of this world’s culture and values. Take Peter, for example: You know the Devil tried to make out that Peter was so self-deluded that he, Satan, should be allowed to utterly destroy his faith. Father, keep these vulnerable disciples of Mine safe when he attacks them in future.

“Lastly Father, let Your truth go on working within them so that they are refined more and more: so that they become more and more set apart for Your work. Just as You sent Me into this dark world, I’ve sent them; and the world is going to throw every possible form of temptation at them, to divert or disqualify them. Fleshly lusts, greed and covetousness, and subtle forms of pride - all the wiles of the Devil. They’ll get sidetracked and then he’ll tell them they’re hopeless and that You’ve given up on them, tempting them to despair. He’ll try and use Your very words to condemn them. But here and now, Father, I consecrate Myself as their ransom, the full satisfaction for their guilt: to provide the forgiveness they will need, so that they can live in awe of Your goodness rather than terror of Your judgement.