John 17:1-26 is the longest recorded prayer of Christ in Scripture. During His earthly ministry, Christ frequently prayed to the Father (Matt. 11:25-26; 14:19,23; Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12; John 11:41-42), but very little of the content of those prayers is recorded. Thus, this prayer in John 17 reveals a deeper look at the precious content of the Son’s communion with His Father in heaven. Although Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 have become known as “the Lord’s Prayer,” that prayer was taught to the disciples by Christ as a pattern for prayer during the Tribulation. However, the prayer recorded in John 17 can truly be called The Lord’s Prayer.
Communion with the Father (vv. 1-5)
“These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee” (John 17:1).
In verses 1-5 (see pages 8-9), the Lord Jesus Christ prayed concerning the glory and the glorification of the Father and the Son.
Our Lord prayed this prayer in the presence of His disciples on the night before He was crucified. Thus, in verse 1, when the Lord said, “Father, the hour is come,” it was the time of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. The Cross was the very purpose for which Christ came to the world. The Lord had said earlier in John, “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:27 cf. 13:1).
In John 17:1, Christ prayed for the Father to “glorify Thy Son,” or bring into full display the divine character, majesty, attributes, and identity of the Son via His passion. Unlike the gospel of grace (1 Cor. 15:3-4), faith in the identity of the Son is what gave one salvation from their sins under the terms of the gospel of the kingdom. That is the purpose of John’s Gospel (John 20:31 cf. 1:41,49; 4:29; 6:69). When the Lord prayed, “glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee,” it is the Son Who reveals the Father (1:18; 12:45), and by carrying out the plan of redemption, Christ brought glory to the Father by revealing all of His supremely divine attributes such as His love, mercy, justice, wisdom, power, and omniscience.
The Father gave the Son “power” or authority over all of heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18), and “over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou [the Father] hast given Him” (John 17:2). Earlier in John, the Lord explained those that the Father gave Him more fully:
“No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
“It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me” (John 6:44-45).
God drew people to His Son through the Word, the written Word of the Old Testament, and/or through the living Word, Jesus Christ, as He walked the earth and ministered. As people are taught of God by the Word, and they hear and learn, the Father draws them to come unto His Son to find life. Christ taught and spoke the words of God throughout His earthly ministry. The people the Father had given Him were those who heard and responded in faith to Christ, and Christ gave them eternal life (John 10:27-30).
How one received life eternal under the kingdom gospel was as Christ prayed in John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent.” One knows God the Father by knowing and believing in the Son. And to those who knew the Son and believed in His identity as the Messiah, the Son of God granted eternal life under the gospel of the kingdom (5:24; 1 John 5:11-13,20).
The Lord prayed, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do” (John 17:4). Christ glorified and made the Father known by doing His will and completing the work He gave Him. Finishing the Father’s work was imperative to the Lord during His earthly ministry. In John 4:34, Christ said, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.”
Having finished His work, and knowing He came from God and was returning to God (13:3), Christ asked the Father to glorify Him with the glory which He had with Him before the world was (17:5). Christ prayed this because He is God, Who preexisted time and creation, and is eternal. Later in the prayer, the Lord stated that the Father loved Him “before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). From all eternity, the Father and the Son have enjoyed shared fellowship (1:1), glory (17:5), and perfect love (17:24).
Prayer for the Disciples (vv. 6-19)
“I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word” (John 17:6).
In verses 6-19 (see pages 8-9), Christ prayed for “the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world,” referring to the disciples. Christ told His disciples in John 15:19, “I have chosen you out of the world.”
The disciples were chosen out of the world to be separate from it, for Christ to use in reaching it (Matt. 28:19-20) with the gospel of the kingdom.
In verse 7 of John 17, we see how the disciples were capable representatives of Christ because they knew that His mission (3:16-17) and His message were of the Father (12:49). They received and accepted Christ’s words as truth and life (6:68). And the Lord stated in John 17:8 that they knew and believed two truths: first, that Christ had come from God (16:27,30), and second, that God sent Him (1 John 4:14).
When the Lord stated, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world,” in John 17:9, this does not mean that Christ was unconcerned about the world, for we know that God loves the world and sent His Son “that the world through Him might be saved” (3:17). Rather, the Lord stated that He was not praying for the world because His prayer for protection, unity, joy, and sanctification did not apply to them; it only applied to those who belong to God. In love, the Lord did not pray for the world of unbelievers to be kept, united, and sanctified in their rebellion and unbelief. The world needs to be saved from this condition through Christ.
The Son prayed for the disciples, telling the Father in verses 9-10 of chapter 17 that “they are Thine. And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine.” The Father and Son are equal, and what belongs to One belongs to the Other (10:30; 16:15). And Christ was “glorified in them” (17:10), in the disciples, because they believed in Him and Who He is.
In verse 11, when Christ said to the Father that “now I am no more in the world,” He anticipated His return to heaven, praying as if He had already left. “But these are in the world” reflected the Lord’s concern for His disciples whom He would leave behind. Thus, the Lord prayed, “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name.” “Keep” means to guard, take care of, preserve. The Lord prayed this because the disciples would have to face the world’s hatred (15:18-19) and trouble (16:33) without Christ’s immediate presence. In His absence from the world, Christ desired “that they may be one, as we are,” or patterned after the eternal, perfect unity of the Trinity (Psa. 133:1) so that they might endure the difficulties of ministry together.
In verse 12 of John 17, Christ prayed that He had guarded and protected the disciples when He was in the world and none of them was lost, except for Judas Iscariot, so “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (v. 12 cf. Psa. 41:9). But Judas was never a believer; he was “the son of perdition.” Because of his unbelief and treachery, Judas Iscariot (John 6:70-71) is identified with His destiny: perdition (cf. 2 Thes. 2:3).
When the Lord said to the Father, “these things I speak in the world, that they might have My joy” (John 17:13), it meant that the Lord had prayed this prayer aloud (cf. v. 1) for the benefit of His disciples so they might have the full measure of His joy by hearing His words of comfort.
The disciples needed Christ’s joy and comfort. Since the disciples did not now conform to the world’s beliefs and values, they were hated (17:14; 15:19). The Lord, though, prayed not for the isolation of the disciples from the hostile world but for the Father to preserve them in the midst of it (17:15). And in the hostile world, he prayed that the disciples would be kept specifically “from the evil,” or the evil one, Satan, who “as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).
With both Christ and the disciples being “not of the world” (John 17:16), the Lord prayed for God’s truth to sanctify the disciples to do the Father’s will like the Lord did. “Sanctify” (v. 17) means to set apart; in the context of Scripture, it means to be set apart unto God. God does not delegate the sanctifying process. He does not command us to do it on our own. God does it Himself (1 Thes. 5:23) as we live by faith in Him.
As God sanctifies us and sets us apart unto Himself, He does so by the truth of His Word (John 17:17). The closer we are to the Lord, the further we find ourselves from ungodliness and worldliness. What God reveals to us changes our thinking, values, and our priorities, and it leads us to be set apart unto God and His purposes. That was Christ’s prayer for His disciples.
The Lord did not want the disciples “out of the world” (v. 15) or “of the world” (v. 16). As His representatives, they were to be in the world (v. 18) but not of it. When the Lord prayed, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself” (v. 19), He referred to His being wholly separated to do God’s will and to go to the cross, and His prayer was that His example might stir the disciples to the same type of surrender and sacrifice.
Prayer for Future Kingdom Believers (vv. 20-26)
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word” (John 17:20).
In verses 20-26 (see pages 8-9), Christ prayed “for them also which shall believe on Me through their word,” or for those who would believe through the witness of the disciples (v. 20). Christ sent His disciples into the world (v. 18) to share the gospel of the kingdom and many would believe as a result. As He prayed for the disciples (v. 11), Christ prayed that kingdom believers might be one and exhibit the character and unity of the Godhead (v. 21).
When Christ prayed “that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me” (v. 21), this meant for the world to believe that Christ is the Son of God, a belief which was required for salvation under the gospel of the kingdom (6:40; 20:31).
In verse 22 of John 17, the Lord prayed, “And the glory which thou gavest Me I have given them.” “The glory” that the Father gave the Son is the glory of His words. As the Lord said earlier in His prayer, “For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me…” (v. 8). These words were given “that they may be one,” as the unity that Christ desired for kingdom believers was to be based on truth, the truth of God’s words.
In verse 23, Christ prayed that the unity in the kingdom church would be so great and so complete that the world would know, take note, and realize that its faith was real, that Christ is God the Son, and that these believers were supremely, deeply, and eternally loved by God.
Christ then prayed for these kingdom believers to “be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory” (v. 24), praying that they would be with Him when He reigns in glory in His kingdom on the earth (12:26; 14:2-3). They will behold His glory at that day.
The Son has known and been loved by the Father since before the foundation of the world (17:24). As Christ said in John 7:29, “But I know Him: for I am from Him, and He hath sent Me.” In contrast, the Lord prayed, “the world hath not known Thee” (17:25). The world does not know the Father because it rejects the Son Who reveals Him (1:10; 15:21). To know the Father, one must know the Son. The disciples and the kingdom believers, however, knew and believed that the Father sent the Son (17:25).
Christ had declared the name of the Father during His earthly ministry, and He stated that He “will declare it” (v. 26), which anticipated His resurrection. After Christ rose again, He would continue to give glory to the Father. Christ was hours from the cross, yet He declared “that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (v. 26). Knowing the unjust treatment, suffering, and death that was ahead of Him, Christ affirmed and knew that the Father loved Him. And the Lord prayed that this divine, eternal love might be in the kingdom believers.
