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The Gospel of John, Chapter 17: Prayer
Chapter 17 consists entirely of a prayer Jesus prays. Sometimes Jesus speaks of himself in the third person. The language is liturgical and repetitive. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation (link above), it appears as a poem or psalm. I’ll take it in the opposite direction, and summarize with (gasp) bullet points:
Glorify your Son so the Son may glorify you (third person)
He has authority over all people (third person)
He can give eternal life (third person)
Eternal life means knowing you, God and Jesus Christ whom you sent.
I (switch to first person) made your name known to those whom you gave me.
They received the words from you.
I am asking on their behalf.
Protect them.
The world has hated them because they do not belong to the world.
Protect them from the evil one.
Make them holy in the truth.
And I also ask on behalf of future believers, those who will believe in me [through the words of the disciples]
The top 12 words in the prayer are:
World
Given
One
Know
Sent
Word
Father
Glorify
Gave
Ask
Behalf
Love
My word counter (wordart.com) eliminates small connecting words like “in”, but this passage has a lot of the preposition “in” + pronoun: in me, in you, in them, in us. There is a lot of “being in.”
At the start of this Chapter 17 prayer Jesus says:
“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. (verses 17:1-5)
Lots of glorifying there. Glorify means “to praise, extol, magnify, celebrate, honor.” (Strong’s Concordance)
In verses 1-5 which I quoted above, we see some of the themes from the opening words from Chapter 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ….
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, … No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
- Chapter 1, verses 1-4, 14, 18.
In his prayer Jesus also recalls the Logos (Word) of Chapter 1:
I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. (verse 6)
I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. (verse 14)
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (verse 17)
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. (verse 20-21a)
In each of these verses “word” is “logos” in Greek. It can have so many layers of meaning in this prayer.
Jesus prays for protection from evil for his followers, present and future.
Jesus ends his prayer with a request for God’s love to be in his followers:
“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (verses 17: 25-26)
Jesus’ prayer includes many of the themes we’ve seen all along in this gospel, as you can probably tell from the list of the top 12 words (above). The prayer is infused with a poetical sense of belonging, loyalty, unity. It’s so poignant, juxtaposed with the upcoming separation that Jesus is facing.
In the next chapter Jesus will begin the painful and humiliating path to death on the cross.
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