Chapter 17 is divided thus: Verses 1-5 relate to Christ Himself, to His
taking His position in glory, to His work, and to that glory as belonging
to His Person, and the result of His work. Verses 1-3 present His new
position in two aspects: "glorify thy Son"-power over all flesh, for
eternal life to those given to Him; verses 4, 5, His work and its results.
In verses 6-13 He speaks of His disciples as put into this relationship
with the Father by His revealing His name to them, and then His having
given them the words which He had Himself received, that they might enjoy
all the full blessedness of this relationship. He also prays for them that
they may be one as He and the Father were. In verses 14-21 we find their
consequent relationship to the world; in verses 20, 21, He introduces those
who should believe through their means into the enjoyment of their
blessing. Verses 22-26 make known the result, both future, and in this
world, for them: the possession of the glory which Christ Himself had
received from the Father-to be with Him, enjoying the sight of His
glory-that the Father's love should be with them here below, even as Christ
Himself had been its object-and that Christ Himself should be in them. The
last three verses alone take the disciples up to heaven as a supplemental
truth.
This is a brief summary of this marvellous chapter, in which we are
admitted, not to the discourse of Christ with man, but to hear the desires
of His heart, when He pours it out to His Father for the blessing of those
that are His own. Wonderful grace that permits us to hear these desires,
and to understand all the privileges that flow from His thus caring for us,
from our being the subject of intercourse between the Father and the Son,
of their common love towards us, when Christ expresses His own desires-that
which He has at heart, and which He presents to the Father as His own
personal wishes!
Some explanations may assist in apprehending the meaning of certain
passages in this marvellous and precious chapter. May the Spirit of God aid
us!
The Lord, whose looks of love had until then been directed towards His
disciples on the earth, now lifts His eyes to heaven as He addresses His
Father. The hour was come to glorify the Son, in order that from the glory
He might glorify the Father. This is, speaking generally, the new position.
His career here was finished, and He had to ascend on high. Two things were
connected with this-power over all flesh, and the gift of eternal life to
as many as the Father had given Him. "The head of every man is Christ."
Those whom the Father had given Him receive eternal life from Him who has
gone up on high. Eternal life was the knowledge of the Father, the only
true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He had sent. The knowledge of the
Almighty gave assurance to the pilgrim of faith; that of Jehovah, the
certainty of the fulfilment of the promises of God to Israel; that of the
Father, who sent the Son, Jesus Christ (the Anointed Man and the Saviour),
who was that life itself, and so received as a present thing (1 John 1:
1-4), was life eternal. True knowledge here was not outward protection or
future hope, but the communication, in life, of communion with the Being
thus known to the soul-of communion with God Himself fully known as the
Father and the Son. Here it is not the divinity of His Person that is
before us in Christ, though a divine Person alone could be in such a place
and so speak, but the place that He had taken in fulfilling the counsels of
God. That which is said of Jesus in this chapter could only be said of One
who is God; but the point treated is that of His place in the counsels of
God, and not the revelation of His nature. He receives all from His
Father-He is sent by Him, His Father glorifies Him.
[see note #63]
We see the same truth of the communication of eternal life in connection
with His divine nature and His oneness with the Father in 1 John 5: 20.
Here He fulfils the Father's will, and is dependent on Him in the place
that He has taken, and that He is going to take, even in the glory, however
glorious His nature may be. So, also, in chapter 5 of our Gospel, He
quickens whom He will; here it is those whom the Father has given Him. And
the life He gives is realised in the knowledge of the Father, and of Jesus
Christ whom He has sent.
He now declares the conditions under which He takes this place on high. He
had perfectly glorified the Father on earth. Nothing that manifested God
the Father had been wanting, whatever might be the difficulty; the
contradiction of sinners was but an occasion of so doing. But this very
thing made the sorrow infinite. Nevertheless Jesus had accomplished that
glory on the earth in the face of all that opposed itself. His glory with
the Father in heaven was but the just consequence-the necessary
consequence, in mere justice. Moreover Jesus had had this glory with His
Father before the world was. His work and His Person alike gave Him a right
to it. The Father glorified on earth by the Son: the Son glorified with the
Father on high: such is the revelation contained in these verses-a right,
proceeding from His Person as Son, but to a glory into which He entered as
man, in consequence of having, as such, perfectly glorified His Father on
earth. These are the verses that relate to Christ. This, moreover, gives
the relationship in which He enters into this new place as man, His Son,
and the work by which He does so in righteousness, and thus gives us a
title, and the character in which we have a place there.
He now speaks of the disciples; how they entered into their peculiar place
in connection with this position of Jesus-into this relationship with His
Father. He had manifested the Father's name to those whom the Father had
given Him out of the world. They belonged to the Father, and the Father had
given them to Jesus. They had kept the Father's word. It was faith in the
revelation which the Son had made of the Father. The words of the prophets
were true. The faithful enjoyed them: they sustained their faith. But the
word of the Father, by Jesus, revealed the Father Himself, in Him whom the
Father had sent, and put him who received them into the place of love,
which was Christ's place; and to know the Father and the Son was life
eternal. This was quite another thing from hopes connected with the Messiah
or what Jehovah had given Him. It is thus, also, that the disciples are
presented to the Father; not as receiving Christ in the character of
Messiah, and honouring Him as possessing His power by that title. They had
known that all which Jesus had was of the Father. He was then the Son; His
relationship to the Father was acknowledged. Dull of comprehension as they
were, the Lord recognises them according to His appreciation of their
faith, according to the object of that faith, as known to Himself, and not
according to their intelligence. Precious truth! (compare chap. 14: 7).
They acknowledged Jesus, then, as receiving all from the Father, not as
Messiah from Jehovah; for Jesus had given them all the words that the
Father had given Him. Thus He had brought them in their own souls into the
consciousness of the relationship between the Son and the Father, and into
full communion, according to the communications of the Father to the Son in
that relationship. He speaks of their position through faith-not of their
realisation of this position. Thus they had acknowledged that Jesus came
forth from the Father, and that He came with the Father's authority-the
Father had sent Him. It was from thence He came, and He came furnished with
the authority of a mission from the Father. This was their position by
faith.
And now-the disciples being already in this position-He places them,
according to His thoughts and His desires, before the Father in prayer. He
prays for them, distinguishing them completely from the world. The time
would come when (according to Psalm 2) He would ask of the Father with
reference to the world; He was not doing so now, but for those out of the
world, whom the Father had given Him. For they were the Father's. For all
that is the Father's is in essential opposition to the world (compare 1
John 2: 16).
The Lord presents to the Father two motives for His request: 1st, They were
the Father's, so that the Father, for His own glory, and because of His
affection for that which belonged to Him, should keep them; 2nd, Jesus was
glorified in them, so that if Jesus was the object of the Father's
affection, for that reason also the Father should keep them. Besides, the
interests of the Father and the Son could not be separated. If they were
the Father's they were, in fact, the Son's; and it was but an example of
that universal truth-all that was the Son's was the Father's, and all that
was the Father's was the Son's. What a place for us! to be the object of
this mutual affection, of these common and inseparable interests of the
Father and the Son. This is the great principle-the great foundation of the
prayer of Christ. He prayed the Father for His disciples, because they
belonged to the Father; Jesus must needs, therefore, seek their blessing.
The Father would be thoroughly interested for them, because in them the Son
was to be glorified.
He then presents the circumstances to which the prayer applied. He was no
longer in this world Himself. They would be deprived of His personal care
as present with them, but they would be in this world, while He was coming
to the Father. This is the ground of His request with regard to their
position. He puts them in connection, therefore, with the Holy Father-all
the perfect love of such a Father-the Father of Jesus and their Father,
maintaining (it was their blessing) the holiness that His nature required,
if they were to be in relationship with Him. It was direct guardianship.
The Father would keep in His own name those whom He had given to Jesus. The
connection thus was direct. Jesus committed them to Him, and that, not only
as belonging to the Father, but now as His own, invested with all the value
which that would give them in the Father's eyes.
The object of His solicitude was to keep them in unity, even as the Father
and the Son are one. One only divine Spirit was the bond of that oneness.
In this sense the bond was truly divine. So far as they were filled with
the Holy Spirit, they had but one mind, one counsel, one aim. This is the
unity referred to here. The Father and the Son were their only object; the
accomplishing their counsels and objects their only pursuit. They had only
the thoughts of God; because God Himself, the Holy Ghost, was the source of
their thoughts. It was one only divine power and nature that united
them-the Holy Ghost. The mind, the aim, the life, the whole moral
existence, were consequently one. The Lord speaks, necessarily, at the
height of His own thoughts, when He expresses His desires for them. If it
is a question of realisation, we must then think of man; yet of a strength
also that is perfected in weakness.
This is the sum of the Lord's desires-sons, saints, under the Father's
care; one, not by an effort or by agreement, but according to divine power.
He being here, had kept them in the Father's name, faithful to accomplish
all that the Father had committed to Him, and to lose none of those that
were His. As to Judas, it was only the fulfilment of the word. The
guardianship of Jesus present in the world could now no longer exist. But
He spoke these things, being still here, the disciples hearing them, in
order that they might understand that they were placed before the Father in
the same position that Christ had held, and that they might thus have
fulfilled in themselves, in this same relationship, the joy which Christ
had possessed. What unutterable grace! They had lost Him, visibly, to find
themselves (by Him and in Him) in His own relationship with the Father,
enjoying all that He enjoyed in that communion here below, as being in His
place in their own relationship with the Father. Therefore He had imparted
to them all the words that the Father had given Him-the communications of
His love to Himself, when walking as Son in that place here below; and, in
the especial name of "Holy Father," by which the Son Himself addressed Him
from the earth, the Father was to keep those whom the Son had left there.
Thus should they have His joy fulfilled in themselves.
This was their relationship to the Father, Jesus being away. He turns now
to their relationship with the world, in consequence of the former.
He gave them the word of His Father-not the words to bring them into
communion with Him, but His word-the testimony of what He was. And the
world had hated them as it had hated Jesus (the living and personal
testimony of the Father) and the Father Himself. Being thus in relationship
with the Father, who had taken them out from the men of the world, and
having received the Father's word (and eternal life in the Son in that
knowledge), they were not of the world even as Jesus was not of the world:
and therefor the world hated them. Nevertheless the Lord does not pray that
they might be taken out of it; but that the Father should keep them from
the evil. He enters into the detail of His desires in this respect,
grounded on their not being of the world. He repeats this thought as the
basis of their position here below. "They are not of the world, even as I
am not of the world." What then were they to be? By what rule, by what
model, were they to be formed? By the truth, and the Father's word is
truth. Christ was always the Word, but the living Word among men. In the
scriptures we possess it, written and stedfast: they reveal Him, bear
witness to Him. It was thus that the disciples were to be set apart.
"Sanctify them by thy truth: thy word is the truth." It was this,
personally, that they were to be formed by, the Father's word, as He was
revealed in Jesus.
Their mission follows. Jesus sends them into the world, as the Father had
sent Him into the world; into the world-in no wise of the world. They are
sent into it on the part of Christ: were they of it, they could not be sent
into it. But it was not only the Father's word which was the truth, nor the
communication of the Father's word by Christ present with His disciples
(points of which from verse 14 till now Jesus had been speaking, "I have
given them thy word"): He sanctified Himself. He set Himself apart as a
heavenly man above the heavens, a glorified man in the glory, in order that
all truth might shine forth in Him, in His Person, raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father-all that the Father is being thus displayed in
Him; the testimony of divine righteousness, of divine love, of divine
power, totally overturning the lie of Satan, by which man had been deceived
and falsity brought into the world; the perfect model of that which man was
according to the counsels of God, and as the expression of His power
morally and in glory-the image of the invisible God, the Son, and in glory.
Jesus set Himself apart, in this place, in order that the disciples might
be sanctified by the communication to them of what He was; for this
communication was the truth, and created them in the image of that which it
revealed. So that it was the Father's glory, revealed by Him on earth, and
the glory into which He had ascended as man; for this is the complete
result-the illustration in glory of the way in which He had set Himself
apart for God, but on behalf of His own. Thus there is not only the forming
and governing of the thoughts by the word, setting us apart morally to God,
but the blessed affections flowing from our having this truth in the Person
of Christ, our hearts connected with Him in grace. This ends the second
part of that which related to the disciples, in communion and in testimony.
In verse 20, He declares that He prays also for those who should believe on
Him through their means. Here the character of the unity differs a little
from that in verse 11. There, in speaking of the disciples, He says, "as we
are"; for the oneness of the Father and the Son shewed itself in fixed
purpose, object, love, work, everything. Therefore the disciples were to
have that kind of unity. Here those who believed, inasmuch as receiving and
taking part in that which was communicated, had their oneness in the power
of the blessing into which they were brought. By one Spirit, in which they
were necessarily united, they had a place in communion with the Father and
the Son. It was the communion of the Father and of the Son (compare 1 John
1: 3; and how similar the language of the apostle is to that of Christ!).
Thus, the Lord asks that they may be one in them-the Father and the Son.
This was the means to make the world believe that the Father had sent the
Son; for here were those that had believed it, who, however opposed their
interests and habits might be, however strong their prejudices, yet were
one (by this powerful revelation and by this work) in the Father and the
Son.
Here His prayer ends, but not all His converse with His Father. He gives us
(and here the witnesses and the believers are together) the glory which the
Father has given Him. It is the basis of another, a third,
[see note #64]
mode of oneness. All partake, it is true, in glory, of this absolute
oneness in thought, object, fixed purpose, which is found in the oneness of
the Father and the Son. Perfection being come, that which the Holy Ghost
had produced spiritually, His absorbing energy shutting out every other,
was natural to all in glory.
But the principle of the existence of this unity, added yet another
character to that truth-that of manifestation, or at least of an inward
source which realised its manifestation in them: "I in them," said Jesus,
"and thou in me." This is not the simple, perfect oneness of verse 11, nor
the mutuality and communion of verse 21. It is Christ in all believers, and
the Father in Christ, a unity in manifestation in glory, not merely in
communion-a oneness in which all is perfectly connected with its source.
And Christ, whom alone they were to manifest, is in them; and the Father,
whom Christ had perfectly manifested, is in Him. The world (for this will
be in the millennial glory, and manifested to the world) will then know (He
does not say, "that it may believe") that Jesus had been sent by the Father
(how deny it, when He should be seen in glory?) and, moreover, that the
disciples had been loved by the Father, even as Jesus Himself was loved.
The fact of their possessing the same glory as Christ would be the proof.
But there was yet more. There is that which the world will not see, because
it will not be in it. "Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be
with me where I am." There we are not only like Christ (conformed to the
Son, bearing the image of the heavenly man before the eyes of the world),
but with Him where He is. Jesus desires that we should see His glory.
[see note #65]
Solace and encouragement for us, after having partaken of His shame: but
yet more precious, inasmuch as we see that He who has been dishonoured as
man, and because He became man for our sake, shall, even on that account,
be glorified with a glory above all other glory, save His who has put all
things under Him. For He speaks here of given glory. It is this which is so
precious to us, because He has acquired it by His sufferings for us, and
yet it is what was perfectly due to Him-the just reward for having, in
them, perfectly glorified the Father. Now, this is a peculiar joy, entirely
beyond the world. The world will see the glory that we have in common with
Christ, and will know that we have been loved as Christ was loved. But
there is a secret for those who love Him, which belongs to His Person and
to our association with Himself. The Father loved Him before the world
was-a love in which there is no question of comparison but of that which is
infinite, perfect, and thus in itself satisfying. We shall share this in
the sense of seeing our Beloved in it, and of being with Him, and of
beholding the glory which the Father has given Him, according to the love
wherewith He loved Him before the world had any part whatever in the
dealings of God. Up to this we were in the world; here in heaven, out of
all the world's claims or apprehension (Christ seen in the fruit of that
love which the Fatherhad for Him before the world existed). Christ, then,
was the Father's delight. We see Him in the eternal fruit of that love as
Man. We shall be in it with Him for ever, to enjoy His being in it-that our
Jesus, our Beloved, is in it, and is what He is.
Meantime, being such, there was justice in the dealings of God with regard
to His rejection. He had fully, perfectly, manifested the Father. The world
had not known Him, but Jesus had known Him, and the disciples had known
that the Father had sent Him. He appeals here, not to the holiness of the
Father, that He might keep them according to that blessed name, but to the
righteousness of the Father, that He might make a distinction between the
world on one side, and Jesus with His own on the other; for there was the
moral reason as well as the ineffable love of the Father for the Son. And
Jesus would have us enjoy, while here below, the consciousness that the
distinction has been made by the communications of grace, before it is made
by judgment.
He had declared unto them the Father's name, and would declare it, even
when He had gone up on high, in order that the love wherewith the Father
had loved Him might be in them (that their hearts might possess it in this
world-what grace!) and Jesus Himself in them, the communicator of that
love, the source of strength to enjoy it, conducting it, so to speak, in
all the perfection in which He enjoyed it, into their hearts, in which He
dwelt-Himself the strength, the life, the competency, the right, and the
means of enjoying it thus, and as such, in the heart. For it is in the Son
who declares it to us, that we know the name of the Father whom He reveals
to us. That is, He would have us enjoy now that relationship in love in
which we shall see Him in heaven. The world will know we have been loved as
Jesus when we appear in the same glory with Him; but our part is to know it
now, Christ being in us.
