“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” β John 17:20β21
Context and Key Themes
John 17 is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in any of the gospels, and the chapter has been called the High Priestly Prayer since the early centuries of the church. The designation comes not from anything Jesus says in it β he does not call himself High Priest here β but from the function he performs. He is interceding for his people on the eve of offering himself as their sacrifice. The Old Testament high priest went once a year into the Holy of Holies to intercede for the nation. Jesus is now entering the great and final intercession that will culminate in his own blood shed on the cross the next day. The prayer is the priestly act that precedes the priestly sacrifice.
The prayer is also unlike any other in scripture. It is spoken aloud, deliberately, so the disciples can hear him praying for them. It is addressed to the Father, but every line is also a gift to those listening. Jesus wants the eleven to know what the Son asks of the Father on their behalf, because knowing it will carry them through everything that follows.
The prayer divides naturally into three concentric circles. First, Jesus prays for himself and his own glorification through the work he is about to complete (verses 1β5). Second, he prays for the eleven disciples with him β their protection, their sanctification, their joy (verses 6β19). Third, he prays for every believer in every generation who will come to faith through the disciples’ testimony β their unity, their oneness, their eventual presence with him in glory (verses 20β26).
That third circle is us. Every Christian reading this chapter is inside the prayer Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion. He interceded for you by name in the Father’s hearing, without ever hearing your name in this life. He prayed for us long before we existed. The prayer is still being answered.
Father, the Hour Has Come
Jesus lifts his eyes to heaven and begins. Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
The hour, which he has spoken about throughout the gospel as not yet come, has now come. The cross is tonight. Jesus prays for the glorification that the cross will accomplish. He is not asking to be spared. He is asking to complete the work. And the glorification of the Son in this moment is the simultaneous glorification of the Father β the two glories move together.
The authority granted is startling in its scope. Authority over all flesh. Not over Israel only. Not over the called-out community only. Over all flesh. The Son has authority over every human being who has ever lived, and the mission of that authority is targeted β to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. The Father has given a specific people to the Son. The Son’s authority reaches everyone, and his life-giving work reaches those the Father has given him.
Then the definition of eternal life that should shape every Christian’s understanding. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Eternal life is not primarily duration. It is knowledge. Not the knowledge of accumulated facts β the Greek ginΕskΕ here means relational, experiential, intimate knowledge. To know the Father. To know Jesus Christ whom he sent. That knowing, once begun, is already eternal life. It extends through death and into the resurrection, but it has already started in the believer who knows the Father through the Son. Every Christian who has been born again is already inside eternal life. Death does not begin it. Death merely reveals what was already true.
Jesus continues. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. Before the cross is complete, before the words it is finished are uttered from Golgotha, Jesus is speaking of the work as accomplished. The Father’s plan is so certain that the Son can speak of its completion as an already-done thing. The confidence is absolute.
And then the request. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. This is a confession of pre-existence as direct as any in the gospel. The Son had glory with the Father before the world existed. He now asks to be restored to it. The one praying is not a man becoming divine. He is the eternal Son who temporarily laid aside the outward display of that glory for the work of the incarnation, and he is asking the Father to return him to it.
For the Ones You Have Given Me
The prayer’s circle widens. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.
The eleven are described in language that would have stunned them to overhear. They belonged to the Father. The Father gave them to the Son. They have kept the Father’s word. They have received the words the Father gave the Son. They have come to know in truth that Jesus came from the Father, and they have believed he was sent. This is as generous a summary of the disciples as could be written. They have been slow, they have misunderstood, they have argued about greatness, they have been rebuked β and yet in the Father’s hearing, Jesus credits them with faithfulness. This is how the Son speaks of his own to the Father. The failures are not denied, but they are not the summary.
Every Christian should hear this. When the Son intercedes for his own to the Father, he does not catalog our failures. He describes our faith. He is not naive about the weakness. He is gracious in the accounting. The prayer he is praying for you tonight, in the presence of the Father, emphasizes what he has accomplished in you, not what you have failed at.
Then the explicit focus. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
This is not a statement that Jesus does not love the world. The gospel has already said God so loved the world. But in this specific prayer, he is not interceding for the world. He is interceding for his own. The world has rejected him. His own have received him. The prayer is for the received ones β for their protection, their unity, their joy. The world’s invitation is still open. The intercession is for those who have come through the door.
Holy Father, Keep Them
Then the first great petition. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
Jesus is leaving the world physically. His disciples remain in it. He asks the Father to keep them β to guard them, to preserve them β in his name. The name is where they are kept safe. The name is their refuge. And the keeping has a purpose: that they may be one, even as we are one. The unity of the Father and the Son is the pattern for the unity of the believers. The oneness the Father has shared with the Son from eternity is now extended to the disciples.
He continues. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Judas is the son of destruction. His loss is not a failure of Jesus’ keeping. It is the fulfillment of scripture. Every disciple the Father gave Jesus has been kept. The one who was not kept was not genuinely given β or the Greek idiom permits the reading that Judas was assigned by the Father to a role that was always heading toward destruction. Either way, the arithmetic is intact. Of those truly given to the Son by the Father, not one is lost. This is the doctrine of preservation in seed form, spoken by Jesus himself on the night of his betrayal.
Then the petition deepens. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Two things stand out here. First, Jesus is praying this aloud for a reason β that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. The prayer is itself a joy-gift. Hearing Jesus intercede for them fills the disciples’ joy to the brim. There is a joy that only comes from hearing the Son pray for you by name.
Second, Jesus does not ask for the disciples to be removed from the world. He prays for protection in the world, not extraction from it. This has enormous implications. The Christian life is not designed to be a retreat from the world. The Christian is supposed to remain in the world, among the things of the world, working and living and bearing witness β while being kept from the evil one who still has influence there. The prayer is not get them out. The prayer is keep them safe in it.
Sanctify Them in the Truth
Then the second petition. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
The word sanctify is the Greek hagiazΕ β to set apart, to make holy, to consecrate for a specific purpose. Jesus prays that the disciples will be set apart by the truth β and in the same breath declares what the truth is: the Father’s word.
This is a short, stunning definition of the mechanism of Christian growth. The Word does the sanctifying. Not ceremony, not effort, not location. The Word. The disciple who is saturated in the Word of God is being sanctified. The disciple who is starved of it is not. Every Christian practice that aims at growth without the Word is spinning wheels. Every Christian who abides in the Word is being set apart.
And the commission. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. The pattern of the Father’s sending of the Son is now the pattern of the Son’s sending of the disciples. They are not merely in the world. They are sent into it. With purpose. With the same authority of being sent. The apostolic mission is Christ’s mission continued by the Spirit-indwelt community.
And for their sake I consecrate myself β Jesus consecrates himself, sets himself apart as the sacrifice, so that they may be set apart in truth. His consecration is the ground of their sanctification. The ongoing work of making the disciples holy flows from his one-time consecration of himself on the cross.
That They May All Be One
Then the prayer’s horizon expands to include every believer who will ever exist. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.
Pause there. This is the moment every Christian in history is folded into the prayer. Every person who has ever believed in Jesus β through the apostolic word, through the preaching of the early church, through the writings of the New Testament, through a sermon, a testimony, a book, a website β is being prayed for here, at the end of John 17, by the Lord on the night of his arrest. You are in this prayer. I am in this prayer. Every believer reading this is named, not by name, but by inclusion in the category those who will believe in me through their word.
And the petition for all of us. That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The unity of the church is the chief petition of the Lord’s prayer for his people. And the standard of that unity is the unity of the Father and the Son. Not organizational unity. Not uniformity of opinion on every issue. A unity of life patterned on the mutual indwelling of the Trinity. Believers in the Father and the Son. Believers in one another. All held together by the same Spirit.
And the reason this unity matters: so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The church’s unity is part of the church’s witness to the world. A divided church obscures the truth of Jesus. A united church demonstrates it. This is not a call to paper over real doctrinal differences with cheap ecumenism. It is a call to refuse the petty divisions, the personal grievances, the tribal hostilities that make the church look no different from any other human institution. When the church is united in love across what divides it, the world notices. When the church is fractious, the world dismisses.
Jesus repeats the theme. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
The glory has been given. The oneness is a gift, not an achievement. The believer does not produce it by effort. The believer receives it by being in Christ. And the culmination is staggering β the world may know… that you loved them even as you loved me. The Father’s love for the disciples is of the same quality as the Father’s love for the Son. Every Christian is loved by the Father with the love the Father has for Jesus. There is not a second-tier love for us and a first-tier love for the Son. There is one love, and we have been gathered into it.
Father, I Desire
Then the most tender request in the prayer. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
The word desire is the Greek thelΕ β I will, I want. Jesus is not tentatively asking. He is expressing what he wills. He wills that every believer the Father has given him will be with him where he is, to see the glory he had with the Father before the foundation of the world.
This is the Son’s own desire for the final reunion. Not merely the disciples’ longing to be with him, but his longing to have them with him. The prepared place of chapter 14 has a reason. The Son wants his own with him. The universe will not be complete, from the Son’s standpoint, until every sheep the Father has given him is in the fold, in his presence, beholding his glory.
If you are in Christ, he wants you with him more than you want to be with him. The pull is stronger from his end than from ours.
I Will Continue to Make It Known
The prayer closes. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Three movements in the closing. First, the world does not know the Father β a statement of the division that the cross will make permanent until every soul chooses which side they stand on. Second, Jesus knows the Father β the unbroken knowing that has been from eternity. Third, these eleven know that the Father sent him β the hard-won belief that has finally landed, just before the test that will shake them to their foundations and then restore them into something stronger than before.
And the final petition is the permanent work: I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
The revelation of the Father did not end with the cross. It did not end with the ascension. It did not end with the closing of the canon. Jesus continues to make the Father’s name known through every generation, by the Spirit, through the Word, through the faithful testimony of his people. The purpose is that the Father’s love for the Son will be in the believer, and the Son himself will be in the believer. The indwelling that was announced in chapter 14 is the final word of chapter 17. I in them.
The prayer ends. The discourse ends. The next sentence of the gospel (chapter 18) begins: When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. The walk to Gethsemane has begun. The arrest is minutes away. The prayer is the final act before the betrayal.
Reflection
John 17 is the chapter that lets every Christian overhear the Son praying for them to the Father on the night before the cross. Nothing in the Christian life is more comforting than this β that the Lord, knowing exactly what was about to happen to him and exactly what his disciples would do and fail to do in the hours ahead, spent his last private time in prayer for them, and for everyone who would ever believe through them.
The definition of eternal life in verse 3 is the one every Christian should memorize. This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Not a length of time. A kind of knowing. The Christian who has begun to know the Father through the Son has already begun eternal life. Death does not start it. Death only unveils what was already flowing. Every prayer you have ever offered to the Father, every moment the Spirit has reminded you of a word of Christ, every tender awareness of the Lord’s presence β that was eternal life active. It was not rehearsal. It was already the substance.
And the shape of the intercession for the disciples is the shape of Christ’s ongoing intercession for every Christian. He asks the Father to keep them. He asks the Father to sanctify them by the Word. He asks the Father to protect them from the evil one. He asks that their joy be filled. He asks that they be one. These are still the requests he makes for his own. The throne room of heaven still echoes with these petitions offered on your behalf by the Son.
The unity of the church is still the most visible ground of the world’s ability to believe in the Sending of the Son. That they may all be one… so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Every local church that is fractured by gossip and petty rivalries is, in a small way, obscuring the gospel. Every cross-denominational friendship that holds against the pressure of sectarian reflex is, in a small way, illustrating it. The world is watching the church to see whether Christianity holds the people it claims. If it does, the world has a reason to consider the claim. If it does not, the church has made its own witness harder.
And the deepest word of the chapter may be verse 24. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory. The Son wills it. The Son wants it. The Son has prepared the place, arranged the rescue, paid the price, and will come again to take his own to himself β because he wants us there. The homecoming is not conditional on our enthusiasm alone. The pull of the Son for his own is part of what is bringing every believer to the final reunion. If your enthusiasm is thin some days, his is not. He wants you home. He always has.
Whatever this day has brought you, John 17 is the record that the Son prayed for you the night before his cross. You were on his mind when he lifted his eyes to heaven. You are still on his mind now, at the Father’s right hand, where he always lives to make intercession for those who draw near to God through him. The prayer has not ended. The prayer of chapter 17 is, in a sense, the prayer he is still praying.
You were named. You were asked for. You are being kept.