Bible Commentaries
John 17

Verses 1-26

This chapter records for us words of our Lord addressed to His Father. In the first movement He was dealing strictly and only with relationships between Himself and the Father, referring to a past glory, and anticipating the coming glory, first, that resulting from the Cross, and then the return to that which had been abandoned.

In the second section He spoke to His Father of His relationship with the men immediately surrounding Him at the time. His prayer for them was not indifferent to the world, although He prayed at the moment not for the world, but for these men as the instrument by which He would yet reach the world. For them He asked that they might be kept from the evil that is in the world, and that to this end they might be sanctified in the truth. These men no longer belonged to the world in its degradation, but they did belong to it for its salvation. This He indicated as He said, "As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so send I them into the world."

Finally, He said, "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word." Thus He looked on and prayed for the world. Therefore He prayed that they might be one. The closing words of this intercessory prayer reveal our Lord's final purpose for the Church. It is that all His own might be with Him. The first application undoubtedly is to His Cross, with Him in its fellowship; and the last inevitably to the glory, with Him in the glory that will follow.