‘Jesus spoke these things, and lifting up his eyes to heaven he said, “Father, the hour is come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you”.'
‘Lifting up his eyes to heaven'. The main purpose of these words is to stress where the response will come from, but it also illustrates how Jesus prayed at this moment (compare John 11:41). It contrasts with Gethsemane where ‘He fell on the ground' (Mark 14:35) or ‘on His face' (Matthew 26:39). This was a prayer of hope and expectancy, whereas that would be a cry from the heart for help in His hour of need.
‘Father, the hour is come.' These words bring home His expectancy of death. He knows that on the morrow He will die. They can be likened to the words spoken by the condemned man before he walks out to execution. He was ready to face His fate.
This ‘hour' had been mentioned by Jesus before (John 7:30; John 12:23; John 13:1). It referred to the hour of His going from the world to His Father (John 7:33; John 13:1), by way of the cross (John 12:23; John 12:32-33). It was the last final period of His life from the moment when He knew that the end was coming (John 13:1). It was the hour of unbearable suffering. But in the end it was through the cross and resurrection that Jesus would be glorified and vindicated and would bring great glory on the Father, for there on the cross, and through His resurrection, would be carried out the plan which had been laid in eternity for the redemption of His people (Ephesians 1:4-8; 2 Timothy 1:9).
This is a reminder that Jesus' life followed a carefully planned divine pattern (see John 2:4; John 7:6; John 7:8), a pattern of which Chapter s 13-20, describing as they do His final hours, are the culmination. It is not therefore surprising to discover that they were a carefully laid foundation for the future, containing the promise of the Spirit of truth who would safeguard His message together with warnings of what was to come (Chapter s 14 - 16), His patriarchal prayer which would guarantee the safeguarding of His disciples (chapter 17) and His commissioning of His disciples to safeguard on His behalf the purity of the infant church, by bestowing on them ‘Holy Spirit' (John 20:20-22).
Note that in chapter 17 He does not pray to the Spirit, but to the Father. Nor does He directly mention the Spirit. The Spirit's work is always at the Father's behest, and subject to the Father's will, and is directed towards glorifying the Father and the Son and fulfilling Their purpose. Jesus does not therefore have to refer to the Spirit when speaking with His Father. His activity, having been described earlier, is assumed. Thus in John 17 Jesus prays to the Father for the carrying out of His will, and makes His arrangements for the disciples in terms of personal commitment to and response from the Father. It is the Father with whom they have to deal. By this He reveals something of God's deep-seated love and concern for those who have been chosen for the task of taking His truth to the world..
The passage can be divided into three sections. In the first He prays for the fulfilment of the Father's purposes as regards Himself (John 17:1-5), in the second He prays for the possibility of the fulfilment of the Father's purposes through the Apostles (John 17:6-19), and in the third He prays for the fulfilment of those purposes in all true believers (John 17:20-26). The distinction is very clear and emphasises that Jesus does make this specific distinction between the Apostles on the one hand and all who followed them on the other, a distinction we have already observed in Chapter s 14-16.
‘Glorify your Son, in order that your Son may glorify you.' These are like the last words that a royal warrior son might make to a kingly father before going out to battle. Jesus is here conscious that He is about to face a battle of huge dimensions which will result in great glory. In Daniel 7:13-14, when the son of man comes into the presence of the Ancient of Days, He comes out of suffering (John 17:25 - for the son of man is both people and prince) to receive ‘dominion and glory and a kingdom'. Here the Son of Man goes forward to receive the same. But that glory must come through a cross (John 12:23-25 with 32-33) before He receives the crown. He must be glorified through suffering.
In His ministry He has continually revealed His glory (John 1:14; John 2:11; John 11:4 see also Mark 9:1-8; Matthew 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36), but this is leading to greater glory, for it is a glory achieved through the final fulfilment of God's plan of deliverance in which the power of the Enemy is broken through the self-giving of Christ, whilst He Himself is raised to supreme authority. Yet in the end it is seen to be but the restoration of His former glory (John 17:5), the glory of the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14), the glory of the One seated on the eternal throne (Revelation 3:21), the glory which He had with Him before the world was (John 17:5).
‘In order that your Son may glorify you.' The result of His receiving His glory will be that He brings great glory on the Father, for His glorious work is at the behest of His Father, and reveals the wonder of God's being. Above all it reveals His outstanding and all pervasive love (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9-10; Romans 5:8). What greater glory could there be than the glory revealed when a holy but merciful God surrenders His own Son to die in awful suffering, a suffering in which He Himself will take part, for undeserving and sinful men, in order to finally redeem them and bring them with Him into His glory?.