I. Perhaps the first thought which arrests the mind in this wide-circling verse is the connection of power and mercy power all subordinate to mercy. Three gifts, you will observe three gifts are separately mentioned, and these three gifts comprise everything. The whole truth, as it is in Jesus, is wrapt up in these three gifts. God gives Christ a people. Over that people, when He had died for them, God gives Christ authority, for that is the meaning of the word "power:" authority, prerogative, rule. And Christ, using the power, gives to them eternal life.
II. It is just what we want a force superior to the grossnesses of nature an authority which asserts itself over the material something that can elevate what we call the baser to something which seems to us to be, and which perhaps is, the higher part of our being. We want it daily in ourselves we want it in those we love we want it in the thickness and oppressiveness of a burdened life we want it in all the great things of life we want it in the Judgment Day we want it in the new heavens and the new earth we want it and we have it. "Thou hast given Him power over all flesh."
III. What is eternal life? (1) It is a thing present. Never think of eternal life as a thing beginning the other side of the grave. It begins now, or not at all. (2) To know God is eternal life. But remember it is no knowledge of God or of Christ to know them intellectually to know them abstractly. You must know them personally. You must not know of them as you read in a book, as you know persons in history; but you must know them as you know one with whom you are intimate, whose mind you have read; in whose smile you have sunned yourself; in whose heart you are; with whom you have held sweet converse. That is life here that is life for ever and ever.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 314.
References: John 17:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. x., No. 566; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xvii., p. 122; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 314.John 17:1-8. W. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 277. John 17:1-7. J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 265.John 17:3. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 310; S. Baring Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 43; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 17; Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 5; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxviii., p. 33.