And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
And I have declared, х egnoorisa (G1107)] - 'I declared' or 'made known'
Unto them thy name. He had said this variously before (John 17:6; John 17:8; John 17:14; John 17:22); but here He repeats it for the sake of adding what follows.
And will declare it - or 'make it known' х egnoorisa (G1107) ... gnoorisa (G1107)]. As this could not mean that He was to continue His own Personal ministry on earth, it can refer only to the ministry of His apostles after His ascension "with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven," and of all who should succeed them, as ambassadors of Christ and ministers of reconciliation, to the end of time. This ministry-Jesus here tells His Father-would be but Himself continuing to make known His Father's name to men, or the prolongation of His own ministry. How consolatory a truth this to the faithful ministers of Jesus, and under what a responsibility does it lay all who from their lips hear the message of eternal life in Christ Jesus!
That the love wherewith thou hast loved, [ eegapeesas (G25 ), 'lovedst'] me may be in them, and I in them. He had just expressed His desire "that the world may know that Thou lovedst them as Thou lovedst Me" (John 17:23). Here it is the implantation and preservation of that love in His people's hearts that He speaks of; and the way by which this was to be done, He says, was "the making known to them of the Father's name;" that is, the revelation of it to their souls by the Spirit's efficacious sealing of the Gospel message-as He had explained in John 16:8-15. This eternal love of the Father, resting first on Christ, is by His Spirit imparted to and takes up its permanent abode in all that believe in Him; and "He abiding in them, and they in Him" (John 15:5), they are "one Spirit." 'With this lofty thought,' says Olshausen, 'the Redeemer concludes His prayer for His disciples, and in them for His Church through all ages. He has compressed into the last moments given Him for conversation with His own the most sublime and glorious sentiments ever uttered by mortal lips. But hardly has the sound of the last word died away, when He passes with the disciples over the Brook Kedron to Gethsemane-and the bitter conflict draws on. The seed of the new world must be sown in Death, that thence Life may spring up.'
Remarks:
(1) How strange is the spiritual obtuseness which can imagine it possible that such a prayer should have been penned if it had not first been prayed by the glorious One of whom this Gospel is the historic Record! But it is not only the historic reality of this prayer, in the Life of Jesus, which is self-evidencing. It throws a strong light upon the question of Inspiration also, which in this case at least must be held to attach to the language as well as to the thoughts which it conveys. In such a case, every intelligent reader must see that apart from the language of this prayer, we can have no confidence that its thoughts are accurately conveyed to us. But who that has any spiritual discernment, and any of that spiritual taste and delicacy which constant dealing with Scripture in a devout and loving spirit begets, does not feel that the language of this prayer is all-worthy of the thoughts which it conveys to us-worthy of the Lips that poured forth this prayer: and what internal testimony to its inspiration could be stronger than this? We are not insensible to the difficulty of explaining all the facts of the Biblical language, considering it as inspired; but let not this despoil us of what is beyond reasonable dispute, as illustrated by the language of this divine prayer. Nor need we commit ourselves to the many rash and at least dubious theories, by which it has been sought to explain and reconcile acknowledged difficulties on this subject. Sitting loose to all these, let us nevertheless-planting our foot upon such a prayer as this-rest perfectly assured that He of Whom the Lord Jesus promised that He should "bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever He had spoken to them," has so guided the sacred penman in the reproduction of this prayer that we have it not only in the substance and spirit of it, but in the form also in which it was poured forth in the upper room.
(2) One feels it almost trifling to ask again whether such a prayer as this could have been uttered by a creature? But it may not be amiss to call the reader's attention to the studious care with which Jesus avoids mixing Himself up with His disciples as He associates Himself with the Father. "THOU IN ME," He says, "and I IN THEE;" and again, "I in them, and they in US." This, we think, is one of the most remarkable features in the phraseology of this chapter; and as it has a most important bearing on the subject of the foregoing Remark-the inspiration attaching to the language-so it is in singular harmony with our Lord's manner of speaking on other occasions (see the note at John 3:7, and Remark 3 at the close of that section; and at John 20:17).
(3) Has Christ, in order to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given Him, obtained from the Father "power over all flesh"? With confidence, then, may we entrust to Him our eternal all, assured "that He is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him against that day" (see the note at 2 Timothy 1:12). For since His power is not limited to the objects of His saving operations, but extends to "all flesh," He can and assuredly will make "all things to work together for the good of them that love God, of them who are the called according to His purpose."
(4) How fixed are the banks within which the waters of "eternal life" flow to men: "This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Beyond this embankment the water of life may not be sought, and will not be found; and the spurious liberality which would break down this embankment is to be eschewed by all to whom the teaching of the Lord Jesus is sacred and dear.
(5) Did Jesus yearn to "ascend up where He was before," and be "glorified beside the Father with the glory which He had along with Him before the world was"? What an affecting light does this throw upon His self-sacrificing love to His Father and to men, in coming hither and staying here during all the period of His work in the flesh-enduring the privations of life, the contradiction of sinners against Himself, the varied assaults of the great Enemy of souls, the slowness of His disciples' apprehension in spiritual things, not to speak of the sight of evil all around Him, and the sense of sin and the curse pressing upon His spirit all throughout, and bringing Him at length to the accursed tree! "Ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich."
(6) Small indeed was the saving fruit of Christ's personal ministry-few the souls that were thoroughly won to Him; but those few-how dear were they to Him, as the representatives and pledges of a mighty harvest to come! and how does He yearn over those Eleven faithful ones, who represented those that were to gather His redeemed in all time! And will not His faithful servants learn from Him to value and cherish the first fruits of their labours in His service-however few and humble they may be-according to His valuation?
(7) Hardly anything in this prayer is more remarkable than the much that Christ makes in it of the exceedingly small amount of light and faith to which His most advanced disciples had up to that time attained. But He looked doubtless rather to the frame of their hearts toward Him, and the degree of teachableness they had, than to the extent of their actual knowledge-to their implicit rather than their explicit belief in Him. The servants of Christ have much to learn from Him in this matter. While mere general goodness of heart is of no saving value, a guileless desire to be taught of God, and an honest willingness to follow that teaching wherever it may lead us-which distinguished the Eleven-is, in the sight of God and the estimation of Jesus, of great price. It was precisely this which Jesus commended in Nathanael, and in this respect they were in effect all Nathanael's. Is there not a tendency in some of the servants of Christ, jealous for soundness in the faith, to weigh all religious character in the scales of mere theological orthodoxy? to prefer rounded but cold accuracy of knowledge to the rudimental simplicity of a babe in Christ? to reject an implicit, if it be not an explicit faith? Of course, since the one of these advances surely into the other in the case of all divinely taught believers, even as the shining light shineth more and more unto the perfect day, so those who, under shelter of an implicit faith, advisedly, and after full opportunity, decline an explicit acknowledgment of the distinctive peculiarities of the Gospel, as they are opened up in the writings of the apostles under the full teaching of the Spirit, show clearly that they are void of that childlike faith in which they pretend to rest. But the tender and discerning eye of the true shepherd will look with as much benignity on the lambs of his flock as on the sheep of his pasture.
(8) The whole treatment of believers by the Lord Jesus has three great divisions. The first is the drawing of them, and bringing them to commit their souls to Him for salvation; or in other words, their conversion: the second, the preserving of them in this state, and maturing them for heaven; or in other words, their sanctification: the third, the bringing of them at length to His Father's house; or in other words, their glorification. The first of these stages is, in this prayer, viewed as past. Those for whom He prays have received His word, and are His already. The second being that of which they now stood in need, and all depending upon that, the burden of this prayer is devoted to that sphere of His work: "Keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me;" "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil;" "Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth." One petition only, but that a majestic and all-comprehensive one, is devoted to the third department: "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."
(9) Does Jesus so emphatically pray here for His believing people, first, that His Father would "keep them through His own name" (John 17:11); and then-dividing this keeping into its negative and positive elements-pray both negatively, that they may be "not taken out of the world, but kept from the evil" (John 17:15), and positively, "that they may be sanctified through the truth"! (John 17:17). What a tender and powerful call is this upon themselves, to keep praying along with and under their great Intercessor, to His Father and their Father, that He would do for them all that He here asks in their behalf! And is it not an interesting fact, that this "keeping" is the burden of some of the most precious promises of God to His ancient people, of many of their weightiest prayers, and of some of the chiefest passages of the New Testament; as if it had been designed to provide believers of every age with a Manual on this subject? Thus, "He will keep the feet of His saints" (1 Samuel 2:9); "Preserve me, O God: for in Thee do I put my trust" (Psalms 16:1); "O that Thou wouldest bless me indeed, and that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me" (1 Chronicles 4:10); "He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock" (Jeremiah 31:10). "The Lord is faithful," says the apostle, "who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil" (2 Thessalonians 3:3); "I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12); "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling (this answers to the negative part of our Lord's petition here) and to prevent you faultless (this is the positive) before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy," etc. (Jude 1:24). But
(10) In thus praying, we not only follow the example, and are encouraged by the model here presented to us, but we utter here below just what our great Intercessor within the veil is continually presenting in our behalf at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Indeed, as this Intercessory prayer of Christ, though actually presented on earth and before His death, represents His work in the flesh in nearly every verse as already past-insomuch that He says, "Now I am no more in the world" - we are to regard it, and the Church has always so regarded it, as virtually a prayer from within the veil, or a kind of specimen of the things He is now asking, and the style in which He now asks them, at the right hand of God. So that believers should never doubt that whensoever they pour out their hearts for what this prayer teaches them to ask of the Father in Jesus' name a double pleading for the same things enters into the Father's ready ear-theirs on earth and Christ's in heaven; in their case the Spirit making intercession with groaning which often cannot be uttered (see the note at Romans 8:26), and so, as the Spirit who takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us, making our cries to chime in with the mightier demands of Him who can say, "Father, I WILL."
(11) Does Jesus so emphatically represent the Father's "word" as the medium through which He asks Him to sanctify them, and the very element of all true sanctification? How does this rebuke the rationalistic teaching of our day, which systematically depreciates the importance of Biblical truth to men's salvation! Between this view of God's truth, and that of our Lord here, there is all the difference that there is between utter and dismal uncertainty in eternal things, and solid footing and assured confidence founded on that which cannot lie. On the one we cannot live with comfort, nor die with any well-grounded hope; on the other we can rise above the ills of life and triumph over the terrors of death. On nothing less than, "Thus saith the Lord," has the soul that repose which it irresistibly yearns for; but on this it enjoys unruffled peace, the peace of God which passeth all understanding.
(12) Do believers realize the length and breadth of that saying of Jesus, "The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them, that they may be one even as We are one"? The glory of a perfect righteousness; the glory of a full acceptance; the glory of a free and ready access; the glory of an indwelling Spirit of life, and love, and liberty, and universal holiness; the glory of an assured and rightful and abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom-and all this as a presently possessed, and to-be-presently realized glory? And lest this should seem an overstrained exposition of the mind of Christ in John 17:22, the words which follow seem almost to go beyond it - "I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me:" and the prayer dies away with the expression of the means He had taken and should continue to take, in order "that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me (says He) may be in them, and I in them." It is too much to be feared that few believers rise to this. Yet "this," according to our Lord's intercessory prayer, "is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of Me, saith the Lord" (Isaiah 54:17). A grovelling carnality, a false humility, and an erroneous style of teaching, growing out of both these, seem to be the main causes of the general indisposition to rise to the standing which the Lord here gives to all His believing people. But shall we not strive to shake these off, and "walk in the light as He is in the light"? Then shall we "have fellowship with each other" - He and we - "and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son shall cleanse us from all sin." And then may we sing --
`So nigh, so very nigh to God, I cannot nearer be; For in the Person of His Son
I am as near as He. So dear, so very dear to God, More dear I cannot be; The love wherewith He loves the Son -
Such is His love to Me.'