John 17:1–5. “Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him. This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ. I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.”
John 17:1 marks the beginning of Jesus’ high priestly prayer. This prayer comes on the heels of what the Christian tradition refers to as the Last Supper. The Last Supper is where Jesus gives his farewell discourse, which we find in John 13–17, to the Twelve during the Passover Festival, Thursday evening, on which he was later betrayed by Judas and handed over to the Roman soldiers. He was then crucified on the following day.
When we look at the structure of John 17:1–5, there is a pattern of thought identifiable in what is called a chiasm, a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order. The result is a “mirror” effect as the ideas are “reflected” back in a passage. It is a very helpful way of identifying a key point the author wants us to see.
In looking at the chiastic structure of these passages here are the mirrored ideas (it might look a little strange on a phone):
A. The Son seeks glorification from the Father so he can glorify him (17:1).
B. The Son has completed the Father’s work of giving eternal life to everyone given to him (17:2).
C. Eternal life is knowing the only true God and his Christ (17:3).
B’. The Son has glorified the Father in completing the work he was given (17:4).
A’. The Son seeks to be glorified in the presence of his Father that he had before the world existed (17:5).
Let’s work through the texts.
In John 13:1, the beginning of Jesus’ farewell discourse, John writes, “Jesus knew his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father.” What is this hour? In this hour, we see glory and darkness transpire. In John 13:31–32, Judas’ departure initiates the hour of darkness, setting in motion Jesus’ arrest, trial, execution, and the hour of his glorification, in which God will glorify the Son . . . at once [1]. Many things happen in this hour. Yes, in this hour the Son of Man is to be glorified (John 12:23), but Scripture says, this hour is to also be a “dominion of darkness,” (Luke 22:53), when the “Son of Man would be betrayed into the hands of sinners” (Mark 14:41), and his disciples will scatter to their own homes, leaving Jesus all alone (John 16:32). And while his soul is troubled because of the death he is to face, this is the purpose for which he came to this hour: for the Father—to glorify his name (John 12:28), in the judgment of the world, when “the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31). Jesus concludes verse 1, saying to the Father, “Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.” How must the Father glorify the Son so that the Son can glorify the Father?
In 17:4, Jesus says that he has glorified the Father on earth by completing the work the Father gave him to do. What is this work? In John 6:38–40, Jesus says, I have come from heaven to do the will of my Father, which is that he “should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day.” He continues, “For this the will of my Father: everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Now, we know that the last day isn’t the death and resurrection of Christ; rather, the event marks the eschatological completion of God’s plan of redemption, which, in one sense is completed in Jesus’ death, resurrection, and glorification, as the first fruits. But we need to look further into the work the Father gave the Son to complete.
In 17:6, Jesus says he has revealed the Father’s name to the people he gave them from the world. And in John 17:11–12, Jesus tells the Father that he protected the ones he was given by “your name that you have given me” and “not one of them was lost, except the son of destruction.” Therefore, we see then that Christ fulfilled the will of the Father from 6:38–40. And now that he has done this, glorifying the Father on earth in completing this work, Jesus asks that he be glorified by the Father. John gives us a clue as to the Son’s glorification from the Father in 12:16, where he notes that the disciples did not understand the things Jesus was talking about from the Old Testament that he was fulfilling. He writes, “when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him.” While Jesus says he has glorified the Father on earth in completing his work, he asks for the Father to glorify him, so that he may glorify the Father. So, we have the Son glorifying the Father, then the Father glorifying the Son, and the Son glorifying the Father in the glorification of the Son.
John 17:2 establishes the ground for the Son asking that the Father glorifies him: because the Father gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to everyone the Father has given him. But why does the Father have to give his Son, who is God, authority over all people? In the Gospels, we see Jesus constantly remark that a certain event is supposed to happen so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. And the installation of the Messiah as Lord and King of the earth is the central theme of the Old Testament, which God’s Israel was waiting for. We see this decreed in Psalm 2:6–12:
Psalm 2:6–12, ““I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” I will declare the Lord’s decree. He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with an iron scepter; you will shatter them like pottery.” So now, kings, be wise; receive instruction, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with reverential awe and rejoice with trembling. Pay homage to the Son or he will be angry and you will perish in your rebellion, for his anger may ignite at any moment. All who take refuge in him are happy.”
The prophet Daniel spoke of the Messiah who would be given an everlasting dominion, glory, and a kingdom that would never be destroyed.
Daniel 7:14, “He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.”
Christ is the fulfillment of Daniel’s vision, and has been given all things from the Father, all authority in heaven and on earth (John 3:35; Matthew 11:27; 28:18). The Christ came as promised as a descendant from David according to the flesh, and in his resurrection and exaltation he “was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness” (Rom 1:3–4). As the Son of God at the right hand of the Father, he will reign until he puts all enemies under his feet. He will then hand the kingdom back over to the Father, subjecting himself, as proper and fitting for a human, “to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). That handing over the kingdom back to the Father marks the end of the “incarnate Son’s mediating messianic reign, the Last Adam’s final, conclusive act of obedience.”[2]
So, going back to 17:2, the Father’s action of giving the Son authority over all people, is alone his divine right. The OT Scriptures as we observed above show this is what I AM will do for his Messiah. Since the Son is in the flesh, as man, this why he says in John 14:28, the Father is “greater than I.” And therefore, the Son, as man, must be given authority from God the Father. However, we must not think the Son in his divinity is inferior to the Father in his submission to him; rather, we must see that his submission is a mode of his divine perfection, not a lack in it.[3] God’s purpose is to redeem humanity, which required perfect obedience by a human. Therefore, the Son must be fully man in every way. And so, therefore, in verse 2, the Father as the cause and origin of all things, grants “everyone” to the Son, so that the Son may give eternal life to the “everyone” the Father has given to him. The Son then glorifies the Father by making the Father known to all he has given him.
Augustine, commenting on this passage, writes,
If, then, the Son glorifies you [the Father] in this way, “as you have given him power over all flesh,” [17:2] and you have so given “that he may give eternal life to all whom you have given him,” [17:2] and “this is eternal life, that they may know you,” [17:3] therefore the Son glorifies you in such a way that he may make you known to all whom you have given him.[4]
As to the glorification of the Son, as we see Jesus speaking of in verse 1, this is clearly expressed in Acts 2:33 and 3:13–15, where Peter says the Son has been exalted to the right hand of God, having glorified his servant Jesus, having raised him from the dead. Philippians 2:5–11 is instructive showing the completion of the Father glorifying the Son and the Father being glorified in the Son’s glorification. Paul writes,
Philippians 2:5–11
5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. 9 For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— 11 and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The name God gave to the Son is the very name by which the Son protected the ones the Father gave to him (as we saw in John 17:11–12), so that they me be one with the Son and the Father, as the Son and the Father are one. And what is this name? Yahweh, I AM. The Only, True living God. And in the raising up of the Son from the dead, the power of God demonstrated in the resurrection, reveals the glory of God, in that the Son, existing in the form of God, took on flesh and humbled himself in his obedience to God to the point of death on a cross. God highly exalted him, giving him the name above every other name, I AM, so that everyone who bows to Jesus and confesses him as Lord, they are bowing and confessing God as Lord, all to the glory of God the Father.
How does this bring glory to the Father? The Son as servant carries out the Father’s activity, “not as a servant of someone else’s activity but as the wisdom and power of God the Father.”[5] What do we see throughout John’s Gospel and the other Gospels? A man performing the works of God, so that people would be believe he is from the Father. The Father is glorified when one realizes from the Son’s works who his Father is and the Father glorifies the Son in return when one receives the Son because of the Father’s works.[6] Jesus says in John 5:22–23, “The Father, in fact, judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”
If one receives the One who was sent, one receives not just the One sent, but the One who sent the One who was received.
In the Son’s death and resurrection, God demonstrates the height of his omnipotence in not just coming back from death but also destroying sin and death itself, revealing to the world what John tells us in his prologue: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it” (1:4–5). “The Crucified Son simply ‘is’ the glory of God.”[7]
The key idea (John 17:3), as observed in the chiastic arrangement noted earlier, is that eternal life is knowing God, which comes through knowing Christ. God’s purpose to make himself known, is in the person of Jesus Christ. It is not a mere human God adopted as his messenger; rather, it is the mode of existence that the Word, from John 1:1, who was in the beginning with God and was God, took upon himself. In the person of Jesus Christ, God reveals God. Knowing God only comes through knowing Christ. In this passage, grammatically speaking, knowing the one, true God and the one he has sent are coordinating statements, which means they are equal. That little word “and” determines that relationship. And the Son defines eternal life in this manner to emphasize God’s purpose and intention for everyone he has given to the Son: to have eternal life is by way of himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Perfect knowledge of the only true God only comes by contemplation of the Son, in the Spirit.[8]
Let’s look at a few passages that further support this interpretation.
1 John 5:11, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
1 John 5:20, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”
Notice how 1 John 5:11 has a similar structure to John 17:3. God has given us eternal life, which v. 3 says is to know you, the only true God. 5:11 says, eternal life is in his Son. And the Son, as we see in 5:20, has given us understanding, knowledge, to know the True One. Who is the true one? It is reserved for God only. And then John concludes with stating what this knowledge signifies: To be “in the true one—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” And this knowledge is not just a mental ascent to a higher understanding; rather it is an active, continual knowing of God through a relationship with Christ. And this knowing is believing and is one the central themes of the Gospel of John.
There are those, notably Jehovah’s Witnesses, that assert John 17:3 excludes Jesus from being the one, true God. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In John 5:19, Jesus says he “cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.” Does Jesus lack the ability to do anything? No, he only does . . . what he sees the Father doing—nothing else! The works Jesus was doing in John 5 were the works that Father and the Son were doing because they are only the works God can do. And because God is one, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—inseparably acting—healed the man on the Sabbath. And he confirms this oneness in John 10:37–38, Jesus was speaking of the works of the Father that he was doing, and said, “if I am doing them and you don’t believe me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father.”” If the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son, doing the same works, and the Father is the “only true God,” then the Son has to also be “the only true God” (see my post, Inseparable Operations for the Layman, to see further the Father, Son, and Spirit sharing in the one divine work of the Trinity). The Son is speaking as the incarnate servant, sent on mission to carry out the will and work of God. The goal of the mission was so that everyone the Father gave to the Son would know him. But the only way to know the only true God is to know Jesus Christ.
Scripture also reveals that the Spirit is distinctly a mode or person of the divine essence, who Jesus refers to as “the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). Jesus says the Father will send the Spirit in my name, will teach you all things (14:25). And the Spirit, Paul says, is the “Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ,” who gives life and raised Jesus from the dead who lives in us (Romans 8:9–11). What are we to conclude about Christ and the Spirit? Scripture says God the Father raised Jesus (Acts 2:24; Romans 4:24), Jesus raised Jesus (John 10:17–18), and the Spirit raised Jesus (1 Cor 6:14; Romans 8:11). Was this three different works by three divine beings or one, indivisible divine work by three coequal persons who share the one divine essence? Since we are monotheists, then we must affirm the latter? The texts and the theology of the text pressures us to affirm that God is one yet three. It is important to remember that if we are to see what Scripture teaches, we need to look at the theology the texts teach, not merely the words of the text. One who gets stuck on that method will have a very inconsistent and errant theology, most often leading to heresy.
A few other passages from the NT and the OT lend further support for this interpretation, which reveals that there are distinct persons in God. The Son exists and therefore, must have a Father, ontologically speaking. And the works he does reveal that his ontological identity is divine.
John 5:26, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself.
To have life in himself is not to be given immortality as humans are given; rather to have life in himself as the Father has is to have always existed and living as the Father has, giving life to all things without diminution of his own life, sustaining all things by the Word of his power.
2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Eternal life, as defined in John 17:3, is to know the only, true God. Scripture says, “no one can see God and live” (Exodus 33:20). So one can only see God in the face of Jesus Christ, who has shined the glory of God into our hearts.
Isaiah 42:8, “I am the Lord. That is my name, and I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”
John 17:22, “I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.”
John 17:24, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.”
I AM says he will not give his glory to another. But the Son says he has given to them the glory God the Father gave to him, which he gave to the Son from before the world’s foundation. There wasn’t a point in time when the Father gave his glory to his Son, which is why he says it was from before the foundation of the world. Rather, he is expressing a glory of divine love between the Father and the Son that has always existed. The Son is speaking in temporal language to express the eternal reality of the Triune relationships. We determine this based on other passages already discussed .
One last question of interest is, why does the Son refer to himself as Jesus Christ in the third person?
3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.
Grammatically speaking, this verse seems a bit odd, compared to the surrounding passages, in that the Son speaks of himself in the third person. Some conservative scholars think it is more likely that John inserted this in the discourse, like a parenthetical note or footnote. And other conservative scholars see that it flows from a natural progression of the argument from verses 1 and 2. One helpful grammatical element to recognize, supporting our claim that this passage does not exclude Jesus from sharing in the full divinity of the Father, is that the verse is an appositional clause. What is that? It is when a word or phrase is ordered in such a way to define another word or phrase. We identify this by where John has positioned the relative pronoun, the little word that. His purpose, thus also Jesus’ purpose, is not to focus on making a distinction between Jesus Christ and the one, true God; rather, he is emphasizing, rather defining, what eternal life is. Eternal life has two components to it, but they are really the same logically speaking. Eternal life is, meaning there is no other way to have eternal life, 1) to know you [God], the only true God, and 2) Jesus Christ, who he has sent. To have eternal life, one most know the Father and the Son. If Jesus was a mere creature, why would eternal life depend on knowing him? As observed in the Gospels, the Son has appeared in the form of man, under the Father in heaven, thus he ascribes power, honor, and glory to his Father as man should, since to man he is the only, true God. As the Father of Jesus Christ, he is the only true God. But this oneness and truth can only be found in the humbled, crucified Christ, where the divine majesty displays itself.[9] “This man, this man (we must emphasize both), is God himself who reveals God himself, who by God himself is revealed as God himself.”[10]
In John 17:5, the Son is expressing that he has completed his work, by revealing the Father to those whom the Father gave to him, and therefore, wants to be glorified as God in the presence of his Father, just as he had before the world was. Commenting on this passage, John Calvin writes,
What he declares and desires is nothing that doesn’t strictly belong to him, but only that he may appear in the flesh, such as he was before the creation of the world; or, to speak more plainly, that the Divine majesty, which he had always possessed, may now be illustriously displayed in the person of the Mediator, and in the human flesh with which he was clothed.[11]
The glory that the Son wants to have in the presence of the Father, he wants his sheep to have as well. Toward the end of his prayer, in John 17:24, he says, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.” The glory of divine love the Father has for the Son, the Son wants us to share in. It doesn’t get any better than that. And Jesus says that he will continue to make his Father’s name known to them, “so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them” (17:26).
To God—Father, Son, and Spirit—be the glory!
~ Romans 11:36 ~
[1] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 482.
[2] R. B. Jamieson, “1 Corinthians 15.28 and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology,” New Testament Studies 66, no. 2 (April 2020): 189.
[3] Beautiful statement from the late John Webster.
[4] Saint Augustine and John W. Rettig, Tractates on the Gospel of John 55-111 (Washington, US: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 259.
[5] Cyril, David R. Maxwell, and Joel C. Elowsky, Commentary on John: Volume 2, Commentary on John (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 270.
[6] Ibid., 271.
[7] Aaron Riches, Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 100.
[8] Cyril, Maxwell, and Elowsky, Commentary on John: Volume 2, 274.
[9] John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, 2:168.
[10] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936), I/2, 163.
[11] John Calvin, John, 2:169.
Comments
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Good job,
Al