The time for His betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion drew near. He had encouraged His disciples. But before anything else would take place, Jesus would pray.
The “disciple whom Jesus loved,” known as John, either John ben Zebedee (the Apostle), or John the Elder, wrote his recollections of his experiences with Jesus so that those who hear or read would believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and would find eternal life in His name (cf. John 20:31).
Immediately upon ending His extended discourse with His eleven disciples (John 13:31-16:31), Jesus looked upward to heaven and began praying (John 17:1). Whether Jesus had gone somewhere by Himself or gave the prayer in the presence of His disciples was not revealed, and arguments are made for either possibility.
Jesus began His prayer with what we could deem a report summary of His work and ministry in John 17:1-8 (cf. John 1:1-16:31). Jesus announced the coming of the time for the glorification of the Son so the Son would glorify Him: the Father gave the Son authority over people so He could give eternal life, which was defined as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent (John 17:1-3). Jesus confirmed the glorification of the Father on earth by doing the work God gave Jesus to do; thus Jesus asked to receive glory at the side of the Father as He enjoyed before the earth was created (John 17:4-5). Jesus made known the Father’s name to the disciples given to Jesus out of the world; they belonged to the Father, and He gave them to the Son, and they have obeyed the word of the Father (John 17:6). They had come to understand everything the Son has came from the Father; they accepted the words of the Son as belonging to the Father, and the Son had come from the Father (John 17:7-8).
In this way Jesus summarized all of His life’s work and purpose: He certainly proclaimed the purposes of God to all Israel, but His primary mission involved making known the ways of the Father to the disciples in particular. We can, and should, profitably read all which had previously taken place in the Gospel in John, and the other Gospels as well, in light of this insistence; in so doing we can see the Evangelists presented Jesus primarily in terms of providing instruction and direction to the disciples.
Yet why would Jesus’ primary focus fall upon those disciples? We can get an idea from the core of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:9-19. Jesus prayed on behalf of the disciples: not the world, but on those given to Jesus, since they belong to the Father (John 17:9). After confessing everything belonging to the Father belongs to the Son and vice versa, Jesus declared the disciples had glorified Jesus (John 17:10). Jesus spoke (most likely proleptically) of no longer being in the world and coming to the Father; He therefore prayed for the Father to keep the disciples safe in the name given to Jesus so they might be one as the Father and Son are one (John 17:11). Jesus kept them safe while He was with them, and the only one lost was the one destined for destruction and to fulfill the Scripture (John 17:12). But now Jesus would be returning to the Father, and so He spoke these things while still in the world so they might experience the completion of His joy in themselves (John 17:13). The world hated them because Jesus gave them the word of the Father: they thus no longer belong to the world, just as Jesus did not belong to the world (John 17:14, 16). Jesus was not asking for the Father to remove them from the world but to keep them safe from the evil one (John 17:15). Jesus asked the Father to set them apart in the truth; the word of the Father is truth; as the Father sent the Son into the world, so Jesus has sent the disciples into the world; and Jesus set Himself apart on their behalf so they might be truly set apart (John 17:16-19).
And so Jesus asked the Father to watch over and protect the disciples since He would no longer be able to do so as He had done previously while on earth. He had prepared them to go out into the world and proclaim all God had accomplished through Him, and this they would begin to do soon after His resurrection and ascension (cf. Acts 2ff). He expected the disciples to endure the hostility of the world; the Acts of the Apostles would bear witness to some of what the disciples would be called upon to suffer.
Jesus asked the Father to keep the disciples safe, and yet the Scriptures would attest to James ben Zebedee’s martyrdom in Acts 12:2 and foreshadowed Simon Peter’s martyrdom in John 21:18-19); tradition would attest to the martyrdom of all the apostles save perhaps John the Evangelist. Was Jesus’ prayer frustrated, or prayed in vain? Far from it; the disciples accomplished all God intended for them to do. They bore witness to Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return; almost two thousand years later, we still hear of and speak regarding their witness. We can perceive the protection the Father gave to the disciples in experiences like their imprisonments and delivery in Acts 4:1-31, 5:17-42, 12:3-19, and in other situations. Our challenges with this situation involve our assumption the request for protection would demand the disciples enjoy a completely quiet, unmolested life. God’s purposes in Christ are not frustrated by worldly opposition, persecution, and resistance; instead, they are expected. Jesus’ prayer for His disciples was heard and honored; the deaths the disciples suffered all ultimately worked to the glory of God in Christ.
Jesus then prayed on behalf of “those who believe in Me through their testimony” (John 17:20), that is, all believers in Christ. All who believe, from the day of Pentecost in 30 until the day the Lord Jesus Christ returns, do so on the basis of the testimony the disciples provided.
Jesus prayed for all Christians to live in relational unity with God and with one another: that all Christians would be one, as the Father and the Son are in one another, and they would be in the Father and the Son, so the world would believe the Father sent Jesus (John 17:21). The glory of the Father given to the Son would now be given to Christians so they might be one as the Father and Son are one, with the Son in them and the Father in the Son, so they might be completely one, and the world would know the Father sent the Son and the Father has loved Christians as He loved the Son (John 17:22-23). Jesus wanted all those the Father gave Him to be with Jesus where He was so they might see the glory the Father gave the Son since He loved Him before the creation of the world (John 17:24). Jesus concluded His prayer by confessing His and His disciples’ knowledge of the Father, even if the world did not know Him; Jesus made the name of the Father known to the disciples, and would continue to do so, so the love the Father had for the Son may be in the disciples, and Jesus might be in the disciples (John 17:25-26).
Just before Jesus went to suffer unimaginable agony and terror, He prayed for all of us. Jesus wanted us all to be one as the Father and the Son are one. We do well to deeply meditate and consider Jesus’ prayer for us.
The world of Christianity is not defined by its unity; most would imagine Jesus’ purposes in His prayer have been frustrated. There is little doubt Jesus would be disappointed in the numerous divisions and sects within Christianity, all of which developed not out of the manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit but from partaking in the works of the flesh (cf. Galatians 5:19-23).
But to focus on the sectarian divisions of Christianity would miss the point: while Jesus’ prayer may seem to have been frustrated by all the divisions within the faith, the prayer remains active, powerful, and valid for all who are in Christ Jesus!
Jesus’ prayer spoke to the core of what Christianity is supposed to be all about: perichoretic relational unity among the people of God and with God as God maintains perichoretic relational unity within Himself.
When Jesus said the Father was “in” Him and said He was “in” the Father, we best understand Him as speaking in perichoretic terms (John 17:21, 23). “Perichoretic” is the adjectival form of perichoresis, originally a Greek term meaning “mutual interpenetration without loss of distinctive identity.”
Our experience of music represents a great demonstration of perichoresis: when a band plays or a choir sings a song, sound vibrations are generated from the instruments and voices. Those sound vibrations interpenetrate the local environment: we can hear the combined sound of all the instruments and/or voices. But those sound vibrations do not lose their distinctive identity in the process: we can pick out and focus upon the sound coming from a specific instrument or voice. They come together to make the sound of the song, but also maintain their distinctive identities as instruments and/or voices.
The marital relations of men and women can also profitably be understood in perichoretic terms. Jesus spoke of how the two become one flesh, and so they are no longer two but one (Matthew 19:4-6). They do become one, but they remain distinctly the husband and the wife. They thus can mutually interpenetrate but do not lose their distinctive identities.
And so Jesus can help us come to a better understand of the nature of God. The great declaration of the shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 remains undisputed: YHWH is one God. But in the beginning, God declared He would make mankind in “Our” image (Genesis 1:26). The Father is God; the Son is God (John 1:1, 8:58, 10:30), the Spirit is God (2 Peter 1:21); yet God remains “one.” Many have erred in insisting upon God’s unity in personhood, and in so doing fell into the heresies of modalism or Arianism, believing God must be one person with three modes or the Son and the Spirit are lesser divine beings. But the Scriptures never explicitly spoke of God as one in personhood.
Instead, we do best to understand what Jesus has spoken about His relationship with His Father in John 17:20-23 as powerful testimony involving the relational unity of God. God is one, not in person, but in essence, substance, will, purpose, and in relationship. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit mutually interpenetrate one another but do not lose their distinctive identities. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all so unified that we speak of God as He, Him rather than They, Them.
As God shares in perichoretic relational unity, so He has invited people to share in that perichoretic relational unity with Him and with one another, as Jesus prayed for all believers to be one with one another as the Father and the Son are one, and for the believers to be “in” the Son (and the Father and the Spirit) as the Son is “in” the Father (John 17:20-23). Remember how God bore witness to making mankind in “Our” image in Genesis 1:26? Such means humans are made in the image of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit: humans are made in relational unity to seek relationships with God his Creator and with his fellow human beings.
And God has most fully realized His purpose in making humanity through Jesus. Paul would speak of God’s eternal purpose realized in Christ Jesus displayed in the church before the powers and principalities in Ephesians 3:10-11. This great demonstration was the reconciliation of all kinds of people in Christ: people who come from different backgrounds, often hostile toward one another in the world, but made one person in Christ, sharing in a faith which brought them together above and beyond all which would divide them in the world. This kind of unity was elusive and countercultural in the first century, and remains so in the twenty-first.
When Christians are one with God in Christ through the Spirit and one with one another, they bear witness to the world how the Father sent Jesus, and of the love of God for Christians as God has loved Jesus (John 17:23, 26). God is love, according to 1 John 4:8, and love provides a second witness of sorts to God’s perichoretic relational unity. If God were indeed one in person, and God is love, such would demand God be the ultimate narcissist (God loves Himself), or prove in need of and dependent upon His creation (in order to give Him something to love and to be loved by). But God need not be either of these, since God is love because the Father loves the Spirit and the Son who loves the Father and the Spirit who loves the Father and the Son. Since God thus abides in love, He wanted to share in that love with “offspring” made in His image, and thus God loves the creation He has made, and loves humanity made in His image. The love of God was most powerfully demonstrated in Jesus’ suffering on our behalf on the cross (cf. Romans 5:6-11). That is the kind of love with which God loves Christians. And that kind of self-sacrificial love should be how Christians love God and one another (1 John 4:7-21).
When Christians love one another not merely in word and pretense, but in truth and deed, they bear witness to who God is and what God is about (cf. John 13:34-35, 1 John 3:16-18). “The world” will always remain hostile to God and His people, but the witness of God’s love for Christians displayed among Christians themselves will prove compelling to some among the world who will want to know that love and share in it. Perhaps we have placed far too much emphasis on marketing and sales techniques and best practices in promoting the Gospel; we would do much better by living in the love of God, sharing in that love with fellow Christians, and allow that love to be the witness to the world, just as Jesus intended in His prayer.
Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1-26 has often been described as His “High Priestly Prayer.” Jesus could not be a priest in the order of Levi or Aaron since He was a Judahite (cf. Hebrews 7:14). But David had spoken of the Messiah as a priest in the order of Melchizedek in Psalm 110:4, and the Hebrews author explained how Jesus fulfilled the role of high priest in that kind of order, since He willingly offered Himself once for all the sins of the world (cf. Hebrews 7:1-10:25). In this perspective, as Jesus was about to suffer, He first made provision in prayer for all those for whom He was about to suffer. But we should never allow the prayer to be understood as aloof and remote on account of its description as the “High Priestly Prayer,” for it is anything but. In it Jesus prayed for the protection of His disciples, and God protected them. In it Jesus prayed for us, that we might be one with God and one another, dwelling in the love of God and sharing love among one another. That prayer will remain effective and powerful for those who truly enjoy perichoretic relational unity with God in Christ through the Spirit and with one another. May we be the people for whom Jesus’ prayer proves effective and powerful, and dwell in relational unity with God and His people for all eternity!
Ethan R. Longhenry