John 17:11

Ver. 11. “ And I am no more in the world; but they are in the world; and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name, them whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. ”

At the moment of asking God more specially for His protection for His disciples, the thought of Jesus naturally turns towards the dangers to which they will be exposed in the state of desertion in which His departure is about to leave them: “Keep them, these precious vessels (John 17:6-10), which are from this moment so exposed (John 17:11-15).” Jesus is no longer with them, in the world, to keep them, and He is not yet with God so as to be able to protect them from the midst of His heavenly glory. There is a sorrowful interval, during which His Father must charge Himself with this care. This reason would be absolutely incomprehensible, if the Fourth Gospel really taught, as Reuss thinks, that the Logos is susceptible neither of humiliation nor of exaltation, or, as Baur affirms, that death is for Him only the divesting of bodily appearances. John 17:5 has proved that, when once His divine state is abandoned, there remains for Him, as a mode of existence, only His earthly presence with His own, and John 17:11-12 prove that, when this presence comes to an end, there is nothing else to do for them except to lay them in the arms of the Father. Weiss thinks that even in His state of exaltation He will do nothing except through asking it of the Father. The passages which he alleges do not seem to me to prove this (John 14:13; John 14:16); and this idea is in direct contradiction to Matthew 28:20.

The title: Holy Father, must be used in connection with the petition presented. Holiness, in man, is the consecration of his whole being to the task which the divine will assigns to him. Holiness, in God, is the free, deliberate, calm, immutable affirmation of Himself who is the good, or of the good which is Himself. The holiness of God, therefore, as soon as we are associated therewith, draws a deep line of demarcation between us and the men who live under the sway of their natural instincts, and whom the Scriptures call the world. The term: Holy Father, here characterizes God as the one who has drawn this line of separation between the disciples and the world.

And the petition: keep them, has in view the maintenance of this separation. Jesus supplicates His Father to keep the disciples in this sphere of consecration, which is foreign to the life of the world, and of which God is Himself the centre and the author. The words: in thy name, make the relation of the divine character which is granted to the apostles as it were the inclosing wall of this sacred domain in which they are to be kept.

The reading which nearly all the Mjj. present would signify: “in thy name which thou hast given me.” But where in the Scriptures is the name of God spoken of as given to the Son? The expression: “ My name is in him ” (Exo 23:21), is very different. I do not accept this reading even though it is so strongly supported; comp. John 17:12, where it is even far more improbable. Since the received reading: those whom (οὕς) thou hast given me, has in its favor only Mnn., I think that the reading ὃ δέδωκας, “ that which thou hast given me,” must be preferred, which is preserved in the Cambridge MS., but that we must make these words the explanatory apposition of αὐτούς, them, which precedes; it is the reverse construction of that in John 17:2, where the plural αὐτοῖς is the explanatory apposition of the singular πᾶν.

Comp. also John 17:24 (in case the reading ὅ for οὕς must be adopted in that verse): “Keep them in my name, them, that which thou hast given me.” This reading gives the same sense as that of the T. R. (οὕς); and it easily explains the origin of the Alexandrian reading (ᾧ substituted for ὅ which was referred to ὀνόματι). The conjunction that may depend either on δέδωκας, or, what is the only possible meaning with the reading which we prefer, on keep them: “Keep them in the sphere of thy knowledge (those whom thou hast given to me to introduce into it), that they may remain one as we are, and that no one of them may be lost in isolation by means of the rupture of the bundle which my care had formed.” What indeed would have become of Thomas if, after the resurrection, he had persisted in keeping himself separated from his brethren?

The words as we are signify that, as it is by the common possession of the divine nature that the Father and the Son are one, it is by the common knowledge of this nature (the name), that the disciples may remain closely united among themselves and may each one of them be individually kept.