John 17:1

John 17:1. These things spake Jesus, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said. Thus the Evangelist connects the prayer before us with the parting discourse contained in the previous Chapter s. It is offered in the same place, while the disciples stand around, and in the same frame of mind as that in which Jesus had just spoken; so that, when we read of His ‘lifting up His eyes to heaven,' we must think of them as full alike of holy devotion and of the consciousness of completed victory.

Father, the hour is come. The first word of the prayer is ‘Father;' not ‘our Father' as in the Lord's Prayer, but simply ‘Father,' and so throughout, though twice with ‘righteous' or ‘holy' connected with the name (John 17:5; John 17:11; John 17:21; John 17:24-25). The word sums up the peculiar revelation of this Gospel, and expresses the whole consciousness of that relation to God in which ‘the only-begotten Son' stood, and would have us to stand. Yet it is not a word of tenderness only, but of authority and power: if it stirs affection, it awakens also reverence and awe. ‘The hour' referred to is not merely that of death, or of death as a transition to glory; it is that in which the Son makes perfect the accomplishment of the Father's will (comp. chaps. John 2:4; John 7:30; John 8:20; John 13:32). This no doubt involves alike the death and the exaltation of Jesus, but it is the inner character of the hour, rather than its outward accompaniments, that is mainly referred to in the words ‘The hour is come.'

Glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee. On the meaning of ‘glorify' compare what has been said at chap. John 13:31-32. It is not a bestowal of personal glory for which Jesus prays, for such a thought would both be out of keeping with the mind of Him who never sought His own glory, and would compel us to understand the word ‘glorify' in the first clause in a sense wholly different from any that can be given it in the second. What Jesus prays for is, that the Father would now withdraw the veil which had hitherto obscured to some, and concealed from others, the ‘glory' belonging to the Son's unity of relation to the Father, in order that that ‘glory' of the Father Himself, which is the end of all existence, and which can be seen only in the Son, may thus shine forth in the sight of His creatures without any shadow to dim its brightness. The former is the means, the latter is the end (comp. on chap. John 11:4). The transition from ‘Thy Son' to ‘the Son' is worthy of notice, the former including an appeal to personal relationship, the latter bringing especially into view the work by which Jesus ‘declares' the Father (comp. chap. John 1:18), and leads men into the condition and privileges of son ship (comp. chap. John 1:12).