John 17:19

John 17:19. And for them I consecrate myself, that they themselves also may be consecrated in truth. It was for the very purpose of bringing them to a consecration like His own that His whole work of love and sacrifice had been freely undertaken. He might have said ‘ I was consecrated,' a thought which has its perfect parallel in chap. John 10:36. But He speaks of consecrating Himself, partly because He entered into His consecration with perfect acquiescence and freedom; partly, perhaps mainly, because He is thinking of that High-priestly work of His which was now immediately impending. (It will be observed that the proleptic form of expression is not always maintained: see John 17:13.) The following words express, with special reference to the disciples, the end which Jesus had been desirous to attain. It is that their consecration might be the exact counterpart of His (‘they also'); that they might act in it a free and independent part, devoting themselves in personal faith to the task assigned them (‘they themselves'), and that all might be done ‘in truth,' not simply truly, but in conformity with the real, the essential, the everlasting (comp. on John 17:17). Finally, let us notice that the consecration spoken of is, alike in the case of Jesus and of His disciples, not a process but an act completed at once, in His case, when, gathering together in one view all His labours and sufferings, He presented them a living sacrifice to His Father: in theirs, when they are in like manner enabled to present themselves as living sacrifices in His one perfect sacrifice.

Thus the second section of the prayer closes, its main burden having been that the disciples, who are about to be sent forth into the world in order to carry on the work of Jesus there, and who for this purpose have had the name of the Father manifested to them that they may know the Father, and the word of the Father given them that they may proclaim the Father, may be preserved by the Father from the world, and may be enabled to exhibit a perfect consecration to the Father's work. Thus shall the Father be glorified in them as He had been glorified in the Son, who accomplished the work that had been given Him to do.