John 17:4

John 17:4. I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. The first petition of Jesus in this prayer had been ‘glorify Thy Son.' That petition is now to be repeated in a more emphatic form (John 17:5), but first we have a fuller statement of the ground on which it rests. In John 17:2-3, the petition had been connected with the design of the Father; now it is connected with the accomplishment of that design; and the general prayer for glorification is to rise into the prayer ‘Glorify Thou Me now.' This glorifying of the Father is said to have taken place ‘on the earth,' that is, amidst the humiliations and sorrows of the Lord's earthly life. There in word, and deed, and suffering even unto death, Jesus revealed the Father's loving will for the salvation of men; there He accomplished the purpose for which the Father sent Him; there He glorified the Father. It will be observed that all is spoken of as past, for the whole work of Jesus is at this moment looked upon as finished. It is not indeed entirely finished, for He has not yet been nailed to the cross; but that final part of it may still be connected in thought with the whole suffering life, and may be spoken of as if it had been met. All the life of Jesus had been a death; in all of it He had been accomplishing His work and glorifying the Father: the one step still remaining, and already fully taken in will, may thus be easily associated with the rest, and the whole be contemplated as over. Therefore Jesus prays.

The predicative ‘Christ' requires the verb to express knowledge of a fact: the impression given by the verse is that great stress belongs to ‘know' in the sense of acquaintance with a Person.