John 18:9

John 18:9. That the word might be fulfilled, which he spake, Those which thou hast given me, I lost not one of them. The words thus referred to are those of chap. John 17:12. There they primarily apply to spiritual and eternal safety; here to what is, in the first instance at least, temporal deliverance.

It is impossible to imagine that the Evangelist did not understand this: but the powers of the world and of evil are so identified in his eyes that oppression by, or deliverance from, the one is oppression by, or deliverance from, the other. The temporal is the shadow of the eternal, and the principles working out upon man's stage here stretch into the long hereafter. In addition to this, however, it is to be noticed that the temporal deliverance thus afforded was really a means to secure the spiritual safety of the disciples. Seized by the Roman guard, they would in all probability have denied their Master even more faithlessly than Peter was so soon to do.