John 17:26

Joh_17:26

And I have declared unto them Thy name

The Divine name

The name of God is His moral character.

This is the stability and glory of the universe. These words present it

I. AS THE HIGHEST OBJECT FOR REVELATION. I have declared. Paul said at Athens, Him declare I unto you. Not only is this the highest function of

1. The material universe.

2. Angels.

3. But of Christ the greatest Being.

II. AS THE GRAND ORGAN OF REFORMATION. That the love, &c. Gods character is the reformatory force.

1. Moral reformation consists in the transfusion of Divine love into souls.

2. This transfusion of love can only be accomplished through a manifestation of the Divine character. Gods character alone generates love. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Love and I--a mystery

I. THE FOOD OF LOVE TO GOD.

1. Knowledge. I have made known. We cannot love a God whom we do not know. Only when the eyes are opened to behold the loveliness of God will the heart go out towards God, who is so desirable an object for the affections.

2. A knowledge given by Christ. It is not knowledge that we pick up as a matter of book learning that will ever bring out our love to the Father. Not knowledge communicated by the preacher alone. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. He that knows not Christ knows not the Father.

3. Knowledge coming gradually. And will declare it. As if, though they knew the Father, there was far more to know.

4. Knowledge distinguishing us from the world. It is the mark by which the elect are made manifest (Joh_17:6).

5. Knowledge of the name of God.

(1) Righteous, and yet a Father. Our joy begins when we see the two united.

(2) The word name is used as a sort of summary of all the attributes of God. All these attributes are well adapted to win the love of all regenerate spirits. God is

(a) Holy. To a holy mind there is nothing in the world, there is nothing in heaven more beautiful than holiness.

(b) Good;

(c) Merciful; Who is a God like unto Thee.

(d) Love, and there is a something about love which always wins love.

II. THE LOVE ITSELF.

1. What it is not. The prayer is not that the Fathers love may be set upon them, or move towards them, but be in them. Christ did not die to make His Father loving, but because His Father is loving.

2. This love is of a very peculiar sort. The love wherewith Thou hast loved Me.

(1) Our Lord desires us to have a distinct recognition of the Fathers love to Him. God never loved anything as He loves Christ, except His people, and they have had to be lifted up to that position by the love which the Father has to His Son.

(2) You are to have in your heart a sense of the Fathers love to you, and to recollect that it is precisely the same love wherewith He loves His Son. When there was a choice between Christ and His people which should die of the two, the Father freely delivered up His own Son that we might live through Him.

(3) We are to give back a reflection of this love, and to love Jesus as the Father loves Him. The Father is the Sun and we are the moon, but the moonlight is the same light as the sunlight. The moon has not a ray of light but what came from the sun, and we have not a live coal of love to Christ but what came from the Father. We are as the moon, shining by reflected light, but Jesus loves the moonlight of our love and rejoices in it.

(4) This love of the Father in us is to go beaming forth from us to all around.

3. This indwelling of the Fathers love in us has the most blessed results.

(1) Has an expulsive result. As soon as ever it gets into the heart it says to all love of sin, Get thee hence: there remains no room for thee here.

(2) A repulsive power by which it repels the assaults of sin.

(3) An impulsive power. It is as when an engine receives fire and steam, and so obtains the force which drives it. Then have you motive power, then are you urged on to this and that heroic deed which, apart from this sublime love, you never would have thought of.

(4) How elevating it is. How it lifts a man up above self and sin; how it makes him seek the things that are above!

(5) How purifying it is!

(6) How happy it makes the subject of its influence! If you are unhappy you want mole of the love of God.

III. THE COMPANION OF LOVE. I in them. Catch those two words. Here is love and. I--love and Christ come together. Oh, blessed guests!

1. We are sure that He is where love is; for, where there is love there is

(1) Life, and where there is life there is Christ, for He Himself says, I am the Life.

(2) The Holy Spirit; but wherever the Holy Spirit is, there is Christ, for the Holy Spirit is Christs representative.

(3) Faith, for faith worketh by love, and there never was true love to Christ apart from faith.

(4) God, for God is love.

2. You need not go abroad to find the Lord Jesus Christ. He lives within you.

(1) What a blessed sense of power this gives to us. I in them. Then it is no more I in weakness, but, I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.

(2) Hence we gather the security of the believer.

(3) We should give Christ good entertainment. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Spiritual illumination and Divine love

I. THE GREAT SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION. I have declared to them Thy name. The name was the Jewish formulary for God; His perfections, glory, grace.

1. That the saving knowledge of God comes to us by direct communication from Christ. Not by wisdom, virtue, strength of our own; for the world by wisdom knew not God, but from the discovery which Christ makes by His word and Spirit: I have declared. See it in the woman of Samaria--in His patience with the disciples. It is Christs prerogative to convey the saving knowledge of God to the mind; it is our privilege to seek that knowledge from Him.

2. That we need spiritual illumination from above, not only at our first conversion, but through the whole progress of our spiritual life. I have declared--and will declare it. Paul prays for the Ephesians that God would give them the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge of Him--and yet they knew Him already. Paul, who was taught not of men, but of Christ Himself, and was even caught up to the third heaven, puts himself among the number of them who know only in part; and this will be true of the most learned and holy men to the last hour of life.

3. It becomes us to acknowledge our ignorance, and to implore Divine teaching. This is a promise to be pleaded in prayer. We are like babes, unskilful in the word of righteousness. The best persons and the best churches still need more light. It is not enough that Christ has declared to them, but He must still declare--not indeed new truths, new essentials of salvation, but He conveys new impressions of truth to the mind; new aptitudes to receive, to appropriate, to exemplify and apply truth.

II. THE GREAT LOVE WHICH GOD BEARS TO HIS CHILDREN It is here compared to the love which God bears to Christ. This love is said to be in them, just as Christ is said to be in them. By Gods love to Christ, learn His love to you.

1. This love is ancient in its date. Thou hast loved Me from the foundation of the world (Pro_8:22; Pro_8:31).

2. Unlimited in its degree. As you can place no limit to Gods love to the Mediator, so you can place no limit to His love to the people He has redeemed. Many would discourage the hopes of Gods children. Satan himself would rob them of consolation. False systems of religion do this.

3. Enlightened in its exercise. Gods love to Christ was enlightened, and His conduct towards Him was regulated with a view to the office He was to sustain, and He allowed Him to pass through scenes of pain, poverty, temptation. So He does us: much tribulation.

4. Constant in its duration. It is an everlasting love. (The Evangelist.)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John

THE HIGH PRIEST’S PRAYER

CHRIST’S SUMMARY OF HIS WORK

Joh 17:26.

This is the solemn and calm close of Christ’s great High-priestly prayer; the very last words that He spoke before Gethsemane and His passion. In it He sums up both the purpose of His life and the petitions of His prayer, and presents the perfect fulfilment of the former as the ground on which He asks the fulfilment of the latter. There is a singular correspondence and contrast between these last words to God and the last words to the disciples, which immediately preceded them. These were, ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ In both He sums up His life, in both He is unconscious of flaw, imperfection, or limitation; in both He shares His own possessions among His followers. But His words to men carry a trace of His own conflict and a foreboding of theirs. For Him life had been, and for them it was to be, tribulation and a battle, and the highest thing that He could promise them was victory won by conflict. But from the serene elevation of the prayer all such thoughts disappear. Unbroken calm lies over it. His life has been one continual manifestation of the name of God; and the portion that He promises to His followers is not victory won by strife, but the participation with Himself in the love of God.

Both views are true-true to His experience, true to ours. The difference between them lies in the elevation of the beholder’s eye. Looked at on the outward side, His life and ours must be always a battle and often a sorrow. Looked at from within, His life was an unbroken abiding in the love of God, and a continual impartation of the name of God, and our lives may be an ever growing knowledge of God, leading to and being a fuller and fuller possession of His love, and of a present Christ. So let us ponder these deep words: our Lord’s own summing up of His work and aims; His statement of what we may hope to attain; and the path by which we may attain it. I shall best bring out the whole fullness of their meaning if I simply follow them word by word.

I. Note, first, the backward look of the revealing Son.

‘I have declared Thy name.’

The first thing that strikes one about these words is their boldness. Remember that they are spoken to God, at the close of a life the heights and depths of which they sum up. They are an appeal to God’s righteous judgment of the whole character of the career. Do they breathe the tone that we might expect? Surely the prophet or teacher who has most earnestly tried to make himself a mirror, without spot to darken and without dint to distort the divine ray, will be the first to feel, as he looks back, the imperfections of his repetition of his message. But Jesus Christ, when He looks back over His life, has no flaw, limitation, incompleteness, to record or to confess. As always so here, He is absolutely unconscious of anything in the nature of weakness, error, or sin. As when He looked back upon His life as a conflict, He had no defeats to remember with shame, so here, when He looks upon it as the revelation of God He feels that everything which He has received of the Father He has made known unto men.

And the strange thing is that we admit the claim, and have become so accustomed to regard it as being perfectly legitimate that we forget how enormous it is. He takes an attitude here which in any other man would be repulsive, but in Him is supremely natural. We criticise other people, we outgrow their teachings, we see where their doctrines have deviated from truth by excess or defect, or disproportion; but when He says ‘I have declared Thy name,’ we feel that He says nothing more than the simple facts of His life vindicate and confirm.

Not less remarkable is the implication in these words, not only of the completeness of His message, but of the fullness of His knowledge of God, and its entirely underived nature. So He claims for Himself an altogether special and unique position here: He has learned God from none; He teaches God to all. ‘That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’

Looking a little more closely at these words before us, we have here Christ’s own account of His whole life. The meaning of it all is the revelation of the heart of God. Not by words, of course; not by words only, but far more by deeds. And I would have you ask yourselves this question-If the deeds of a man are a declaration of the name of God, what sort of a man is He who thus declares Him? Must we not feel that if these words, or anything like them, really came from the lips of Jesus Christ, we are here in the presence of something other than a holy life of a simple humanity, which might help men to climb to the apprehension of a God who was perfect love; and that when He says ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,’ we stand before ‘God manifest in the flesh.’

What is that name of God which the revealing Son declares? Not the mere syllables by which we call Him, but the manifested character of the Father. That one name, in the narrower sense of the word, carries the whole revelation that Jesus Christ has to make; for it speaks of tenderness, of kindred, of paternal care, of the transmission of a nature, of the embrace of a divine love. And it delivers men from all their creeping dreads, from all their dark peradventures, from all their stinging fears, from all the paralysing uncertainties which, like clouds, always misty and often thunder-bearing, have shut out the sight of the divine face. If this Christ, in His weakness and humanity, with pity welling from His eyes, and making music of His voice, with the swift help streaming from His fingers-tips to every pain and weariness, and the gracious righteousness that drew little children and did not repel publicans and harlots, is our best image of God, then love is the centre of divinity, and all the rest that we call God is but circumference and fringe of that central brightness.

‘So through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, “O heart I made! a heart beats here.”‘

He has declared God’s name, His last best name of Love.

Need I dwell for one moment on the fact that that name is only declared by this Son? There is no need to deny the presence of manifold other precious sources in men’s experience and lives from which something may be inferred of what God truly is. But all these, rich and manifold as they are, fall into nothingness before the life of Jesus Christ, considered as the making visible of God. For all the rest are partial and incomplete. ‘At sundry times and in divers manners’ God flung forth syllables of the name, and ‘fragments of that mighty voice came rolling down the wind.’ But in Jesus Christ the whole name, in all its syllables, is spoken. Other sources of knowledge are ambiguous, and need the interpretation of Christ’s life and Cross ere they can be construed into a harmonious whole. Life, nature, our inmost being, history, all these sources speak with two voices; and it is only when we hear the deep note that underlies them in the word of Christ that their discord becomes a harmony. Other sources lack authority. They come at the most with a ‘may be.’ He comes with a ‘Verily, verily.’ Other sources speak to the understanding, or the conscience, or to fear. Christ speaks to the heart. Other sources leave the man who accepts them unaffected. Christ’s message penetrates to the transforming and assimilation of the whole being.

So, dear brethren! for all generations, and for this generation most of all, the plain alternative lies between the declaration of the name of God in Jesus Christ and a godless and orphan world. Modern thought will make short work of all other sources of certitude about the character of God, and will leave men alone in the dark. Christ, the historical fact of the life and death of Jesus Christ, is the sole surviving source of certitude, which is blessedness, as to whether there is a God, and what sort of a God He is.

II. Secondly, note here that strange forward look of the dying Man: ‘I have declared Thy name and will declare it.’

And that was said within eight and forty hours of the Cross, which, if He had been a simple human teacher and martyr, would have ended all His activity in the world. But here He is not merely summing up His life, and laying it aside, writing the last sentence, as it were, which gathers up the whole of the completed book, but He is closing the first volume, and in the act of doing so He stretches out His hand to open the second. ‘I will declare it.’ When? How? Did not earthly life, then, put a stop to this Teacher’s activity? Was there still prophetic function to be done after death had sealed His lips? Certainly.

That anticipation, which at once differentiates Him from all the brood of merely human teachers and prophets, even the highest, does indeed include as future, at the moment when He speaks, the swiftly coming and close Cross; but it goes beyond it. How much of Christendom’s knowledge of God depended upon the Passion, on the threshold of which Christ was standing? He, hanging on the Cross in weakness, and dying there amidst the darkness that overspread the land, is a strange Revealer of the omnipotent, infinite, ever-blessed God. But Oh! if we strike Gethsemane and Calvary out of Christ’s manifestation of the Father, how infinitely poorer are we and the world! ‘God commendeth,’ {rather ‘establisheth,’} ‘His love toward us in that whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’ And so as we turn ourselves to the little knoll outside the gate, where the Nazarene carpenter hangs faint and dying, we-wonder of Wonders, and yet certainty of certainties!-have to say, ‘Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him.’

But that future revelation extends beyond the Cross, and includes resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and the whole history of the Church right onwards through the ages. The difference between the two volumes of revelation-that which includes the work of Christ upon earth, and that which includes His revelation from the heavens-is this, that the first volume contains all the facts, and the second volume contains His interpretation and application of the facts in the understandings and hearts of His people. We have no more facts from which to construe God than these which belong to the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and we never shall have, here at all events. But whilst the first volume to the bottom of the last page is finished and tolerates and needs no additions, day by day, moment by moment, epoch by epoch Christ is bringing His people to a fuller understanding of the significance of the first volume, and writing the second more and more upon their hearts.

So we have an ever-living Christ, still the active Teacher of His Church. Times of unsettlement and revolutionary change and the ‘shaking of the things that are made,’ like the times in which we live, are but times in which the great Teacher is setting some new lesson from the old Book to His slow scholars. There is always a little confusion in the schoolroom when the classes are being rearranged and new books are being put into old hands. The tributary stream, as it rushes in, makes broken water for a moment. Do not let us be afraid when ‘the things that can be shaken’ shake, but let us see in the shaking the attendant of a new curriculum on which the great Teacher is launching His scholars, and let us learn the new lessons of the old Gospel which He is then teaching.

III. Thirdly, note the participation in the Father’s love which is the issue of the knowledge of the Father’s name.

Christ says that His end, an end which is surely attained in the declaration of the divine name, is that ‘the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.’ We are here touching upon heights too dizzy for free and safe walking, on glories too bright for close and steady gaze. But where Christ has spoken we may reverently follow. Mark, then, that marvellous thought of the identity between the love which was His and the love which is ours. ‘From everlasting’ that divine love lay on the Eternal Word which in the hoary beginning, before the beginning of creatures, ‘was with God, and was God.’ The deepest conception that we can form of the divine nature is of a Being who in Himself carries the Subject and the Object of an eternal love, which we speak of in the deep emblem of ‘the Word,’ and the God with whom He eternally ‘was.’ That love lay upon Christ, without limitation, without reservation, without interruption, finding nothing there from which it recoiled, and nothing there which did not respond to it. No mist, no thunderstorm, ever broke that sunshine, no tempest ever swept across that calm. Continuous, full, perfect was the love that knit the Father to the Son, and continuous, full, and perfect was the consciousness of abiding in that love, which lay like light upon the spirit of Him that said ‘I delight to do Thy will.’ ‘The Father hath not left Me alone.’

And all that love Christ gives to us as deep, as continuous, as unreserved. Our consciousness of God’s love is meant by Christ to be like His own. Alas! alas! is that our experience, Christian people? The sun always shines on the rainless land of Egypt, except for a month or two in the year. The contrast between the unclouded blue and continuous light and heat there, and our murky skies and humid atmosphere, is like the contrast between our broken and feeble consciousness of the shining of the divine love and the uninterrupted glory of light and joy of communion which poured on Christ’s heart. But it is possible for us indefinitely to approximate to such an experience; and the way by which we reach it is that plain and simple one of accepting Christ’s declaration of the Father’s name.

IV. And so, lastly, notice the indwelling Christ who makes our participation in the divine love possible: ‘And I in them.’

One may well say, ‘How can it be that love should be transferred? How can it be that the love of God to me shall be identical with the love of God to Christ?’ There is only one answer. If Christ dwells in me, then God’s love to Him falls upon me by no transference, but by my incorporation into Him. And I would urge that this great truth of the actual indwelling of Christ in the soul is no mere piece of rhetorical exaggeration, nor a wild and enthusiastic way of putting the fact that the influence of His teaching and the beauty of His example can sway us; but it is a plain and absolute truth that the divine Christ can come into and abide in the narrow room of our poor hearts. And if He does this, then ‘he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit’; and the Christ in me receives the sunshine of the divine love. That does not destroy, but heightens, my individuality. I am more and not less myself because ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’

So, dear brethren! it all comes to this-we may each of us, if we will, have Jesus Christ for Guest and Inhabitant in our hearts. If we have, then, since God loves Him, He must love me who have Him within me, and as long as God loves Christ He cannot cease to love me, nor can I cease to be conscious of His love to me, and whatsoever gifts His love bestows upon Jesus, pass over in measure, and partially, to myself. Thus immortality, heaven, glory, all blessedness in heaven and earth, are the fruit and crystallisation, so to speak, of that oneness with Christ which is possible for us. And the conditions are simply that we shall with joyful trust accept His declaration of the Father’s name, and see God manifest in Him; and welcome in our inmost hearts that great Gospel. Then His prayer, and the travail of His soul, will reach their end even in me, and ‘the love wherewith the Father loved the Son shall be in me,’ and the Son Himself shall dwell in my heart.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17:26 All who accept the Son and embrace the Father will experience the kind of love known only between the Father and the Son. • I will be in them: Jesus loves his followers and wants to indwell them with glory and joy unmatched by anything in the world.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh 17:26. Γνωρίσω, I will make known [‘declare’]) He did so, for instance, ch. Joh 20:17, “I ascend unto My Father and your Father;” with which comp. Heb 2:12, “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto Thee.”—τὸ ὄνομά σου, Thy name) as Father, a most loving name.—ἡ ἀγάπη—κἀγὼ, the love—and I) i.e. Thou and Thy love; and I and My love.—ἐν αὐτοῖς ᾖ, may be in them) that Thou mayest love them in themselves with the same love wherewith Thou lovest Me: that their heart may be the theatre and scene wherein is to be exercised this love.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He communicateth with his by little and little, the knowledge of the Father, which is most full in Christ the Mediator, that they may in him be beloved of the Father, with the selfsame love wherewith he loveth the Son.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

And I have declared--I made known or communicated.

thy name--in His past ministry.

and will declare it--in yet larger measure, by the gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost and through all succeeding ages.

that the love wherewith thou hast loved--lovedst.

me may be in them, and I in them--This eternal love of the Father, resting first on Christ, is by His Spirit imparted to and takes up its permanent abode in all that believe in Him; and "He abiding in them and they in Him" (Joh 15:5), they are "one Spirit." "With this lofty thought the Redeemer closes His prayer for His disciples, and in them for His Church through all ages. He has compressed into the last moments given Him for conversation with His own the most sublime and glorious sentiments ever uttered by mortal lips. But hardly has the sound of the last word died away, when He passes with the disciples over the brook Kedron to Gethsemane--and the bitter conflict draws on. The seed of the new world must be sown in Death, that thence Life may spring up" [OLSHAUSEN].

Next: John Chapter 18

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 26. I have declared unto them thy name, c.] I have taught them the true doctrine.

And will declare it] This he did:

1st. By the conversations he had with his disciples after his resurrection, during the space of forty days.

2dly. By the Holy Spirit which was poured out upon them on the day of pentecost. And all these declarations Jesus Christ made, that the love of God, and Christ Jesus himself, might dwell in them and thus they were to become a habitation for God through the eternal Spirit.

OUR Lord's sermon, which he concluded by the prayer recorded in this chapter, begins at Joh 13:13, and is one of the most excellent than can be conceived. His sermon on the mount shows men what they should do, so as to please God: this sermon shows them how they are to do the things prescribed in the other. In the former the reader sees a strict morality which he fears he shall never be able to perform: in this, he sees all things are possible to him who believes; for that very God who made him shall dwell in his heart, and enable him to do all that He pleases to employ him in. No man can properly understand the nature and design of the religion of Christ who does not enter into the spirit of the preceding discourse. Perhaps no part of our Lord's words has been less understood, or more perverted, than the seventeenth chapter of St. John. I have done what I could, in so small a compass, to make every thing plain, and to apply these words in that way in which I am satisfied he used them.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

26. And I have declared to them thy name, and will declare it. Christ discharged the office of Teacher, but, in order to make known the Father, he employed the secret revelation of the Spirit, and not the sound of his voice alone. He means, therefore, that he taught the apostles efficaciously. Besides, their faith being at that time very weak, he promises greater progress for the future, and thus prepares them to expect more abundant grace of the Holy Spirit. Though he speaks of the apostles, we ought to draw from this a general exhortation, to study to make constant progress, and not to think that we have run so well that we have not still a long journey before us, so long as we are surrounded by the flesh.

That the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them; that is, that thou mayest love them in me, or, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be extended to them; for, strictly speaking, the love with which God loves us is no other than that with which he loved his Son from the beginning, so as to render us also acceptable to him, and capablc of being loved in Christ. And, indeed, as was said a little before, so far as relates to us, apart from Christ, we are hated by God, and he only begins to love us, when we are united to the body of his beloved Son. It is an invaluable privilege of faith, that we know that Christ was loved by the Father on our account, that we might be made partakers of the same love, and might enjoy it for ever.

And I in them. This clause deserves our attention, for it teaches us that the only way in which we are included in that love which he mentions is, that Christ dwells in us; for, as the Father cannot look upon his Son without having likewise before his eyes the whole body of Christ, so, if we wish to be beheld in him, we must be actually his members.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(26) And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.—The Greek word here rendered “declared” is of the same root as the verb rendered “known” in the previous verse. It is better to preserve this connection by rendering the clause, And I made known Thy name unto them, and will make it known. His whole teaching had been a making known of the name, character, will of God, to them. In part this had been received, but in part only. The first steps in the spiritual lessons had been taken, but in His Presence in the Paraclete He will guide them into all truth, and make known to hearts quickened to receive it, the love of God which passeth knowledge.

That the love wherewith thou hast loved (better, didst love) me may be in them, and I in them.—Comp. Note on Joh_15:9. The thought of Christ’s prayer in this verse is expanded in St. Paul’s prayer in Eph_3:17-19. It is more than that God may love the disciples, even as He loved the Son; it is that they may so know the nature of God that this love may be in them, dwelling in them as the principle of their life. And then the thought passes on to that fulness which has been present all through this last discourse and prayer, “and I in them.” (Comp. Joh_17:23.) Going from them, to be yet with them; not to be with them only as a Person without, but as a power within. “I in them” are the last words of the Intercessory Prayer. The words remain in all their comfort for them in whom “Christ is formed;” in all their encouragement for doubting hearts seeking to know God; in all their warning for hearts that do not seek His presence. They are the prayer of Him who knoweth that the Father always heareth Him.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. have declared … will declare] Better, made known … will make known. The verb is cognate with that rendered ‘know’ in Joh_17:25, and here as there the aorist is used, not the perfect. Christ knows the Father and makes known His name, i.e. His attributes and will (see on Joh_1:12), to the disciples. This imparting of knowledge is already accomplished in part,—‘I made known’ (comp. Joh_15:15); but the knowledge and the love which imparts it being alike inexhaustible, there is room for perpetual instruction throughout all time, especially after the Paraclete has been given,—‘I will make known’ (comp. Joh_14:26, Joh_16:13).

wherewith thou hast loved me] In the Greek we have a double accusative, as in Eph_2:4. ‘Hast loved’ should be didst love (see on Joh_17:4): but possibly this is a case where the English present might be admitted as the best equivalent of the Greek aorist (see on Joh_15:8).

may be in them] May rule in their hearts as a guiding principle, without which they cannot receive the knowledge here promised; for ‘he that loveth not, knoweth not God’ (1Jn_4:8).

I in them] These last words of Christ’s Mediatorial Prayer sum up its purpose. They are the thread which runs through all these farewell discourses. He is going away, and yet abides with them. His bodily presence passes away, His spiritual presence remains for ever; not seen with the eye without, but felt as life and strength within. Having known Christ after the flesh, now they know Him so no more: they are in Christ, a new creation (2Co_5:16-17).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Ver. 26. That the love, &c.] Claritas in intellecta parit ardorem in affectu. Ignoti nulla cupido. Clarity of mind gives birth to zeal in devotion. The unlearned desire nothing.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Thy name - See the notes at Joh 17:6.

And will declare it - After my resurrection, and by the influence of the Holy Spirit, Luk 24:45; Act 1:3.

I in them - By my doctrines and the influences of my Spirit. That my religion may show its power, and produce its proper fruits in their minds, Gal 4:19.

The discourse in John 14; 15; 16 is the most tender and sublime that was ever pronounced in our world. No composition can be found anywhere so fitted to sustain the soul in trial or to support it in death. This sublime and beautiful discourse is appropriately closed by a solemn and most affecting prayer - a prayer at once expressive of the profoundest reverence for God and the tenderest love for men - simple, grave, tender, sublime, and full of consolation. It is the model for our prayers, and with like reverence, faith, and love we should come before God. This prayer for the church will yet be fully answered; and he who loves the church and the world cannot but cast his eyes onward to that time when all believers shall be one; when contentions, bigotry, strife, and anger shall cease; and when, in perpetual union and love, Christians shall show forth the power and purity of that holy gospel with which the Saviour came to bless mankind. Soon may that happy day arise!

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

I will make thy name known to them, by giving them, by means of the Holy Ghost, a perfect knowledge. For if they know Thee, they will likewise know that I am not different from Thee, but thy own well begotten Son. (St. John Chrysostom, hom. lxxxi. in Joan.)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

By the name of God, is to be understood God himself, and whatsoever God hath made himself known by his word and gospel, his attributes and perfections. And after my resurrection, I will yet further declare it to them, who are yet in a great measure ignorant and imperfect in their notions of thee; that thy love wherewith thou hast loved me may be further communicated to them, and be derived to them, and abide in and upon them for ever; because I am in them (so some would have it read, though the word be καγω, which properly is, and I, as we translate it). The words are but a repetition of what our Lord hath often said, and illustrated in, Joh 15:9, by the parable of the vine and the branches; and teach us this lesson, that Christ must be in those souls who can pretend to any share in that love of God wherewith he hath loved Christ: Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? 2Co 13:5.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

26. Declared thy name—Unfolding the mystery of grace and glory embraced in the name of the Father.

And will declare it—Unfolding its still more gracious grace, and its still more glorious glory, to them, to the Church of all ages, and to their whole glorious assembly in eternity.

Love wherewith thou hast loved me—Which, as said in Joh_17:24, was a love before the foundation of the world.

May be in them—Love from God resting upon them, and to God dwelling in them. They thus, by faith, come into a participation of God’s eternal love to his Son. They come into the everlasting beams of the eternal Sun. They enter into the embrace of God’s eternal purpose to glorify all who believe in Jesus. They fasten themselves to the golden chain of God’s election to eternal life of all who know him through his Son.

And I in them—As the life-spring of their immortal existence, the well-spring of their eternal love, the day-spring of their eternal glory. For eternal life, love, and glory, embodied in Christ dwelling in them, are the full consummation of all that the sufferings and intercession of Christ himself can bring to his chosen. And in this consummation does this intercession most fitly end.

Thus close the valedictory utterances of Jesus to his disciples, extending through the last four chapters of this Gospel. They are, first, the colloquy and events during the supper, (chap. 13;) second, the Lord’s after-supper discourse, slightly interrupted by questions, (chap. 14;) third, his parting address of prediction, warning, and consolation, (chap. 15, and 16;) fourth, and last, this High Priestly prayer, (chap. 17.) It is pervaded with pathos, which runs as an undertone even through the triumphant passages both of the valedictory and the prayer. The pathos and the sorrow are soon to deepen into the immediate agonies of Gethsemane and the crucifixion; the triumphal tone is sustained by a prophetic recognition of the victory in the more distant future.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Since they have "learned that thou sourest me," our Lord, to complete the awful monologue, adds, And I made known thy Name to them, pointing back to the efanerwsasou to onoma of Ver. 6. "To make manifest" is not equal in potency with "to make known, to cause them to know;" there is more direct work done in them and to them in order to effect knowledge. Our Lord also declares that he has done this already, but his work of manifestation and teaching are not complete. There is more and more for these to learn. And (gnwrisw) I will make them to know it. A promise of Divine expansion reaching onward and outward forevermore. By the power of his Spirit, by his return to them in his resurrection-life, by the ministry of the Paraclete, he would prolong and complete the convincing process. In order that the love wherewith thou hast loved me (notice the unusual expression, h agaph hn hgaphsav ; and cf. Eph_2:4) the eternal love of the Father to the well-beloved Son the love which has flowed forth upon him as the perfect Son of man, and Representative of man, upon him who laid down his life that he might take it again (cf. Joh_10:17) may be in them; may alight on them as knowing, receiving, loving me. (cf. Joh_16:27, "The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me However much was involved in the utterance just quoted, in this closing utterance still more is conveyed. The waves on this boundless ocean of love pour in, one behind the other, each nobler and freighted with richer blessing than that which preceded; and the motive of this infinite fullness of eternal love being thus lavished upon them is added: I in them. On this profound suggestion he has already said much, but not until we reach these last words do they flash forth in all their mystic grandeur. His life will be so identified with their life, his abode so blended with their being, his life so repeated in their experience, his personality so much entwined and blended with theirs, that he in them, and because he is in them, prolongs and repeats himself as the Object of an eternal love. We see the same ideas in the Pauline teaching, and can only explain Gal_1:16 Gal_2:20 Gal_4:6 Rom_8:9, Rom_8:10, 11 Eph_2:18 Eph_3:19 Col_2:7 Col_3:4, as echoes of the class of teaching which, long before John had recorded the prayer in this form, had yet become the seed and life-principle of the Church. This is not only true of the closing verses, but of the whole prayer and preceding discourse.

5. review of the difficulties attending the preservation and characteristics of this discourse and prayer. The sublime comprehensiveness of the prayer; its augmenting swell of thought; the awful depth of its self-consciousness; the limpid simplicity of its style; the movement from himself to his disciples, to the entire Church, to the outlying world; the ground on which he bases every prayer; the imperial dignity of the Pleader; the total absence of any sense of personal weakness or sinfulness; the revelation and insight thus granted into the heart of the God-man; its naturalness, if we concede the foregoing character; its profound humility, if we bear in mind his unique claims; constitute this page a supernatural phenomenon. Christ himself is the greatest of his miracles. The supposition that some unknown writer of the second century excogitated such a conception out of the synoptic narrative, the Pauline Epistles, and the Alexandrine philosophy, refutes itself.

We admit, with F. W. Newman, with Reuss, and with all the rationalist critics, that it is difficult to understand how the apostle could have reproduced so accurately this wondrous discourse and the prayer; but the author practically admits that it was a supernatural process of memory. (Joh_14:25, Joh_14:26) Still, there are facts enough in the natural sphere and within the knowledge of all, that such extraordinary efforts of memory are by no means uncommon. John was the contemporary of men whose surprising memory held the whole "Mishna" and thousands of illustrative comments, "Halacha," and "Hagada" ready for constant reference and application. The rishis of India, the Greek rhapsodists, mediaeval minnesingers, and wandering bards, have had imprinted indelibly and verbally on their recollection ten or twenty times the bulk of this wondrous discourse. John was young, impressionable, intimately acquainted with his Lord, though needing many things to complete his apprehension of his glory; and, even apart from Divine or spiritual aid, there is no reason to dispute its accuracy.

The impression that this discourse and prayer have produced on the general consciousness of the Church, is, that none but Christ could have uttered these words, and he only at such a conjuncture.

Keim insists that John, if it were he, by this narrative annihilates the synoptic tradition of the agony in the garden. And we do not deny that the intercalation of that agony between this prayer and the sublime manner in which Jesus meets the band of soldiers, renders a harmony of the Gospels at this point very difficult. The difficulty does not so much arise from the fact that the profound and awful strife should follow upon this sublime and lofty calm, upon this imperial and Divine prerogative, but that throughout the Johannine recital of the events which occurred on the night of betrayal and Passion, the same exalted demeanor is preserved, and numerous incidents and sayings are recorded which appear discrepant with the utter prostration and overwhelming affliction revealed in the synoptic narrative. This contrast must not be minimized, and cannot be disputed. The question to be decided is whether the twofold aspect of the scene can possibly represent the truth, or whether it proceeds from the theological prepossessions of a later writer, who imagined the behavior of the incarnate Loges under these conditions without any real and deep foundation in reality.

By way of preface to an expository treatment, it is desirable to observe that John throughout received impressions from his Lord of a profoundly different character from that of the other observers, and throughout he saw the Divine manifestation which, while they witnessed it, they did not penetrate as he had done. The veil of the human phenomena concealed much from their spiritual apprehension. The different manner in which the same event is described by two witnesses, and the different constructions put upon the same action when viewed with diverse presuppositions, is of too common occurrence to need illustration. Luke represents the tradition concerning the Son of man in the hour of his deepest dejection. John represents what he saw of the ineffably Divine element which triumphed over the human. The angle of vision was different, the sensitive brooding and susceptible nature of John was unlike the impetuous human passion of Peter"s soul, and the resultant impression on them both of the whole cycle of events was correspondingly different. Then let it be noticed that John, who knew the synoptic narrative, deliberately omitted what had passed into universal credence, such as the Transfiguration, the Holy Supper, and the Ascension: why was he not at liberty to omit the agony in the garden and the traitor"s kiss? He takes up his story after the surprise was over, and when the Lord had resumed the tone of the voluntary Sufferer and Divine Savior; and if we compare the two descriptions of that scene, they supplement and explain one another. Numerous incidents throughout the closing scenes, which are omitted by John, are recorded by one or more of the evangelists, and some facts and words are peculiar to the Johannine narrative. These omissions from and additions to the synoptic narrative have been supposed to reveal the purpose of the theologian rather than the record of the eyewitness. It is rashly asserted that John omits the symptoms of human weakness and shame, and exaggerates the signs of Divine indwelling and of lofty prerogative. This, however, is by no means true. He does omit the agony in the garden, but he gives in John 12 the analogue of that awful scene, and the same Divine spirit with which it was consummated. He omits the "traitor"s kiss," but he hints the occurrence of that crowning treachery. He does omit the record of the desertion by the disciples, but (Joh_16:32) he records the prediction of it. tie omits the incident of the false witness and the adjuration, but it should in all fairness be remembered that he also omitted the great confession of the Lord"s Messiah-ship and exaltation; and while he passes by the incidents of the mockery of the Lord, he records other matters and methods of mockery which are equally humiliating. (Joh_19:12) If he omits the examinations before Caiaphas and Herod, he gives that which the synoptic tradition had lest sight of in the first examination before Annas and in the private interview with Pilate. The hand-washing of Pilate and the dream of his wife are passed over, but the conduct of Pilate is made far more intelligible by that private interview. The evangelists Luke and Matthew both record features of sorrow and words from the cross and pot-tents attending the Crucifixion, which confer a royal prerogative and a Divine significance on his death. The rending of the veil, the confession of the centurion, the great earthquake, the supernatural darkness, the repentance and acceptance of the dying brigand, all these we might reasonably expect, on the theory of theological prepossession, to have been found in the Fourth Gospel; and what is more remarkable still on that hypothesis is that the most peculiar and pathetic feature of the last hours is an exhibition of Christ"s perfect humanity and filial love, which the other narrators fail to. (Joh_19:25-27) We conclude, therefore, that the matters in which the narratives agree are abundant and remarkable, and their divergences cannot be accounted for on the ground of theological bias. The exposition of the following chapters will bring the several lacunae, correspondences, and peculiarities into yet fuller prominence.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I have declared to them thy name - Thy new, best name of love; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me - That thou and thy love, and I and my love, may be in them - That they may love me with that love.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

That is, "I have made known unto them thy nature, attributes, counsels, will and commands, and I will continue the manifestation of the same unto the end.

Learn thence, that the saving knowledge of God was not attainable by natural abilities, but cometh to us by the special revelation of Jesus Christ: I have declared unto them thy name.

Learn, 2. That they that have the name of God, his nature, and will, savingly declared to them, do not stand in need of any farther declarations and discoveries of God’s nature and will to be made unto them: I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.

That is, "That the love which is originally in thyself, as the fountain of all grace, may be communicated and dispensed from thee to them, and become inherent in them."

Learn hence, that it is not enough for the people of God that they are beloved of him, and that his love is towards them; but they must endeavour to have it in them; that is, experience it in the effects of it, and in the sense and feeling of it in their own souls.

The safety of a Christian lies in this, that God loves him; but the joy, the comfort, and happiness of a Christ, consists in the knowledge, in the sensible apprehension and feeling, of his love; therefore Christ closeth his prayer for his members, with this affectionate and comprehensive petition: Let the love wherewith thou hast loved me, be in them, and I in them.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. ἐγνώρισα. Shew in translation that the verb is cognate with ἔγνων in Joh 17:25; made known. In both cases the aorist should be kept in English. Christ knows the Father and makes known His name, i.e. His attributes and will (see on Joh 1:12), to the disciples. This imparting of knowledge is already accomplished in part,—‘I made known’ (comp. Joh 15:15); but the knowledge and the love which imparts it being alike inexhaustible, there is room for perpetual instruction throughout all time, especially after the Paraclete has been given,—‘I will make known’ (comp. Joh 14:26, Joh 16:13). With the double accusative, ἣν ἠγάπησάς με comp. Joh 7:24; Rev 16:9; Eph 2:4: this love is to rule in their hearts as a guiding principle, without which they cannot receive the knowledge here promised; ‘he that loveth not, knoweth not God (1Jn 4:8).

κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτοῖς. These last words of Christ’s mediatorial Prayer are the thread which runs through all these farewell discourses. He is going away and yet abides with them. His bodily presence passes away, His spiritual presence remains for ever; not seen with the eye without, but felt as life and strength within. Having known Christ after the flesh, now they know Him so no more: they are in Christ, a new creation (2Co 5:16-17).

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26.] δίκαιε is connected with the final clause of ver. 24. The Righteousness of the Father is witnessed by the beginning (πρὸ κατ. κόσ.) of Redemption, and (κἀκεῖνοι ὦσιν) by the glorification of the elect from Christ; but also by ὁ κόσμος σε οὐκ ἔγνω,—the final distinction made by His justice between the world and His.

The first καί is in the quasi-disjunctive usage so common with our Evangelist, see ch. 16:32, note,—and contrasts with the δέ immediately following: the more classical construction would be τε—δέ (Lücke). The second καί merely couples the preceding to the following, as depending upon it: see Mat 11:27.

This ἔγνω, ἔγνωσαν, ἐγνώρισα, γνωρίσω, shew that our Lord spoke here of the then present time and disciples again, at the close of His prayer.

The γνωρίσω is by the whole work and testimony of the Spirit completed in the Kingdom of God. This promise has been in fulfilment through all the history of the Church. And the great result of this manifestation of the Father’s name is, that the wonderful Love wherewith He loved Christ, may dwell in (not the Apostles merely—the future γνωρίσω has again thrown the meaning onward to the great body of believers) them,—i.e. the perfect, living knowledge of God in Christ, which reveals, and in fact is, this love. And this can only be by κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτοῖς—Christ dwelling in their hearts by faith, and renewing and enlightening them by His Spirit. He does not say, ‘Thou in them’—but I in them and Thou in Me: see ver. 23.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

26. καὶ ἐγνώρισα αὐτοῖς τὸ ὄνομά σου, repeated in slightly different form from v. 6, where see note. For γνωρίζειν, cf. 15:15.

καὶ γνωρίσω, sc. in the Church of the future, by the Spirit which is to come (16:12, 25).

ἵνα ἡ ἀγάπη ἣν ἠγάπησάς με ἐν αὐτοῖς ᾖ. This is not a prayer that God may love Christian disciples with the same kind of love as that with which He loved Christ. Already, at v. 23, we have seen that even “the world”—in its alienation and hostility—was thus loved by God, although the world did not recognise it. But the prayer is that the love of God for all Christian disciples, similar as it is to the love of God for Christ, may be “in them,” that is, their sense of it may become vivid and efficacious; so that they may recognise, in Paul’s words, “that the love of God has been shed abroad in their hearts, through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5).

For ἤν after ἀγάπη D substitutes the more usual ᾗ, qua; but there is an exact parallel to the true reading at Eph 2:4: διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην αὐτοῦ ἣν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς (cf. 7:39 for a similar constr.).

κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτοῖς. “I in them.” This has already been proclaimed as the ideal condition of the disciples of Christ (v. 23, where see note). Here the thought is, as in the preceding clause, of a growing sense of Christ’s presence in the believer’s heart. It is this for which the last petition is offered, “ut cor ipsorum theatrum sit et palaestra huius amoris” (Bengel). Ego in ipsis is the last aspiration of Jesus for His own, before He goes forth to meet death.

1 What is Christianity?, Eng. Tr., p. 132.

1 See Chase, The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church, p. 111.

אԠSinaiticus (δ 2). Leningrad. iv.

B Vaticanus (δ 1). Rome. Cent. iv.

Θ̠Koridethi (ε 050). Tiflis. vii-ix. Discovered at Koridethi, in Russian territory, and edited by Beermann & Gregory (Leipzig, 1913). The text is akin to that of fam. 13, fam. 1, and the cursives 28, 565, 700 See Lake and Blake in Harvard Theol. Review (July 1923) and Streeter, The Four Gospels. Cf. also J.T.S. Oct. 1915, April and July 1925.

A Alexandrinus (δ 4). British Museum. v. Cc. 6:50-8:52 are missing.

C Ephræmi (δ 3). Paris. v. Palimpsest. Contains considerable fragments of Jn.

N Purpureus Petropolitanus (ε 19). Dispersed through the libraries of Leningrad, Patmos, Rome, Vienna, and British Museum. vi. Some pages are missing. Edited by H. S. Cronin in Cambridge Texts and Studies (1899).

Γ̠(ε 70) Oxford and Leningrad. ix-x. Contains Son 1:1-13 8:3-15:24 19:6 to end.

Δ̠Sangallensis (ε 76). St. Gall. ix-x. Græco-Latin.

D Bezæ (δ 5). Cambridge. v-vi. Græco-Latin. Cc. 18:14-20:13 are missing in the Greek text, and the gap has been filled by a ninth-century scribe (Dsupp).

L Regius (ε 56). Paris. viii. Cc. 15:2-20 21:15-25 are missing.

W Freer (ε 014). Washington. iv-vi. Discovered in Egypt in 1906. The Gospels are in the order Mt., Jn., Lk., Mk. Collation in The Washington MS. of the Four Gospels, by H. A. Sanders (1912).

Diat. E. A. Abbott’s Diatessarica, including his Johannine Vocabulary and Johannine Grammar, Parts I.-X. (1900-1915).

1 Apostolic Fathers, p. 489.

1 See D.C.G. i. 909.

2 See Introd., p. cxli.

1 See Chase, The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church, p. 109, for the arguments in favour of τοῦ πονηροῦ being taken as masculine rather than neuter.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ver. 26. No doubt the light which has dawned in the hearts of the disciples through the revelation of God in Christ as yet only begins to appear. But Jesus pledges Himself to communicate to them for the future the fulness of the knowledge of the Father which He Himself possesses.

The future: I will make known, does not refer to the death of Jesus, as Weiss supposes, but, according to the preceding chapters (Joh 14:21; Joh 14:26, Joh 16:25), to the sending of the Holy Spirit and the entire work of Jesus in the Church after the day of Pentecost. Reuss well renders the admirable thought contained in the words: And that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them: “The love of God which, before the creation of the physical world, had its adequate object in the person of the Son (Joh 17:24), finds it, since the creation of the new spiritual world, in all those who are united with the Son.” What God desired in sending His Son here on earth was precisely that He might form for Himself in the midst of humanity a family of children like Him, of which He should be the elder Brother (Rom 8:29).

Jesus adds: And that I myself may be in them. Connected as it is with the preceding words, this expression must mean: “And in loving them thus, it will still be myself in them whom thou wilt love, and thus thy love will not attach itself to anything that is defiled.” Its object, indeed, will be Jesus living in them, His holy image reproduced in their person.

What simplicity, what calmness, what transparent depth in this whole prayer! “It is indeed,” as Gess says, “the only Son who here speaks to His Father. Everything in these beautiful words is supernatural, because He who speaks is the only Son who has come from heaven; but at the same time everything in them is natural, for He speaks as a son speaks to his father.” The feeling which is the soul of this prayer, the ardent zeal for the glory of God, is that which inspired Jesus throughout His whole life. His three petitions—that for His personal glorification, that for the consecration of His apostles and that for the glorification of the Church, are indeed the sentiments which must have filled His soul in view of the blow which was about to put an end to His earthly activity. In the details not a word has been met whose appropriateness and fitness to the given situation has not been proved by exegesis. Can it be possible to hold, with Baur, that, at the distance of more than a century, a Christian should have succeeded in reproducing thus the impressions of Jesus? This would be to say that there existed then another Jesus than Jesus Himself.

Weiss and Reuss hold, as we do, that this is the composition of an immediate witness. But they find in certain passages—in Joh 17:3 for example— the proof that the disciple has reproduced the thoughts of the Master after his own fashion. The second asks whether John had, then, in his hands tablets and pencil to take down word for word the prayer of Jesus.

But, if John truly regarded Jesus as the Logos, we ask once again how could the respect which he must have had for His words have permitted him to make Him speak, and especially pray, according to his own fancy? He undoubtedly did not have his pencil in hand; but the memory is proportionate to the attention and the attention to the interest; now must not that of John have been excited to the highest degree? On the other hand, the words of Jesus, simple, grave, earnest, were of a nature to impress themselves more deeply and distinctly on the heart of John than any other words. Moreover, it is not impossible that, at an inconsiderable remove of time from that evening, John should have felt the need of committing to writing what he recalled to mind of these last conversations and this prayer. Or again, the unceasingly renewed meditation upon these words engraved upon the tablets of his heart and ever refreshed by the action of the Spirit, may have supplied the place of any external means. This inward miracle, if one will call it so, is far less improbable than the artificial composition of such a prayer.

But is the profound calmness which reigns in this scene compatible with the agony in Gethsemane which immediately follows it in the other Gospels? Keim asserts that John by this narrative annihilates the Synoptical tradition.

The conflict in Gethsemane has the character of a sudden crisis, of a violent shock, in some sort of an explosion, after which calmness was re- established in the soul of Jesus as quickly as it had been troubled. This passing crisis has a double cause: the one natural, the singular impressibility of the soul of Jesus, of which we have seen so many proofs in our Gospel, particularly in ch. 11 and Joh 12:27. By virtue of the very purity of His nature, Jesus was accessible, as was no other man, to every lawful emotion. His soul resembled a magnetic needle, whose mobility is only equalled by the perseverance with which, in every oscillation, it tends to recover its normal direction. Gethsemane must have been for Jesus, not punishment, but the struggle with a view to the acceptance of punishment; and thus the anticipatory suffering of the cross. Such an anticipation is sometimes more painful than the reality itself. The supernatural cause is pointed out by Jesus Himself, Joh 14:30 : “The prince of this world is coming.” Comp. Luk 22:53 : “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” The extraordinary character of this agony betrays itself in its suddenness and even its violence. St. Luke had closed his narrative of the temptation in the desert with the words: “The devil withdrew from him, ἄχρι καιροῦ, until another favorable moment.” The hour of Gethsemane was that moment which Satan judged favorable to subject Jesus to the new test which he was reserving for Him. There is nothing here which is not in perfect accord with the normal development of Jesus’ life.

The sacerdotal prayer is, as it were, the amen added by Jesus to His work accomplished here on earth; it forms thus the climax of this part, which is intended to trace out the development of faith in the disciples (chs. 13-16), and corresponds, notwithstanding the difference of forms, with the passage in Joh 12:37-50, in which John gave his reflections on the history of Jewish unbelief (chs. 5-12).

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.