F. The Disciples’ Response (16:17–33)

17So some of his disciples said to each other, “What is this that he is saying to us? ‘A short time, and you do not see me, and again a short time, and you will see me’? And ‘because I am going to the Father’?” 18So they said, “What does this ‘short time’ mean? We don’t know what he is talking about.” 19Jesus could tell that they wanted to ask him, and he said to them, “Are you questioning each other because I said, ‘A short time, and you no longer see me, and again a short time, and you will see me’? 20Amen, amen, I say to you that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will be grieved, but your grief will be turned into joy. 21The woman, when she gives birth, has grief because her hour has come. But when the child is born, she no longer remembers the distress on account of the joy that a human being is born into the world. 22And so you have grief now, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy from you. 23And in that day you will ask me nothing. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name he will give you. 24Up to now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy might be fulfilled.

25These things I have spoken to you in parables. An hour is coming when I will speak to you no longer in parables, but I will report to you plainly about the Father. 26In that day you will ask in my name, and I am not saying to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf. 27For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. 28I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and going off to the Father.”

29His disciples said, “Look, now you are speaking plainly, and no longer telling a parable. 30Now we know that you know all things and have no need that anyone ask you. By this we believe that you came forth from God.” 31Jesus answered them, “Now you believe! 32Look, an hour is coming and has come that you will be scattered, each to his own home, and leave me all alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 33These things I have spoken to you so that in me you might have peace. In the world you have distress, but take courage, I have overcome the world!”

Finally the disciples break their long silence. For the first time since Judas’s question (14:22), they offer a reaction to what Jesus has said. Yet in contrast to 13:36–14:31, they speak not as individuals, but as a group, and quite noticeably not to Jesus directly, but only “to each other” (v. 17). They express somewhat repetitiously (vv. 17–18) their confusion about what he has just said (v. 16), while ignoring all that preceded it (14:23–16:15). Jesus takes note of the fact that they have still not questioned him directly and summarizes their confusion yet again (v. 19). Then he offers by way of explanation a parable about a woman in labor (vv. 20–21), which he promptly interprets for them (vv. 22–24). Finally, picking up some threads of his preceding long discourse, he tries to get through to them once again (vv. 25–28). At last they answer him directly, claiming that “now” they understand what he is saying (vv. 29–30). Whether they actually do or not is unclear (vv. 31–33), for his final verdict on their faith and understanding awaits the next chapter.

17–18 If Jesus’ riddle (v. 16) was designed to elicit a response from the disciples, it succeeds. The Gospel writer describes their confusion over it at some length. First, “So some of his disciples said to each other, ‘What is this that he is saying to us? “A short time, and you do not see me, and again a short time, and you will see me”?1 And “because I am going to the Father”?’ ” (v. 17). Then, somewhat redundantly, “So they said, ‘What does this “short time” mean? We don’t know what he is talking about’ ” (v. 18). In contrast to earlier questions voiced by single individuals and directed to Jesus as “Lord” (13:36; 14:5, 8, 22), these questions are spoken “to each other” (v. 17), like the questions and murmurings of Jesus’ antagonists in the first half of the Gospel (see, for example, 6:41–43, 52, 60–61; 7:35–36; see also 7:15, 25–27; 8:22; 10:19–21). Yet this hesitancy to speak directly to him is not unprecedented even for the disciples (see v. 5; also 4:27, 33; and compare 21:12). Jesus has noticed it already, and attributed it to their “grief” (vv. 5–6). The writer is less kind, accenting the disciples’ bewilderment by the use of repetition and redundancy. First, they quote the riddle in full, asking “What is this that he is saying to us?” Then, drawing on something Jesus said earlier, they cite the reason why they would not see him: “because I am going to the Father” (v. 10; this shows that they have heard more than just the final riddle). Not content with that, they continue, “What does this ‘short time’ mean? We don’t know what he is talking about.” In just two verses they speak of “a short time,” “again a short time,” and “this ‘short time,’ ” asking twice, “What is this?” and concluding “We don’t know what he is talking about.” Their ignorance sounds almost invincible.

19 Noticing that they still have not spoken to him directly, “Jesus could tell2 that they wanted to ask him, and he said to them, ‘Are you questioning each other3 because I said, “A short time, and you do not see me, and again a short time, and you will see me”?’ ” (v. 19). The word-for-word repetition of the riddle, now for the third time (see vv. 16, 17), gently mocks the disciples, calling attention to their bewilderment. Yet at the same time Jesus gives them the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging that, far from ignoring him, they “wanted to ask him” but did not, whether out of grief (as in v. 6) or for some other reason. Therefore he will answer the questions they have asked each other, but could not bring themselves to ask him: “What is this that he is saying to us?” (v. 17), and “What does this ‘short time’ mean?” (v. 18).

20 The explanation begins with an “Amen, amen” saying, the twenty-third in the Gospel (and the first since 14:12): “Amen, amen, I say to you that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will be grieved, but your grief will be turned into joy” (v. 20).4 The original riddle (v. 16) said nothing about “the world,” nor did the disciples in questioning each other about it. But now Jesus returns to the subject of “the world,” and the sharp contrast between what the “short time” (or “times”) of which he has just spoken will mean to “you” and what it will mean to “the world.” In that sense he revisits 14:19, where the contrast between the world’s perception and that of Jesus’ disciples was evident. But this time the contrast is not so much between two different perceptions of reality as between two different responses toward what is perceived. The reality is that Jesus is literally going away. He will be absent not only from the world, but also from the disciples. For a “short time” at least, they must put up with his absence, and consequently “weep and mourn.”5 What differentiates them from the world is not the experience of Jesus’ “real absence” but their emotional response to it. The world will “rejoice”6 at his absence, even as they are “grieved”7 (v. 20a). This is not surprising in view of the earlier warning that “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before you” (15:18). Because he has been a thorn in the world’s side, exposing its sin (see 15:22), the world will rejoice that he is gone.8

That much is essentially an explanation of the first half of the riddle: “A short time, and you no longer see me.” As for the second half, “and again a short time, and you will see me,” Jesus addresses that with the promise, “but your grief will be turned into joy” (v. 20b). His intention for the disciples all along has been “joy” (see 15:11), but “grief” has gripped them instead, even before his departure (see v. 6). “You will be grieved” (v. 20a), he now says, but in fact they are already grieved at even the prospect of his absence, too grieved to question him directly (vv. 17–18). Yet his original intent “that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be fulfilled” (15:11) will not be thwarted, for their grief “will be turned into joy.” What will be the turning point? Clearly, it has to do with the promise that they will “see” Jesus once more.9 Taking our cue from 14:19–20, we suspect that it is his resurrection (see also 20:20, “so the disciples rejoiced, seeing the Lord”). This is confirmed in part by what is not said. He does not say that the world’s “joy” will turn to “grief,” suggesting that this turning point is something of which the world is not even aware—quite plausibly his resurrection (see 14:19, “the world no longer sees me”; also Acts 10:41–42). Still, the riddle is not quite solved. Will the disciples’ grief turn to joy after “a short time,” or after two successive “short times” (see v. 16). They are still puzzled. An illustration or parable of some kind is needed, and Jesus quickly supplies one.

21 The parable centers on the two key words, “grief” and “joy,” in connection with childbirth: “The woman, when she gives birth, has grief because her hour has come.10 But when the child is born, she no longer remembers the distress, on account of the joy that a human being is born into the world” (v. 21). “The woman”11 is generic. While childbirth was a common metaphor for eschatological “distress” or tribulation prior to “the day of the Lord” in Judaism and early Christianity, this is any woman giving birth (as in 1 Thess 5:3), just as “the slave” (8:35; 15:15) is any slave, or “the son” (5:19; 8:35) is any son.12 She is not an allegorical figure representing either Israel or Jerusalem or the people of God (as, for example, in Isa 26:16–19; 66:7–9; Mic 4:9–10; 5:3; or Rev 12:2). Yet the parable does involve a comparison between her experience and that of the disciples. The comparison is a simple one: there is “grief” and then “joy,” but the joy far outweighs the grief.13 Jesus’ point is much the same as Paul’s: “For I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18), and “For this light temporary distress is achieving for us an immeasurable and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17).14 Most mothers will dispute the accuracy of the claim that “when the child is born, she no longer remembers the distress” (evidence perhaps that the Gospel writer was a man!), but the words are not intended literally. They are simply a way of making the point that the prospect of “joy” renders all the “grief” or “distress” that precedes it worthwhile (see Heb 12:2).

The parable comes as a surprise in one respect, in that the reason for the woman’s overwhelming joy is “that a human being15 is born into the world.” To be born “into the world” is evidently a good thing, even in the face of all that has been said about “the world” hating the disciples (15:18–25) and rejoicing at their grief (see v. 20). The positive imagery recalls “the true [Light] that illumines every human being16 who comes into the world” (1:9), reminding us that the dualism of this Gospel never lapses into world-denying Gnosticism. The disciples themselves, while not “of,” or “from” the world, are, and will be, emphatically “in” the world (see 17:11, 16), not only by virtue of having been “born” into it but by virtue of being “sent” (17:18), even as Jesus himself was both “born” (18:37) and “sent into the world” (for example, 3:17; 10:36). Yet implicit in the imagery is also an argument from the lesser to the greater, as the very real joy at physical birth hints at a greater joy transcending even that of a new mother.17

Jesus immediately makes the application explicit: “And so you have grief now, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy from you” (v. 22). “Now” confirms that “grief” (as in v. 6) is a present experience for the disciples, not something that begins only after “a short time.” The “short time” has already begun, for they have already felt the pain of their Teacher’s absence and expressed it, first by their questions (13:36–14:22), and then by their confused silence (vv. 5–6, 17–18). Here at least—in keeping with option (c) above (see pp. 838–39)—Jesus seems to leave room for only one “short time,” the one in which they already find themselves, a brief period after which their present grief will turn to joy. His use of the adverb “again” signals that he is accenting this second way of looking at the “short time.”18 The reader expects something like “but you will see me again,” in keeping with the thrice-repeated promise, “and you will see me” (vv. 16, 17, and 19). Instead, quite unexpectedly, he promises, “but I will see you again,”19 pointedly reminding them that their reunion with him, and consequently their heart’s joy, depends on his initiative alone, not on their moods or perceptions.20

The promise, “I will see you again,” also recalls Jesus’ terminology earlier in answering the questions of individual disciples: “I am coming back” (14:3), and “I am coming to you” (14:18, 28). The vocabulary of “not seeing” and “seeing” has now replaced that of “going away” and “coming,” yet the experience described is the same, and with the same ambiguities. There Jesus’ “coming” could refer either to his resurrection and the coming of the Advocate (14:18), or to his “second” coming at the close of the age (14:3), or it could be left uncertain (14:28). The same is true here. A reader who knows the end of the story will know that Jesus and the disciples saw each other again when he was raised from the dead (20:14, 18, 20, 25, 29), and that they “rejoiced” (20:20), yet it could hardly be said of them that “no one takes your joy from you.” Their life from then on was not uninterrupted joy, nor is that of the reader. Rather, grief and joy exist alongside each other in the present age, even after Jesus’ resurrection (see 21:17, “Peter was grieved”). The resurrection appearances of chapters 20 and 21 provide a glimpse of eternal joy, but only a glimpse. Turning from grief to joy is not something that happens once for all in the life of the disciple, but something that happens again and again. The “short time” in which we live as disciples of Jesus and readers of the Gospel can be a time of either grief or joy, depending on a variety of factors—external circumstances, our prayers, our faith, and above all the ministry of the risen Jesus in the person of the Advocate. As readers we will resonate at times with the first way of looking at it (“you do not see me”), and at other times (“again”) with the second (“you will see me,” or “I will see you”). Jesus is conspicuous among us, whether by his presence or his absence. Ambiguity is evident among the disciples in the rest of the chapter (see vv. 31–33), even as it doubtless was among the Gospel’s first readers, and no less so today.

23–24 Jesus’ explanation of the parable (v. 21) continues (vv. 23–24), confirming the conclusion that “your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy from you” (v. 22). “And in that day,” he promises, “you will ask me nothing” (v. 23a). “In that day” recalls an earlier promise that “In that day, you will come to know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20). “Joy” rests on knowledge, and he has repeatedly promised the disciples knowledge (see also 15:15). “You will ask me nothing”21 could mean either “you will ask me for nothing”—that is, in prayer,22 or “you will ask me no questions.”23 In support of the former, the emphatic “me” suggests to some translators that Jesus is distinguishing himself from the Father: the disciples will not need to pray to him or through him, but will have direct access to the Father (see vv. 26–27).24 Yet the verb “to ask”25 is used only of Jesus’ prayers in this Gospel (see 14:16; 16:26; 17:9, 15, 20), not of the prayers of disciples or believers (1 Jn 5:16 is a possible, though unlikely, exception). When the disciples are the subject, it normally means to ask questions (as in vv. 5 and 19; also 9:2). In the very next sentence, when the subject turns to prayer (v. 23b), a different verb for “ask” is used,26 not once but three times. Here the meaning is, “you will ask me no questions”—not because they are too grieved (as in v. 6) or too confused to ask (as in v. 19), but because they will have no need to ask.27 “In that day” (here as in 14:20) they will understand what they do not understand now. Their questions will have been answered. The emphatic “me” simply identifies Jesus as the Source of truth, who will reveal all things freely without being questioned (see v. 30).28

Another kind of “asking” is needed, however, even commanded. While the disciples will have no more need to ask questions (v. 23a), they will always need to “ask”29 in prayer. Without hesitation Jesus continues: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name he will give you” (v. 23b). This twenty-fourth “Amen, amen” pronouncement in the Gospel does not introduce a new topic, but adds a necessary qualification to what has already been said. “Joy” (v. 22) rests on knowledge to be sure, but the transition from grief to joy is accomplished only through prayer. The pronouncement itself is nothing new, for he has already expressed his intent (in almost the same words) “that whatever you ask of the Father in my name he might give you”—this as the means by which the disciples would “go and bear fruit” (15:16). What he stated there as an intention is stated here as a fact. Prayer “in his name” will be answered because it is the prayer of those who know him, and do not have to be told what he would want.

The promise of answered prayer is for “that day”30 (v. 23a) when Jesus will see them again (v. 22) and make himself known to them, yet he boldly invites them to claim it even now: “Up to now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy might be fulfilled” (v. 24).31 The reference to “your joy” brings him full circle back to the application of the parable about the woman (“but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy from you,” v. 22), and back still further to his stated intention “that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be fulfilled” (15:11). With this, he confirms that the transition from “grief” to “joy” is not limited to an eschatological moment, whether the resurrection of Jesus or his final coming, but is something that happens again and again, above all through the prayers of those who grieve.

25 Once again (as in 14:25; 15:11; 16:1, 4, 6), the expression “These things I have spoken to you”32 marks a rhetorical pause in the discourse, drawing a distinction (as in 16:1) between the present and a future “hour” to come: “These things I have spoken to you in parables. An hour is coming when I will speak to you no longer in parables, but I will report to you plainly33 about the Father” (v. 25). But here (in contrast to 16:2), Jesus speaks of the coming “hour” as a time not simply of persecution, but of open revelation and free access to God—all the more necessary, perhaps, because of persecution to come. The phrase “in parables”34 is probably broad enough to refer both to the riddle that first aroused the disciples’ curiosity, “A short time, and you no longer see me, and again a short time, and you will see me” (v. 16), and to the actual parable that followed, about a woman giving birth (v. 21, like 10:1–5 a “parable of normalcy” in everyday life). The former confused them (vv. 17–19); the latter was an attempt to clarify, yet nothing in the text suggests that the clarification was successful. Confusion still reigns. But when “parable” gives way to “plain” speech, then (and only then) will they understand.

“Plainly” is the same word used earlier to mean “openly” or “publicly” (7:4, 13, 26).35 The meaning, however, is closer to what was implied by the Jews at the Rededication, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (10:24, in contrast to figurative language about shepherds and sheep), or to the instance in which Jesus, after referring to Lazarus as having “fallen asleep” (11:11), finally told the disciples “plainly” that “Lazarus died” (11:14). Here, by contrast, the promise to speak “plainly” looks beyond the present scene to a coming “hour” when Jesus will continue to speak to the disciples (see v. 12, “I have still more to say to you, but you are unable to bear it now”), but only through the Advocate (see v. 13, “But when that one comes, the Spirit of truth, he will lead you in all the truth”). In this way, he promises, “I will report to you plainly about the Father.” The verb “report,” or “report back,”36 occurs only here in John’s Gospel,37 but is particularly appropriate in a setting which seems to presuppose Jesus’ departure to the Father and his return in the person of the Advocate.38 The content of his “report” is “about the Father,” in keeping with what has been the content of his revelation all along (see, for example, 8:28; 14:9, 24; 15:15). From here on (vv. 26–28) his emphasis is resolutely on “the Father.”

26–27 “In that day,” Jesus continues, “you will ask in my name, and I am not saying to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf” (v. 26). “In that day” confirms the impression that he is speaking of a future time after his departure (as in v. 23 and 14:20), a “day” indistinguishable from that coming “hour” when he will speak “plainly” and not in parables (v. 25). It is, as we have seen, a day not for questions but for prayer (v. 23). He has invited the disciples even now to “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy might be fulfilled” (v. 24), but he implies that “in that day” their relation to the Father will be closer and more direct than it is now. “You will ask in my name,” he says, just as he has said all along (vv. 23–24; also 14:13; 15:16), but he goes on to define what that means, or more precisely what it does not mean. It does not mean that he will intercede for them with the Father, or that he will somehow take their prayers and present them to the Father. On the contrary, he says, “I am not saying that I will ask39 the Father on your behalf.” In the following chapter, he will still be heard “asking” on the disciples’ behalf (see 17:9, 15, 20), but “in that day,” after he goes to the Father, he will no longer need to do so, for their own access to the Father will be immediate and direct.40 He makes this explicit by adding, “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (v. 27). This implies that of course their prayers to the Father will be answered (as we knew already from v. 23), but there is no need to spell it out. The Father’s love for the disciples, of course, consists of far more than just answering their prayers.

The notion that the Father loves us because we love Jesus echoes 14:21 (“the person who loves me will be loved by my Father”) and 14:23 (“If anyone loves me, … my Father will love him”) almost verbatim.41 The main difference is that there the proof that a person loved Jesus was keeping his “commands” (14:21), or his “word” (14:23), while the proof here, he says, is believing “that I came forth from God” (v. 27). The test is creedal here, not behavioral. Jesus’ acknowledgment that the disciples have in fact believed this can be grounded in Peter’s confession that “we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:69), in light of Jesus’ subsequent self-identification as he “whom the Father consecrated [that is, “made holy”] and sent into the world” (10:36).

28 Jesus next expands the brief clause, “that I came forth from God,”42 into a full summary of his mission that could serve admirably as a summary of the whole Gospel of John: “I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world. Again,43 I am leaving the world44 and going off to the Father” (v. 28).45 The first two clauses echo what he said long before to the Jews at the Tent festival (“I came forth from God, and here I am,” 8:42), while the first and last clauses state in his own words what the reader has known from the very beginning of the present scene (“that he had come from God and was going to God,” 13:3). This is the whole package, the sum of what he wants his disciples to understand and believe.

29 At long last the disciples are able to speak directly to Jesus: “His disciples said,46 ‘Look, now you are speaking plainly, and no longer telling a parable. Now we know that you know all things and have no need that anyone ask you. By this we believe that you came forth from God’ ” (vv. 29–30). These are the only words the disciples as a group have addressed to Jesus in the entire farewell discourse. At first, some of them had spoken to him individually, addressing him repeatedly as “Lord” (13:6, 9, 25, 36; 14:5, 8, 22), but since then they have spoken only once, and that to each other, not to Jesus (vv. 17–18). Finally, they break their long silence, but these are also their last words before the discourse comes to an end. Have they understood, or not?

Clearly, the disciples think that “now” they understand Jesus. Their repetition of “now” (vv. 29, 30) has the effect of finishing his sentence for him. He has said, “An hour is coming”47 (v. 25), and they in effect supply the conclusion, “and now is” (in keeping with 4:23 and 5:25). He spoke of a coming “hour” in which “I will speak to you no longer in parables, but I will report to you plainly about the Father” (v. 25), and their response is that the “hour” has already begun. The question is, Are they being premature. Have they “jumped the gun” with their jubilant claim? Earlier, the expressions “the hour is coming” and “the hour is coming and now is” could either be used interchangeably (as in 4:21, 23), or differentiated (as in 5:25, 28). In the present discourse, the shorter form (“the hour is coming”) seems to have been used for events that are future from the standpoint of Jesus, but present in the experience of the readers (vv. 2, 25). The question is whether or not the Gospel writer intends a sharp distinction between the experience of the readers of the Gospel and the experience of these original disciples on the scene. Probably not. The disciples’ impression that Jesus is “speaking plainly, and no longer telling a parable” (v. 29) is, after all, accurate. “I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world,” and “I am leaving the world and going off to the Father,” are about as “plain” as speech can be.48

30 From the disciples’ recognition of “plain” speech a confession of faith emerges: “Now we know that you know all things and have no need that anyone ask you,” and “By this we believe that you came forth from God” (v. 30).49 The acknowledgment “that you know all things and have no need that anyone ask you” is somewhat anticlimactic, for it simply repeats in the disciples’ own words something Jesus has said already: that “in that day you will ask me nothing” (v. 23). They seem to have understood that pronouncement correctly: “in that day” their questions will have been answered.50 To a modern reader, the words, “you know all things and have no need that anyone ask you,” sound somehow wrong, for one expects, “you know all things and have no need to ask anyone.” But the notion that Jesus “knows all things” is not an abstract theological claim. It is closely linked to his role as Revealer. If he knows all things, he will reveal all things without being questioned. This he will do, he has implied, through the Advocate who “will lead you in all the truth” (see vv. 12, 13). The initiative in revelation rests with him, not with the disciples.

The use of questions to solicit divine revelation was a familiar technique in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature (and in later gnostic writings), and not least in this very Gospel (quite conspicuously in the four questions of Peter, Thomas, Philip, and Judas after the footwashing). But as the discourse moved toward its close, Jesus seized the initiative by answering the disciples’ unspoken questions without being asked (see vv. 19–22). This, he claimed, would be the model for the coming “day” when he would see them again (v. 23), and his disciples, echoing his words, now claim that it has already gone into effect. The same principle appears to be at work in the second-century Shepherd of Hermas, in which the prophet is told that “no spirit given by God is consulted,51 but having divine power it speaks all things from its own authority, because it comes from above, from the power of the divine spirit. But the spirit that, when consulted, speaks in light of human desires is earthly and insubstantial, having no power. And it does not speak at all unless it is consulted.”52 Here, too, the point seems to be that Jesus does not have to be “questioned” or consulted, but takes the initiative in revelation.

The recognition that Jesus knows and reveals all things triggers the disciples’ confession “that you came forth from God.”53 In comparison to most confessions in this Gospel, it is a modest confession indeed, for it is not attributed to a particular person, nor does it draw on any of the great christological titles, such as “the Christ” (11:27), or “Son of God” (1:34, 49; 11:27), or “Holy One of God” (6:69), or “Lord” and “God” (20:28). It shows no advance, in fact, over what Nicodemus recognized almost from the beginning, that Jesus had “come from God as a teacher” (3:2)! In the present context, moreover, it too is anticlimactic, merely confirming what Jesus already said: “you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (v. 27). It does not begin to match the full confession he seemed to want to elicit from them when he added, “Again, I am leaving the world and going off to the Father” (v. 28)—much less the joyful affirmation that “I am coming back” (14:3), or “I am coming to you” (14:18, 28), or “I will see you again” (v. 22). Unless the reader is expected to fill in the gaps to encompass the full scope of Jesus’ mission to the world, their confession is not so much premature and overblown as weak, belated, and long overdue. Not much here for Jesus to build on, but build on it he will (see 17:6–8).

31 The disciples’ confession of what they “know” and “believe” (v. 30) will form the basis of Jesus’ long prayer in the following chapter, but first he pauses to remind them that they still have a long way to go (vv. 31–33). His ironic reply to their confession54 can be read as either a question (“Do you now believe?”), or an exclamation, probably intended ironically (“Now you believe!”). Most English translations read it as a question,55 yet Jesus has already stated without qualification that they do in fact believe precisely what they have just said they believe (see v. 27). It is unlikely that their confirmation of it (v. 30) would have led him to have second thoughts as to their sincerity. Their belief is real, but it is “now,” that is, temporary. It will not stand the test of time, and of persecution (see v. 2). In choosing a different word for “now” from the one his disciples have just used,56 he avoids mocking them, yet his comment reminds them that their confidence is misplaced. “Now,” on their lips means “already,” while on Jesus’ lips it means “for the time being.” Hard times are coming, and they are not prepared.57

32 “Look,” he continues, “an hour is coming and has come that you will be scattered, each to his own home, and leave me all alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (v. 32). For the third time in the chapter he uses the expression “an hour is coming,” recalling simultaneously his dire prediction of excommunication and death (v. 2) and the glad prospect of “plain” speaking and direct access to God in prayer (v. 25). In the second instance, as we have seen, the disciples virtually finished his sentence for him, announcing that the “hour” had already come (vv. 29–30). This time he finishes his own sentence (as in 4:23 and 5:25)—“an hour is coming and has come”58—revisiting instead the earlier warning of persecution (v. 2).

The focus of the prophecy is not on the specifics of what the disciples will suffer at the hands of either “the world” or “the Jews” (as in v. 2), but on the effect all this will have on them. “You will be scattered,”59 Jesus tells them, “each to his own home, and leave me all alone.” Having warned them explicitly against being “made to stumble” (v. 1), he now acknowledges that they will in fact do exactly that. The prediction, “you will be scattered,” corresponds to Jesus’ words in Mark that “you will all be made to stumble” (Mk 14:27; also Mt 26:31). The verb “scattered,” in fact, recalls the accompanying biblical quotation in Mark and Matthew (from Zech 13:7): “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” In John’s Gospel, as in the other two, the reference functions as an explicit prediction of the disciples’ desertion and flight at Jesus’ arrest (see Mk 14:50–51; Mt 26:56), even though in John’s Gospel, as we will see, that event is narrated differently (see 18:8–9). This is evident from the words, “and leave me all alone,” referring to Jesus’ suffering and death. Yet those “scattered, each to his own home” are not just the disciples on the scene but all believers everywhere, all those in danger of being “made to stumble” at the prospect of expulsion from the synagogue, or even death (see v. 2). Their time of being “scattered” is their time of “grief” (see vv. 20, 22). Not only will Jesus’ immediate disciples leave him “all alone”60 in his passion, but they themselves, and their followers, will be left alone in the wake of his departure. He has said, “I will not leave you orphaned” (14:18), yet he now acknowledges times in their experience when their sense of his absence and their own isolation (temporary though it may be) will be very real and very strong.

Closing on a note of hope, Jesus adds, “and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” He has said as much twice before to the Pharisees at the Tent festival, first to enhance his authority to pass judgment (8:16), but then in a more sweeping way to assert a relationship that “always” exists: “And the One who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that please him” (8:29). If the Father has been with the Son throughout his ministry, there is no reason to believe that he will desert him just because the disciples do. And if the pronouncement holds out hope for Jesus in his passion, it does so for the scattered disciples as well. They have been told that “the Father himself loves you” (v. 27), and while it has not yet been made explicit, they have every reason to believe that as “children of God who are scattered” they will at last be “gathered into one” (see 11:52). Their grief will turn to joy, as we have seen, not once for all in a single moment but again and again, through prayer and through the ministry of the Advocate.

33 The expression, “These things I have spoken to you,”61 finally does what the reader expected it to do all along. It brings the discourse to a close. Here (as in 15:11; 16:1, 4) it is followed by a purpose clause: “These things I have spoken to you so that in me you might have peace. In the world you have distress, but take courage, I have overcome the world!” (v. 33). Earlier, he stated his purpose both positively (to bring joy, 15:11), and negatively (to warn against “stumbling,” 16:1, 4). This time he combines warning and assurance, with the good news that in the end assurance and hope have the last word. He visualizes the disciples after his departure living simultaneously “in me” (as in 14:20; 15:2, 4–7), where they will have “peace,” and “in the world,” where “distress”62 awaits them. His final word to them is “Take courage, I have overcome63 the world.” If chapters 15 and 16 are indeed a “second” farewell discourse, as many have proposed, then the second discourse ends on a note reminiscent of Jesus’ words near the close of the first, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let no one’s heart be shaken, nor let it be fearful!” (14:27). The dualism is evident in both places. Jesus and his disciples are at war with “the world,” and “the world” is already defeated in principle. His victory over the world is theirs as well, a victory confirmed and accomplished in the long prayer to follow (17:1–26), and explicitly claimed for Christian believers both in 1 John (see 2:13–14; 4:4; 5:4–5) and in the book of Revelation (see 3:21; 5:5; 12:11; 15:2; 17:14; 21:7). But as for the disciples on the scene, they are not heard from again.

G. The Prayer for the Disciples (17:1–26)

1These things Jesus spoke, and when he had lifted his eyes to heaven he said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son might glorify you, 2just as you gave him authority over all flesh, so that all that you have given him he might give them life eternal. 3And this is the eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ. 4I glorified you on the earth, having completed the work you have given me that I should do. 5And now you, Father, glorify me in your own presence, with the glory I had in your presence before the world was.

6I revealed your name to the men you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7Now they have known that all things you have given me are from you, 8because the words that you gave me I have given to them, and they received, and they came to know truly that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me.

9I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you have given me, because they are yours, 10and all mine are yours and yours mine, and I am glorified in them. 11And I am no longer in the world, and they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. 12When I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me, and I guarded them, and none of them is lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you, and these things I am speaking in the world so that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14I have given them your word, and the world hated them, because they are not from the world, just as I am not from the world. 15I am asking not that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. 16They are not from the world, just as I am not from the world. 17Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is the truth. 18Just as you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world, 19and on their behalf I consecrate myself, so that they too might be consecrated in truth.

20And not for these alone do I ask, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21so that all might be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that these too might be in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me. 22And I, the glory that you have given me I have given to them, so that they might be one just as we are one—23I in them and you in me—so that they might be perfected into one, so that the world might know that you sent me and loved them just as you loved me. 24Father, that which you have given me, I want them to be with me where I am, so that they might see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25Righteous Father, and yet the world did not know you, but I knew you, and these men knew that you sent me. 26And I made known to them your name, and I will make known, so that the love with which you loved me might be in them, and I in them.

Discourse now gives way to prayer, a long prayer addressed to God as “Father” (vv. 1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25), revisiting most of the themes of the preceding discourse. In particular, the prayer builds positively on the disciples’ rather modest confession that “By this we believe that you came forth from God” (16:30). Their confession means that they “have kept your word,” he reports to the Father (v. 6), in that “they have known that all things you have given me are from you” (v. 7), and have come to “know truly that I came forth from you, and … believed that you sent me” (v. 8; also v. 25). At the same time the prayer builds negatively on Jesus’ warning that they “will be scattered, each to his own home, and leave me all alone” (16:32). The repeated petitions “that they may be one just as we are” (see vv. 11, 21–23) are best understood against the background of that prediction. Those “scattered” in the world are those who stand in need of prayer for protection and unity (compare 11:52, “that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered into one”). In that sense the prayer, traditionally known as Jesus’ “high-priestly” prayer (on the basis of vv. 17 and 19), could equally be viewed as the Shepherd’s prayer (see 10:16), for its concerns are both pastoral and priestly.

Structurally, the prayer can be divided into six parts: first, Jesus prays to the Father for his own glorification on the basis of what he has accomplished in the world (vv. 1–5); second, he points to his disciples as trophies of his ministry in the world (vv. 6–8); third, he prays for their safety in the world, their unity, and their mission to the world (vv. 9–19); fourth, he prays for those who are not yet disciples, but “believe in me through their word,” and for the unity of them all in the Father and the Son, so that even the world might believe and know what the Father has done (vv. 20–23); fifth, he states what he “wants” finally for his disciples (v. 24); sixth and last, he summarizes once again both the results of his ministry and his intent for those who believe (vv. 25–26).

1–2 Echoing Jesus’ own concluding words (“These things I have spoken to you,” 16:33), the Gospel writer continues the narrative: “These things Jesus spoke,1 and when he had lifted his eyes to heaven he said, ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son might glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all flesh, so that all that you have given him he might give them life eternal’ ” (vv. 1–2). In “lifting his eyes to heaven” he turns his attention away from the disciples and toward God. They are presumably still present, because when he makes his exit they leave with him (18:1), but they are silent throughout, and there is no evidence that they can even hear what he is saying. To all intents and purposes, he is alone with the Father, just as he was at Gethsemane in the other Gospels when the disciples were asleep. Jesus has “lifted his eyes” upward in prayer once before, at the tomb of Lazarus (11:41),2 where instead of offering a petition he simply thanked the Father that he had already been heard (11:42). In both places, he addresses God as “Father,” as he does consistently in the Gospel tradition, but the petition, “Glorify your Son,” recalls rather 12:28, where he corrected “Father, save me from this hour” (12:27) to “Father, glorify your name.” The parallel is heightened by a common reference to the “hour,” echoing 12:23, “The hour has come that the Son of man might be glorified” (see also 13:1). Here the coming “hour” does double duty, alluding both to Jesus’ own impending death and to the consequent scattering of the disciples in an “hour” that is both “coming” and “has come” (16:32).

The prayer, “Glorify your Son, so that the Son might glorify you” (v. 1) evokes at the same time Jesus’ first words after the departure of Judas Iscariot, “Now the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in him” (13:31).3 The “glorification” of which he speaks is mutual. The prayer here suggests that the Father first glorifies the Son, and the Son consequently glorifies the Father, but it can just as easily be the other way around (as in vv. 4 and 5). When the Son is glorified the Father is glorified, and vice versa (see also 11:4). But what does “glorified” mean concretely, whether for the Father or for the Son? Its meaning has to be determined from the context. As far as the Son is concerned, it is an oversimplification to say that Jesus is simply praying that he might die on the cross. Throughout the farewell discourse he has spoken of his death as a departure to the Father, and it appears likely here that he wants to be “glorified” in the sense of being reunited with the Father (he will make this explicit in v. 5). And what does it mean for the Son to “glorify” the Father? He explains this in the next clause, “just as you gave him authority over all flesh, so that all that you have given him he might give them life eternal” (v. 2). This second purpose clause clarifies the first: the Son will “glorify” the Father, he says, by giving “life eternal” to “all that you have given him”—that is, to the disciples (see 6:37, 39).4 Most immediately, the disciples are those whose feet Jesus washed and who have just now confessed, “By this we believe that you came forth from God” (16:30). Yet they represent a wider group of all who have believed in Jesus so far, including the Samaritans, the royal official and his household in chapter 4, the man born blind, and women disciples such as Martha and Mary. While “authority over all flesh”5 hints at even broader horizons,6 the accent is specifically on believers, as the rest of the prayer will demonstrate (see, for example, v. 9, “I do not ask on behalf of the world”). His words to the Father here echo his words to “the Jews” at the Rededication festival, where he referred to his disciples as his “sheep,” adding, “And I give them life eternal, and they will never ever be lost” (10:28).7 For the moment at least, “authority over all flesh” matters less than the authority to confer eternal life on those who believe.8

3 So crucial is this “eternal life” that the Gospel writer, blending his words with the words of Jesus, inserts a definition: “And this is the eternal life,9 that they might know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (v. 3). The definition functions much like the Gospel writer’s characteristic narrative asides, yet it is not a narrative aside, for the writer clearly wants to put it on the lips of Jesus. Its closest kinship is with certain passages where Jesus is abruptly represented as speaking of himself in the third person and from the Gospel writer’s postresurrection viewpoint (see, for example, 3:13, 16–21; 6:27, 33). Its uniqueness lies in its being part of a prayer and in its use of the actual name, “Jesus Christ”—one of only two occurrences of the full name in the entire Gospel (the other being 1:17). Obviously, the use of the name undercuts to some degree the writer’s intention of attributing the words to Jesus himself, yet it is little more than an extension of the practice of representing Jesus as speaking of himself in the third person as “the Son of man” (a title he almost certainly did use), and “the Son” (a title he may well have used).

Like the narrative asides, the definition of eternal life is for the reader’s benefit, despite being addressed to God, as is the designation of the Father as “the only true God.” God the Father knows who he is, and does not need to have “eternal life” defined for him! But for the reader of John’s Gospel it is crucial that “eternal life” be defined as knowledge revealed through Jesus the Word. The phrase “the only true God,” though firmly rooted in Jewish monotheism, nevertheless echoes some of Jesus’ rebukes to “the Jews” themselves in earlier settings. Despite their monotheism, they did not “seek the glory that comes from the Only God” (5:44), nor did they understand that “the One who sent me is True, whom you do not know” (7:28). In this Gospel, “you, the only true God,” and “him whom you sent, Jesus Christ,” are inextricably linked. Neither can be known apart from the other. The ending of 1 John draws the same conclusion: “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, that we might know the True One, and we are in the True One, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and life eternal” (1 Jn 5:20). In much the same way, the definition of eternal life here upholds Jewish monotheism as the writer understands it, while at the same time reinforcing for the reader the Gospel’s opening line, that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1).

4–5 Jesus now reverses the order of his opening petition (“Glorify your Son, so that the Son might glorify you,” v. 1) in such a way that the Son’s glorification of the Father comes first: “I glorified you on the earth.10 … And now you, Father, glorify me in your own presence, with the glory I had in your presence before the world was” (vv. 4–5, italics added).11 More specifically, he has glorified the Father on earth by “having completed the work12 you have given me that I should do” (v. 4). Long before, and in a very different setting, he has said, “My food is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work” (4:34). The nature of that “work” he will spell out shortly (vv. 6–8), but for the moment he mentions it only briefly, as the basis for the twin petitions, “Glorify your Son” (v. 1) and “glorify me in your own presence” (v. 5). The result is a kind of chiasm:

a “Glorify your Son” (v. 1a)

b “So that the Son might glorify you” (v. 1b)

b′ “I have glorified you” (v. 4)

a′ “And now glorify me” (v. 5)

Jesus is asking the Father for “glorification” (a and a′) on the basis of having glorified the Father already on earth (b′), and with the promise of continuing to do so (b). This continuing glorification of the Father by the Son is probably best understood as the continuing gift of eternal life to all those whom the Father has given him (see v. 2), with life understood as knowledge of “the only True God” (v. 3).13 This will take place through the testimony of the Advocate among those who are disciples already, and in the end through the written Gospel itself (see 20:31).

The “glory” for which Jesus is asking is here defined as “the glory that I had in your presence14 before the world was” (v. 5). This is consistent with the notion that this “glory” is understood as the Son’s reunion with the Father, but more specifically it revisits the Gospel’s opening affirmation that “the Word was with God,15 and the Word was God” (1:1). While the allusion to the Gospel’s beginning is indirect rather than direct,16 the reader is expected to know that Jesus was “with God in the beginning” (1:2), and that he shared in the Father’s glory (see 1:14b). He alluded occasionally to his preexistence, in such expressions as “I came down from heaven” (6:38), or “[what] if you see the Son of man going up where he was at first?” (6:62), or “The things I have seen in the Father’s presence I speak” (8:38), or “before Abraham came to be, I am” (8:58). But more often he spoke ambiguously of having “come into the world,” or being “sent” from the Father, expressions consistent with preexistence while not quite demanding it (see 1:6, where John too is a man “sent from God”). Jesus’ language here in prayer to the Father, accenting where he came from and where he is going, recalls his “plain” revelation to the disciples just a few verses earlier, “I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and going off to the Father” (16:28). Turning his face now toward the Father, he asks that his journey back to the Father might begin. At the same time, the disciples are very much on his mind (see vv. 2–3), and the future glorification for which Jesus prays is, as we will see (v. 24), as much for their sakes as for his.

6 Jesus now interrupts the petition proper in order to report to the Father more explicitly in just what way “I glorified you on the earth, having completed the work you have given me that I should do” (v. 4). What exactly was “the work” he was given to do, and has he in fact “completed” it? At this point in the narrative, it cannot be the work of dying on the cross (see 19:30, “It is finished!”). Rather, it is the work of revealing the Father’s “name” (that is, the Father himself) in the world. From the start, Jesus made it clear that “I have come in my Father’s name,” but his experience with the Jewish leaders was that “you do not accept me” (5:43). All his works were done “in my Father’s name,” he said, but were met with unbelief, except by those whom he called his “sheep” (see 10:25–26). They alone accepted him, and in doing so accepted his Father as well. In learning to know Jesus as Son of God, they have come to know God in a new way, as Father of Jesus—and so, though still only implicitly, as their own Father (see 20:17). Accordingly, he can report to the Father that “I revealed your name17 to the men18 you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word” (v. 6). He speaks of his gathered disciples as if they were not in the same room. They are, he claims, the Father’s gift to him, the living trophies of his mission (see v. 2; also 6:37, 39; 10:29).

In all this, he is giving them the benefit of the doubt, just as he did earlier when he said, “you are friends, because everything I heard from my Father I made known to you” (15:14). He also said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word” (14:23), and “The person who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you all hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” (14:24), with the implicit invitation to do exactly that—love him and thereby “keep his word,” which he claimed was the very word of the Father. Now we learn that they have in fact done so, for Jesus explicitly tells the Father, “they have kept your word” (v. 6). This is by no means obvious to the reader, for, as we have seen, after an initial set of questions the disciples have been silent through most of Jesus’ farewell discourse. The conclusion that they have “kept the Father’s word” appears to be based on their sole declarative statement at the end, “Now we know that you know all things.… By this we believe that you came forth from God” (16:30).19 To be sure, a stronger case can be made in their favor by going further back, to when Peter, speaking for them all, said, “Lord, to whom shall we turn? You have words of eternal life, and we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68–69). Implicit in the title “the Holy One of God” was, as we have seen, the notion that Jesus was the One “whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world” (10:36). It was on that basis, presumably, that Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (10:27), and yet they seem to have made little if any progress since then. They have been slow learners at best throughout the farewell discourse. Jesus himself practically articulated their confession for them when he said, “I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and going off to the Father” (16:28), and all they did was echo the first half of what he said (“By this we believe that you came forth from God,” v. 30).20 The reader’s impression is that seldom has so much been built on so little.21 It appears that this final prayer of Jesus is itself an operation of divine grace, transforming the shaky faith of the disciples into something firm and lasting.22

7–8 As Jesus, continues, the reference to 16:30 becomes more and more unmistakable: “Now they have known that all things you have given me are from you, because the words that you gave me I have given to them, and they received, and they came to know truly that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me” (vv. 7–8). “Now they have known”23 echoes almost verbally the disciples’ own claim, “Now we know”24 (16:30a). What they “knew,” as we have seen, was that Jesus knew all things and revealed all things freely from God without being asked (see 16:30a). This, they believed, was because he “came forth from God” (16:30b). Putting their confession into his own words, Jesus tells the Father, “they came to know truly that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me” (v. 8b). At the same time, in claiming that “the words25 that you gave me I have given to them, and they received” (v. 8a), he still seems to have in mind Peter’s earlier acknowledgment that “You have words of life eternal, and we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68), and even prior to that the principle that “to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name” (1:12). Just as in verse 6, Jesus builds immediately on 16:30, but at the same time more broadly on all that has gone before.

In this report to the Father, Jesus focuses attention on the Father, not himself. The repetition of the emphatic “you,” “your,” and “yours” is striking: “your name” (v. 6), “Yours they were” (v. 6), “your word” (v. 6), “all things you have given me are from you” (v. 7),26 “I came forth from you” (v. 8), “that you sent me” (v. 8; italics added throughout). Jesus commends his disciples to the Father not so much because they have recognized something about him as because they have recognized the Father—even though they are still unable to speak of “the Father” explicitly. Convinced as ever that “the Father himself loves” the disciples because they have “loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (16:27), he will now present them to the Father in prayer.

9–10 Jesus now begins intercessory prayer: “I ask27 on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you have given me, because they are yours, and all mine are yours and yours mine, and I am glorified in them” (vv. 9–10). The verb “to pray”28 is never used in this Gospel, only the verbs for “ask.”29 In keeping with the dualism of this Gospel, Jesus does not “ask,” or pray, “on behalf of the world,” but solely on behalf of the disciples, whom he continues to refer to as “those you have given me” (as in vv. 2, 6), for all the reasons he has just set forth (vv. 6–8). This does not mean that he is unconcerned about the world, only that his concern for the world is indirect rather than direct. His plans for the world, whatever they may be, are channeled through the disciples, and them alone (see vv. 21, 23). His mission to the world is over, even as theirs is about to begin (see v. 18).

Even though the Father has given the disciples to Jesus, he has not given them away. They still belong to the Father, and for this reason Jesus prays to the Father on their behalf. “They are yours,” he tells the Father, adding that “all mine are yours30 and yours mine,” and “I am glorified in them.” The abrupt neuter plurals31 are striking. The apparent antecedents are masculine plurals: “the men you gave me out of the world” (v. 6), and who “received” and “came to know” and “believed” the truth (v. 8). Why does he switch to the neuter? It is tempting to think of the clause as wholly parenthetical, a virtual narrative aside placed on the lips of Jesus, as if he were generalizing, reflecting on the universality of what he and the Father had in common—that is, “all things mine are yours and things of yours are mine” (see 16:15, “All things that the Father has are mine”; also 3:35).32 This is possible, yet there is no denying that the focus is strongly on persons, the disciples in particular, not on things. More likely, therefore, Jesus is tacitly (and abruptly) reintroducing the metaphor of himself as Shepherd and the disciples as sheep, so that the unspoken antecedent of the neuter plurals, “all mine” and “yours” (ta sa), is the neuter plural “sheep,”33 as if to say, “and all my sheep are yours and yours are mine.” There is a kind of precedent for this in 10:14–15, where Jesus said, “I am the good Shepherd, and I know mine34 and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” There, to be sure, the sheep metaphor was explicit, yet, as we have seen, “the Father” was not part of that metaphorical world, and the thought expressed was quite independent of the world of shepherds and sheep. Quite possibly here, the generalization involved in the expression “all mine are yours and yours are mine” has to do with persons only, not things, embracing both the disciples on the scene and Jesus’ “other sheep” (see 10:16), thus anticipating the later reference to “those who believe in me through their word” (v. 20). If so, although the words in question have a mildly parenthetical quality, they in no way interrupt the prayer’s consistent focus on the disciples.35 In a very real sense, this chapter can be understood as the Good Shepherd’s prayer for his soon-to-be-scattered sheep (see 16:32).

Jesus draws the conclusion, “and I am glorified in them” (v. 10b), evidently in much the same sense in which God is “glorified” in him (see 13:31). To put it in more contemporary terms, the disciples (whatever their shortcomings) are his pride and joy, just as he is the Father’s pride and joy. They are his “glory” in that they are the living proof that he has indeed “completed the work” the Father gave him to do (see v. 4), making possible his return to the Father to resume the glory that was his “before the world was” (v. 5). They are his “sheep,” for whom he has already risked his life and for whom he will lay down his life. And just as the glorification of the Father and the Son has been mutual (see 13:31–32), so the glorification of Jesus and the disciples will turn out to be mutual. Just as he is “glorified in them,” so they will be in him as they continue his work in the world (see v. 22, “And I, the glory that you have given me I have given to them”).

11 True to the principle that his “glorification” is nothing other than his departure to the Father, Jesus finishes the thought of the preceding verse: “And I am no longer in the world, and they are in the world, and I am coming to you” (v. 11a), With this, he simply reiterates the recurring themes of the farewell discourse, except that he is now voicing them to the Father instead of to the disciples. The two clauses, “And I am no longer in the world,” and “I am coming to you,” echo such pronouncements as “A short time, and you no longer see me” (16:16), and “I go to the Father” (16:10, 17), respectively, and now frame the assertion that will govern most of the rest of the prayer: “and they36 are in the world.” Jesus is poised between “the world” and heaven, neither “in the world” in the same way as before, nor quite in the Father’s presence either. When he says, “I am coming to you,” he speaks of what he is about to do, not what he has already done, and two verses later, when he says the same thing again, he immediately adds, “these things I am speaking in the world” (v. 13). So there is a sense in which he is still “in the world,” and a sense in which he is not.37 What is clear in any event is a growing distance between Jesus and the disciples. They are fully “in the world” even as he leaves it, and for that reason they stand in need of prayer.

The intercession proper begins with the words, “Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are” (v. 11b). This is where the verse division should have come. Jesus has said that he is “asking” on the disciples’ behalf (v. 9), but here for the first time he “asks” for something specific. He marks the specificity with the direct address “Holy Father,”38 echoing the address, “Father,” in verses 1 and 5. Like the prayer for his own glorification (vv. 1, 5), the prayer is a simple imperative, “keep39 them in your name,” corresponding perhaps to the claim just made, that “they have kept your word” (v. 6).40 The mention of the Father’s “name” takes us back to verse 6, where Jesus said, “I have revealed your name,” probably in the sense of revealing the Father himself. But here the identification of the Father’s name as a name “which you have given me” is puzzling.41 What “name” has the Father given to the Son? It is unlikely that the name is “Lord,” the common LXX translation of the divine name, because “Lord” in this Gospel is consistently either a mere term of respect (“Sir”) or at most a divine title (as in 20:28), not a name. Raymond Brown (already in v. 6) suggested that the “name” in question is “I Am,” in keeping with certain LXX passages in which it seems to function in that way. In revealing himself as “I Am” (above all in 8:58), Jesus reveals himself by a name the Father has given him, and thereby reveals the Father.42 While the specificity of such an interpretation is appealing, it is doubtful that most readers would have understood such a subtle allusion. More likely, perhaps, the Father has given Jesus his own “name” simply in the sense of delegating to him the authority to act on the Father’s behalf, thereby revealing who the Father is (see, for example, v. 2, “authority over all flesh”; also, 13:20, “the person who receives me receives the One who sent me”; 16:15, “All things that the Father has are mine”). In this sense the petitions “Glorify your name” (12:28) and “Glorify your Son” (17:1) amount to the same thing.43

All this, Jesus says, is “so that they may be one44 just as we are” (v. 11b),45 the first of four notices of such an intention in the prayer (see vv. 21, 22, 23). Again, the Shepherd discourse is in play, where he had said, “they will become one flock, one Shepherd” (10:16), and “I and the Father are one” (10:30). The Shepherd’s prayer for the sheep is what accomplishes his intention. And even apart from the Shepherd and sheep imagery, we have been told that Jesus himself would die “in order that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered into one” (11:52). The analogy here between the unity of the disciples and the unity of the Father and the Son is striking, yet not without precedent. Jesus has, after all, said first, that “the Father is in me and I in the Father” (10:38), and later, to the disciples, that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20). As we have seen, there is little that is new in the prayer. Most of what is said has been said before, except that now it is spoken to the Father in prayer rather than to the disciples in discourse.

12 “When I was with them,” Jesus explains, “I kept them in your name” (v. 12a). “When I was with them” recalls 16:4, “And these things I did not tell you from the beginning, because I was with you.” Here again, Jesus looks back on his ministry in the world as if it were already in the past, in keeping with what he has just said (“I am no longer in the world,” v. 11). The notice affords him the opportunity to add a postscript to what he has already reported to the Father about the “work” he has accomplished on earth (see vv. 4, 6–8). What he has just asked the Father to do (that is, “keep them in your name,” v. 11) is what he himself has done up to now: “I kept them in your name which you have given me, and I guarded them.” The shared responsibility of the Father and the Son to “keep” or “guard”46 the disciples “so that they may be one just as we are” (v. 11) corresponds to their own responsibility to “dwell” or “remain” in the Father and the Son (see 14:20; 15:4, 7). Jesus concludes that he has done so successfully because “none of them is lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” In short, he announces that the intention stated in 3:16, 6:39, and 10:28 has been realized. That is, none of those who believe in Jesus—his “sheep,” according to 10:27–28—are “lost.” As we have seen, there is a grim finality in this Gospel to being “lost” which is not present in other Gospels or the letters of Paul.

Jesus’ words here, particularly his reference to the one exception, are more for the reader’s benefit than a real part of a prayer to the Father. He is not by any means offering an excuse to the Father for the one exception—the “son of destruction,” who is in fact “lost”—but simply informing the reader that this is the case. The “son of destruction” (that is, the one destined to be lost) can only be Judas Iscariot,47 and the God who assigned Judas his fate hardly needs to be reminded of it! Like the definition of eternal life near the beginning of the prayer (v. 3), the notice that this happened in order “that the Scripture might be fulfilled”48 is intended solely for the reader, who might have been wondering now for several chapters how one of twelve “chosen” disciples could also have been “the devil” (see 6:70). But what “Scripture” had to be fulfilled? The one nearest at hand is Psalm 41:9 (40:10, LXX), introduced in exactly the same way as here in 13:18: “The one who eats my bread lifted up his heel against me.” Yet as we have seen, that text seems not to have referred to Judas exclusively, and even to the extent that it did refer to him, it was in relation to his betrayal of Jesus at the table, not in relation to the inevitability that he would be “lost,” or to the “destruction” awaiting him (Ps 68[68]:26 and 109[108]:8, as cited in Acts 1:20, are better suited to that purpose). Of the four instances in John’s Gospel of the expression “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (the others being 13:18 and 19:24, 36), this is the only one in which a specific text is not cited. In that respect it is closer to 19:28, “that the Scripture might be completed,” where (as we will see) no one biblical text is in view. Quite possibly, readers of John’s Gospel were expected to be familiar in a general way with the notion that Judas’s betrayal and his subsequent fate were prophesied in Scripture (see not only 13:18 and Acts 1:20, but also Matt 27:9). If this was the case, and “the Scripture cannot be abolished” (10:35), then Judas’s grim fate was inevitable—even in the face of the principle that “none of them is lost.” He has in any case hinted at Judas’s “destruction” in connection with the metaphor of the vine and the branches (see 15:6, “thrown out like the branch, and withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned up”).

13 “But now I am coming to you,” Jesus continues, in sharp contrast to “When I was with them” (v. 12). With this, he picks up the thought of verse 11, giving it an added note of immediacy. Even so, he tacitly acknowledges that he is still “in the world” (despite his words to the contrary in v. 11): “And these things I am speaking in the world so that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (v. 13). Again the prayer simply replicates in words directed to the Father what Jesus has already told the disciples about his joy and theirs being fulfilled (see 15:11; 16:24). It is not altogether clear whether “these things I am speaking in the world” refers to what he said earlier to the disciples or to what he is saying to the Father right now. Probably the ambiguity is deliberate, for the discourse and the prayer both have the same intention. Jesus wants “joy,” his own joy, for the disciples, even in their time of “grief” in the world (see 16:22). Their joy will be “fulfilled in themselves,”49 by virtue of their relationship to him, not in the external circumstances they face, which may well be dire and difficult (see 15:18–16:3). Of these circumstances he now speaks.

14 “I have given them your word,” he continues, “and the world hated them, because they are not from the world, just as I am not from the world” (v. 14). The first clause is repetitious (see v. 8a, “the words that you gave me I have given to them”), but serves here to heighten the force of what follows: “and the world hated them,”50 once again echoing to the Father what he has already said to the disciples (15:18, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before you”). He also reiterates the reason for the world’s hatred: “because they are not from the world just as I am not from the world” (compare 15:19). Because the world hates the disciples, they are in danger of persecution (see 15:20–16:3), and in need of protection, just as sheep need protection from predators (see 10:10, 12). Jesus himself has already “guarded” them (v. 12) in the course of his ministry, and he will do so once more before his departure (see 18:8–9), but now he entrusts them to the Father’s care.

15–16 As we have seen, Jesus’ words to the Father in verses 12–14 were not so much petitionary or intercessory prayer as simply a continuation of his rehearsal of his ministry on earth.51 But now he resumes the intercession that broke off when he prayed “that they may be one, just as we are” (v. 11b). The verb “ask” (as in v. 9) signals the next petition: “I am asking not that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the Evil One.” The disciples, although chosen “out of the world” (15:19), are not to be taken “out of the world.” To “take them out of the world”52 should not be understood as equivalent either to “I will take you to myself” redemptively (14:3), or to “taking away” in judgment the branches of the vine that do not bear fruit (15:2). Rather, it is purely hypothetical, like Paul’s comment that in telling the Corinthians not to mingle with immoral people he did not mean the immoral “of this world,” for then they would have to “go out of the world” (1 Cor 5:10). It is not something that either this writer or the Apostle Paul envisions as actually happening. The accent falls instead on the last clause, the real object of the petition: “that you keep them from the Evil One,” corresponding to the earlier petition, “keep them in your name” (v. 11). Like “Father” (v. 1; 11:41; 12:27, 28), “Holy Father” (v. 11), and the references to God’s “name” in prayer (vv. 11, 12; 12:28), “keep them from the Evil One” evokes the Lord’s Prayer, which (according to Matthew and the Didache) ends with the petition, “deliver us from the Evil One” (Mt 6:13), traditionally rendered as “deliver us from evil.” The reference to the devil is unmistakable, for he has already been identified as “the ruler of the world” (14:30), or of “this world” (12:31), and near the end of 1 John the reader is reminded that “the whole world lies in the Evil One.”53 Thus, to “keep them from the Evil One” is to keep them safe in the hostile “world.” Jesus then adds, “They are not from the world, just as I am not from the world” (v. 16), repeating verse 14b verbatim. The redundancy reinforces even more the dualism governing both the prayer and the preceding discourse (again, see 15:18–19).

17 Jesus next adds to the imperatives “glorify” (vv. 1, 5) and “keep” (v. 11) a third imperative: “Consecrate54 them in the truth. Your word is the truth” (v. 17).55 Appropriately, the One addressed as “Holy Father” (v. 11) is the One who “consecrates” or “makes holy” Jesus’ disciples, for it was he who first “consecrated” Jesus and sent him into the world (10:36), as “the Holy One of God” (6:69). This is the first hint within the prayer of the traditional notion of it as a “high-priestly” prayer, for a prayer of “consecration” is the appropriate work of a priest. Jesus prays that the Father might consecrate or sanctify the disciples “in the truth,” which he then immediately defines (not for the Father’s benefit but for the reader’s, just as in v. 3!) as “your word.” By “your word” he does not mean the written Scriptures (as in 10:35), but the “word” or message from the Father which he has given the disciples and which they have “received” and “kept” (see vv. 6, 8). That word is “the truth” that has set them free (see 8:32), so as to become no longer “slaves” but “friends” (see 15:15). The identification of “your word” and “the truth” is thoroughly in keeping with Jesus’ identification of himself as “the Truth” (14:6), the coming Advocate, as “the Spirit of truth” (14:17; 15:26; 16:13), and the Father as “the only true God” (v. 3).

18 The connection between “consecration” and “sending” evident in 10:36 is maintained here as well. “Just as you sent me into the world,” Jesus goes on, “I also sent them56 into the world” (v. 18). He speaks of the disciples’ mission to the world in the past tense, as if it has already started, or even been completed,57 and yet it will not “officially” begin until he tells them after the resurrection, “just as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (20:22). It is commonly suggested that the pronouncement is worded in this way for the benefit of the readers of the Gospel, who would hear it in relation to their own ongoing mission in the world, and this is undoubtedly the case. And yet he had said long before in a Samaritan village, “I have sent you58 to harvest that on which you have not labored” (4:38). Quite possibly there are echoes both there and here of certain synoptic (or synoptic-like) traditions in which Jesus sent the disciples on certain missionary journeys already during the course of his ministry (see Mk 6:6–13; Mt 10:5–16; Lk 9:1–6; 10:1–12). The difference here comes in the phrase “into the world,” which occurs in none of those passages, and which looks beyond those early preaching tours toward a worldwide mission that would begin with Jesus’ resurrection.59 In principle, Jesus has just now sent his disciples “into the world” by praying to the Father, “Consecrate them” (v. 17), that is, “Set them apart for mission, just as you set me apart.”

19 Still, there is a sense in which the “consecration” of the disciples is not yet accomplished, for Jesus continues, “and on their behalf I consecrate myself,60 so that they too might be consecrated in truth” (v. 19). The priestly language of the two preceding verses continues. What does it mean for Jesus to “consecrate” himself, given that the Father, in sending him into the world, has already “consecrated” him (10:36)? And in what sense does his self-consecration “consecrate” the disciples? Having been “consecrated” by being sent into the world, Jesus as priest now “consecrates himself” to fulfill a priestly role—evidently to offer himself as a sacrifice. According to the book of Hebrews (5:3; 9:7), Jewish priests repeatedly offered sacrifices both for their own sins and for the sins of the people, while Jesus, being “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens,” had no need to do this, but instead “sacrificed for their sins once and for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:26–27, NIV). The accent, both in Hebrews and here, is not only on Jesus’ priestly role but on his initiative in carrying it out. Here he can say that “on their behalf61 I consecrate myself,” just as he said earlier in the voice of the Good Shepherd, “I lay down my life for [or “on behalf of”] the sheep” (10:15) and “No one took it away from me, but I lay it down on my own” (10:18). The “Lamb of God” of John’s prophecy (1:29, 36) has become both Shepherd62 and High Priest, offering himself to the Father so that his disciples “might be consecrated in truth” (v. 19)!63 It is unclear how far the priestly imagery should be pressed. Are the disciples “consecrated” as a priesthood (see, for example, 1 Pet 2:5, 9), or perhaps as sacrificial victims facing the prospect of eventual martyrdom? Or are they simply set apart for a mission, without specific reflection on what that mission will entail? Probably the latter, although the precedent of 6:53–58 and 16:2 suggests that martyrdom remains a very real threat. Jesus’ awareness of such a possibility has been evident already in his prayer “not that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One” (v. 15). Yet the emphasis is not so much on a priestly role for the disciples or on the prospect of martyrdom as it is on “truth,” that is, the word of God with which they are entrusted (see v. 17).

20–21 Jesus now looks beyond the small group of disciples whose feet he had washed after the meal to a larger group: “And not for these alone do I ask, but also for those who believe64 in me through their word, so that all might be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that these too might be in us,65 so that the world might believe that you sent me” (vv. 20–21). This broader awareness corresponds to his words much earlier about the “other sheep I have, which are not from this courtyard. Those too I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock, one Shepherd” (10:16). Even the form of the pronouncement (“not for these alone … but also”) corresponds to the principle that Jesus dies “not for the nation alone, but also in order that the children of God who are scattered might be gathered into one” (11:52). Jesus’ prayer now reveals just how these “other sheep,” or “children of God,” will be brought in. It will be “through their word,” that is, through the message proclaimed by Jesus’ disciples, the very “word” of the Father (v. 17) by which they have been consecrated in answer to Jesus’ prayer. Here, as in the other two passages, the accent is not on futurity—that is, that these “others” necessarily belong to a later generation—but simply on the fact that the “word” reaches them not directly from Jesus, but indirectly through his disciples. Just as in 10:16 he could say, “other sheep I have,” as if they were already his, and in 11:52 they were already called “children of God,” so here they are “those who believe,” whenever and wherever that might be, not “those who will believe” at some unstated time in the future.66 As in the two earlier passages, the end and goal of the process is unity. Just as he had said, “they will become one flock, one Shepherd” (10:16), and just as his death would be “in order that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered into one” (11:52), so here his prayer is that “all might be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that these too might be in us” (v. 21a; compare v. 11). Because the accent is not on futurity, the point of the prayer for unity is not that later generations of believers should bond with earlier generations by holding fast to the apostolic tradition, but simply that all believers everywhere should be united with each other in their commitment to Jesus and to the Father.

Jesus goes beyond the earlier passages (10:16 and 11:52) in two ways. The first is that he grounds the unity of all believers in the unity of the Father and the Son, as the preceding discourse might have led us to expect (see 14:20, “In that day, you will come to know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you”). Here his use of direct address, almost redundantly (“just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you”) accents the intimacy between Father and Son. The second is that he adds an additional object and purpose to his prayer—perhaps its ultimate purpose: “so that the world might believe67 that you sent me” (v. 21b). This abrupt enlargement of the scope of the prayer (going beyond v. 11 as well) qualifies the earlier disclaimer that “I do not ask on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you have given me” (v. 9). Even though Jesus’ prayer is not for the world, the whole world is within his horizons. He views the unity of the disciples and their mission to the world as inseparable. His vision is that their unity with one another will send a message to the world that will bring people to faith in him and in the Father. He builds here on 13:35 (“By this they all will come to know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other”), implying that the unity of which he speaks must be something visible to the outside world, visible, for example, in love shown to each other. Going even beyond 13:35, his intent is that many who now belong to “the world” will recognize not only that the disciples belong to Jesus but that Jesus belongs to the Father and comes from the Father. In this way he reveals at last the implication of his announcements early on that “God so loved the world” (3:16), or that he himself came to “save” the world (3:17; 12:47). God’s plan for the world will come to realization not through Jesus during his limited time on earth, but through the band of disciples he has gathered around him. Moreover, the promise held out to the world is very carefully worded here (as it is in 3:16). The negative verdict that “the world did not know him” (1:10) and “his own did not receive him” (1:11) is not rescinded. Jesus does not say that the whole world will believe in him (that is, that everyone will become his disciple), or even that he intends this. His intent is only that the world might believe, or recognize, that he was sent from God, whom he calls Father.68 This could mean either than the world will come to faith, as the disciples have done (16:30), and in that sense cease to be “the world,” or that Jesus and his mission from the Father will be vindicated before the world, and the world consequently proven wrong (see 16:8–11). In that event, the world becomes simply a theater for the vindication of Jesus’ followers as those chosen and beloved of God.

Jesus’ petition thus holds out hope for the world, but nothing approaching certainty. It is not a prophecy of what must happen, but simply a generalized expression of divine intent comparable to 3:17 (“For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through him”) or 12:47 (“I did not come to judge the world but to save the world”). Readers of the Gospel in every generation have known that the outcome of the disciples’ mission to the world remains undecided. In any event, the focus is not on the question of whether or not “the world” will be saved, but on the disciples themselves, and on the nature of their unity in the Father and the Son. The point is that it must be a visible unity, a “sign” to the world, testifying not only to their relationships with each other but to their relationship with Jesus and to the Father. Implicit in the notion of unity—in itself a very abstract concept—is the concrete imperative of loving one another (as in 13:34–35; 15:12, 17), and obeying Jesus’ commands (as in 14:15 and 15:10). Those are things even “the world” can see, and those things, he implies, are the heart and soul of the disciples’ mission to the world—consequently the world’s only hope

22–23 “And I, the glory that you have given me I have given to them,” Jesus continues (v. 22a). What is this “glory” that the Father has given him? What does it mean for him to give it to his disciples? And when did he confer on them this glory? Was it during the course of his ministry when, as he said, “I revealed your name to the men you gave me out of the world” (v. 6), and passed on to them “the words that you gave me” (v. 8)? Or was it just now, in the course of the prayer itself, when he asked the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth” (v. 17), and consecrated himself on their behalf (v. 19)?69 It is tempting to place it during the ministry because of the structural parallel between “the words that you gave me I have given to them” (v. 8), and “the glory that you have given me I have given to them” (v. 22). But this is unlikely because during Jesus’ ministry, as described in this Gospel, the “glory” seems to have been his and his alone, something the disciples can see (1:14; 2:11; 11:4, 40), but in which they do not share. Even though he can say “I am glorified in them” (v. 10), the glory is still his and not yet theirs. His “glorification,” moreover, is repeatedly linked to his impending death (see 7:39; 11:4; 12:23; 13:31–32; 17:1, 5).70 It is therefore more plausible that he has conferred his “glory” on the disciples at this very moment, in the act of “consecrating” himself as a sacrifice “so that they too might be consecrated in truth” (v. 19).71 The “glory” he gives them is the mission on which he has just now “sent them” (v. 18), continuing his own revelatory mission as those “consecrated” to that task.

The purpose of consecrating the disciples, or giving them glory, is indistinguishable from the purpose of the prayer itself: “so that they might be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they might be perfected into one, so that the world might know that you sent me and loved them just as you loved me” (vv. 22b–23). Here he repeats almost verbatim, with three slight elaborations, verse 21 (“so that all might be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that these too might be in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me”). The first elaboration is that becoming “one” (v. 21a) is defined as being “perfected into one”72 (v. 23), recalling the “gathering into one” of the “children of God” (11:52). The second is that the world’s “believing” (v. 21b) is defined as “knowing” or recognizing73 (v. 23). The third is that what the world is intended to “know” is not just “that you sent me” (v. 21), but “that you sent me and loved them as you loved me” (v. 23). Jesus has not spoken of the love of God so far in the prayer itself, but the Father’s love is by now a major theme of the Gospel, whether for the Son (3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 15:9) or for the disciples (14:21, 23; 16:27).

The modest changes are interrelated. The notion of being “perfected” is less characteristic of John’s Gospel than of the “priestly” Epistle to the Hebrews, where “by one offering” Jesus is said to have “perfected forever those who are being consecrated” (Heb 10:14; also Heb 2:10–11). But more in keeping with the theology of John’s Gospel is the notion that the “perfecting into one” of Jesus’ disciples means first of all having the love of God “perfected” or brought to realization in their love for one another.74 This was evident in the preceding discourse, where “dwelling” in Jesus (15:4) was defined as dwelling in his love (15:9–10) by extending his love to one another (15:12, 17). In 1 John, this relationship is explicitly characterized as having the love of God “perfected”75 in us (1 Jn 4:12; also 2:5; 4:17–18), and this is likely implied here by the phrase “perfected into one.”

With these subtle changes, the implicit link to 13:35 (“By this they all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other”) becomes almost explicit. The world cannot see, or “know,” a merely “spiritual” unity or indwelling of the disciples in each other, or in the Father and the Son, but it can recognize the love believers have for each other as a sign of God’s love for them. On that recognition, and on that alone, rests the possibility “that the world might believe” (v. 21). Perhaps surprisingly, nothing is said here of the world recognizing the Father’s love for the world itself (see 3:16). Possibly this is because Jesus has been addressing God as “Father” (vv. 1, 5, 11), and will immediately do so again (vv. 24, 25). While God indeed “loves” the world (3:16), he does not love it in the same way that he loves Jesus and the disciples—that is, as a father loves a child.

24 The prayer so far has been punctuated with the address, “Father” (vv. 1, 5), framing Jesus’ petitions for his own glorification, “Holy Father” (v. 11), beginning a series of petitions for his disciples, and “Father” again (v. 21), highlighting the last and arguably most important of his petitions. Now he uses it again: “Father, that which you have given me, I want them to be with me where I am” (v. 24a). This time it introduces something more than a petition, a forthright declaration to the Father of what “I want.”76 The contrast with his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane in other Gospels is striking, for there he is represented as praying, “Not what I want,77 but what you want” (Mk 14:36; also Mt 26:39 and Lk 22:42). He is more assertive here, in keeping with his invitation to the disciples to ask “whatever you want,78 and it will be done for you” (15:7). There, as we saw, the sweeping promise was given on the condition that “you make your dwelling in me and my words come to dwell in you,” and if the promise was valid for the disciples, it is all the more so for Jesus himself.79

Obviously, what he “wants” is far different here from what it was at Gethsemane in the synoptic accounts. What he wanted there was to be spared the “cup” of suffering and death, something to which he has already consecrated himself here (see v. 19). What he wants rather is for his disciples “to be with me where I am,” something he has already promised them (14:3 and 12:26), and he is not afraid to make his wants known boldly.80 In characteristic fashion (as in 6:37, 39; 10:29; 17:2) he speaks of his disciples corporately as “that which you have given me.” The phrase focuses on the disciples (“Twelve” according to 6:70) who accompanied Jesus during his ministry, but implicitly at least it refers as well to others who believed during his ministry (such as the Samaritans at Sychar, the man born blind, and Martha), and beyond that to those who would “believe in me through their word” (v. 20). Jesus has just envisioned them all as “one,” after all (vv. 21, 23), and the presumption all along has been that even those who do not yet believe nevertheless belong to him in some sense already.81 But what does it mean for them to be, as he says, “with me where I am”? The phrase “where I am”82 echoes 12:26 and 14:3 verbatim. Clearly, he is not referring to the present moment but to the disciples’ presence with him in the Father’s presence after he has gone away and come back, and taken them to himself (as in 14:3). The promise is further explained in light of the prayer’s opening paragraph, in particular his petition to the Father to “glorify me in your own presence, with the glory I had in your presence before the world was” (v. 5). That petition, we now learn, was more than just a private transaction between the Father and the Son that had nothing to do with the disciples. Already in those opening lines, Jesus was in some sense praying on their behalf as much as for himself, for he now adds, “so that they might see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24b). His future glorification with the Father, resuming the glory he had “before the world was” (v. 5), or “before the foundation of the world”83 (v. 24), is for their benefit no less than his own.

In what way will Jesus’ disciples “see” the glory that will be his on his return to the Father, and in what way will that vision of future glory go beyond what they have “seen” already in the course of his ministry (1:14; 2:11)? At one level, it is impossible to say. How does one quantify “glory”? The best answer, perhaps, is that the glory Jesus had “before the world was” (v. 5), and will have again on his return to the Father, is the measure of the Father’s love for him. The Son’s glory is that “which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” What he wants the disciples to “see” is the full extent of that love. The measure of Jesus’ love for his disciples is clear: he gives his life for them. But the measure of the Father’s love for the Son is more difficult to comprehend. It has come to expression in certain pronouncements earlier in the Gospel—for example, John’s testimony that because the Father loves the Son he has “given all things in his hand” (3:35), and Jesus’ testimony to the Jews that the Father loves the Son and “shows him everything that he himself is doing” (5:20). Yet it is not something the disciples will fully comprehend short of that future day when they will stand with Jesus in the Father’s presence, and see for themselves the “glory” of the Father’s love for Jesus, and consequently for them, the same love they in turn have displayed to the world by their love for one another (see vv. 21, 23).

25–26 Again Jesus punctuates the prayer with an address, this time “Righteous Father,”84 setting the last two verses off as a distinct unit summarizing the prayer in its entirety: “Righteous Father, and yet the world did not know you, but I knew you, and these men knew that you sent me. And I made known to them your name, and I will make known, so that the love with which you loved me might be in them, and I in them” (vv. 25–26). While “Righteous Father” has much the same rhetorical effect as “Holy Father” (v. 11), the vocabulary of “righteous” and “righteousness” has been used very sparingly in this Gospel. Jesus has attributed “righteousness” or “justice” to God by telling the Jewish leaders that “my judgment is right, because I am not seeking my will but the will of the One who sent me” (5:30), and by telling his disciples that the Advocate will convict the world “of justice, because I am going to the Father” (16:10). Here his point is simply that those who know the Father (Jesus and his disciples) are “right” and those in “the world” who do not are wrong.

The “and” which immediately follows the direct address is puzzling, but should probably be assigned an adversative force: “and yet.”85 That is, despite what Jesus has just said about the world’s potential belief and knowledge (vv. 21 and 23), and about the disciples’ future vision of Jesus’ “glory” (v. 24), he can still say to the Father, “the world did not know you.” The verdict stated from the beginning that “the world did not know him” (1:10) still stands, repeated now almost verbatim. Jesus, in contrast to the world, has known the Father (see 10:15; Mt 11:27), and so too, he adds, have his disciples, for he adds, “these men knew that you sent me” (v. 25b).86 As in verse 6–8, he is referring here primarily to those who had said, “By this we believe that you came forth from God” (16:30). He has said of them once, “they came to know truly that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me” (v. 8), and now he commends their knowledge once again. They already know what he wants “the world” to know (see v. 23, “that you sent me”). How do they know? Because he has revealed to them the Father’s “name” (v. 6), that is, who God is in relation to Jesus—“ ‘the Father’ who sent him.”

Now he speaks again of what he has revealed to them, not for the Father’s benefit, but for the reader’s: “And I made known to them your name, and I will make known, so that the love with which you loved me might be in them, and I in them” (v. 26). “I made known87 to them your name” (v. 26a) recalls what he told them two chapters earlier, that “everything I heard from my Father I made known to you” (15:15), and at the same time his report to the Father that “I revealed your name to the men you gave me out of the world” (v. 6), both referring to his now-completed ministry on earth. “I will make known,”88 by contrast, looks to the future. For the first time in the prayer, we learn that the revelation Jesus brought will continue after his departure. Nothing has been said in the prayer of the ministry of the Advocate, but here it is clearly presupposed. What he “will make known” will be known through the Advocate, for the benefit both of those whom the Father has already given him and those others “who believe in me through their word” (v. 20). He has said, “I have still much more to say to you” (16:12), and implied that he will say it in the person of the Advocate (16:13–15). Now, in the presence of the Father, he confirms that the revelation will continue. More important, he confirms that the content of the revelation is, above all, the Father’s “name,” that is, the Father’ identity as “Father,” in relation to Jesus as Son, and by extension to all those whom the Father has given to the Son (see 20:17, “my Father and your Father”). Finally, this relationship is again defined in very characteristically Johannine terms as a relationship of love: “so that the love with which you loved me might be in them, and I in them.”

Jesus’ final pastoral and priestly prayer thus ends with a triple affirmation of the love with which all other love begins (vv. 23, 24, 26), the love with which, he tells the Father, “you loved me”89 (v. 26b; see also v. 23, “just as you loved me,” and v. 24, “because you loved me”). From the Father’s love for the Son (15:9) comes the Son’s love for the disciples (13:34; 15:12) and their love for one another (13:34–35; 15:12, 17). His prayer is that the Father’s love for him might be “in them” as well, and in that sense, consequently, he can add “and I in them,” for (as we have seen throughout the farewell discourse) the concrete expression of “indwelling” (14:20; 15:1–8) is love.