John 17
John 17 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
John 17 is the longest prayer of Jesus recorded anywhere in the Gospels. On the night before his arrest, he lifts his eyes to heaven and prays out loud — first for himself, then for his disciples, then for everyone who will ever believe because of them. Readers have long called it the "high priestly" prayer, because in it Jesus stands between God and his people, interceding for them the way a priest would.
The petitions come one after another. Jesus asks the Father to glorify the Son so the Son can glorify the Father. He asks God to "keep them" — to protect his followers once he is gone. He asks that they be set apart by truth: "Sanctify them in your truth." He announces that he is sending them into the world just as the Father sent him. And he asks, famously, "that they may all be one," as united as the Father and the Son are with each other.
This is a distinctly Johannine way of praying. Nothing quite like it appears in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. The prayer sketches a whole picture of what the church is: a people chosen and sustained by God, resented by the world, protected by the Father, sent out on mission, and bound together across time and space by the shared life of the Father and the Son.
And then there is the uncomfortable question the chapter forces on us. If Jesus prayed that his followers would be one, what do we make of a church splintered into hundreds of denominations, some of which have excommunicated or even persecuted one another? John 17 gives us both the vision and the scorecard, and it asks us to hold them honestly side by side.
What scholars say
C. Clifton Black walks through the petitions of John 17 — election, protection, sending, and a unity grounded in the mutual glorification of Father and Son — and notes that nothing like this repeated praying appears in the Synoptic Gospels. John Goldingay then raises the painful follow-up: given a church of hundreds of sometimes hostile denominations, he is inclined to call Jesus' prayer for oneness the least-answered prayer in history.
“(John 17:9, 11b, 17–18, 20) Gathered into these entreaties is a wealth of insight into Johannine ecclesiology: God's election, separation, and sustenance of the church in truth, which the world at large rejects; the Father's protection of Christ's followers after his departure; their role as emissaries into the world, commissioned by the Son who was himself sent by the Father (3:17; 3:34; 4:34; et al.); the extension of discipleship to those who entrust themselves to the earliest disciples' proclamation of Jesus; the unity of the church in Christ across time and space. Nowhere in the Synoptic Gospels do we find repeated petitions for the Son's mutual glorification with the Father who sent him, which forms the basis of the church's unity with the Son and the Father: Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.”
“Its background is a theological fact that also underlies concern about church unity. Israel is one people; the Church is one body. How, then, can Israel be two nations with two governments, sometimes at war with one another? How can the Church be hundreds of denominations with hundreds of governments, sometimes excommunicating each other or martyring each other’s members? I’m inclined to think that Jesus’ prayer in John 17 that “they all may be one” is the least-answered prayer in history.”
What it means for you
It is worth sitting with the fact that Jesus prayed for you — verse 20 explicitly includes those who would believe through the disciples' message. That means the requests in this chapter are, in a sense, addressed to your life: to be kept, to be shaped by truth, to be sent, to be one with other believers.
The hardest of these is unity. John 17 suggests that how we treat Christians we disagree with is not a side issue; it is part of Jesus' own prayer, still waiting for an answer. Unity here is not vague niceness — it is grounded in truth — but it does mean division should grieve us rather than satisfy us.
John 17 in context
John 17 closes the Farewell Discourse (John 13–16), the long stretch of teaching Jesus gives his disciples at the last supper. He has washed their feet, predicted his betrayal, and promised the Spirit; now, before crossing the Kidron Valley to the garden where he will be arrested (chapter 18), he turns from teaching to prayer. The chapter moves outward in three circles: Jesus prays for himself and his coming "hour" (verses 1–5), for his disciples (verses 6–19), and for all future believers (verses 20–26).
Passages we cover in this chapter