17:1 These {1} words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, {2} Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:
(1) Jesus Christ, the everlasting high Priest, being ready to immediately offer himself up, by solemn prayers consecrates himself to God the Father as a sacrifice, and us together with himself. Therefore this prayer was from the beginning, is, and will be to the end of the world, the foundation and ground of the Church of God.
(2) He first declares that as he came into the world so that the Father might show in him (being apprehended by faith) his glory in saving his elect, so he applied himself to that only: and therefore he desires from the Father that he would bless the work which he had finished.
17:1 The Lord's Prayer for His Disciples
SUMMARY OF JOHN 17:
The Prayer of Christ That He May Be Glorified. The Disciples to Whom the Word Was Given. The Prayer, Not for the World, but for Them. That They May Be Sanctified. The Prayer for Saints in All Ages. That They May Be One. For Unity, That the World May Believe.
These words spake Jesus. This prayer, so solemn and so tender, would never have been recorded had it not been intended for our study and profit, but I approach it with a feeling that it is almost too sacred for the usual verbal and textual criticism. It is the overflow of the full soul of the Lord in devotion to the Father, a fitting close to the wonderful discourses beginning in chapter 13; offered in the Upper Room, just before the Lord led his disciples out into the moonlit night, on the way to Gethsemane. This is the real Lord's Prayer of the sacred Word; the prayer of is the disciples' prayer, taught to them by the Lord (Mt 6:9-13). In order to drink in its spirit, we must realize that the Lord stands at the foot of the cross, is about to suffer, and before the separation from his disciples and the agony and shame of the cross, he goes to the Father in their behalf and in his own.
Father, the hour is come. The hour of the great sacrifice, of the tragedy of the cross, the hour for which Christ came into the world, had now come.
Glorify thy Son. He was about to stoop to shame. Had he been left in the tomb, the shame would have been complete. Christ not only prays that he shall be lifted up (Joh 12:32)but that he may so drink the cup (Mt 20:22 Joh 18:11) that the cross itself shall be a glory.
17:1 Father - This simplicity of appellation highly became the only - begotten Son of God; to which a believer then makes the nearest approach, when he is fullest of love and humble confidence. The hour is come - The appointed time for it; glorify thy Son - The Son glorified the Father, both before and after his own glorification. When he speaks to the Father he does not style himself the Son of man.
17:1-5 Our Lord prayed as a man, and as the Mediator of his people; yet he spoke with majesty and authority, as one with and equal to the Father. Eternal life could not be given to believers, unless Christ, their Surety, both glorified the Father, and was glorified of him. This is the sinner's way to eternal life, and when this knowledge shall be made perfect, holiness and happiness will be fully enjoyed. The holiness and happiness of the redeemed, are especially that glory of Christ, and of his Father, which was the joy set before him, for which he endured the cross and despised the shame; this glory was the end of the sorrow of his soul, and in obtaining it he was fully satisfied. Thus we are taught that our glorifying God is needed as an evidence of our interest in Christ, through whom eternal life is God's free gift.
