John 17: What Jesus Asked for You Before the Cross

Introduction

When people talk about “the Lord's Prayer,” they think of the Our Father, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” John 17 is different. This is not a prayer Jesus taught, it is a prayer he prayed himself.

Chihiro Kinoshita, pastor of Kumejima Kibougaoka Christian Church on an island in Okinawa, places this moment after the last supper, somewhere between the upper room and the garden of Gethsemane, which Jesus does not reach until chapter 18. Less than twenty-four hours later, he will be on the cross. “What Jesus asked of God at the very end must carry a great deal of meaning.”

The pastor admits that this chapter is difficult and not very concrete. He divides it into three parts: Jesus prays for himself (verses 1 to 5), for his disciples (verses 6 to 19), and then for all who will believe in him, which includes us (verses 20 to 26). As you study it, you can learn what Jesus desires for you and how he wants you to live on this earth.

Outline of the message

1. “Father, the hour has come”: a prayer full of confidence

• Until then, Jesus kept saying that his hour had not yet come. Here he says: “Father, the hour has come.” It is the hour of his arrest, the cross, the resurrection and the ascension.
• Jesus speaks of these coming events as if they had already happened. He does not pray in the tone of “it would be nice if…” He is certain it will happen.
• When we ask for what is according to God's will, we can pray with the same confidence. The pastor cites 1 John 5:14 and Jesus' promise: whatever you ask in his name, the Father will give you.
• “Glorify your Son, that your Son may also glorify you”: this glory is the work of salvation carried through to its end. The cross brings the forgiveness of sins. The resurrection gives the power to live for God as a brand-new creation, by the Holy Spirit. The return to heaven shows that Jesus is vindicated as righteous.
• Jesus does not see the cross as a defeat. It is a crushing victory, through which all who believe are forgiven, receive the same righteousness he has, and inherit God's kingdom with him.
• “If Jesus prayed, then if we do not pray, nothing will happen.” God goes before us, he knows our needs and prepares for them. But if we do not ask with faith, we do not receive what he has prepared. “That is why it is written: ask.”

2. Eternal life: knowing God by experience

• “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ” (verse 3). Jesus gives this life to those the Father has given him, that is, to those who believe in him.
• The authority “over all flesh” concerns every human being: the eternal destiny of each soul depends on how it receives Jesus. God wants all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, to come to repentance, and Jesus died for all.
• God's election and a person's response always go together. “My little head cannot understand it.” No one can, and it is not necessary. If you have believed, God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blame before him.
• Understanding and believing do not always coincide. “If you understand everything, there is no room left for faith. What you know is a fact: you do not need to believe it.”
• The word “know” comes up again and again in John 17. The Greek verb is ginôskô: to know by experience, not just intellectually as with oida. Eternal life is a relationship with God.
• The pastor gives an example: if he tells his daughter “I love you” while staying cold toward her and constantly ignoring her, his words will not get through. You know love when you taste it. God's love was shown at the cross: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10).
• The moment you taste God's love most is when you have sinned, when you have said or done what you did not want to. Understanding that God forgives even that in Christ is knowing that he loves you. Looking for the proof of his love in the fulfillment of your wishes is exhausting: the method or the timing of your requests is not always his. But at the foot of the cross, you can taste his love in any circumstance.

3. Praying without forcing it and fighting your local battles

• “I have accomplished the work which you have given me to do” (verse 4). Jesus proclaimed the gospel, healed the sick, drove out demons. But the work above all others is the cross, the resurrection and the ascension, and he speaks of it as something already done.
• The pastor offers a warning: there is no need to declare forcefully “in Jesus' name, this will happen” when your faith does not follow. You can say: “My faith is not working right now, but I am counting on your help. Help me.”
• If what you ask is what the Word says, the salvation of a person or the strength to walk the way God wants, keep praying, even without knowing when or how the answer will come.
• In weakness, lean on God. Constantly putting yourself down (“failed again”) amounts to refusing his love. “It is precisely because I cannot do it that I need his love, his forgiveness and his help.”
• Jesus bore the same flesh as ours, with its weakness, and he prayed with the confidence born of his relationship with the Father. We can learn to pray like that.
• You have to start with “local battles.” There is no point asking for a hundred people to be saved through you when you can barely pray each day. Start with the basics: remembering God a little at work or at school, staying at peace in the midst of worry.
• These small answers stack up like steps. Share your weaknesses, ask others to pray with you: that is what fellowship is. When you come back a week or a month later to tell how God answered, those who prayed with you are encouraged.
• “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8). This fruit does not come from our willpower or our tenacity. With humor, the pastor imagines someone keeping a journal of the week's prayers: “Come back in a year,” and the notebook will have stopped. The Holy Spirit, for his part, puts the desire deep in the heart, and what was impossible becomes possible. That is why the glory goes to God.

4. The glory from before the world, and the question of motive

• In verse 5, Jesus asks for the glory he had with the Father before the world existed. Yet God says in Isaiah 48:11: “I will not give my glory to another.” If Jesus shares this glory, it is because he is one with the Father while being a distinct person.
• Paul says it in his letter to the Philippians: Jesus had this glory, but he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. He clothed himself in the same flesh as ours and became obedient to the point of death on a cross.
• Jesus asks to be glorified so that the Father may be glorified. Praying “use me, act through me” is not a bad prayer, but you need to check your motive.
• The pastor admits it frankly: sometimes he asks for people to be saved or for the church to grow for his own satisfaction, “because I have been a pastor for years and it ought to look like it holds together.” We want to pray that God's plan will be fulfilled and that God will receive the glory.

5. Jesus made God's name visible, and his people are kept in it with joy

• “I revealed your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world” (verse 6). The Greek verb (phaneroô) means to make visible, as when you remove a veil.
• God's name is Yahweh, “I am.” “I am, I am everything you need.” Jesus did not just teach this name, he showed what it is to live holding on to it.
• He never lacked anything. Before five thousand men, with five loaves and two fish, the food multiplied. When the tax was due, he sent Peter to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth: “for me and for you.” “As for the other eleven, I do not know how they managed,” the pastor smiles.
• Jesus tells the Father: “they have kept your word.” Yet he constantly reproached them for their little faith, and they argued over who was the greatest. Being declared righteous by faith in Jesus is exactly this: God sees us as those who have kept all his word.
• That does not mean there is nothing left to do. You understand this grace when the Holy Spirit shines a light on a sin and you remember that God already declares you righteous.
• The disciples' understanding was imperfect, but they knew by experience that Jesus came from the Father. You will never understand Jesus 100%, but you can believe in him with everything you do not understand. In the relationship, knowledge deepens.
• “I pray for them... for they are yours” (verse 9). Because you belong to God, you can pray with confidence: “Help me, help this person.”
• The disciples' faith glorified Jesus. When Peter and John healed the lame man at the temple gate, the crowd was amazed, and Peter answered that it was not their own godliness: it all came from the name of Jesus.
• Jesus asks that his disciples be kept in the Father's name. Only the son of perdition, Judas, was lost. God's election and Judas' choice coexist: he too had the chance to repent. Peter denied Jesus three times, but he chose to trust him and be forgiven.
• Kept in a living relationship with God, the disciples can be perfectly one. Without it, we fall back into the question: “Who is the greatest?”
• Jesus also asks that they have his joy fulfilled in themselves (verse 13). All the disciples except John died as martyrs. This joy is not the world's joy (health, money, success at work or at school). Beaten with rods, the apostles rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.
• “You rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). This joy does not come from any special strength or intelligence, but from salvation known by experience. If you lack it, ask for it.
• The pastor stays honest: he does not know whether he would have this joy at the moment of martyrdom (he does not ask to be a martyr, by the way), even though he thinks it would be there when the time came. But he is sure he has joy, and he wants it to grow: “Whatever happens, even at the moment of death, I want to be at peace and in joy.”

6. In the world, protected from evil and sanctified by the Word

• “The world hated them, because they are not of the world” (verse 14). The disciples' actions and hearts are not perfect, but faith in Jesus sets them apart from the world. Without necessarily talking about persecution, others eventually notice: “you are different.”
• “I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one” (verse 15). Believing in Jesus does not end life on earth: staying here has meaning. But there is the devil, his influence and pressures that keep us from following the Spirit. “That is normal.” Jesus prays that we be protected from them.
• “Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth” (verse 17). It is God who sanctifies. There is no need to make yourself deliberately prickly by announcing everywhere everything you no longer do because you are a Christian. The Holy Spirit gradually changes your thoughts and your sensitivity, and being set apart happens naturally.
• This happens through the Word. “Do you read the Bible?” Not as a reading rule, but in a way that presses on you: “Today, I am going to live like this.” Reading the day's passage in your devotional book, “done, goodbye,” and then leaving for work, leaves no time to hear what the Spirit wants to say. You also need to stop and listen.
• “I would like to sleep a lot, I am tired every day.” The pastor puts both on the scale and asks God to make the desire to be holy before him grow in him. By his willpower alone, he cannot manage it. But the Spirit encourages at the right moment: “Today, I will sit down.” “Get up five minutes earlier.” “Stop what you are doing and come before God.”
• Reading the Word, hearing God's voice, understanding by the Spirit and applying it every day: this is how we truly know (ginôskô) and are sanctified. Without this, sent into the world, a Christian has no color, no fragrance and no light.

7. The unity of all believers, founded on love, and the gap to close

• “Not for these only do I pray, but for those also who believe in me through their word” (verse 20). Jesus does not pray “if only people would believe”: he is certain they will believe.
• He asks “that they may all be one” (verse 21). Denominations, Protestants, Catholics: clashing because “our way is the right one” is sad. Those who want to praise Jesus by dancing and forming a conga line can do so: “We do not do that in our church, but there can be different ways of praising.”
• On some readings of the Word, unity is not possible. But if we believe in Jesus Christ, we can be one in him. A church's unity rests not on family, friends or social obligations, but on Jesus.
• People will come with whom unity seems impossible, “difficult people.” Since it is God's will, it will happen. “However rich the preaching, however good the worship team, however beautiful the building, if we are not one in Christ, it means nothing.”
• The foundation of unity is love: knowing by experience that God loves you as he loves Jesus, and that he loves the other person too. Otherwise, you say to yourself: “Why can't he get it right? Why does he say such things?” Without measuring how much you have been loved and forgiven, you cannot love others.
• Colossians 1:6 speaks of the gospel bearing fruit and growing since the day you heard and understood God's grace “in truth.” Understanding grace gives momentum, and it is through unity that the kingdom spreads in the region where we are sent. “Revival begins only with the church.”
• In verses 25 and 26, Jesus asks that the Father's love be in us and that he himself be in us. Thus we know by experience the name of God: the one who is everything we need.
• In summary, Jesus asked for glory so that the Father may be glorified. He asked that his disciples be kept in God's name, protected from evil and sanctified in the world. And he asked that we be one, that we keep knowing God's love and that we finish our race.
• If there is a gap between what you desire and what Jesus desires, pray that it be filled: “Help me, that my heart may become one with yours.”
• Also ask God to show you why, once you are home, you forget what you agreed with on Sunday, then ask the Holy Spirit to remove that cause.
• “Jesus prayed for us with the certainty that it would come true. So let us pray, letting ourselves be accompanied by his prayer. Let us ask, and it will be given to us.”

Key takeaways

• John 17 is not a prayer Jesus taught, it is the prayer he himself addressed to the Father before the cross, with the certainty that it would be answered.
• Eternal life is knowing God by experience (ginôskô): a relationship in which you taste his love, above all at the foot of the cross.
• God prepares what you need, but he invites you to ask for it with faith, starting with the small battles of daily life.
• It is God who sanctifies, by his Word and by his Spirit. You remain in the world, but you are protected from it.
• The unity of believers rests on Jesus and on the love received from God, not on affinities. That is where his glory is seen.

Personal application

1. In which area of your life have you given up asking, settling for wishing that things would change?
2. When did you last taste God's love by receiving his forgiveness for a specific fault?
3. What “local battle” can you fight this week: five minutes earlier in the morning, a moment of silence after your reading, a prayer at work or at school?
4. With whom can you share a weakness and pray, so that you can come back and tell how God answered?
5. Is there someone in your church with whom unity seems difficult? What changes for you in knowing that God loves them as he loves you?

Verses cited

• John 17
• Matthew 6:9-13
• Luke 11:1
• 1 John 5:14
• John 16:23
• 1 Timothy 2:4
• 2 Peter 3:9
• Ephesians 1:4
• 1 John 4:10
• John 15:8
• Isaiah 48:11
• Philippians 2:6-8
• Exodus 3:14
• Matthew 14:13-21
• Matthew 17:24-27
• Acts 3:1-16
• Acts 5:40-41
• 1 Peter 1:8-9
• Colossians 1:6

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between the Our Father and the prayer in John 17?

The Our Father is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray. John 17 is the prayer Jesus himself addressed to the Father, after the last supper and before Gethsemane, less than twenty-four hours before the cross. In it he prays for himself (verses 1 to 5), for his disciples (verses 6 to 19) and for all who will believe in him (verses 20 to 26).

What does it mean to “know” God in John 17:3?

Chihiro Kinoshita explains that the Greek word used is ginôskô: to know by experience, not just intellectually. Eternal life is therefore a relationship with God in which you taste his love, in particular at the foot of the cross, when you receive his forgiveness for your faults.

Why does Jesus not ask that his disciples be taken out of the world?

Because believing in Jesus does not end life on earth: staying in the world has meaning, since Jesus sends his disciples into the world as the Father sent him. So he asks that they be protected from evil and sanctified by the truth, that is, by the Word of God, through the work of the Holy Spirit.