John 17:11 - Exposition

And I am no more (no longer) in the world (cf. John 16:28 ). The earthly ministry is over; for a while he must leave them in the pitiless storm, bereft of his care and counsel, exposed to infinite peril and temptation. Headless, scattered, tempted to believe that all he had said to them was one huge delusion. And these are in the world , without me, without visible sight of the mirror in which thy glory has been reflected, and I come —I return— to thee . These are the conditions on their part and on mine, which justify this prayer for them; and my prayer is, Holy Father, keep —or, guard— them . This grand title stands here in solitary grandeur (though let John 17:25 , πάτερ δίκαιε , be noticed, and the fact that Revelation 6:10 speaks of "the Holy and True," and 1 John 2:20 of "the Holy One"). The very holiness of the Father is appealed to as the surest basis of the petition. They have already been taught to pray, "Hallowed [made holy] be thy Name." The eternal holiness and righteousness of God is involved in the saving and sanctification of the believer in Jesus. " Keep them, holy Father" (says our Lord), in and by thy Name, those whom thou hast given me. οὕς δέδωκάς μοι is the reading of the T.R., on the very feeble authority from the codices, simply D2, 69, and some versions. It is also thus quoted by Epiphanius twice; but the reading of all the best uncial manuscripts, א , A, B, C, L, Y, γ, δ, π , etc., numerous versions and quotations, is ῷ δέδωκάς κοι . Some very unimportant manuscripts read ὃ , which Godet prefers as practically equivalent to οὓς , regarded as a unity, "that which," and as calculated to explain the ῷ of the uncials, and the reading οὕς . Lachmann, Tischendorf (8th edit.), Tregelles, Meyer, Westcott and Herr, and R.T. all read ῷ , which is thrown by attraction to ὀνόματί into the dative, and requires the translation, Keep them ( in or by ) in the power of thy Name which thou hast given me . And since ὃ is a resolution of the attraction, it is quite as likely that it is a correction of ῷ as that the reverse process should have taken place. The expression is very peculiar, but not inexplicable. Philippians 2:9 is the best illustration of the clause. It reads, according to the true text, " He hath bestowed on him the Name ( τὸ ὄνομα ) which is above every name," i.e. the eternal Name, the incommunicable Name (cf. Revelation 2:17 ; Revelation 19:12 ) of Jehovah. Meyer objects to this that the Father's Name was simply given him as an ambassador or for purposes of revelation and manifestation. This may be a partial limitation of the thought. He has already said, " I have manifested thy Name, thy fatherhood to the men," etc. And now he adds, " Keep them in the power and grace of this glorious Name, of which my Person and message have been the full expression." That they may be one , united, formed into a unity of being, even as we are , not losing their personality, but blending and interchanging their interests and their affections after the Divine pattern of the Father and Son. The relations between Christians, which constitute the essential unity of their corporate being, are of the same kind as those which pertain to Christ and God, and prevail between them, therefore lying far behind the shifting phases of organization and human order, in the essence and substance of spiritual life. Some writers have found in this analogy between the union of believers and the hypostatic union of the Persons of the Godhead, either a species of tritheism in the Godhead, or a minimizing of the entire conception to what is called moral union between the Father-God and his Son Jesus Christ. But the effect of the utterance is rather to lift the idea of the unity of the body of Christ to a superlative height, and to interpret still further the nature of its oneness with the Father and Son (see Philippians 2:23 ).