NOTES for Joh 17:1-13
Jesus’ prayer, His address to the Father, like His entire earthly ministry, also becomes a testimony to the Kingdom. First of all, of course, this applies to His words about His glorification of the Father and His glorification by the Father. If we remember that in biblical language glory signifies a theophany or God’s presence, these words fully describe the meaning of the Savior’s earthly ministry as it is revealed to Him Himself. As is evident from Jesus’ words, the principal task of His earthly ministry was to glorify the Father, to reveal to the world the Kingdom that belongs wholly to Him and that He opens to the world through His Son. For it to be opened to the world completely and in its fullness, it had to become an organic part of this world, and therefore the One through whom it was revealed also had to become an organic part of it. This is why the Messiah, bearing in Himself the whole fullness of the Kingdom, also had to be born into the world as every human being is born into it, and to live the same human life that every human being lives in it. During His earthly ministry, His human nature was not even to be revealed to the world in its transformed state, for then it would already have been partly alien to the world that was not yet transformed. The only thing that could not be present in it was sin, for sin is incompatible with the Kingdom. Now the moment when His earthly journey would be completed was already near, and with it drew near the time when the Father would glorify the Son. The moment was coming when the Kingdom that the Son had brought into the world was to begin revealing itself within it, and the first step on this path was the triumph of the Kingdom in the Son through His overcoming of death, which has no place in the Kingdom, just as sin has no place there. The Son’s chief concern is for those whom He leaves in the world as inhabitants of His Kingdom. For they were, in essence, to become not simply continuers of His work but, in a certain sense, His own continuation in the world, so that the completion of His earthly ministry would not become the end of the history of the Kingdom entering the world. This required unity: the unity of the Father with the Son and the unity of the Savior’s disciples and followers with Him. It is this unity that forms the foundation of the Kingdom in our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been fully transformed.