That they all may be one

This chapter has often been referred to as the High Priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus. His time of teaching was finished. He had been speaking to His disciples about the Father; now He turns and speaks to the Father about His disciples. The chapter can be divided into three: His prayer for Himself, vv. 1-8, His prayer for His disciples, vv. 9-19, and His prayer for us, vv. 20-26.

His request for the Father to glorify Him, v. 5, is not motivated by pride as it might be if we were asking for the same, but rather it is a request for His loyalty to the Father to be vindicated. He had come to manifest the Father’s name, v. 6, but essentially the world had rejected His witness. The cross would be the ultimate test of the validity of His claim to be the Son of God. His prayer therefore is that in raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His own right hand, the Father would show the world that their verdict was wrong.

The Lord then turns His attention to the disciples that He was going to leave behind. Up until this point He had kept them, v. 12, and now He is going to leave them in the care of His Father, v. 11. As the next few hours would show, this does not mean that they would never let the Lord down, but that their faith would not give way under the tremendous pressure of the world. Peter is a case in point. Shortly, he would deny that he even knew the Lord, but as the final chapters of this Gospel show, his faith did not completely crumble. This was not to Peter’s credit but proof that the Lord’s prayer had been answered, for his faith had not failed.

The Lord finally turns His attention to those who would be the fruit of the worldwide witness that these men would commence. The results of the preaching of the apostles and many preachers of the gospel have never been in doubt. The Lord foresaw a people that the Father would give Him. Eventually, those people would be brought to the Lord Himself so that they might behold His glory. And in doing so they will for all eternity see how much the Father loves the Son, and how much the Son delights to reveal the Father to them.