The Lord having communicated to them the doctrine of the completion of His work—of the glorifying of the Father, and of the world, by the glorifying of His own life—and having put into their heart the germ of this world-transforming power of His life, He now seals all these announcements by laying His work on the heart of the Father in His high-priestly intercessory prayer.

The high-priestly intercession is the positive glorification of Christ in the spirit, the foundation of the actual glorification by the surrender of His life and His whole work into the hands of the It was spoken by the Lord before passing over the brook

Father.
Kidron (xvii.).

These things spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said:

'Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee: As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.

'I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they have known that all things, whatsoever Thou gavest Me, are of Thee. For the words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me.1

'I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine, and all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them. And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep in Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as we are! 'While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of 1 Regarding Lachmann's dwxas everywhere 6-8, instead of dédwxas,” see Stier in loc.

name.

them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled (vid. Isa. lvii. 4, etc.). And now come I to Thee: and these things I speak-still-in the world, that they may have My perfect joy in themselves. I have given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

'I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil. not of the world, even as I am not of the world. them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.

They are
Sanctify

'As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

'Yet not alone for these do I pray, but for them also who shall believe on Me through their word:

'That they all may be one: as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.

'And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me.

'Father, I will that where I am they also be with Me, whom Thou hast given Me, that they may see (Oewpwσi) My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.

'O righteous Father, and the world doth not know Thee: but I know Thee, and these know that Thou hast sent Me. And I have made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.'

The first petition of Jesus is a petition for the glorifying of His name in the world generally (vers. 1-5).2

The motive urged for His petition is, that the hour of the

Regarding the omission of the second by Lachmann, see vol. iv. 250. 2 The first pause I found formerly, along with Olshausen and Lucke, at the close of the ver. 8; now, however, at the close of ver. 5, in which I agree with Stier.

glorifying is come. The eternal foundation of His glorification is the power which the Son has in principle received over all flesh,' and the realization of it consists in His granting eternal life to all whom the Father hath given Him. The central point of eternal life, and thus of the glorifying of the name of Jesus, is the knowledge of the one true God, and of His ambassador Jesus Christ (the Anointed of God), who not only as Christ, but also as Jesus, in His human nature and form, is the absolute ambassador, the perfect manifestation of the Father. The historical foundation of the glorifying of the Son consists in the fact, that He has glorified the Father on the earth, and finished His work. The measure of His glorification, finally, is that eternal glory which He had with the Father before the foundation of the world.

The disciples, however, constitute its medium; and as Jesus has deposited His work in their hands, His petition for the preservation of His work becomes an intercession for them.

This intercession for the disciples is the second petition of Jesus (vers. 6-19).

He mentions first His work in the disciples (vers. 6-8). The work of Jesus in them consists in His having revealed to them the name of the Father. As the work of God, it depends on the Father having given them to Him. It has attained its result as a work of faith in the disciples themselves, by their having kept the word of God. And now it has become the individual personal life of the disciples, and unfolds its operation in the fact, that they know that the whole manifestation of the life of Jesus in the Father is a revelation of God. They have a living knowledge of the words of God, a knowledge of the Son in the Father, from whom He came forth, and of the Father in the Son, whom He had sent.

He then makes mention of the infinite value of this company of disciples, and of the work in their hearts (vers. 9-11). He prays for them, not for the world. For whilst He prays for them, He just by this prays also for the world: as the bearers of His salva

'In the word flesh lies "the

sum of all misery and wretchedness," as A. H. Franke rightly preaches.' So Stier with truth; yet there lies in the same expression also the sum of all undeveloped human adaptation for the kingdom of God.

tion; they outweigh the whole world. The first form in which their value appears, is that they are the channels of salvation to the world. The second lies in the words: for they are Thine; they constitute a circle of elect ones around the Son, and are thus the centre of all that is God's and Christ's, that the Father gives to the Son, and the Son brings back to the Father. The third form of their value is this: Christ is glorified in them, and now labours no longer as a human teacher in the world. He returns to the Father, and leaves them behind as the organs of His operation in the world. Hence the urgent petition that the Holy Father would keep them in His name, that they might form a unity in this world, as the Son with the Father-a unity in the Spirit, in love, in the truth.

On this He indicates the great danger to which they should henceforth be exposed (vers. 12-14). Hitherto He was Himself with them, and kept them. Faithfully did He watch them; and none of them was lost, except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which had foreseen his fall,1-not therefore through the want of watchful fidelity on the part of Christ. Now, however, it must be otherwise. He goes forth from them to the Father, and speaks only a few words more in the world, in order to perfect what was wanting in their condition, and leave behind with them His perfect joy, the inward blessedness of His Spirit as an inheritance. They are now thus the possessors and keepers of His word in the world. Therefore also the hatred of the world has already fallen on them. For now, in the kernel of their new life, they belong as little to the world as Christ Himself. From this cause the heaviest tribulations and dangers await them.

Yet the Lord does not fear that the world shall overcome them; on the contrary, He expects that they shall overcome the world. And this is the request which He now expresses (vers. 15-19).

He prays not, He says, that the Father would take them out of the world, but only that He would keep them from the evil:* that He would sanctify them in the world, that He would make them to be as beings not of this world, living for God in the truth, being drawn upwards, and flying upwards into the eternal reality of the word of God. With this consecration He would 1 Comp. vol. iv. p. 248.

2

* Regarding the construction peïv ix, see Stier, vi. 483.

then send them down into the world, as the Father had sent Him into the world. He, on His part, would sanctify Himself for them-in pure resignation offer Himself to the Father, and leave the world, that in the strength of this sanctification they might be sanctified in the truth-in pure resignation and devotedness to God, have their conversation in heaven even in the midst of the world.

On this follows the third petition of Christ—the intercession for all future believers, who shall be brought to Him by the word of the disciples.

He has three requests for them.

The first is for their true oneness. They should all be one, after the manner of the oneness which subsists between the Father and the Son; so that all should be reflected in each, and each in all, that their individuality should appear uninjured in their totality, and this last in their individuality. This oneness should proceed from their being one with the Father and the Son; its effect, however, should be, that the world should be brought to believe that the Father had sent Him.2

The second request is, that they should share in the spiritual glory of Christ-that they should become perfected, free, spiritual

1 Stier also thinks, a certain sanctification, renewal, transformation (or whatever one may call it), of the human nature in Christ's person must be admitted' as the kernel and germ of our sanctification. Any truth to be found in this idea, however, can only be the fact, that the transition of Christ from the first pure form of His humanity into the second, entirely coincided with His becoming free from the constant burdensome incitations of the world in its corruption, addressed to His somatic psychical and pneumatic life, from the morally impure atmosphere of this world, which sought to penetrate to the innermost centre of His will. But to admit an actual dimming of the purity of the human nature of Christ Himself in this world, would at once contradict Scripture, and likewise faith's idea of Christ.

2Faith itself, however, is not asked or given.' This remark is made by Stier (vol. vi. 498), in order to reconcile Luke xvii. 5 with Mark. ix. 24. He says this, no doubt, against those who represent faith excusively as a gift of God. But the one kind of dualism in the christological sphere does not justify the other. The question is not here: Either asked from God or rendered by man; but all which is asked is rendered, and all which is rendered is asked. Stier must accept, along with the newer 'spiritualistic' Christology, this also, that the introduction of those antitheses of the Adamitic consciousness into the christological sphere must here only cause confusion, and even generate errors.