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Joh_17:16-17. From the τηρεῖν which has been hitherto prayed for, the intercession now advances to the positive ἁγιάζειν , Joh_17:17; and this part of it also is first introduced in Joh_17:16, and that by an emphatic resumption of what was said in Joh_17:14 on the side of the condition fitted for the ἁγιάζειν .
ἁγίασον αὐτοὺς ἐν τῇ ἀληθ .] The disciples were in the truth, for since they had believingly accepted the word of God given to them by Christ, and had kept it (Joh_17:6; Joh_17:12), the divine truth, the expression of which that word is, was the element of life, in which they, taken from the world and given to Christ, were found. Now He prays that God would not merely keep them (that He has previously prayed for), but yet further: He would provide them with a holy consecration (comp. on Joh_10:36) in this their sphere of life, whereby is meant not indeed the translation into “the true position of being” (Luthardt), but the equipment with divine illumination, power, courage, joyfulness, love, inspiration, etc., for their official activity (Joh_17:18) which should ensue, and did ensue, through means of the Holy Spirit, Joh_14:17, Joh_15:26, Joh_16:7 ff. Comp. on ἐν , Sir_45:4. Ordinarily it is taken instrumentally, in virtue of, by means of (Chrysostom, Nonnus, Theophylact, Calvin, and many others, including Lücke, Tholuck, Godet), but in arbitrary neglect of the analogy of the correlate τηρεῖν ἐν , Joh_17:11-12; whilst De Wette, B. Crusius, Baeumlein, just as arbitrarily here again mix up also the notion of τηρεῖν ; “so that they remain in the truth,” whereby the climactic relation of τηρεῖν and ἁγιάζειν is misapprehended. When, with Luther, (“make truly holy”), ἐν τ . ἀληθ . has been taken as equivalent to ἀληθῶς , of complete sanctification in opposition to their hitherto defective condition (Hengstenberg), against the view is decisive, not indeed the article (comp. Xen. Anab. vi. 2. 10), but rather the following ὁ λόγος , κ . τ . λ . The reading ἐν τ . ἀλ . σου is a correct, more precise definition arising from a gloss.
ὁ λόγος ὁ σὸς ἀλήθ , ἐστι ] a supporting of the prayer, in which ὁ σός has peculiar weight; Thy word (Joh_14:24, Joh_12:49, Joh_7:16), the word of no other, is truth. How shouldst Thou, then, not grant the ἁγιάζειν prayed for? That ἀλήθ . is without the article, does not rest upon the fact that it is a predicate, but upon the conception that the essence of the λόγος is truth, so that ἀλήθ . is abstract, not a noun appellative. Comp. Joh_4:24, 1Jn_4:16.