Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 17:24 - 17:24
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_17:24. What He has already bestowed on them, but as yet as a possession of hope (Joh_17:22), He wills ( θέλω ) that they may also partake of in reality. He does not merely wish it (against Beza, Calvin, B. Crusius, Tholuck, Ewald), but the Son prays in the consciousness of the ἐξουσία bestowed on Him by the Father according to Joh_17:2, for the communication of eternal life to His own. This consciousness is that of the most intimate confidence and clearest accord with the Father. Previously He had said ἐρωτῶ ; “nunc incrementum sumit oratio,” Bengel. The idea of the last will, however (Godet), is not to be imported here.
The relative definition is placed first emphatically, because justifying the θέλω according to its contents. This is neutral ( ὅ , see the critical notes), whereby the persons ( ἐκεῖνοι , i.e. the disciples and all believers, Joh_17:20) are designated in abstracto, according to their category (comp. Joh_17:2; Joh_6:37), and the moment of δέδωκάς μοι , which is a motive cause to the granting of the prayer, becomes more prominent in and of itself.
ἵνα ] Purpose of θέλω (they should, etc.), and therewith its contents; see on Luk_6:31.
ὅπου εἰμὶ ἐγὼ , κἀκεῖνοι , κ . τ . λ .] shall be realized at the Parousia.[200] See on Joh_14:3, also on ἀναστήσω αὐτὸ , κ . τ . λ ., Joh_6:39.
θεωρῶσι ] behold, experimentally, and with personal participation, as συνδοξασθέντες , Rom_8:17; Rom_8:29, and συμβασιλεύοντες , 2Ti_2:12. The opposite: behold death, Joh_8:51.[201] Against the interpretation that the beholding of the ΔΌΞΑ of Christ in itself (its reflection, as it were) constitutes blessedness (Olshausen, comp. Chrysostom and Euth. Zigabenus), Joh_17:22 testifies, although it is also essentially included in it, 1Jn_3:2; Heb_12:14.
ἣν ἔδωκάς μοι , ὅτι , κ . τ . λ .] Further added in childlike feeling of gratitude to ΤῊΝ ἘΜΉΝ , and that proleptically (comp. εἰμί ), because the Lord is on the point of entering into this ΔΌΞΑ (Joh_17:1), as if He had already received it (comp. Joh_17:22): whom Thou gavest me, because (motive of the ἐδωκ .) Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world ( πρὸ κατ . κ . not belonging to ἜΔΩΚ . Μ ., as Paulus and B. Crusius think). The ΔΌΞΑ of Christ, as the ΛΌΓΟς ἌΣΑΡΚΟς (Joh_17:5), was, according to the mode of view and expression of the N. T., not one imparted to Him from love, but in virtue of the ontologically Trinitarian relation to the Father,[202] that which pertained with metaphysical necessity to the Son in the unity of the divine nature, the μορφὴ ΘΕΟῦ , which He as ΘΕῸς ΛΌΓΟς , Joh_1:1, had, being from eternity eternally with the Father (Joh_17:5); whereas the δόξα here intended is in His exaltation after the completion of His work, since it concerned His entire person, including its human side, that given to Him by the Father from love (Php_2:9), from that love, however, which did not first originate in time, but was already cherished by the Father toward the Son before the foundation of the world. That δόξα possessed by Jesus before His incarnation, to which for the most part (as still Luthardt, Ebrard, Hengstehberg) reference is wrongly made, whereby, according to Joh_17:5, ἜΔΩΚΑς would have to be conceived of as brought about through the generation of the ΜΟΝΟΓΕΝΉς , was the purely divine; that given to Him through His exaltation is indeed the same, into which He now again has entered, but because it is the glory of the λόγος ἔνσαρκος , divine-human in eternal consummation (Php_2:9). Comp. on Joh_17:5; Joh_1:14. Nowhere in the N. T. is the premundane δόξα of the Son designated as given to Him (Php_2:6; Col_1:15; 2Co_8:9), although this would be imaginable in and of itself as an eternal self-communication of Fatherly love (comp. Brückner and Ebrard).[203] Further, it is strangely incorrect that the ΔΌΞΑ , which the Father has given to the Son, has been explained here differently from that in Joh_17:22.
The love of the Father to the Son before the foundation of the world implies the personal pre-existence of the latter with God, but is not reconcilable with the idea of the pre-temporal ideal existence which He has had in God, as the archetype of humanity. This in answer to Beyschlag, p. 87, who considers the relation as analogous to the eternal election of grace, Eph_1:4, Rom_8:29; which is not appropriate, since the election of grace concerns those as yet not in existence, namely, future believers, whom God προέγνω as future. The Son, however, whom He loved, must personally exist with the Father, since it was in Christ that the motive already lay for the election of grace (see on Eph_1:4). Comp. also on Joh_17:5. To suppose that God, according to the present passage, had loved His own ideal of humanity before the foundation of the world, the idea consequently of His own thought, is an idea without any analogy in the N. T., and we thereby arrive at an anthropopathic self-love, as men form to themselves an ideal, and are glad to attain it.
[200] The intermediate state denoted in Php_1:23 (see in loc.) is not meant (Hengstenberg), nor a part of the meaning (Godet), but as what follows shows, the completed fellowship of glory. Comp. 1Jn_3:2.
[201] Baur thus explains away the historical sense: “They behold this glory, see it in reality before them, if in them, through the communication of the true God consciousness, and of the eternal life thereby conditioned, through which they have become one with Jesus and the Father, just as He is one with the Father, the divine principle (to this, according to Baur, δέδωκα , ver. 22, refers) has realized itself as that which it is in itself.”
[202] Comp. J. Müller, Von der Sünde, II. p. 183 f.
[203] Euth. Zigabenus: τὴν δόξαν τῆς θεότητος , ἣν δέδωκάς μοι , οὐχ ὡς ἐλάττονι ἢ ὑστερογενεῖ , ἀλλʼ ὡς αἴτιος , εἴτουν ὡς γεννήσας με . But in the N. T. this mode of presentation is unsupported; in ver. 26, to which Johansson appeals, ἔδωκεν in truth refers first to the time of the sending into the world.