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Joh_17:4-5. Once more the prayer of Joh_17:1, δόξασόν σου τὸν υἱόν , but stating a different reason for it (“ostendit, non iniquum se petere,” Grotius), and setting forth the δόξα more definitely.
ἐγώ σε ἐδοξ . ἐπὶ τ . γ .] By what, is expressed by the following parallel proposition, which is subjoined with asyndetic liveliness. The Messianic work glorified God, to whose highest revelation, and therewith to His knowledge, praise, and honour it bore reference. Comp. Joh_17:6.
The aorists ἐδόξ . and ἐτελεί . are employed, because Jesus stands at the goal of His earthly activity, where He already includes in this account the fact which puts a close to His earthly work, the fact of His death, as already accomplished. Christ is not passive in His sufferings; His obedientia passiva is active, the highest point of His activity.
καὶ νῦν ] And now, when I take leave of this my earthly ministry.
In what follows note the correlation of με σύ with ἐγώ σε , in which the thought of recompense (comp. διό , Php_2:9) is expressed. The emphasis lies on ἐγώ and σύ , hence after με no comma should stand.
παρὰ σεαυτῷ ] so that I may be united with Thyself in heavenly fellowship (Col_3:3), corresponding to ἐπὶ τ . γῆς . Comp. on Joh_13:32.
The δόξα , which Jesus possessed before the creation of the world, and thus in eternity before time was ( εἶχον , which is to be understood realiter, not with the Socinians, Grotius, Wetstein, Nösselt, Löffler, Eckermann, Stolz, Gabler, comp. B. Crusius, Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 286 f., Scholten, ideally of the destinatio divina), was the divine glory, i.e. the essentially glorious manifestation of the entire divine perfection and blessedness, the μορφὴ θεοῦ (Php_2:6) in His pre-existent state (Joh_1:1), of which He divested Himself when He became man, and the resumption of which, in the consciousness of its once enjoyed possession,[189]He now asks in prayer from God. Had Christ contemplated Himself as the eternal archetype of humanity in His pre-historical unity with the proper personal life of God, and attributed to Himself in this sense the premundane δόξα (Beyschlag, p. 87 f.), His expression ΕἾΧΟΝ ΠΑΡᾺ ΣΟΊ would stand in contradiction therewith, because this latter separates the subject that had been in possession from the divine subject in such a manner that the former was with the latter, and possessed the glory, as then also the glory again prayed for would not be adequate to that already formerly possessed; for the essence of the former is the σύνθρονον εἶναι θεοῦ , which consequently that of the latter must also have been. Comp. on Joh_6:62.
For the fulfilment of this prayer: Php_2:9; 1Ti_3:16; Heb_1:8; Heb_1:13; Act_2:34; 1Pe_3:22, et al. The δόξα , however, which His believing ones beheld in Him in His earthly working (Joh_1:14), was not the heavenly majesty in its Godlike, absolute existence and manifestation,—that He had as λόγος ἄσαρκος , and obtained it again in divine-human completeness after His ascension,—but His temporally divine-human glory, the glory of God present in earthly and bodily limitation, which He had in the state of ΚΈΝΩΣΙς , and made known through grace and truth, as well as through His entire activity. Comp. on Joh_1:14; see also Liebner, Christol. I. p. 323 f.
[189] Not merely in a momentary anticipation, in which it appeared before the eye of His spirit (Weizsäcker). Comp. on Joh_8:58. It is a perversion of the exegetically clear and certain relation when Weizsäcker finds in such passages, instead of the self-consciousness of Jesus reaching back into His pre-human state, only “the culminating point of an advancing self-knowledge.” That here, however, and in ver. 25, different modes of apprehending the person of Christ are intimated (Weizsäcker in the Jahrb. f. D. Th. 1862, p. 645 ff.), cannot be established on exegetical grounds. See on ver. 25.