When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:1-5)
The Road to the Hour of Christ
When Jesus lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed the words of John 17:1–5, he stood at the culmination of a long and deliberate path. For about three years, he had revealed himself as the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God who came to save his people and glorify the Father in a way no one else could. That identity was affirmed from the beginning. At his baptism, the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). It was a clear announcement: He is the One you have been waiting for.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed who he was through his teaching and his works, and his disciples believed him. Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). When others fell away, Peter again affirmed, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life … you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68–69).
Jesus also revealed what he came to do. In Luke 9, he said, “The Son of Man must suffer … be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). Yet the disciples struggled to understand. Even when he repeated, “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men,” they could not comprehend why this was necessary (Luke 9:44).
Soon after, Luke records that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). From that point forward, his mission moved steadily toward the cross. The days were drawing near “for him to be taken up,” and he walked directly toward that purpose.
By the time we reach John 17, the hour has arrived. Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the Passover, shared the meal with his disciples, watched Judas depart to carry out his betrayal, and given his final words of instruction. Arrest is only hours away; crucifixion will come in the morning.
As the evening draws to a close, Jesus turns from his disciples to his Father. John tells us, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven” (John 17:1). Here begins the profound prayer that marks the threshold of his suffering and the heart of his mission.
Entering the Sacred Space of Christ’s Prayer
I’ve always enjoyed reading what are sometimes called “synthetic” harmonies of the Gospels—attempts to combine Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into a single chronological narrative. They allow you to follow every moment of Jesus’ ministry without interruption and offer a compelling sense of movement from beginning to end. But whenever I reach John 17 in one of these harmonies, I always pause. The prayer feels uniquely intimate. If it weren’t recorded in Scripture, I might think, I’m not meant to hear this. This is a private moment between a Son and his Father.
That sense of reverence comes naturally. John 17 preserves the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. We often read that he prayed, but we rarely hear his actual words. Here, though, we are allowed to listen in full. It is a privilege that invites a certain stillness. You feel as though you’ve stepped into holy ground.
Many Bibles label this chapter “The High Priestly Prayer,” a title used since the Reformation, even though neither Jesus nor John uses it. John never explicitly calls Jesus a high priest. So why has this name endured?
The reason goes back to the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16. Under the old covenant, the Most Holy Place, the room that housed the ark of the covenant, was the most sacred space on earth. Only the high priest could enter it, and only once a year. He entered with sacrifice and prayer to make atonement for the sins of the people.
Before he performed those duties, the high priest traditionally kept vigil through the night. With assistance from others, he remained awake in prayer, interceding for himself, for the priests who served with him, and for the people he represented. The law didn’t command this practice, but by the first century it had become standard.
In John 17, Jesus follows this same pattern. In verses 1–5, he prays for himself and the work he is about to complete. In verses 6–19, he prays for the disciples who have served alongside him. In verses 20–26, he prays for all who will believe through their witness. “I do not ask for these only,” he says, “but also for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:20).
Elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus is explicitly called our High Priest. Hebrews says, “We have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God,” and that he was appointed by the Father for this role (Hebrews 4:14; 5:5). As the true and final High Priest, he intercedes before offering himself as the sacrifice.
Even after this prayer, the pattern continues. In Gethsemane, he says to his disciples, “Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray” (Mark 14:37–38). He intends to remain awake in prayer until the moment of his offering arrives.
So when we listen to John 17, we are entering sacred space. Our great High Priest is offering his final night of intercession before presenting himself to the Father as the atonement for sins.
The Once-for-All Sacrifice of Christ
There is, however, a crucial difference between Christ and the high priests of the old covenant. Those priests entered the Most Holy Place year after year because the sacrifices they offered could never fully remove sin. Hebrews 9 describes this contrast with clarity:
The priests go regularly into the first section … but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood … But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come … he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. … How much more will the blood of Christ … purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:6–7, 11–14)
Everything hinges on that phrase: he entered once for all. His offering is final. Jesus would accomplish the atonement that the old covenant could never achieve, not through animal blood, but through his own, the blood of the sinless Son and perfect Lamb, securing eternal redemption for his people.
With that in view, it’s no surprise that his suffering and death dominated his thoughts. The hour was only moments away. He had long “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” intentionally moving toward the cross (Luke 9:51). And after giving his disciples final words of instruction and comfort, he turned to the Father in prayer.
What does he pray in these opening verses?
The Hour Has Come
Jesus begins his prayer, saying, “Father, the hour has come” (John 17:1). Earlier in his ministry, he repeatedly said, “My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4; cf. John 7:6). But now the moment he had anticipated throughout his life and ministry had arrived.
John 12 gives us the first signal of this shift. A group of Greeks—Gentiles—came seeking Jesus. When he heard this, he announced, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). At first glance, that response seems abrupt. But in light of Old Testament prophecy, the significance becomes clear. The arrival of the nations prefigured the global scope of salvation promised in Isaiah: “My salvation [will] reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). Their coming marked the approaching fulfillment of that promise, a turning point that would be accomplished through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Other signs pointed to the nearness of the hour as well. During the Passover meal, John tells us:
During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot … to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands … rose from supper. (John 13:2–4)
A little later: “Satan entered into [Judas]. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly’” (John 13:27). The spiritual conflict had reached its climax. The religious leaders’ hostility had reached a peak. Judas was prepared to act. Rome stood unknowingly ready to play its part. Every element needed for the crucifixion was now in place, and Jesus recognized it: “The hour has come.”
What hour? The hour foreseen in the very first prophecy of Scripture. In the Garden of Eden, God told the serpent:
He shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)
The time had come for Satan to strike the Lord’s heel, and for Christ to crush the serpent’s head.
Christ’s Petition for Glory
With everything unfolding around him, we might expect Jesus to pray for strength or for deliverance from what lay ahead. Those prayers would come in Gethsemane, but not here. Instead, he begins with a striking request: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son” (John 17:1).
Only Jesus could pray this way. First, he speaks as the eternal Son addressing his Father. Second, he asks, not tentatively, but with confident expectation, that the Father glorify him. He doesn’t say, “Will you glorify me?” but simply, “Glorify your Son.” The petition assumes certainty.
This would be unimaginable if Jesus were merely a man. He knew the Scriptures, including the words of Isaiah: “My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11). God does not share his glory with anyone. Yet Jesus asks to be glorified with that very glory. The only explanation is the one John gives at the beginning of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And again: “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14).
Though he “emptied himself” by taking on human flesh, the divine glory belongs to him by nature (Philippians 2:7). That truth stands out even more clearly in verse 5, where Jesus prays, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” The glory they shared from eternity is the glory he now asks to be displayed once more.
And Jesus knows the Father will grant this request. The Father has never failed to accomplish a single word he has spoken. He will not fail now, not in the hour for which the Son came, not when redemption hangs in the balance, and not when his own glory will shine brightest through the obedience, sacrifice, and triumph of his beloved Son.
The Glory Christ Seeks
But what is this glory Jesus asks for? We speak often of the glory of God and the glory of Christ, yet the meaning can feel vague. In its simplest form, God’s glory is God revealed. We tend to associate glory with brightness or greatness, and those ideas are included, but the heart of glory is the manifestation of who God is.
Scripture consistently speaks this way. Psalm 19:1 declares, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” Creation reveals God; it displays something of his nature and power. Psalm 29 goes further: “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders” (Psalm 29:3). Thunder and lightning are more than random natural events. They are glimpses, faint but unmistakable, of the Creator’s majesty. This is why, later in the psalm, those in the temple cry out, “Glory!” (Psalm 29:9).
Paul draws the same conclusion in Romans 1: God’s “invisible attributes … have been clearly perceived … in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:19–20). Creation is not a complete revelation of God, but it genuinely reveals him, and therefore it declares his glory.
God himself is invisible, but when he makes his attributes known, whether through creation, redemption, judgment, or the person of his Son, that revelation is his glory. Jonathan Edwards described it as “the shining forth of his excellency.” Louis Berkhof called it “the majestic revelation of God’s inherent excellence.”
Drawing together the best of these insights:
The glory of God is the outward shining of all his divine perfections—the visible display of his infinite worth—by which he makes himself known and magnified in creation, redemption, and judgment.
This is the glory Jesus prays to receive and to reveal.
The Glory Revealed Through the Cross
Before the incarnation, God the Son shared the Father’s full divine glory. But when he took on human flesh, that glory was veiled. Paul describes this humility: “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6–7). Jesus echoes the same truth in his prayer: “Father, glorify me … with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). His self-emptying was not the loss of deity, but the addition of true humanity, which concealed much of his radiance.
Even so, glimpses of his glory appeared throughout his earthly ministry. John writes, “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14). At the wedding in Cana, Jesus “manifested his glory” by turning water into wine (John 2:11). At the transfiguration, several disciples “saw his glory” in a moment of unveiled majesty (Luke 9:32). These were real revelations, yet only partial. The fullness remained hidden, which is why Jesus prays that the glory he once shared openly with the Father would be revealed again.
“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). Through his death and resurrection, the Son will be glorified and the Father will be glorified. This is fitting, since the Son “is the radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1:3). His glory is the Father’s glory because they share the same divine nature. If Jesus were not God in the flesh, a prayer like this would be unthinkable, blasphemous even. His glory is God’s glory. His authority extends over all flesh. He grants eternal life. To know him is to know God. As he said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
But how does the cross reveal this glory?
At Calvary, the character of God shines with unprecedented clarity. In those dark hours, every divine attribute appears more vividly than anywhere else in history:
Holiness—as sin is judged without compromise.
Justice—as the Substitute bears the penalty sinners deserve.
Love—as the Son willingly lays down his life for those who cannot save themselves.
Mercy—as forgiveness is poured out on the undeserving.
Faithfulness—as every promise and prophecy reaches its fulfillment.
Wisdom—as God sovereignly weaves together human evil and satanic assault to accomplish salvation.
At the cross, the veil is drawn back. The radiance of God’s character appears not in blinding light or overwhelming splendor but in the suffering, obedience, sacrifice, and triumph of the crucified Christ.
The Son’s Authority and the Gift of Eternal Life
Jesus continues, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him” (John 17:1–2). His request is grounded in what the Father has entrusted to him.
The Father has given the Son authority over all humanity, and Jesus exercises that authority by giving his life for those under his care. Because he will bear the penalty of sin—death—he will also give eternal life to those the Father has entrusted to him. His atonement is effective and purposeful, not general or uncertain. He says plainly that he gives eternal life “to all whom you have given him.” This theme appears throughout John’s Gospel.
Here again, we see the unity of Father and Son. The Father is glorified when the Son is glorified, and the Son is glorified as he accomplishes the Father’s will. The Father chooses a people and gives them to the Son; the Son redeems those people and grants them eternal life. Their roles are distinct, but their will and purpose are one, reflecting their shared divine nature.
Eternal Life as Knowing the Father and the Son
Jesus expands his thought in verse 3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Before considering the word know, notice again how closely he joins the Father and the Son.
Earlier that evening Jesus had told his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1). Why must both be believed? Because claiming faith in God while rejecting his Son is a contradiction. Many in Israel professed belief in God yet rejected Christ. Jesus addressed this plainly: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here” (John 8:42). To refuse the Son is to refuse the Father.
The two cannot be separated. Jesus had already said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and shortly after, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Father is known only through the Son, and the Son perfectly reveals the Father.
So when Jesus prays, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” he is not distinguishing himself from God but uniting himself with him. Eternal life is found in knowing the Father and the Son together. To know the only true God is to know the Christ he has sent.
Verse 3 once reshaped how I understood salvation. In my youth, I tended to think of salvation mainly as escaping hell and going to heaven. But Jesus defines eternal life not in terms of destination but in terms of relationship: knowing the Father and the Son. According to him, that is the essence of salvation and its greatest privilege.
Throughout Scripture, knowing carries the weight of intimacy. Adam “knew” his wife. Israel was called to “know” the Lord in covenant faithfulness. The word goes far beyond awareness or information. It involves trust, love, communion, and personal fellowship. And for sinners, such knowledge becomes possible only through reconciliation accomplished by Christ.
So when Jesus prays to be glorified, he is asking the Father to reveal him through the cross and resurrection so that sinners come to know him personally. Yes, salvation includes the promise of heaven, but its heart is restored fellowship with God. As it happens, his request for glory is, at the same time, a request for our blessing—for the revelation that brings reconciliation.
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Those two realities always belong together. When God is glorified, sinners are drawn to enjoy him. And when we enjoy him, he is glorified.
The Finished Work and the Exalted Christ
Jesus continues, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). He can speak this way because every step of his earthly life has moved in perfect obedience to the Father. He accomplished what Adam failed to do and what no sinner ever could. While Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Jesus never fell short (Romans 3:23). His life displayed flawless righteousness, and in a few hours, he would offer himself as the perfect sacrifice, satisfying divine justice, bearing the penalty of sin, and securing redemption once for all. It is no surprise that his final words on the cross would be, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
And what would follow that finished work? People from every nation would come to see his glory, believe in him, receive eternal life, and in turn glorify him through their lives and witness. His work would not end at the cross; it would spread across centuries and continents as redeemed sinners come to know him personally.
Jesus then prays, “Father, glorify me in your own presence” (John 17:5). Having completed the work entrusted to him, he would return to the Father’s side to share once more in the glory that was his before the world existed. His exaltation would become universal and unmistakable. Paul writes:
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9–10)
Yet this exaltation came only because he first humbled himself “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). The path to glory ran directly through obedience, suffering, and sacrifice, and through that path, he accomplished the salvation of his people and the eternal glorification of his name.
