John 17:5 - Exposition

And now ( νῦν )—the very point of time has come— glorify thou me, O Father , explaining the opening of the prayer, "Glorify thy Son." He identifies his own Personality—"me"—with that of "the Son," and "thy Son." With thy own self ( παρὰ σεαυτῷ ); in closest connection and fellowship with thy-self—a relation which has been arrested or suspended since have been "Jesus Christ," and glorifying thee amid the toil and sorrow of this earthly pilgrimage. This immediate glorification of the Son embraces the glory of vicarious death, the triumphant resurrection, the mystery of ascension in the strength of his human memories to the right hand of God ( John 13:31 , John 13:32 ). He still further defines this wondrous prospect, as with the glory which I had with thee before the world was —before the being of the κόσμος παρὰ σεαυτῷ … παρὰ σοι παρὰ in John represents local relationships (see John 1:40 ; John 4:40 ; John 14:25 ; Revelation 2:13 ) or intimate spiritual associations ( John 14:3 ). So our Lord remembers and anticipates a "glory with the Father." That which he refers to as before the existence of the world has been softened down by Grotius, Wettstein, Schleiermacher, and some moderns to mean the glory of the Divine thought and destination concerning him; but the expression παρὰ σοι is far from being exhausted by such a rendering. He who wrote the prologue ( John 1:2 , John 1:18 ) meant that, as the Logos had been πρὸς τὸν θέον and εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός , and at a special epoch "became flesh," the beamings forth of his glory on earth were those which belonged to human life, to the form of a servant, and were profoundly different from that μορφὴ θεοῦ in which his innermost self-consciousness, the center of his Personality, originally dwelt. And now he seeks to carry this new appanage of his Sonship, this God-glorifying humanity, up into the glory of the pre-existent majesty (cf. Philippians 2:9 ; 1 Timothy 3:16 ; Hebrews 1:8 , Hebrews 1:13 ). The δόξα which was visible to the disciples on earth ( John 1:14 ) was glory limited, colored, conditioned, by human life and death; but so complete was the Lord's union with the Loges, that it did not quench his memory of the glory of his omnipresent, eternal Being, nor his remembrance of absolute coexistence with the Father before all worlds. He would lift humanity to the very throne of God by its union with his Person. This stupendous claim both as to the past and future would be utterly bewildering if it stood alone; but the Old Testament has prepared the mind of the disciples for this great mystery ( Proverbs 8:1-36 .; Isaiah 6:1-13 .). The theophanies generally, and John 8:25 and Hebrews 1:1-14 ., with numerous other passages, sustain and corroborate the conception that the Loges of God was throughout all human history on the verge of manifestation in the flesh. The record of the extraordinary God-consciousness of Jesus does transcend all human experience, and baffles us at every turn; but the human consciousness of Jesus appears gradually to have come into such communion with the Loges who had become flesh in him, that he thought the veritable thoughts and felt the emotions of the eternal God as though they were absolutely his own. In addition to this idea of his resumption of his own eternal state, Lange and Moulton, in opposition to Meyer, lay emphasis on the answer to this prayer, consisting in such a manifestation of the premundane glory in his flesh , that it should perfectly establish the relation between the glory of the Father before all worlds, rod the glory of utter and complete self-sacrifice for the redemption of the world. The glory of omnipotence and omnipresence is lost in the greater glory of infinite love. Thus the glory which he had with the Father would be best seen in the completion of his agony, the τετέλεσται of the cross.