SCOPE OF JESUS'S HIGH PRIESTLY PRAYER IN JOHN 17, THE

Encounter, Winter 2006 by Janzen, J Gerald

In respect to 17:23, "that the world [ho kosmos] may know that you have sent me and have loved them [autous] as you loved me," Brown observes that "Bernard...interprets this to mean that the world will understand that God has loved it,12 but more likely it means that the world will understand that God has loved the Christian believers."13 Brown's further comment is nothing short of astonishing: "The love of God for the world is mentioned only as a preparation for the incarnation of the Son in iii 16; contrast xv 19" (italics added). It is unclear what bearing 15:19 has on the question of God's love for the world, since it speaks only of the world's love and hate. (Paul would say the measure of God's love is that while we were sinners/enemies, Christ died for us [Romans 5]. Would John say less?) What is astonishing is Brown's "only." A propos of 17:23, "that you have loved them as [kathos] you have loved me," Brown aptly comments, "The standard of comparison is breathtaking but logical; since the Christians are God's children and endowed with the life that Jesus has from the Father (vi 57), God loves these children as He loves His Son. There is only one love of God" (italics added). What of the world? Does God love the world as God loves these children? If not, is God's love one or is it two? More radically, does God love the world as God loves the Son? How can God not love the world as God loves the Son, given that "all things were made through him"? If the love between the Father and the Son is a love of mutual indwelling, and if that love, that mutual indwelling, predates the creation of the world (1:1-2; 17:5), this must mean that the world was created out of the matrix of that love. The love spoken of in 3:16, then, is a love that seeks to reclaim and redeem a world gone astray from that love, and to draw that world back into the sphere of that love. This, again, suggests that the third hina clause in John 17:20-21 and in 17:22-23 indicates the ultimate saving purpose to be served through the proximate concerns expressed in the first two hina clauses of those two "blocks."

By definition, the very concept of the sacred establishes a boundary that excludes what is profane. And in human practice, the inveterate tendency of that which considers itself to be sanctified is to protect itself against whatever would defile it. The thematics of "keeping" and "guarding" in verses 11, 12, and 15 exemplify this both in Jesus's own activity and in his prayer for the disciples. But one result is for a "sanctified community" to close in on itself and concern itself only with its own internal sanctity.14 And the passage now under examination does not stop with verse 17. The thrust of verses 18-19 is to counter that all-too-common tendency of the religious.

Consider: As in verses 20-23, kathos in verse 18 has the meaning, "in the same manner as." Jesus is sending his followers into the world (see already 4:31-42) in the same manner as the Father has sent him into the world-that is, with the aim expressed in 3:16: God's love for the world, embodied in the action of the Son, to win the believing response of the world to that love. That is how Jesus sends into the world those whom Jesus has just asked the Father to "sanctify" in the truth. Further, Jesus says that he sanctifies himself for their sake. His sanctification is not for his own sake, but for theirs. Here again, a sanctification which arises out of love is a sanctification which is for the sake of the beloved. But if Jesus was sent into the world as one who sanctified himself for the sake of his followers, so that they might be sanctified in truth, and if they are sent into the world as he was sent into the world, does this not raise the question of the purpose of their sanctification? Are they sanctified merely for their own sakes? Or for the sake of the world to which they are sent? And, if the latter, is it not so that the world also may come to be sanctified in truth?15