John 17:1-26
This entire chapter is a prayer: Jesus' intimately faithful prayer to God.
17:1 Swelling with love, trust and wonder, Jesus' eyes behold heaven. Heaven, the home and haven of our spiritual creator is ever present and listening. With the same love, trust and wonder, experience it come into view, attentive to our concerns.
Jesus asks for God to continue to provide and sustain the strength of His spirit through this final tribulation, crucifixion on earth. Only with precision, does Jesus begin this and every divine endeavor. He wishes to glorify God by being the vessel through which God's truth will flow.
17:2 With appreciation and gratitude, Jesus acknowledges that His purpose of bringing compassion and truth to humanity would have been impossible without God. He wishes to proceed until completion with the same divine guidance. He maintains determination in His purpose, having been sent by God to shepherd many. He asks God to continue to entrust Him with our lives in order that He may lead each of us, individually, into eternal life.
17:3 Jesus' deepest hope is that we are able to conceive and perceive the ethereal love and wisdom of our creator. His deepest hope is that we personally know our God, find comfort in His nurturing. He hopes that His life has served as an encouraging and protective pathway toward spirituality. He hopes for the ability to fulfill this, His purpose.
17:4 With humility, Jesus ensures God that He has served precisely as God has instructed: confessing and fostering His glory throughout the places and hearts He traveled.
17:5 Jesus acknowledges His impending return to and within God. His faith seeks its home; He is devoted and impassioned with the desire to be there again.
17:6 Jesus humbly confesses the honor with which He accepted and performed the opportunity, the responsibility, of shepherding God's children. He admits His completion of teaching and familiarizing humanity with their creator and He credits humanity with authentic, genuine faith upon hearing the word.
17:7 He promises God that He has thoroughly taught the details of the message He was sent to deliver. He acknowledges that all wisdom and knowledge is given, possible and created by God. He ensures that He has informed humanity of the true origin of the philosophy He brought: not of Himself but of God.
17:8 Jesus promises God that He has delivered what He was given and instructed to deliver and share. He promises God that it has been received and shared by humanity, that humanity understands and that humanity believes -- both in Jesus, the sent-prophet and in the sender, our God.
17:9 With passion and humility Jesus prays for us. He distinguishes God's children from the corruption of the world. He does not pray for the ways of the world, which are ridden with greed and injustice, He prays for God's children who are in the world but wrestle and reject greed and injustice.
17:10 Jesus reiterates that God's children, whom Jesus has been entrusted to lead and protect, are of God and that God is within them and Jesus. God's love and wisdom flows through the souls and spirits of His children, a many-membered body of one, with God at our core.
17:11 Jesus asks God to continue to give His protection and guidance to humanity who will soon be without Jesus' physical, tangible leadership. Jesus asks God to tether Himself to His children so that they can remain with Him, members of the spiritual family.
17:12 Jesus ensures God that He has nourished, sheltered and fostered the children of God. The compassionate, the humble, the just, the honest... these are the children of God and Jesus has promised that He has loved and led them. Jesus promises that He has kept, cupped gently and securely in His hand, the great responsibility He was given.
Jesus mentions Satan, the son of perdition, the only soul so far given the sentence of permanent death. Satan, the father and promoter of greed, injustice, violence, and arrogance. Jesus' mention of Satan is proof that He has been given the entire unfolding of events on earth, that both good and bad are given the freedom to fairly identify and express themselves while on earth. The only entity that will be irretrievably lost is evil.
Knowing the details of the plan yet performing His purpose, Jesus confesses His agreement and appreciation for God's plan.
17:13 In this long goodbye to life on earth, Jesus contemplates humanity's response to His return: He prays to God that we will endure and thrive with joy, despite His return, with joy because of the truth and love of God around and within us.
17:14 Jesus directs His prayer to the children of God who must confront and endure the works of the evil. He reminds God of something God is already aware: compassionate souls are rejected by the world because they are not of the world, they are of the spirit. Jesus prays for our strength and courage.
17:15 Jesus understands that this earth is humanities trial, humanity's opportunity to individual create itself. We have freedom here to become who we want to be, to believe and choose what we want to believe and choose. Jesus understands that humanity must go through this filtering but He asks God to help us through it.
17:16 He emphatically declares a truth which God is already aware: humanity's compassionate souls are born of and created by God, they do not naturally belong here. We belong in the spirit which birthed us, with God, and Jesus prays not only for His own return but also for ours. He prays that we are able to reach the place where we are protected from sadness and injustice. Our souls, our hearts are tender and kind and quite vulnerable here on earth, Jesus prays for our strength.
17:17 Jesus prays for God to solidify us in faith, to bless us and to free us from our adversaries. He confesses His belief in God's word as truth. He prays for God's truth to hone and guide us.
17:18 Jesus was sent by God out into the world with His love and with purpose. Likewise we were sent out into the world by Jesus: with love and with purpose. We were given work to do but also the love and guidance with which to do it. Jesus had a choice, and He chose to fulfill His purpose and trust God. Likewise we have a choice and hopefully it is to do the same: fulfill our purpose and trust God.
17:19 Jesus gives Himself wholeheartedly to us. He takes us under His wing. He devotes Himself to God because He loves and trusts Him and that enables Him to be our shepherd -- that we may be given a path toward God through Him.
17:20-21 Jesus prays for each compassionate, humble soul's journey toward God. Without bias or enforcement, Jesus acknowledges the different cultures and faiths of the world. He ensures God that He understands and accepts each kind soul as a child of God, a member of the same family, and a promoter of the same compassion.
17:22 Jesus promises to have poured His whole self into loving, healing and teaching God's children. The life, wisdom and love given to Jesus by God has been selflessly, abundantly shared.
17:23 He prays that each soul will be united together with God. He promises to have loved us as deeply as God has loved Him and us. He promises to have ensured that we understand Him as a prophet, yes, but a servant of God foremost.
17:24 Jesus prays that we are always aware of Him, that He remain always accessible to us. He knows that we are strong when we derive our strength from His love and guidance.
You were also known and loved before the foundation of the world: Ephesians 1:4. God has known you and loved you beyond what you are even able to understand.
17:25 With passion Jesus expresses that although some of the world is corrupt, His students have been humble and compassionate. He reminds God of the goodness that is within us, despite our sometimes-corrupt surroundings. He reminds God that we try and we care and we work in His name. We work also to understand His word and to incorporate into our lives the lessons we are given by His messengers.
17:26 Jesus promises to have declared the existence, the truth, the love, the creation of our God. He promises to continue declaring it, forever, on earth even at the point of His death and beyond that. Jesus promises God that He remains committed to and passionate about filling God's children with His love, so that they may rest and thrive within and because of it.
