I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them that you have given me; for they are yours.
All Commentaries on John 17:9 Go To John 17
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
When He adds, I pray not for the world, by the world He means those who live according to the lust of the world, and have not the lot to be chosen by grace out of the world, as those had for whom He prayed: But for them which you have given Me. It was because the Father had given Him them, that they did not belong to the world. Nor yet had the Father, in giving them to the Son, lost what He had given: For they are Yours.
It is sufficiently apparent from hence, that all things which the Father has, the Only-Begotten Son has; has in that He is God, born from the Father, and equal with the Father; not in the sense in which the elder son is told, All that I have is yours. For all there means all creatures below the holy rational creature, but here it means the very rational creature itself, which is only subjected to God. Since this is God the Father’s, it could not at the same time be God the Son’s, unless the Son were equal to the Father. For it is impossible that saints, of whom this is said, should be the property of any one, except Him who created and sanctified them. Who He says above in speaking of the Holy Spirit, All things that the Father has are Mine, He means all things which pertain to the divinity of the [Father; for Headds, He (the Holy Spirit) shall receive of Mine; and the Holy Spirit would not receive froma creature which was subject to the Father and the Son.
He speaks of this as already done, meaning that it was as predestined, and sure to be. But is this the glorifying of which He speaks above, And now, O Father, glorify you Me with Your own Self? If then with Yourself, what means here, In them? Perhaps that this very thing, i.e. His glory with the Father, was made known to them, and through them to all that believe.
At the time at which He was speaking, both were still in the world. Yet we must not understand, I am no more in the world, metaphorically of the heart and life; for could there ever have beena time when hen He loved the things of the world? It remains then that He means that He wasnot in the world, as He had been before; i.e. that He was soon going away. Do we not say every day, when any one is going to leave us, or going to die, such an one is gone? This is shown to be the sense by what follows; for He adds, And now I come to You. And then He commends to His Father those whom He was about to leave: Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom you have given Me. As man He prays God for His disciples, whom He received from God. But mark what follows: That they may be one, as We are: He does not say, That they may be one with us, We are one: but, that they may be one: that they may b one in their nature, as We are one in Ours. For, in that He was God and man in one person as manHe prayed, as God He was one with Him to Whom He prayed.
He does not say, That Iand they maybe one, though He might have said so in the sense, that He was the head of the Church, and the Church His body; not one thing, but one person: the head and the body being one Christ. But strewing something else, viz. that His divinity is consubstantial With the Father, He prays that His people may in like manner be one; but one in Christ, not only by the same nature, in which mortal man is made equal to the Angels, but also by tile same will, agreeing most entirely in the same mind, and melted into one Spirit by the fire of love. This is the meaning of, That they may be one as We are: viz. that as the Father and the Son are one not only by equality of substance, but also in will, so they, between whom and God the Son is Mediator, may be one not only by the union of nature, but by the union of love.
The Son as man kept His disciples in the Father's name, being placed among them in human form: the Father again kept them in the Son's name, in that He heard those who asked in the Son’s name. But we must not take this carnally, as if the Father and Son kept us in turns, for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit guardus at the same time: but Scripture do does not raise us, except it stoop to us. Let us understand then that when our Lord says this, He is distinguishing the persons, not dividing, the nature, so that when the Son was keeping His disciples by His bodily presence, the Father was waiting to succeed Him on His departure; but both kept them by spiritual power, and when the Son withdrew His bodily presence, he still held with the Father the spiritual keeping . For when the Son as man received them into His keeping , He did not take them from n the Father’s keeping, and when the Father gave them into the Son’s keeping , it was to the Son asman, who at the, same time was God. Those that you gave Me I have kept, and none of themis lost but the Son of perdition: i.e. the betrayer of Christ, predestined to perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, especially the prophecy, in Psalm 108.
Or thus: That they might have the joy spoken of above: That they maybe one, We are one. This spoken i.e. bestowed by Him, He says, is to be fulfilled in them on which account He spoke thus in the world. This joy is the peace and happiness of the life to come. He says He spoke in the world, though He had just now said, I am no more in the world. For, inasmuch as He had not yet departed, He was still here; and inasmuch as He was going to depart, He was in a certain sense not here.
