John 17:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If Christ "committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth" (Is 53:9), how can the apostles be compared with Him? What then do His words mean, "They are not of the world"? They have another world in view. They have nothing in common with the earth. They have become citizens of heaven. By this also He shows His love, for He praises them before the Father and entrusts them to Him who begot Him.

After His example they drive away the disturbance of worldly evil and become distant and estranged in this life from sensual passions and every shameful thing. Therefore 'keep them in Thy truth.' For purity belongs to Christ by nature and surpasses speech. He is true God, Who neither knows nor admits falling into sin. Rather, He is the fountain of every virtue and of the radiance of holiness. The divine nature, which rules over all, can certainly do nothing other than what truly befits It and is understood as belonging to It. But in the holy disciples, or in all who believe in Him, purity, that is, non-participation in worldly evil, appears only through mercy and grace from above. This grace removes the defilement of falls already committed and takes away the transgressions of life. It also grants the purity of holy life, though this does not remain steadfast without difficulty. Therefore Paul's words seem wise to me: 'Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall' (1 Cor 10:12). For our affairs are always in turmoil, and our life is subject to many changes. The evil one continually tempts and always lies in wait. He wishes to stain by hard-to-detect snares of wickedness even those already purified, if that were possible. For 'his foods are choice,' according to the prophet's word (Hab 1:16). Therefore, having borne witness to His disciples' life outside the world and to their conformity by imitation to His essential purity, He asks the Father that they be preserved, speaking, as it were, in this way: 'O all-holy Father. If they were in the world, that is, if they conducted the life honored in this world, and if they surrendered their heart to earthly and temporal pleasures, they would sketch within themselves the most deformed image, ἰδέαν, of the evil one. Then he would not attack them with his temptations, nor would he arm himself at all against his own children, since he would find in them a reflection of the evil proper to him. But because, after My example, they despised the deception of this world, they have become outside the world. In their conduct they display the clearest image of My incomparable purity. For this reason they have Satan as a watcher and enemy, always gnashing his teeth against the saints. Therefore I now consider it necessary that they be guarded. But their guarding is certainly impossible without Thy truth, that is, without Me. For I am Thy truth by nature, Father, the essential, living, and hypostatic Word.' This, one may suppose, is what He expresses in this saying. See how, in nearly all His words, He always joins His own person to the activity of the Father, whatever that activity may concern. He thereby proves the truth that 'all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made' (Jn 1:3). Therefore, in the words cited a little above, He asked His Begetter for the preservation of the disciples 'in the name' given to Him (Jn 17:11). But in these words He desires that the request for them be fulfilled 'in the truth.' What does this mean, or what does this difference in words intend? Is it not to show the one activity of the Father, accomplished through Him in the guarding of the saints? There, where He says that the disciples are to be guarded 'in the name of the Father,' He declares that those who suffer calamities for God's sake are to be rescued from the power of him who wishes to do evil, by the power and glory of the Godhead. Such a thing happened to them. Though Christ is silent about it now, He once revealed it to His disciples in these words: 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to sift you as wheat. But I prayed for you, that your faith may not fail' (Lk 22:31-32). For much is ordered secretly concerning us, since Christ provides for and defends the life of each one. But here, by the words 'keep them in the truth,' He clearly indicates guidance toward receiving the truth through the illumination of the truth. For no one can come to knowledge of the truth without illumination through the Spirit. Nor can anyone acquire an exact grasp of the divine dogmas, of course in the measure accessible to human beings. For the mysteries contained in the God-inspired Scriptures surpass our mind. Therefore even a moderate knowledge of Christ is not an inglorious gift. Thus blessed Peter, when he confessed the Lord as the true Son of the living God, rightly heard, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven' (Mt 16:17). He reveals to the saints His Son, Who is the truth. This Son does not allow Satan to direct the mind of believers toward false knowledge. Hymenaeus and Alexander once surrendered themselves to this and 'suffered shipwreck in the faith' (1 Tim 1:19-20), because they rejected the right word of truth. Therefore the Father's keeping in the divine name and truth is of great importance for proper continuance in uprightness of thoughts and deeds. Thus we neither fall away from purity of works, nor, by turning aside into ignorance, withdraw from the dogmas of the true religion. This can easily happen to us too, once we have become outside the world. We do not deny our birth in the world, for we were all formed from clay and from the earth, as it is written (Gen 3:19; Job 33:6). Rather, by the quality of our deeds we withdraw from life in the world. For lovers of conformity to Christ walk on earth, yet have their citizenship in heaven. Again we must observe that He very wisely calls the Father 'holy' here. He almost reminds Him that, being holy, He should care for the saints. Everything is holy that is removed from worldly impurity. In Christ this exists by nature, in likeness to the Father. But in the holy disciples it is acquired and added through sanctification by grace, and through purity and holiness of life. Thus each person can be conformed to the divine and supramundane Image. Christ says somewhere to His Father concerning us: 'Sanctify them in Thy truth.' And God Himself, in turn, says through the prophet Ezekiel: 'I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord Who sanctifies them' (Ezek 37:27-28). Therefore, if God promises to sanctify those devoted to Him, and the Spirit is the One Who fulfills this word and sanctifies, then the Spirit is God and is not alien to the Essence that is above all other essences.

The sanctifications of the Old Covenant were only a shadow of this truth. When believers are sanctified in the truth, they are, of course, sanctified in Christ. He spoke according to the truth: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6). And when He said, "The truth shall make you free" (Jn 8:32), He explained His words a little later by adding, "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (Jn 8:36). By this He showed that what He had earlier called truth, He later called the Son. What else, then, does He say here when He declares, "Sanctify them in the truth," if not this: "Sanctify them in Me"?

That would contradict their vocation, which the heavenly Father indicated when He gave them to His Son. Their vocation is that through them the world itself should be transformed and changed by the knowledge of God revealed through Jesus Christ. He prays only that the heavenly Father preserve them from inward temptations of evil. He prays that inwardly they remain strangers to the world, as men sanctified by the truth He preached. He prays that His holy life, which He is ready to surrender for them, may be the foundation of their sanctification. "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth."

In this way, amid all the temptations soon to come upon them, they would remember Christ's intercession for them. They would be filled with the same joy with which He is filled as He goes to the Father. He goes to the Father after He has fully handed over and revealed to His disciples everything the Father entrusted Him to reveal to men. Yet at the same time the world, the unbelieving part of mankind, hated them because they were not of the world. Therefore they need God's special help, which protects them from the evil of the world. And the Lord prays to the Father that He preserve them from this evil.

Foreseeing all this, Jesus knew that victory would not come easily to His disciples. Without special support from above, they could not even emerge victorious from the struggle before them. Therefore, after giving them all His final farewell instructions, He turns in supplication to His Father. He asks Him to guard their faith from every temptation and wavering. He asks Him to sanctify them by His truth. He asks that, after they have completed their earthly struggle, they may be counted worthy to be where He, Christ, will be. He asks that not only they, but all who believe through their word, may be united by self-denying love for one another. He asks that they may remain in constant union with Him, Jesus Christ, and with the Father who sent Him.

This is the evil which the hostile world, together with the prince of the world, can inflict upon them; cf. Mt 6:13; Lk 11:4. "They are not of the world," and so forth; see the note on Jn 15:19. "Even as I am not of the world": "Do not be troubled by this. The word 'as' does not here signify perfect likeness. When Christ and the Father are spoken of, the word 'as' expresses complete equality. When we and Christ are spoken of, it allows for a great difference, because of the great and boundless difference between His nature and ours" (Chrysostom; cf. Theophylact).

In the prayer for Himself, Christ asks for divine glorification as the natural completion of His saving ministry on earth. He asks it for the triumph of the true faith, which leads to eternal life. For His little flock, the apostles whom He sends into the world for struggle, Christ prays that the heavenly Father guard their faith from all temptations and wavering. He prays that He sanctify them by His truth and, after they have completed their earthly struggle, count them worthy of blessedness in the Kingdom of Heaven in union with Him, Christ. For all believers drawn into Christ's Church by the preaching of the apostles, He prays that they remain in constant union with one another. They are to be bound by mutual self-denying love, and also united with Him and with the Father who sent Him: "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us" (verse 21; cf. verses 22-23). The high-priestly prayer of Christ the Savior depicts, in artistic form, the essence of His redemptive ministry to the world. It is lofty in feeling and deep in thought. At the same time, it is supremely simple and clear for a believing soul to receive.

Therefore He added, 'Sanctify them in Thy truth,' that is, make them holy by the imparting of the Holy Spirit and right doctrines. As He had said before, 'You are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you' (Jn 15:3), so now He says the same thing: instruct them, teach them the truth." Without struggle there is no victory. Therefore the apostles had to remain in the world and go to battle. They had to remember the Lord's words, that they "are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." They also had to remember the Lord's words: "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33). The Lord repeatedly told His disciples that they could no longer belong to the world. They were to have nothing in common with it, but remain in it only for the Lord's purposes; cf. Jn 15:19 and above in this chapter, verses 11 and 14. Thus also in the preaching on the Beatitudes in Luke 6:26, the Lord warned His disciples that woe comes when all men speak well of them. As one of the Lord's "witnesses," the Apostle James, beautifully expressed it: "Friendship with the world is enmity against God" (Jas 4:4). "Sanctify them in Thy truth," the Lord prayed for His disciples. This is that heavenly, absolute truth which regenerated the believers. For this truth the world hated the Lord's disciples. The Lord prays that the apostles be sanctified by the Spirit of God, so that they may be reborn as new men dedicated to God's truth. These men offer themselves in sacrifice and dedicate themselves to God. The Lord mercifully receives their sanctified souls and bodies "as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God," for their rational service to Him (Rom 12:1). The truth in which the chosen disciples are sanctified is the fullness of all the divine words and deeds of the God-man, who manifested the invisible God in the world. It is the very Theophany of the Word, who is Truth. The Word of God is not only what our Lord Jesus Christ spoke. It is also all His works, sufferings, death, and glorious resurrection. Therefore, when "the Word became flesh," the new man is created together with this. He is "created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth" (Eph 4:24). This new creation is accomplished by truth, which is the very Word of God, absolute Truth. "I am what I also say to you," the Lord said to the Jews. "I am the Word. I am the Truth. Apart from Me there is no other truth" (Jn 8:25 and the study of this verse).