John 17:26Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Let us therefore believe and love God, so that it may not be said of us, "They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him" (Tit 1:16), and again, "he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8).

But the divine disciples are not able to know something about God as the fruit of their own knowledge. Rather, enlightened by the Spirit, they grasp the exact meaning of the mysteries of the Son, and thus receive the ability to understand the Father.

Therefore Christ added, beneficially and with full justice: "I have declared Your name to them, and I will declare it." Notice again how the same activity of both, that is, of the Father and the Son, appears in the reception of the vision of God.

The Father teaches by revealing His Son. No less does the Son teach by revealing the Father. Therefore He says to blessed Peter near the borders of Caesarea Philippi: "Blessed are you, Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven" (Mt 16:13, 17).

For the disciple confessed and affirmed that he had believed that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now He says of Himself: "I have declared Your name to them, and I will declare it."

Thus the Only-begotten did not cease revealing to us the meaning of His mystery after He first revealed it to the fathers. He does this always, sowing illumination in each through the Spirit and guiding those who love Him toward knowledge of what is above reason and speech.

What He will accomplish, and what benefit He will provide us by what He says He has already revealed to the disciples and will reveal to their descendants, He also showed in the words: "That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

Those who have been able, by pure contemplation, to know God the Father, and have been taught the exact meaning of Christ's mystery, will without doubt possess and certainly receive perfect love from the Father, according to likeness with the Son.

For the Father loves His Son most perfectly. Christ Himself also dwells in them, certainly through the Holy Spirit. Through Himself He leads into spiritual union with God the Father the one who has known Him and bears within himself the work of divine knowledge unharmed.

He has declared to us the Father's "name" by showing us Himself as Son. For with knowledge of the Son, knowledge of Him who begot Him must without doubt be joined and always accompany it. The reverse is also true.

If it must be true and beyond dispute that the Father is conceived and presented together with the Son, and the Son in turn together with the Father, and that knowledge of each corresponds to the other, how can the Son, according to certain impious men, be a creature?

For whoever speaks of the Son communicates to his hearers knowledge of the Father also. But whoever utters the word "creature" gives the thought of the one who created it.

Since the Son calls God Father, and not maker or creator, He evidently acknowledges Himself to be His true offspring. Therefore the Son is understood to be, and is, Son and not a creature, as those men suppose.

For the same reason, the One who creates is Creator, and not Father. It should do no harm to our argument that the name of birth or sonship can also be used of us.

What properly and strictly belongs to the Son by nature has been transferred to us. Holy Scripture often uses figurative speech, and sometimes applies to sons by adoption what belongs to the Son by nature.

There is nothing wondrous in the fact that we too have received the name of offspring, according to the will of the man-loving God to honor us. For He even called gods those who, as is known, are from the earth (Jn 10:34-36; Ps 81:6).

"And I have declared Your name to them," He says, "and I will declare it." That is: "I have declared it by faith, and I will declare it by sight. I have declared it to those who still wander without end, and I will declare it to those who will reign without end."

"That the love," He says, "with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." The expression is unusual: "That the love which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

It would sound more customary to say, "The love with which You loved Me." This is, of course, a translation from Greek, yet similar Latin expressions also exist.

For example, we say, "he served a faithful service" and "he soldiered a strenuous soldiering," though it would seem that we should say, "he served with faithful service" and "he soldiered with strenuous soldiering."

Yet the Apostle also uses this form of expression: "I have fought the good fight" (cf. 2 Tim 4:7). He did not say "in the good fight," which would have been more customary and, in a certain sense, more correct.

Why, then, does the love with which the Father loved the Son abide also in us, if not because we are His members? We are loved in Him, since He is loved entire, that is, as Head and as body.

For this reason He added, "and I in them," as though He said, "because I too am in them." On the one hand, He abides in us as in His temple.

On the other hand, since we are He, inasmuch as He became man in order to be our Head, we are His body. Here the Savior's prayer ends, and the Passion begins.

Therefore let the sermon also be completed, so that, as He Himself grants, we may consider the Passion in other discourses.

"And I in them," so that I may abide in them more fully because of their greater faith, since they will know Me more perfectly. Thus Jesus Christ ends His discourse with a word about love, which is the fulfillment of all the virtues.

Then they will know Thee, the holy Father, still more clearly. They will be still more worthy to be called Thy children.

Thus, having known Thee and abiding in communion with Me, they may feel more and more how Thou lovest Me, and how Thou lovest them, My disciples, in Me.

Thus this prayer embraces the whole work of the Lord, even to its full completion at the end of the ages.

At the close of His prayer, the Lord confesses before the Father that He, the Son of God, came down to earth and became man in order to reveal God fully in His person, life, and works, Heb 1-2.

He has already accomplished this work in the measure required, and He will bring it to completion through the Holy Spirit.

Through His descent upon believers, the Holy Spirit actually revealed God as triune in persons.

By His gracious action in the apostles, and in believers generally, He opened and continues to open their spiritual understanding to the full and true comprehension of God's revelation in Christ.

The highest aim of this revelation of God in the Son and the Holy Spirit is the enthronement in believers of the love that dwells in God, and their unity in Him through their Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

It cannot be compared with any of our prayers. No sinful human being can ever experience what filled the soul of the God-man, who gave His human life for the sins of others, for the sins of the whole world.

Let us bow before the majesty and holiness of this sacrifice. Let us put away every bold attempt to convey the content of this prayer to readers in other words.

Let us read it in the very words recorded by the Evangelist, who wrote not only from memory, but also by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

It will constitute the foundation of their spiritual union with You, and as a result "I in them." Thus God will be all and in all (1 Cor 15:28). All-embracing, all-creating, and all-penetrating love will bring all things to completion in the eternal glorious Kingdom of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The instruction which the Lord Jesus promises to give believers is not so. It will be given so that the love with which the Father loved the Son may be in them, and the Son in them. What is the love of the Father for the Son abiding in us? It is that love which, for the merits of the Son, makes us participants in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the new revelation of God the Father will not be limited to a mere expansion of knowledge in the mind. The Spirit of grace, the fruit of God the Father's love for the Son, is to dwell constantly in the believing soul. He will take possession of all its powers and will become the life-giving principle of the soul's activity. God's love for men will be revealed in the soul as the soul's love for God. Or, as the Apostle Paul says, "the love of God constrains us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died" (2 Cor 5:14). O divine Love, may Your wondrous desires be fulfilled in us. We know that, if they are not fulfilled, it will be only because of ourselves, because of our inattention to our eternal lot and our senseless coldness toward our salvation. Illumine our mind with Your light. Warm our hearts with love for Your good will concerning us. Save us, our Savior, according to Your sole goodness toward us, that we may sing to You in time and in eternity: Alleluia. Amen.

But behold, God, who took upon Himself human nature, with soul and body, knows God in this assumed nature. He gives man knowledge of God in the measure that human powers can receive.

Before the Lord's coming, however, man's spiritual and moral powers were only weakly developed. The Lord, by clothing Himself in human flesh, brings into human capacities new powers and a new capacity to know God.

This is an act of divine creation through the Word, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. Man is given to know God only by the path by which the disciples came to knowledge.

"These have known that You sent Me." In other words, there is no other path to the knowledge of God than the confession of faith: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" (Acts 8:37).

Faith in the Lord has as its consequence the revelation of the mysteries of God to believers. "I have declared Your name to them." The revelation of God's name, in the Old Testament as in the New, is equivalent to the disclosure of a new and higher knowledge of God.

The beginning of revelation about God coincides with the creation of man. It continues among the patriarchs and is especially enlarged with the disclosure of the name He Who Is, or Jehovah, to Moses.

It is explained by many mercies and wonders shown to Israel. Yet "Jeshurun," the name of Israel, "grew stubborn, became fat and thick, and forsook God who made him" (cf. Deut 32:15).

The prophets, moved by the Holy Spirit, increasingly disclosed the meaning of the name Jehovah. They revealed the image of His coming, both in glory and in the temporal abasement of the Messiah, as in Isaiah 53 and many other places.

Then, in the fulfillment of the fullness of time, the Promised One came, the gracious Deliverer of all who are faithful to God. With His coming, the fullness of the meaning of God's name is disclosed, so far as it is given to man to contain it.

This name is revealed and glorified on earth by the gracious word of the God-man, by His miracles, and by His sufferings, death, and Resurrection: "I have declared Your name to them."

The Lord's word that follows, "and I will declare it," points to the eternal and constant abiding of the Spirit of God in the Church of Christ. It also points to His action for the development of the spiritual man.

It leads to the knowledge of the divine Name in its infinite greatness, inexhaustible for man, yet eternally leading him to endless growth. It leads him to ever higher goals and to the expansion of the chief foundation of Christ's teaching, love.

"That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." This love, with which God the Father loved the God-man, includes in that love all believing humanity for the sake of the merits of the God-man.

The Lord Jesus wills that this love should be "in them," that is, in all who are faithful to Christ. He wills that it serve as the bond between God and humanity through the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5). For, as the Lord said: "That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."