After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life (the life of the age) to all whom you have given him.
“And this is the life of the age, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
"Father, the hour has come." Throughout John's Gospel, Jesus has been saying "My hour has not yet come." He's been the master strategist, carefully timing every move, avoiding arrest when it wasn't time. Now, right before his arrest in John 17, the hour has finally come. Jesus, the smartest person to ever live, chose precisely when his end would come. He wasn't a victim of circumstances. He walked deliberately into what was waiting.
Verse 2: God gave Jesus authority over all flesh, "given everything to him." This is an example of the mutual submission within the Trinity. The Father gives all authority to the Son. The Son gives it back. "Glorify me so I glorify you." "You gave me all authority, I give you back all authority." It's a mutual indwelling, a constant exchange.
This relationship among the Trinity is called perichoresis - the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity, the divine dance. This is good and necessary theology because it shows us that at the center of the universe, the Creator Themself is non-hierarchical, non-competitive, non-dualistic. The Divine Dance calls us to join with them in that mutual, non-hierarchical existence. A God who is inherently self-giving and self-emptying shows us that all forms of hierarchy, supremacy, and domination are abominations to God. If God doesn't operate through domination, then any human system built on domination is fundamentally ungodly.
Verse 3: "And this is the life of the age (aionios), that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." What is eternal life - or as we've discussed before, properly translated as "the life of the age"? Knowing God. Or possibly "recognizing God." The invitation to the life of the age is intimacy with God. It's relational, not transactional. It's not about correct beliefs or moral performance. It's about knowing and being known.
Scholars try to figure out the sitz im leben of John - the "life setting," the historical context in which it was written. It seems John was writing to a community struggling with questions about the nature of Christ. Was he God? Was he pre-existent? Or was he just an exceptional human teacher? John's answer is clear: Yes, Jesus is God. Yes, he existed before the world was made. Verse 5: "Glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed."
And importantly, Jesus is only doing precisely what the Father has given him to do. Jesus is not a schism in the Trinity or somehow separate from the Father with his own agenda. Jesus is the embodiment of God, the Word made flesh. This matters because of future heresies that claimed Jesus was a fully separate being from God who fundamentally disagreed with YHWH of the Hebrew Bible - as if the God of the Old Testament was angry and violent, but Jesus came to fix that. No. Jesus reveals who God has always been.
Finally, "glory" in John is ultimately revealed at the cross. If you want to know God's glory, look at the self-giving, self-emptying, self-sacrificing love of God hanging on a Roman execution device. That is true glory. Not power, not dominance, not violence. Love that gives itself away completely.
Questions for reflection:
Jesus says eternal life is knowing God. How does your understanding of Christianity change if the goal is intimacy and knowledge rather than correct belief or moral behavior?
If the Trinity operates through mutual submission and self-giving rather than hierarchy, what does that mean for how we structure our churches, families, and society? Where have you seen Christians use God to justify domination rather than reflect God's mutual love?