<p>17:24- see on Jn. 7:34.</p><p><i>Father, I desire that they also whom You have given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which You have given me. For You loved me from before the foundation of the world</i>- The glory given before the foundation of the world (:5) is paralleled here with God's love for His Son at that same time. These terms such as &quot;glory&quot; and &quot;love&quot; are all parallel, and do not require too much specific definition. To behold or perceive the Lord's glory, which was the Father's glory, was to &quot;be where I am&quot;, which was the whole intention of His death. For He died so that His Spirit would be given to us, that where &quot;I am&quot; in His relationship with the Father, there we might be also (14:2,3). To be where He was meant to behold or perceive the glory; to perceive in Him, a 33 year old Palestinian Jew, of a certain blood type and plasma, son of a hairdresser from a Nazareth back street, covered in blood and spittle on a Roman cross, on a day in April, on a hill just outside Jerusalem, tormented by flies... the sublimest glory of God.</p><p>It could be that His request is therefore specifically that His disciples should be with Him at the cross- &quot;I will that where I am, there they may also be&quot; (Jn. 17:24 RV- hence John's emphasis that he really did behold Him there). He so wishes for us to at least try to stand with Him there and enter into it all. See on Lk. 22:15. But more than physical presence, He desired that they would perceive the crucifixion as the manifestation of glory, after the pattern of the theophany of Exodus 34.</p><p>Love before the foundation of the world is a reference to the description of Moses as having been prepared in God&rsquo;s plan from the beginning: &ldquo;He prepared me Moses before the foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator of His covenant&rdquo; (<i>Assumption of Moses</i> 1.14). Once we appreciate this and other such allusions to popular Jewish belief about Moses, then the passages which appear to speak of personal pre-existence are easier to understand. The Jews didn&rsquo;t believe that Moses personally pre-existed, but rather that he was there in the plan / purpose of God, and with the major role in that purpose, from before creation. The Lord was applying those beliefs and that language to Himself, showing that He was greater than Moses. But by doing so, He wasn&rsquo;t implying that He personally pre-existed.</p><p>&quot;That they may behold my glory&quot; connects with the statement in the prologue that they <i>did</i> behold His glory, as if to say that the Lord's request here was indeed granted. His glory was especially manifested in His death. &ldquo;Where I am&quot; and His future glorification are linked into one and the same event, even though the glorification was not then apparent. This use of language is to be connected with the way John&rsquo;s Gospel speaks several times of the hour coming, and yet having already come (Jn. 4:23; 5:25; 16:32). I have suggested that all these references have application to the Lord&rsquo;s death.</p><p>He tells the Father in prayer: &ldquo;I will NEV &quot;desire&quot; that they&hellip; be with me&rdquo; and yet elsewhere in the same prayer He says &ldquo;I <i>pray</i> that&hellip;&rdquo; (Jn. 17:9,15,20). Our will is essentially our prayer, just as His will was His prayer. If our will is purely God's will, we will receive answers to every prayer. And yet our will is not yet coincidental with His; even the will of the Son was not perfectly attuned to that of the Father (Lk. 22:42; Jn. 5:30; 6:38), hence the unanswered prayer for immediate deliverance from the cross. Yet as we grow spiritually, the will of God will be more evident to us, and we will only ask for those things which are according to His will. And thus our experience of answered prayer will be better and better, which in turn will provide us with even more motivation for faith in prayer. The Lord Jesus is the great example in all this. The implications of our will becoming God&rsquo;s will, of the sacrifice of our natural will, are enormous. Our will is the thing we cling to the most, and only give up at the very last. Our will alone is what we truly have, our dearest thing- and we are called to sacrifice it. I see in the OT significance of the blood poured out far more than merely our physical life force- rather does it further symbolize our essential will.</p>