<p>17:1<i> These things spoke Jesus</i>- The idea is that after having given the discourse just recorded in the previous chapters, the Lord prayed this prayer. In discussing the Lord's teaching about the Comforter in chapters 14-16, we have noted that He speaks of this gift as He Himself, coming in the first instance to the disciples who had been with Him &quot;from the beginning&quot; and who were to convict the Jewish world of sin by their witness, in the strength of the Comforter; and yet we have also seen that the promised Comforter is essentially an internal strengthening given to all believers. These three themes are all summed up in the Lord's prayer of John 17. The prayer falls easily into the same three categories; prayer for Himself (:1-5), for the disciples (:6-19) and for all believers (:20-26).</p><p><i>And lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he said</i>- The significance of this is that the Lord has spoken of how the Comforter would enable believers in Him to have the same kind of relationship with the Father which He had enjoyed in His mortal life. And His prayer goes on to emphasize this. The fact He could pray to God in Heaven with no sense of barrier is a profound visual indicator of the totally open nature of that relationship; and His intention is that we share the same relationship with the Father as He did.</p><p>Indeed we must ask why the record of this prayer, the Lord's longest recorded prayer, this unique insight into His relationship with the Father, is placed at this point. Why do we not have transcripts of other, earlier prayers to the Father earlier in the account? I suggest it is because it follows on from the Lord's promise that through the presence of the Spirit, believers would share His relationship with the Father. And in this prayer, we see something of what that relationship involved.</p><p><i>Father, the hour comes. Glorify Your son, that the son may glorify you</i>- The coming of the predetermined hour for His death did not make the Lord fatalistic, merely submitting to the Father's will. Not the hour had come, He prayed to the Father. Our sense of God's utter sovereignty should lead to prayer and action, as it did with the Lord; rather than mere resignation to His will. The Lord was lifted up on the cross, and 'lifted up' is the Hebrew idea for glorification. The Lord saw the whole process of death, resurrection and ascension as glorification; He did not break the process down into chronological segments, for He looked at it from outside time as we know it. It was by or for the glory of the Father that the Lord was raised from the dead (Rom. 6:4), so the glorification process includes both death and resurrection. The purpose of His glorification was for the Father's glory, and Paul alludes to this in teaching that the whole process of the Lord's humiliation and glorification was &quot;to the glory of God the Father&quot; (Phil. 2:11). The language and concepts simply cannot be fitted in to the Trinitarian paradigm.</p><p>The echoes of Deuteronomy in the Lord&rsquo;s goodbye speeches shouldn&rsquo;t be missed; for Moses at this time truly was a superb type of the Lord Jesus. Deuteronomy concludes with two songs of Moses, one addressed to the Father (Dt. 32), and the other to his people (Dt. 33). It is apparent that the Lord&rsquo;s final prayer in Jn. 17 is divisible into the same divisions- prayer to the Father, and concern for His people. It has been observed that the prayer of Jn. 17 is also almost like a hymn- divided into seven strophes of eight lines each. It would appear to be John&rsquo;s equivalent to the record in Mk. 14:26 of a hymn being sung at the end of the Last Supper.</p><p>The prayer is in some ways an expanded restatement of the model prayer. In it, the Lord asks for the Father&rsquo;s Name to be hallowed or glorified (Jn. 17:1,11,12); for His work or will to be done or finished (Jn. 17:4); for deliverance from the evil one (Jn. 17:15). The prayer of Jn. 17 can be divided into three units of about the same length (Jn. 17:1-8; 9-19; 20-26). Each has the theme of glory, of directly addressing the Father, and of the needs of God&rsquo;s people- all clearly taken from the model prayer.</p>