John 17:5

My Notes

What Does John 17:5 Mean?

Jesus prays for something that existed before anything else existed: glory. Not new glory. Restored glory. The glory He shared with the Father before the cosmos was spoken into being.

"And now, O Father, glorify thou me" — the prayer is for glorification through the cross and resurrection. The "now" signals the hour has come. The road to glory runs through Golgotha. Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him — not with something He's never had, but with something He voluntarily set aside.

"With thine own self" — the glorification isn't separate from the Father. It's in the Father's presence, in the Father's own being. The glory Jesus requests isn't an award given at a distance. It's the restoration of the shared life — the intimate, face-to-face, being-with-being communion of the Father and the Son. The glory is relational, not just radiant.

"With the glory which I had with thee" — past tense. I had this. It was mine. I possessed it. The glory Jesus is asking for is something He previously owned and willingly relinquished. The incarnation was a voluntary glory-surrender. The prayer is for the glory-return.

"Before the world was" — before creation. Before the first word of Genesis 1. Before light, before matter, before time. The glory Jesus shared with the Father predates everything that exists. The Son's glory is older than the universe. It was there when nothing else was. And it was a shared glory — with thee, between Father and Son, in a relationship that preceded and produced everything.

This prayer is one of the strongest declarations of Christ's preexistence and deity in the New Testament. Jesus claims personal memory of glory enjoyed before the world existed. Only God has that kind of résumé.

Reflection Questions

• 1.What does it mean to you that Jesus voluntarily set aside pre-creation glory to become human for your sake?
• 2.How does this prayer — asking to go home — reveal the personal cost of the incarnation?
• 3.What does the phrase 'before the world was' tell you about the age and nature of Christ's glory?
• 4.How does knowing Jesus' prayer was answered (the glory was restored) give you confidence about the prayers you're waiting on?

Devotional

Jesus is about to be crucified. And His prayer isn't for strength. It isn't for rescue. It's for glory — the glory He shared with the Father before anything else existed. He's not asking for something new. He's asking to go home. To return to the shared radiance that was His before He left heaven to become a baby in Bethlehem.

The incarnation was a glory-trade. Jesus set aside what was rightfully His — the visible, radiant, face-to-face glory of the Father's presence — and took on what was ours: flesh, limitation, suffering, death. He traded the glory of heaven for the dust of earth. Not because heaven wasn't good enough. Because we weren't reachable from there. The glory had to be set aside so the rescue could happen at ground level.

Now, on the eve of the cross, He asks for it back. Not as a reward for good performance. As a restoration of what was always His. The glory He had before the world was — older than the stars, older than time, older than everything you've ever known or seen — is the glory the Father will restore through the resurrection and ascension.

The prayer is both heartbreaking and triumphant. Heartbreaking because you hear the longing of Someone who's been away from home for thirty-three years. Triumphant because the asking implies the mission is about to be completed. You only ask to go home when the work is done. And the work — your redemption — is hours from completion.

Before the world was. That's how long Jesus has been who He is. And the glory He returns to is the glory He left for you.

Commentary

Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.

Cross References

Related passages throughout Scripture