John 17:11 - Meaning and Application

After Christ’s general prayers in which he placed his disciples under his Father’s care, he now makes specific requests for them. All these requests concern spiritual blessings and heavenly things. He does not ask that they become rich or powerful, or gain property and honor in the world, but that they be kept from sin, equipped for their work, and brought safely to heaven. The well-being of the soul is the best kind of success, and that is what Christ came to obtain and give.

These prayers also fit their present needs and dangers. Christ’s intercession, that is, his prayer on behalf of his people, always fits the situation. Our Advocate with the Father knows every detail of our needs, burdens, dangers, and hardships, and he shapes his prayers to match them. He did this for Peter’s danger, which Peter himself did not see coming, when he said, “I have prayed for you” (Luke 22:32).

Christ also prays fully and with great earnestness. He lays their needs before his Father and gives strong reasons for them. This teaches us to pray with zeal and persistence, to be full in prayer, and to stay with our requests before the throne of grace. We should wrestle in prayer like Jacob, who said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

The first thing Christ asks for his disciples is their protection. He commits them all to his Father’s keeping, because keeping them means danger is near. Their danger comes from the world in which they live, and he asks that they be kept from its evil. Here the request is, “Keep them from the world.”

There are two ways they might be delivered from the world, but Christ does not ask for either of them. He does not ask that they be taken out of it. That would mean, first, being removed quickly by death. If the world would be painful to them, the quickest relief would be to bring them at once into the better world of heaven. Job, Elijah, Jonah, and Moses all, at hard moments, wished to be taken away. But Christ would not ask this for his disciples for two reasons. First, he came to conquer the impatient passions that make people weary of life and eager for death. He wants us to take up our cross, not run ahead of it. Second, he had work for them to do in the world. The world was sick of them and not worthy of them, yet it could hardly do without them. Out of pity for this dark world, Christ would not have these lights removed before their work was finished, especially for the sake of those who would later believe in him through their word. They must die as martyrs in their own time, after they have completed their witness.

This reminds us that taking good people out of the world is not something to desire, but something to think about seriously. It is also true that Christ does not take his disciples to heaven the moment they are truly called. He leaves them here for a time so they may do good, honor God on earth, and be prepared for heaven. Many good people are allowed to live because others can hardly spare them to die.

Christ also does not ask that they be completely free from trouble and removed from the strain and danger of this life into a place of comfort and safety. That is not the kind of protection he seeks for them. He does not pray that they be freed from all hardship and live in ease and luxury, but that, by God’s help, they remain safe in the midst of danger. He does not ask that they avoid every conflict with the world, but that the world does not defeat them. He does not pray that they escape from among wicked people, but that, like Ezekiel, their faces be strong against evil faces (Ezekiel 3:8). It is a greater honor for a Christian soldier to overcome the world by faith than to flee it by a monastic vow.

The other way Christ prays for their rescue is by asking that they be kept from the corruption in the world, and he prays this in John 17:11 and John 17:15. This petition has three parts. “Holy Father, keep through your own name those whom you have given me.” Christ is about to leave them, but he does not want them to think their defense is leaving too. In their hearing, he gives them over to the care of his Father and their Father. This is a great comfort to all believers: Christ himself has entrusted them to God’s care. Those whom almighty God keeps are truly safe, and he will keep those whom the Son loves gives to him. In this confidence, we can trust the keeping of our souls to God (1 Peter 4:19; 2 Timothy 1:12).

Christ asks, first, for their protection, so that their enemies may not destroy them. He asks that they and all that concerns them be under God’s special care. Let their lives be kept until their work is done. Let their comforts be kept from being crushed by hardship. Let their place and influence in the world not fail. To this prayer we owe the remarkable preservation of the gospel ministry and the gospel church in the world to this day. If God had not graciously kept both, they would have disappeared long ago.

Second, Christ asks for their spiritual care, so that they themselves do not stray from duty or follow the weakness and deceit of their own hearts. “Keep them in their integrity, keep them as disciples, keep them close to their duty.” We need God’s power not only to bring us into a state of grace, God’s saving favor, but also to keep us there. See John 10:28-29; 1 Peter 1:5.

The names Christ uses strengthen the request. He speaks to God as “Holy Father.” When we commit ourselves and others to God’s care, we can take comfort, first, from his holiness. His holiness stands behind the protection of his holy people. He has sworn by his holiness (Psalm 89:35). If he is a holy God who hates sin, then he will make his own people holy and keep them from sin, which they also hate and fear as the greatest evil.

Second, we can take comfort from his fatherhood. Through Christ, he stands to us as a Father. If he is a Father, he will care for his own children, teach them, and keep them. Who else would do it? Christ then speaks of the disciples as those the Father has given him.

What we receive as our Father’s gifts, we can safely leave in our Father’s care. So Christ prays, “Father, keep the gifts and comforts you have given me, the children you have given me, and the ministry I have received.”

He asks that they be kept by God’s own name. Some take this to mean, “Keep them for your name’s sake.” In other words, God’s honor is tied to their safety as well as Christ’s own honor. If they turn away or fall, both will suffer. God’s people have often prayed, “for your name’s sake,” and those who care most about God’s honor can pray it with confidence.

Others understand it as, “Keep them in your name.” That is, keep them in the knowledge and fear of your name, and in the open service of your name, no matter what it costs them. Keep them attached to your truth, your worship, and your commandments. Still others take it to mean, “Keep them by your name,” that is, by your own power and care. Let your name be their strong tower, and let your tabernacle, your dwelling place, be their shelter.

He also prays, “Keep them from the evil.” This matches the prayer Jesus taught them to pray each day, “Deliver us from evil,” and it gives them confidence to pray that way. First, keep them from the evil one, the devil, and from all his helpers. Keep them from Satan as a tempter, so he may not sift them, or so their faith will not fail. Keep them from him as a destroyer, so he may not drive them to despair.

Second, keep them from evil itself, meaning sin. Keep them from anything that looks like sin or leads toward it. Keep them so that they do no evil (2 Corinthians 13:7). Of all evils, sin is the one we should fear most.

Third, keep them from the evil in the world, and from the trouble they face in it. Let suffering have no poison in it, no harmful power over them. He does not ask that they be spared from affliction, but that they be carried through it. Let their trials be so changed by God’s care that they do them no lasting harm.

He then gives reasons for these requests, and there are five of them. First, he reminds the Father that he has kept them so far: “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name” (John 17:12). He means that he preserved them in the true faith of the gospel and in God’s service. Those the Father gave him as his close companions, he kept safe. None of them was missing, none had turned away or been ruined, except the son of perdition, Judas, because Scripture had to be fulfilled.

This shows Christ’s faithful fulfillment of his task as their keeper. While he was with them, he guarded them, and his care was effective. He kept them in God’s name, protecting them from dangerous errors and sins, from joining the Pharisees, and from abandoning him to return to what they had left behind. He still watched over them when he sent them out to preach. He kept them from falling into the hands of enemies who wanted to kill them, and he kept them when he gave himself up (John 18:9).

While he was with them, he kept them in a visible way, by words they heard and miracles they saw. When he was no longer with them in that way, they would need a more inward and spiritual kind of care. God sometimes gives sensible comforts and support, and sometimes he withholds them, but when they are withdrawn, believers are not left alone.

What Christ says here about his first disciples is true of all believers in this world. Christ keeps them in God’s name. This shows, first, that they are weak and cannot keep themselves. Second, it shows that they are precious in God’s sight and worth keeping. Third, it shows that their salvation is certain, because that is the goal of their being kept (1 Peter 1:5). As the wicked are reserved for the day of judgment, so the righteous are preserved for the day of joy. Fourth, it shows that they are in the Lord Jesus’s care, for he keeps them as his own charge, like the good shepherd guarding his sheep.

He gives this comforting report about his work: “None of them is lost.” Jesus Christ will certainly keep all whom the Father has given him, so that none of them will be finally and completely lost. They may fear that they are lost, and they may be in great danger, but the Father’s will is that he lose none (John 6:39), and none he will lose. This will be clear when they are all gathered together and not one is missing.

Judas is set apart as someone Christ never undertook to keep. He had been among those given to Christ, but he was not truly one of them. Christ speaks of Judas as already lost, because he had left his Master and his fellow disciples, and had given himself over to the devil’s lead. Soon he would go to his own place, so he was as good as lost already. But Judas’s fall brought no shame on Christ or his family.

Judas was the son of perdition, so he was not one of those given to Christ to be kept. He deserved destruction, and God left him to rush into it. He was a son of the destroyer, like Cain, who belonged to the evil one. The great enemy whom the Lord will destroy is also called a son of perdition, because he is a man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:3). It is a terrible thing that one of the apostles turned out to be a son of perdition. No person’s church position, name, privileges, chances to receive grace, profession, or outward deeds can keep him safe if his heart is not right with God.

Nothing is more likely to end in ruin than a life of outward religion joined with a heart like Judas’s, loving money and self-interest. Yet Christ’s clear distinction between Judas and those given to him shows that the truth and true religion should not suffer because of false followers (1 John 2:19). The Scripture had already spoken of Judas’s betrayal, and God’s wise plan had already foreseen it, so the event followed the prediction exactly, even though the prediction did not force the sin to happen. See Psalm 41:9; Psalm 69:25; Psalm 109:8. We would be shocked by the treachery of people who fall away, if Scripture had not warned us beforehand.

He asks the Father to keep them, because he was now under the necessity of leaving them and could no longer watch over them as before (John 17:11). “Keep them now,” he says, “so I do not lose the work I spent on them while I was with them. Keep them so that they may be one with us, just as we are one with each other.” He will speak more about this in John 17:21.

Notice, first, how gladly he speaks about his departure. He talks about it with a sense of victory and joy, looking both at the world he is leaving and the world he is going to. “Now I am no longer in the world.” It is as if he says, “Farewell to this troubling world. I have had enough of it, and the welcome hour has come when I will be in it no more. I have finished the work I came to do here, and now there is nothing left but to leave as quickly as I can.” For those whose true home is in the world to come, it should be a joy to think of being no longer in this world. When we have done our work here and are made ready for heaven, what is there left here to keep us?

When we know within ourselves that death is near, we should be able to say with holy joy, “Now I am no more in this world, this dark and misleading world, this poor and empty world, this tempting and defiling world. I am no longer troubled by its thorns, no longer trapped by its nets, no longer wandering in this harsh wilderness, no longer tossed on this stormy sea. Now I can leave it behind forever.”

Then he says, “Now I come to you.” To be freed from the world is only part of the comfort of a dying Christ, and of a dying Christian. The better part is to think of going to the Father, into his immediate, unbroken, and everlasting joy. Those who love God cannot help but be glad to think of coming to him, even through the valley of death’s shadow. To leave the body is to be with the Lord, like children brought home from school to their father’s house. “Now I come to you,” he says, “to you whom I have chosen and served, and whom my soul longs for. You are the fountain of light and life, the center and crown of joy. Now my longing will be satisfied, my hope fulfilled, and my happiness completed, for now I come to you.”

Next, he shows deep care for those he is leaving behind. “These are still in the world,” he says. “I have seen how evil the world is. What will become of these dear little ones who must stay in it? Holy Father, keep them. They will need your presence since mine is leaving them. They now need your keeping more than ever, because I am sending them farther into the world than they have gone before. They must launch out into deep waters, where they will be lost unless you keep them safe.”

Here we should notice that when the Lord Jesus was going to the Father, he still carried a tender concern for his own who remain in the world. He still feels for them. He bears their names on his breastplate, even on his heart, and they are engraved on the palms of his hands by the nails of his cross. When he is out of their sight, they are not out of his sight, and certainly not out of his mind. We should have that same kind of care for those who are just starting out in the world when we are nearly through with it, and for those we leave behind when we are leaving.

We should also notice that when Christ speaks of how much his disciples need divine protection, he simply says, “They are in the world.” That is danger enough for people who are headed for heaven. The world flatters them and tries to lead them away, and it also hates them and persecutes them.

He also pleads that it would bring them joy to know they were safe, and it would bring him joy to see them at peace: “I say these things so that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13). Christ deeply desired that his disciples would have full joy, because it is his will that they rejoice always. He was leaving them with tears and trouble, yet he made careful provision to fill their joy. When they thought their joy in him had ended, it was actually being brought closer to perfection than ever before.

We are taught here to base our joy in Christ. It is “my joy,” the joy he gives, or more exactly, the joy that comes from him. Christ is the Christian’s joy, the chief joy. Joy based on the world fades as the world fades, but joy in Christ lasts forever, because he lasts forever. We are also taught to build up that joy with care, because it is both a duty and a privilege for all true believers. No part of the Christian life is pressed on us more strongly than this (Philippians 3:1; Philippians 4:4). And we are taught to aim at full joy, to have it fulfilled in us, because that is what Christ wants.

To secure that joy, he solemnly placed them in his Father’s care and wanted them to hear it from his own lips: “These things I speak in the world, while I am still with them in the world.” His prayer for their preservation in heaven would have been enough in itself, but saying this while he was still with them would comfort and encourage them more. It would help them rejoice even in suffering.

Christ has not only stored up comfort for his people by arranging for their future good, he has also given them comfort now, by saying what will steady them and satisfy them. Here, in front of his disciples, he spoke almost like someone making a last will and testament, and unlike many testators, he told them what he had left them and how safely it was secured. He wanted them to have strong comfort.

Christ’s intercession for us is enough to complete our joy in him. Nothing quiets our fears and doubts more fully, and nothing gives stronger comfort, than this truth, that he always appears before God for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25).

Finally, he pleads the bad treatment they were likely to face in the world because of him (John 17:14). “I have given them your word to carry to the world, and they have received it. They have believed it themselves, and they have accepted the task of passing it on to the world. So the world has hated them, just as it has hated me, because they do not belong to the world any more than I do.” Here we see the world’s hatred for Christ’s followers. While Christ was with them, they had already shown some resistance to the world, and yet the world hated them. It would hate them much more when, through their wider preaching of the gospel, they would turn the world upside down.

So Christ says, in effect, “Father, stand by them, because they are likely to have many enemies. Let them have your love, because the world’s hatred is their share. In the middle of those fiery darts, surround them with your favor like a shield.” It is for God’s honor to take the weaker side and help the helpless.

Lord, be merciful to them, for people would swallow them up. The reasons for this hatred strengthen the prayer. One reason is implied here: they had received God’s word as Christ gave it to them, while most of the world rejected it and turned against those who preached and professed it. Those who receive Christ’s good word must expect the world’s bad will. Gospel ministers have been hated in a special way because they call people out of the world, separate them from it, and teach them not to copy it. In doing that, they show the world its sin.

So Christ says, in effect, “Father, keep them, because they suffer for your sake.” That is the same plea the psalmist made, “For your sake I have borne reproach” (Psalm 69:7). Those who keep Christ’s word with patient endurance are promised special protection in the hour of trial (Revelation 3:10). The very cause that makes a martyr can also make a joyful sufferer.

Another reason is stated more plainly. The world hates them because they are not of the world. When Christ’s word comes with power, it changes people. It loosens their grip on the world’s riches, turns them away from the world’s sin, and so the world takes offense at them.

He also pleads that they are like him in their holy refusal to fit in with the world (John 17:16): “Father, keep them, for they share my spirit and mind. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” We may trust ourselves to God’s care if we are like Christ and follow his steps. God loves those who resemble his Son. We may also trust ourselves to God if we do not live for the world’s interests or give ourselves to its service.

Notice first that Jesus Christ was not of this world. He never belonged to it, and this was especially true now, as he was about to leave it. This shows his outward condition, he was no favorite of the world, no prince or great man. He had no worldly possessions, not even a place to lay his head. He had no worldly power either, since he was no judge or ruler. It also shows his inward spirit, he was completely free from love for the world. The ruler of this world had nothing in him. Earthly things meant nothing to him, not honor, because he made himself nothing; not riches, because for our sake he became poor; not pleasure, because he was a man of sorrows (John 8:23).

From this it follows that true Christians are not of this world either. The Spirit of Christ in them stands against the spirit of the world. First, their lot is often to be despised by the world. They are no more in favor with the world than their Master was before them. Second, it is their privilege to be delivered from the world, as Abraham was brought out from the land of his birth. Third, it is their duty and their mark to be dead to the world. Their most satisfying fellowship is, and should be, with another world, and their main concern should be the business of that world, not this one. Christ’s disciples were weak and had many failings, yet he could still say this for them, they were not of the world. They were not earthly people, and so he entrusted them to the care of heaven.