How could anyone know what he prayed?

He prayed aloud, and his friends were in the room. John writes as someone who was there. It is likely in John's own wording, but the claim fits everything else Jesus said in this Gospel.

If he is God, why is he praying?

John presents the Son and the Father as distinct but sharing one glory and love (vv5, 24). Christians have wrestled with that mystery ever since. It is hard, and it is what the text says.

Who is the 'son of destruction'?

Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Jesus says he protected all the others.

Does 'those who will believe' include me if I'm unsure?

It is for those who come to believe through the apostles' message, and that message is what you're reading now. The door is described as open.

John 17:1-26 · BSB

John 17:1-26 — The Prayer

By Dig Deeper EditorialReviewed by Andy10 min readUpdated August 16, 2026

John 17:1-26: On the night before the cross, with the betrayer already gone out into the dark, Jesus lifts his eyes and prays for glory.

John 17:1-26 · BSB
“When Jesus had spoken these things, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the has come. Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. For You granted Him over all people, so that He may give life to all those You have given Him. Now this is eternal life, that they may You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have . I have glorified You on earth by accomplishing the work You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the existed. I have Your name to those You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me, and they have Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You. For I have given them the words You gave Me, and they have received them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those You have given Me; for they are Yours. All I have is Yours, and all You have is Mine; and in them I have been glorified. I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, them by Your name, the name You gave Me, so that they may be as We are one. While I was with them, I protected and preserved them by Your name, the name You gave Me. Not one of them has been lost, except the son of , so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. But now I am coming to You; and I am saying these things while I am in the world, so that they may have My fulfilled within them. I have given them Your word and the world has hated them. For they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. them by the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world. For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth. I am not asking on behalf of them alone, but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one— I in them and You in Me—that they may be united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me. Father, I want those You have given Me to be with Me where I am, that they may see the glory You gave Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. Father, although the world has not known You, I know You, and they know that You sent Me. And I have made Your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love You have for Me may be in them, and I in them.””

Tap an underlined word to see the original Greek. Or read all 17 written out.

Scripture: Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain.

Reflect

On the night before the cross, Jesus spent His final recorded prayer not only on Himself and the Twelve but on everyone who would believe through their message, and that includes you. The life He came to give is not a reward stored for later but the knowledge of the Father and the Son, beginning now. He asks that you be drawn into the very love that passed between Father and Son before the world began.

You are not held by the strength of your own grip but by the Father's name, placed under the guard of the One Jesus asked to guard you. The world may be hostile and the evil one real, yet the Son has given you His own joy and His own glory, and He has promised to keep making the Father known to you. The love the Father has for Jesus is in you, and Jesus Himself is in you; you can rest there.

Explore further

On the night before the cross, with the betrayer already gone out into the dark, Jesus lifts his eyes and prays for glory. John 17 lets us overhear the Son speaking to the Father, and his first request is startling: "Glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed." Through Isaiah, God had declared, "I will not give My glory to another" (Isaiah 42:8). Yet here is a man in an upper room claiming to have shared that glory before the first day of creation. The Hebrew word behind Scripture's language of glory, kabod, carries the sense of weight, the sheer heaviness of God's reality pressing down. Jesus speaks of that weight as his own home. He is the eternal Son, and the cross he walks toward will display that glory most fully.

Then he prays as a high priest. Aaron once carried the names of Israel's tribes on his breastplate into the holy place (Exodus 28:29). Jesus carries his people into the Father's presence the same way: "They were Yours; You gave them to Me." You are named here too, among "those who will believe in Me through their message." Before you ever prayed, you were prayed for.

The whole story of Scripture bends toward his final request. Humanity was driven from God's presence in Eden. The tabernacle and temple held that presence behind a curtain. Now the Son asks, "Father, I want those You have given Me to be with Me where I am," and Revelation answers with God dwelling among his people forever (Revelation 21:3). Eternal life, Jesus says, is knowing the only true God. He secures it by giving himself.

The Father has never refused the Son, and Jesus has asked to have you with him.

Go deeper

In John 17:19 Jesus says something that sounds strange at first hearing: "For them I sanctify Myself." He has just asked the Father to sanctify the disciples by the truth. Why would the sinless Son need sanctifying? The word is hagiazō, and it means to set something apart for God, marking it off from common use and handing it over to him alone. The Old Testament uses this language for priests ordained to serve at the altar (Exodus 28:41) and for firstborn animals devoted to the LORD. Those animals could never be yoked or sheared, because they already belonged to him (Deuteronomy 15:19). Something set apart in that sense was headed for the altar.

That is the weight of Jesus' words. Hours from Gethsemane, he consecrates himself as priest and offering at once, giving himself wholly to the purpose for which the Father sent him. Hebrews draws the line plainly: "we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10). He sets himself apart "so that they too may be sanctified." Your holiness flows out of his self-giving and rests on an offering already made.

That changes how you face the slow work of growing in grace, at the kitchen sink or at the end of a long shift. The Father's word does its patient work in you because the Son first gave himself entirely for you.

Jesus set himself apart for the cross so that you would be set apart for God. His offering is finished and cannot be undone.

You belong to God because Christ gave himself wholly to God for you.

When this prayer ended, John tells us, Jesus "went out with His disciples across the Kidron Valley" to a garden where Judas would soon arrive with soldiers (John 18:1). The words of John 17:1-26 were spoken in the last free hours of His earthly life, on Passover night, with Jerusalem swollen with pilgrims. Again and again the Gospel has said His hour had not yet come (John 2:4; 7:30). Now He lifts His eyes to heaven, the ordinary posture of Jewish prayer, and says, "Father, the hour has come." The whole book has been leaning toward that sentence.

The timing matters. That same week, the temple priests would slaughter thousands of Passover lambs, each one set apart for the altar. Into that setting Jesus prays, "For them I sanctify Myself." That is priestly language, the vocabulary of consecrating an offering to God. Caiaphas, the high priest who would condemn Him within hours, had already said without understanding it that one man should die for the people (John 11:50-51). The true High Priest was praying in the dark, offering Himself, and the eleven men listening heard their names carried to the Father.

John wrote this down decades later. Early church tradition places him in Ephesus, a city dominated by the great temple of Artemis and increasingly devoted to worshiping the Roman emperor. Believers there were being expelled from synagogues, exactly as Jesus had warned (John 16:2), and pressed to honor gods they knew were false. When they read "the world has hated them" and "keep them from the evil one," they recognized their own streets. When they reached "those who will believe in Me through their message," they found themselves inside the prayer. You are there too, named before you were born, on the night the Lamb walked toward the garden.

The prayer Jesus prayed on the way to the cross still holds everyone who believes in Him.

Go deeper

By the time of Jesus, the covenant name of God, the four Hebrew letters revealed to Moses at the burning bush, had grown too holy for ordinary lips. Jewish reverence surrounded it with silence. When Scripture was read aloud, readers substituted "Lord." Rabbinic tradition remembers that the name was spoken plainly only in the temple, and most solemnly by the high priest on the Day of Atonement, when he entered the Most Holy Place. Worshipers in the courts reportedly fell on their faces when they heard it. For an ordinary Jew, the name of God was something you approached once a year, from a distance, through someone else.

That reverence carried a conviction. A name disclosed the person. To know someone's name was to have access to who they truly were.

So when Jesus prays in John 17:6, "I have revealed Your name to those You have given Me," and ends with "I have made Your name known to them and will continue to make it known," His disciples would have felt the ground shift. Fishermen and a tax collector had been handed what Israel guarded behind a curtain. And He calls that God "Father."

With this in hand, the prayer reads as an unveiling. The distance is gone, and the name once whispered by one man once a year is now spoken over every believer by the Son Himself. How remarkable that God let centuries of holy silence prepare the room for that single night's words.

Hebrews 7:25

“always lives to intercede”

The prayer of John 17 did not end in the upper room, for Scripture says the risen Christ "always lives to intercede" for those who come to God through him, so the same voice that asked "protect them by Your name" still pleads for his people before the Father.

John 10:28-29

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.”

When Jesus prays that none of those the Father gave him would be lost, he is asking for what he had already promised in plain words: "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand."

Philippians 2:8-11

“glorify Your Son”

The request "glorify Your Son" is answered by the road Paul traces from obedience "to death, even death on a cross" to the moment when "God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names," the very glory the Son shared with the Father before the world existed.

1 John 3:2

“be with Me where I am, that they may see the glory”

Jesus' desire that his people "be with Me where I am, that they may see the glory" becomes John's settled hope for the whole church: "We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is."

Ephesians 4:3-6

“one body and one Spirit,”

The oneness Jesus asked for, a unity modeled on the Father and the Son, is a gift already given in "one body and one Spirit," which is why Paul urges believers to "keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" and does not tell them to manufacture it. The Son who prayed for his people that night is still praying for them now.

More cross-references

Numbers 6:24-27

“So they shall put My name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

Aaron's blessing ended with God's own explanation: "So they shall put My name on the Israelites, and I will bless them." Israel's priests spoke the divine name over the people like a covering. Jesus prays in that same register: "I have revealed Your name," and "protect them by Your name." The old benediction was waiting for a Priest who would place the Father's name on his people and keep them safe within it.

Exodus 29:44

“I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests,”

"I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests," the LORD declared, and those consecrations required washing and blood. Hear that background behind "For them I sanctify Myself." Jesus sets himself apart as priest and sacrifice at once, so that his disciples "too may be sanctified by the truth." Aaron was consecrated by another. The Son consecrates himself, and his offering makes his people holy. The priesthood of Israel was a long rehearsal for one night and one prayer, and the Son of God fulfilled every stone, every blessing, and every consecration in himself. Scripture keeps these threads in plain sight, waiting to be found. Read Leviticus alongside Hebrews, and watch how much more of Christ comes into view.

In John 17, on the night before the cross, Jesus prayed for His disciples and then for "those who will believe in Me through their message." That includes you. Your name was in His prayer long before you ever heard of Him.

"As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world." Jesus speaks of His followers as people on assignment. The warehouse floor, the classroom, the hospital shift that runs long are places you have been sent. So when a coworker cuts a corner and expects you to cover, or a meeting drifts into mocking someone who isn't there, you are standing where Jesus placed you. Do the job honestly, and speak kindly of the absent colleague.

"Holy Father, protect them by Your name." Some evenings at home your faith feels thin. The dishes are piled up, the kids are fighting over bedtime, and you wonder if you are holding on at all. Jesus asked the Father to keep you. That request did not depend on your energy tonight. You can tell God plainly how tired you are and go to sleep kept.

"That all of them may be one... so that the world may believe that You sent Me." Unity among believers is part of how the world sees Jesus. When a church friend frustrates you, or believers are tearing into each other online, refuse to pile on. Send the text that mends things. Speak well of a fellow Christian in front of a neighbor who is watching.

Jesus wants you with Him where He is, and He told His Father so.

Go deeper

John 17 contains no command. Jesus is praying, and the hardest line to believe comes near the end: the Father has "loved them just as You have loved Me." The same love. Most believers can accept that God forgives them, tolerates them, maybe even likes them on a good day. Being loved the way the Father loves the Son sounds like too much, especially for someone who remembers last month clearly.

The doubt rarely announces itself. You replay a sharp word you said to your spouse over breakfast and assume God is keeping His distance until you make it up to Him. You scroll past a friend's cheerful post about her early morning in the Psalms and quietly conclude you must be loved a little less. Performance creeps back in as the measure.

Believing Jesus here changes the replay. The sharp word still deserves an apology, and you can offer it without groveling, because your place with the Father was never riding on it. Comparison loses its grip too. There is no smaller portion set aside for ordinary believers. Jesus asked for His own portion to be in you.

Then He added, "I want those You have given Me to be with Me where I am." The Son of God wants your company. He said so to His Father, aloud, in the hour before the cross.

For you He sanctified Himself and went to that cross, so His prayer cannot fail. Your hunger to know Him is already its answer.

You are held in the same love the Father has always had for His Son.

In John 17, near the end of His time on earth, Jesus lifted His eyes to heaven and prayed out loud to His Father while His friends listened. He asked that they would truly know God, that God would keep them safe from the evil one even when people hated them, and that they would stay together as one family. Then He prayed for people who were not even born yet, "those who will believe in Me through their message." Long before your family sat down at this table, Jesus was already praying for everyone here who trusts Him.

Jesus prayed for His friends to be close like a family, so what is something that makes you feel close to the people in our family?

Go around the table and have each person name someone who helped them learn about Jesus, like a grandparent, a teacher, a friend, or a parent. Little ones can name anyone who has ever told them about God. Then take turns thanking God out loud for those people, because through them Jesus' prayer came true for your family.

Go deeper

Most teens know the exhausting work of fitting in. Jesus prayed into exactly that pressure: "I am not asking that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one." Discuss together: Where do you feel the strongest pull to blend in, and what might belonging to Jesus look like right there? If things go quiet, a parent could share a time they hid something true about themselves to be accepted. Then point out that Jesus never asked God to pull his friends out of hard places, only to keep them safe inside them.

Read Luke 22:31-34. At the same supper, Jesus turned to Peter and warned that Satan wanted to sift him like wheat. Peter insisted he would follow Jesus anywhere, even to death, but Jesus said that before the rooster crowed, Peter would deny him three times. Jesus had already told him, "I have prayed for you." Peter did fall that night, but he was not lost. Jesus' prayer held him, just as John 17 asks the Father to keep his people from the evil one.

After the house is quiet, remember that Jesus did not ask to shield his friends from the world. He asked, "Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth." Where in your children's lives could some worry give way to trust, knowing Jesus has already prayed for them?

Questions about this passage

How could anyone know what he prayed?: He prayed aloud, and his friends were in the room. John writes as someone who was there. It is likely in John's own wording, but the claim fits everything else Jesus said in this Gospel.
If he is God, why is he praying?: John presents the Son and the Father as distinct but sharing one glory and love (vv5, 24). Christians have wrestled with that mystery ever since. It is hard, and it is what the text says.
Who is the 'son of destruction'?: Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Jesus says he protected all the others.
Does 'those who will believe' include me if I'm unsure?: It is for those who come to believe through the apostles' message, and that message is what you're reading now. The door is described as open.

Have a different question about John 17:1-26? Ask it — I read every one, and the best get answered here.

A lesson to teach this devotional

For friends, small groups, and Bible classes — easy to use whether you're teaching for the first time or the fiftieth.

The Son who shared God's glory prayed for you before the cross.

Read the full lesson →

Words in this passage

All 17 Greek words written out in full.

hōra (ὥρα): hōra is the Greek behind “hour” in John 17:1-26. John's Gospel has been counting toward this moment. At Cana Jesus says it has 'not yet come,' twice his enemies cannot seize him because it has not arrived, and at 12:23 he announces it. Here the perfect verb elēlythen says the appointed time has arrived and now stands: the cross, resurrection and return to the Father are all this one hour.
doxazō (δοξάζω): doxazō is the Greek behind “glorify” in John 17:1-26. Built on doxa, the word the Greek Old Testament used for Hebrew kabod: weight, and the visible, blazing presence of God that filled the tabernacle. Jesus asks the Father to put His true worth on display, and in John that display happens at the cross, where the Son is 'lifted up.' The request runs in a circle of self-giving: the Son is shown for who He is so that the Father may be seen through Him.
exousia (ἐξουσία): exousia is the Greek behind “authority” in John 17:1-26. Not raw strength but conferred right, the kind a magistrate holds because someone higher has granted it. The Greek says literally 'over all flesh' (pasēs sarkos), humanity in its mortality and weakness. The purpose clause is striking: the Son's jurisdiction over frail humanity exists in order to give life.
aiōnios (αἰώνιος): aiōnios is the Greek behind “eternal” in John 17:1-26. From aiōn, 'age.' In Jewish expectation this was the life belonging to the age to come, after God sets the world right. Jesus defines it here not by length but by relationship, so the life of the coming age begins now for anyone who knows the Father through the Son.
ginōskō (γινώσκω): ginōskō is the Greek behind “know” in John 17:1-26. Personal acquaintance gained through encounter rather than facts gathered about someone; the Greek Old Testament uses it for the closest human intimacy. The present subjunctive pictures an ongoing, deepening relationship. Eternal life is not a possession handed over but a living communion with the only true God and the One He sent.
apostellō (ἀποστέλλω): apostellō is the Greek behind “sent” in John 17:1-26. The root of 'apostle': to dispatch someone with a commission, carrying the sender's authority. Jewish custom held that a man's appointed agent was as the man himself. The 'as... so also' pattern makes the Son's own mission the template for His followers', and the world's recognition that the Father sent Jesus is the goal repeated throughout the prayer.
kosmos (κόσμος): kosmos is the Greek behind “world” in John 17:1-26. Originally 'order' or 'arrangement,' the root behind 'cosmetic.' In John it usually means humanity organized in resistance to God, yet it is also the object of God's love and the destination of His messengers. The word appears about eighteen times in this prayer: the disciples are not 'out of' it in origin, yet are sent straight into it.
phaneroō (φανερόω): phaneroō is the Greek behind “revealed” in John 17:1-26. To bring something hidden out into plain view, to make it visible. In Hebrew thought a name carries the character of its bearer, as when the LORD proclaimed His name to Moses as compassionate and gracious. Jesus claims that in His life and words the Father's very character has been put on display for the disciples.
tēreō (τηρέω): tēreō is the Greek behind “kept” in John 17:1-26. A guard's word: to watch over, hold under careful custody. The perfect tense means the disciples have held onto the Father's word and still do. The same verb returns when Jesus asks the Father to guard them, so the ones who guarded His word are themselves placed under the Father's guard.
tēreō (τηρέω): tēreō is the Greek behind “protect” in John 17:1-26. The request is literally 'keep them in Your name,' placing the disciples within the sphere of the Father's name as within a fortified tower, the picture of Proverbs 18:10. Jesus has been their guard in person, and with his departure he hands that watch to the Father. Their safety rests on who God is, not on their own steadiness.
hen (ἕν): hen is the Greek behind “one” in John 17:1-26. Jesus uses the neuter hen, 'one thing,' not the masculine heis, 'one person,' the same form He used in saying 'I and the Father are one.' It points to a shared life rather than a merged identity or a single organization. The pattern for believers' unity is nothing less than the mutual indwelling of Father and Son.
apōleia (ἀπώλεια): apōleia is the Greek behind “destruction” in John 17:1-26. 'Son of' is a Hebrew idiom for someone defined by, or headed toward, a thing, so this is the one marked out for ruin. There is a wordplay in the Greek: none of them apōleto, 'perished,' except the son of apōleia. Paul uses the same title for the man of lawlessness, and here it names Judas, whose fall happened within Scripture's foresight rather than outside God's purpose.
chara (χαρά): chara is the Greek behind “joy” in John 17:1-26. Kin to charis, 'grace,' this is gladness that has its source outside oneself. Jesus calls it 'My joy,' spoken hours before His arrest, and the perfect participle pictures it filled to the brim and staying full. What He wants to pass to His followers is His own gladness in the Father, which the coming darkness cannot drain.
ponēros (πονηρός): ponēros is the Greek behind “evil” in John 17:1-26. The phrase tou ponērou could be neuter, 'evil' in general, but John's letters use it for a personal enemy, and the translation follows that. Ponēros carries active malice that seeks to harm, more than bare badness. Jesus does not ask for escape from hostile ground but for guarding from a hostile person while on it.
hagiazō (ἁγιάζω): hagiazō is the Greek behind “sanctify” in John 17:1-26. The word for setting priests and temple vessels apart for God's exclusive use. The Father's word, which Jesus calls truth itself, is the means by which that consecration happens. When Jesus says 'I sanctify Myself,' He uses priestly and sacrificial language, dedicating Himself to the cross so that His people may be set apart for God.
teleioō (τελειόω): teleioō is the Greek behind “perfectly” in John 17:1-26. The Greek reads teteleiōmenoi eis hen, woodenly 'having been brought to completion into one.' Teleioō means bringing something to its intended goal, and the perfect passive describes a finished state that God produces, not one believers manufacture. That unity has a purpose beyond itself: the world seeing that the Father loves them as He loves the Son.
dikaios (δίκαιος): dikaios is the Greek behind “righteous” in John 17:1-26. The quality of one whose verdicts are just and who always does what is right. Paired with 'Holy Father' earlier, this form of address is found nowhere else in the New Testament. Jesus appeals to the Father's justice as He contrasts a world that has not known Him with those who have, confident the Father will judge rightly between them.

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John 17:1-26 — The Prayer

Reflect

The Larger StoryHow this passage fits the whole+

Historical ContextThe world behind this verse+

Cross-ReferencesWhere else Scripture says this+

Apply This TodayTake it into today+

Family DevotionFor kids, teens, and couples+

Questions about this passage

How could anyone know what he prayed?

If he is God, why is he praying?

Who is the 'son of destruction'?

Does 'those who will believe' include me if I'm unsure?

A lesson to teach this devotional

Words in this passage

hōra (ὥρα)

doxazō (δοξάζω)

exousia (ἐξουσία)

aiōnios (αἰώνιος)

ginōskō (γινώσκω)

apostellō (ἀποστέλλω)

kosmos (κόσμος)

phaneroō (φανερόω)

tēreō (τηρέω)

tēreō (τηρέω)

hen (ἕν)

apōleia (ἀπώλεια)

chara (χαρά)

ponēros (πονηρός)

hagiazō (ἁγιάζω)

teleioō (τελειόω)

dikaios (δίκαιος)

Related devotionals