Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Seventeen

                                                                                                                                              Verses 6-10

Jesus then began to pray solely for His disciples and for His future Church. Jesus prayed about the faith of His disciples. Jesus prayed in gratitude to His Father that His disciples believed that He came from His Father, and they believed the Word that He had preached to them. They had previously shown that they were confused about the meaning of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, but nevertheless, they loved their Lord. That was all the faith they needed. John 2:19-22. Jesus' disciples, and His future Church, would not attain to a better understanding of what Jesus had done for them in His death, burial, and resurrection until the Holy Spirit had inspired some of them to explain it all in detail when He inspired some of them to write the New Testament. The only person in the gospels who seemed to have some understanding about the meaning of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection was the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive perfume and wiped His feet with her hair. John 12:1-8; Matthew 26:6-13; Luke 7:36-50. Jesus thanked His Father that His disciples had believed His Word, but one can believe something is real even with little understanding of it.

Jesus then informed His disciples that He prayed for them and not for the world. Jesus had to have meant the evil nature of the world that was ruled by Satan. Matthew 4:8-10. Just as every individual human possesses a good nature created by God and an evil nature injected into them by the Devil, so the world as a whole has a good nature created by God and an evil nature ruled by the Devil. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 1:30; Genesis 2:17; II Corinthians 4:4. When Jesus taught that He came "to save the world," He had to have meant that He came to save the good nature of the world, with all of the good humans He had created in it, from the destructive evil that the Devil had injected into it, and every living human in it, when Jesus purged the world and all living humans in it of all sin, evil, and spiritual death when He took it all upon Himself on a cross and rose from the dead victorious over it all. John 12:47; John 12:31-32; Hebrews 2:9-15; Revelation 1:17-18; I John 3:8; Romans 8:18-23; Revelation 21:5. When Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He judged and cast out the Devil and all of his evil works, not living humans whom He creates and loves. John 12:31-32; John 16:11. Jesus cannot win some and lose some. Jesus always wins. Jesus came to save all living humans whom He creates and loves. John 12:32; John 12:47; Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8.

Jesus then reiterated His former teaching that everything He had ever created belonged to Him and His Father. God can never lose anything He has ever created. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 111:7-8. Jesus also taught that His disciples, and His Church, belonged to Him in a special way because He saved them by His grace, and they would glorify Him by representing Him to the world. I Timothy 4:10.