U-God

Library

📚Library🔍Search☀️Daily Verse📅Sacred Calendar⭐Bookmarks

Discover

🌍ExploreNew📊TopicsNew⚖️CompareNew📝BlogNew

More

💡About📜Terms
Start Reading for Free

© 2026 U-God Sacred Library

Christianity

John 17The High Priestly Prayer

Summary

John 17 records a long prayer Jesus offers to the Father before his arrest. He asks to be glorified, defines eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent, and prays for his disciples to be kept from evil and set apart by the truth. He then prays for all future believers, that they may be one as he and the Father are one. Christian tradition calls it the High Priestly Prayer.

Key verse

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”

John 17:21

Themes

  • Prayer
  • Unity
  • Eternal Life
  • In the World, Not of It

Text

1

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2

As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

4

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

5

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

6

I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

7

Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

8

For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

9

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

10

And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

11

And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

12

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

13

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

14

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

15

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

16

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

18

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

19

And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

20

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

21

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

22

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

23

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

24

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

25

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

26

And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Text: King James Version (1611/1769), public domain.

Across traditions

  • Islam

    Surah Al-Ma'ida (5): Jesus Speaks to God

    In Quran 5:116 to 118 Jesus addresses God about his followers, saying he was a witness over them while he dwelt among them, and that God has watched over them since. In the Quran he denies teaching anyone to worship him, which differs from John's oneness of Father and Son.

  • Christianity

    Ephesians 4: One Body, One Spirit

    Ephesians urges believers to keep the unity of the Spirit, echoing the prayer of John 17 that believers may all be one.

Questions about John 17

Why is John 17 called the High Priestly Prayer?

The name, often traced to the sixteenth-century Lutheran scholar David Chytraeus, reflects Jesus interceding for his people like a priest before offering himself. The chapter itself does not use the title.

What does John 17 say eternal life is?

John 17:3 defines it as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent, a relationship that begins now rather than only after death.