²⁰ “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word…”

Jesus’ intercessory prayer for His disciples showed a humble submission to the Father. In His incarnation, He placed Himself in a completely dependent role with the Father; this was essential to being fully human. So in praying for the disciples, this was a tacit deference to the Father’s will. Why ask for something that you could do yourself? It can only mean a humble, voluntary submission.

But, in what sense can God, even the second Person of the trinity, be humble if He is, in fact, perfect? We touch on mysteries beyond our full comprehension. How can we say Jesus was humble when He prayed that He might be glorified with the glory He had before His incarnation (John 17:1-4)? It would seem that humility would be necessary for all of creation, but not for God Himself, because He is the center of all creation, having made it all.

But if we define humbleness, as Paul describes it, we might gain some traction in our thinking. “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of his faith” (Rom 12:3). Humility is not the opposite of glory. And someone who is glorious can indeed be humble, if we are careful with how we see both glory and humility. Jesus sought the glory He had before with an expressed purpose of glorifying the Father. With mere human beings, we would suspect ulterior motives here, but not so with God the Son.

Jesus was not, in fact, thinking of Himself “more highly… than he ought to think.” He was, in fact, thinking with “sound judgment” or “soberly” as the NKJV renders it. For Jesus to seek glory is only right because that was the Father’s desire, namely, to glorify the Son. So Jesus’ request in John 17:1-4 was a sober request, appropriate to the Son of God. The fact that He asked for it, rather than to grab it for Himself, was humble, for it was precisely in this He showed His dependence on the Father.

So we can seek God’s glory through our successes that may at times involve our prominence and exaltation here on earth, while using that glory to bring glory to God (1 Cor 10:31). As for praying for His disciples, in our verse for today, He recognized the coming end of His ministry of discipling them, in a sense, turning them back over to the Father who had given them to Him. Jesus’ assignment on earth was coming to a conclusion.

Lord, thank You for humbly, but confidently praying to the Father for me.