The following are taken from Colin Green’s God in 3D. I am reproducing them here so Latter-day Saints will have some appreciation for how some Trinitarians might approach John 17, esp. vv. 3, 11, and 22 (here, through the lens of “temple theology”):
THE INHERITED NAME
A question we might want answered
is this: what more could Jesus mean in speaking of “the Name you gave me”? It
was given to Jesus to embody the divine Name, the temple presence. But in what
other manner did God give the Name to Jesus? It is as a personal name. We have
already seen in Philippians and Hebrews that Jesus was given the Name: but
Jesus said it too. Behind the title “the Name” a personal name lies—the name Yahweh.
The one to whom the name “Yahweh” is given is Yahweh . . . This is not only
before Jesus’ death but also afterwards (Phil 2:9). As the Son and heir of the
Father, he inherits the Father’s name Yahweh (Heb 1:2-4).
“Glorify Your Son”
We come to the other phrase that
might sound strange: Jesus prays: “Father, the time has come. Glory your
Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1 NIV).
The key to understanding this
Glory are in the story of Solomon’s temple, but also in Pentecost. Pentecost
reveals that the Glory is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. See the
ways that the Holy Spirit figures in Jesus’ prayer:
· When
Jesus talks about the gift of the Glory to his followers (1;&22, this is
the gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit. They become one in the Holy Spirit.
That is why this gift makes them one.
· When
he says, “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you,” this has a lot to
do with the interaction between the Father and the Son in the Spirit of the
Glory, the Holy Spirit. It does not happen without the Holy Spirit.
It also has a lot to do with what
happens when the Glory enters the true temple. The Glory would usher Christ
into his followers’ hearts at Pentecost—just as the Glory ushered the Name into
Solomon’s temple.
It is not the first time Jesus has
spoken this way. As we say in an earlier scene, Jesus said:
The hour has come for the Son
of Man to be glorified . . . for his very reason I came to his hour.
Father, glorify Your name! (John 12:23-28 NIV)
The timing of this, at this tense
point in Jesus’ life, makes his words jar a bit. He was about to suffer a
humiliating death and there is not much glorious for him in that, or so it may
seem. But for Jesus, God’s Glory needed to be present in this part of his
journey more than ever. His death at Calvary was a stepping=stone towards
humanity becoming a temple.
The Glory was not just to be found
in Jerusalem’s temple anymore. The glory was going with Jesus. He is the Name.
And the Name and the Glory belong together.
Much of what Jesus speaks of in
his payer comes through his knowing the Spirit of the Glory, the Holy Spirit.
Jesus prays that the Father’s love will be in the disciples, and that he
himself will be in them (17:26)—it is through the Spirit that he comes to be in
them.
To verify this, we can turn again
from John’s Gospel to John’s first letter, where he wrote this:
. . . God lives in us and his love is made
complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us
of his Spirit. (1 John 4:12-13)
So, it is when the disciples
become temples of the Holy Spirit that Jesus’ prayer is answered.
Jesus’ words—“glorify your Son”—are
not like the words of a vain selfish person such as one whom we might call a “glory-seeker.”
If anyone though that, such is not the case here. What Jesus is saying has
everything to do with being in the life and power of the Spirit of Glory. (Colin
Green, God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in the Bible and Church Fathers [Eugene,
Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2019], 130-32)
Jesus Was Sent as God’s Presence,
the Name
When reading that Jesus speaks to “the
one true God” and about himself as “Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3), don’t
be confused. This is not splitting off the one true God from Jesus, as if they
are two gods. Not at all. In this Gospel, speaking about “God and Jesus “ is
equivalent to speaking about “God and his Name.” Jesus talks all about coming
from heaven as God’s temple presence. Jesus is the living embodiment of “the
Name” (17:8). Just as the one true God put his Name in Solomon’s temple, so the
one true God put Jesus as his Name among his people. So, as John keeps showing us,
here is Jesus as God’s Name with his own Glory in the temple of his body (his
tabernacle, with his Glory). Jesus is John’s God. The words “the one true God”
and “Jesus Christ whom you have sent” needn’t be taken any other way.
It is no different really from the
fact that the Holy Spirit is God, where we see that the Holy Spirit has God’s
privilege of dwelling in God’s temple. The perfect verse to see this—1 Cor
16:9:
do you not know that your body is
a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
So, it is right to say that the
Holy Spirit is from God, with a distinction between the Holy Spirit and God.
But at the same time the Holy Spirit is what God is, dwelling in God’s temple.
It’s just the same with Christ, sent from God, and dwelling in God’s
temple as God. The one and only thing that makes proper sense of the
Bible here is the Trinity, the three-in-one God of the temple.
The model for this is God, his
Name, and his Glory in the Jerusalem temple. The Name is from God, placed in the
temple as his dwelling place.
The disciples hear the point of
Jesus’ prayer. Jesus is ready for the next stage of his journey, which
makes possible their journey. He goes from “tabernacling” amongst his
people—such that they see him and his Glory—to tabernacling in them, so that
they know his presence within them. (Ibid., 127)
