What Does John 17:12 Mean?

(12) **While I was with them in the world.**—Comp. the opening words of John 17:11. During His presence with them there was not this special need for commending them to the Father’s care. His relation to them now is as that of a parent blessing and praying for His children before He is taken away from them. (Comp. John 13:33.) **I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept.**—Better (comp. previous verse), *I kept them in Thy name which Thou gavest Me, and guarded them.* The pronoun is emphatic. “While I was in the world *I* kept them. I am now praying that Thou wouldest keep them.” The words “kept” and “guarded” differ slightly in meaning, the former pointing to the preservation in the truth revealed to them, and the latter to the watchfulness by means of which this result was obtained. The former may be compared to the feeding of the flock, the latter to the care which protects from the wild beasts around. (Comp. John 10:28-30.) **And none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.**—Better, *None of them perished, except the son of perdition.* The tense is the same as that of the word “guarded.” The Good Shepherd watched His flock, and such was His care that none perished but the “son of perdition.” Of him the words carefully state that “he perished.” He, then, was included in “them which Thou gavest Me.” For him there was the same preservation and the same guardianship as for those who remained in the fold. The sheep wandered from the flock, and was lost by his own act. (Comp. especially Notes on John 6:37-39; John 6:71. See also John 18:9.) The term, “son of perdition,” is a well-known Hebrew idiom, by which the lack of qualitative adjectives is supplied by the use of the abstract substantives, which express that quality. A disobedient child is, *e.g., “*a son of disobedience;” other common instances are “children of light,” “children of darkness.” A “son of perdition” is one in whose nature there is the quality expressed by “perdition.” The phrase is used in Isaiah 57:4 to express the apostacy of the Israelites (in English version, “children of transgression”). It occurs once again in 2Thessalonians 2:3, of the “man of sin.” (Comp. Notes there.) It is used, in the Gospel of Nicodemus, of the devil. In the present passage it is difficult to express the meaning in English, because we have no verb of the same root as the abstract substantive “perdition,” and no abstract substantive of the same root as the verb “perish.” No exact translation can therefore give in English the point of our Lord’s words, “And none of them perished except him whose nature it was to perish.” Here, as often (comp. Note on John 10:16), the reader who can consult Luther’s German will find that he exactly hits the sense: “Und ist keiner von ihnen *verloren* ohne das *verlorne* Kind.” **That the scripture might be fulfilled.**—Comp. Note on John 13:18, and Acts 1:20.