Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 68:1 (Mar 2025)
Article: Jesus’s Succession Plan: Reflections On John 17:20–23
Author: Karen H. Jobes

JETS 68.1 (March 2025) p. 1

Jesus’s Succession Plan: Reflections On John 17:20–23

Karen H. Jobes

Presidential Address, Evangelical Theological Society, November 21, 2024, San Diego, CA. Karen Jobes is Professor of New Testament Greek and Greek Exegesis Emerita at Wheaton College and Graduate School. The author gratefully acknowledges critiques by Dr. Moisés Silva, Pastor Daniel Phelps, and Marissa Phelps, which have improved this article.

May I ask how long have you been an evangelical? I made an adult commitment to Christ in the summer between my junior and senior years of college, more than 50 years ago. I came to Christ that summer of 1973 after reading Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth and a tract of a new translation of the Gospel of John that I later discovered was the newly produced NIV. Lindsay put the fear of God in me and John’s Gospel reminded me that Jesus loves me.

Now, these 50-plus years later I don’t have much use for Lindsay’s hermeneutic, but I still love the Gospel of John. It is with great thanksgiving to the Lord that I return to it as the focus of this address.

Please think with me this evening about Jesus’s Succession Plan as described in John 17:15–23, part of that familiar high priestly prayer of our Lord. On the night before his death, Jesus prayed, saying,

15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

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

17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

20 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,

21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—

23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete oneness. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as y...