The Life of the Age to Come (John 17:1–5)
Jesus defines eternal life exactly once in John’s Gospel, and he does it here.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3, ESV)
The phrase translated “eternal life” is ζωὴ αἰώνιος — life of the age, the life that belongs to the age to come. The phrase isn’t primarily about duration. “Eternal life” is the life of the new creation, the life of God’s renewed world. Jesus is saying that this life is available now, because he is here.
And the content of that life is knowing God.
Not knowing about God, but knowing him.
In the language of Scripture, to know someone is to be in relationship with them — present, trusting, bound together over time. Jesus is defining the life of the new age as a relationship with the Father through the Son. That relationship is the gift. It is what the Son came to give to the world.
This definition doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Centuries earlier, Jeremiah had announced a new covenant, one whose hallmark would be exactly this kind of knowing:
“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD” (Jer 31:34).
The old covenant required mediation — priests, teachers, and prophets. The new covenant Jeremiah envisioned would cut through all of that. Everyone, from the least to the greatest, would know God directly. Jesus stands in the upper room on the eve of his death and announces that the moment Jeremiah described has arrived. The new covenant is here, and its content is knowing the Father through the Son he sent.
The life of the age to come is already breaking in. The life of the new creation doesn’t wait for death. Every act of trust in Jesus, every real encounter with him in Scripture and prayer and sacrament, is new-creation life happening now. Paul writes:
“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).
Jesus himself, in his life, death, and resurrection, is the arrival of the age to come, and to know him is to already be living inside that new world.
The rest of the prayer builds on the definition in verse 3. Jesus asks the Father to glorify him so that he can give new-creation life to all those the Father has given him (v. 2). The cross isn’t a detour; it’s the door. What Jesus is about to do — the hour that has finally come — is the act that opens access to knowing, relationship, and life.
It’s worth noting that when Jesus says “Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3), the phrasing sounds unusual coming from Jesus himself. John has shaped this prayer for the ongoing praying community — the prayer was never meant merely to be overheard. The prayer was meant to be prayed. The church has been speaking these words back to God ever since, entering into the same knowing that Jesus describes.
The age to come isn't merely coming. In Jesus, the age to come has already arrived — and to know the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit is to already be living inside it.
Jesus Prayed for You (17:20–26)
Did you know that Jesus prayed for you? Yes, we all know he is our great high priest interceding for us in heaven at the right hand of God, but even while he was on earth, Jesus prayed for you.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20–21, ESV).
This whole chapter is known as the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. While he is mainly interceding for the disciples who followed him during his earthly ministry, he prays not only for them, but also for those who would believe in him through the testimony, and that’s me and you. As you read John 17 today, remember that Jesus is praying for you, and see if that opens up any new insights into his prayer.
Can you expound more on what eternal life in this passage means? Same Greek words in John 3:16 — but I believe evangelicals would teach this is future (aka “heaven” after we die) but I take it to mean eternal life BEGINS when we first know Jesus !