What Does John 17:1 Mean?
Jesus spoke these words, and lifted his eyes to the heavens, and said, Father, the hour has come; give weight to your Son, that your Son also may give weight to you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:THE KEY
The glory here is weight made visible: the Son’s honor reveals the Father, and the Father is revealed through the Son.
THE MEANING
The hour has arrived for the Son to be given weight, so the Father’s weight becomes visible through him. The lifted gaze and the repeated “Son” hold glory within a relationship of giving and revealing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that honor must be held alone: the Son’s glorification reaches its purpose by bringing the Father into view.
THE ROOT
δοξάζω
doxazō
GROWS FROM
δοξάζω (doxazō), from δόξα (doxa)
Glory, honor, or reputation; in this verse, “weight” names the substance and significance that glory makes visible.
“give weight to” in this verse is doxazō. English “glorify” can sound like praise from a distance, but both clauses use the same Greek word-family: glory itself and the act of honoring. The verse presents the Son’s honor and the Father’s honor as mutually revealed, with glory carrying weight that becomes visible.
ALSO GROWS
doxa: Glory, honor, weight.
δόξα
This noun is the root of the repeated verb in the verse: glory is what the Son receives and then makes known in the Father.
endoxos: Honored, glorious.
ἔνδοξος
This related form describes what is held in honor, showing how the word-family joins glory with recognized significance.
THE PATTERN
Glory becomes knowable as it is revealed through presence and relationship.
And he said, Please, show me your weight.To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, to give the light of knowing the weight of God in the face of Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
So when he had gone out, Jesus said, Now the Son of Man is clothed in weight, and God is clothed in weight in him.The same verb appears here in both clauses: Jesus is glorified, and God is glorified in him. That wording makes the two-way movement of John 17:1 visible in a single sentence.
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