What Does John 17:15 Mean?
I do not ask that you lift them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil.
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
I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.THE KEY
The prayer asks for protection that keeps you present in the world instead of taking you out of it.
THE MEANING
You remain in the world, and you are held within it rather than abandoned to its evil. The wording can mean evil itself or the evil one; either way, the prayer is for keeping while you remain here.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that safety requires escape from the world; this prayer asks for protection within it.
THE ROOT
τηρήσῃς
tērēsēs
GROWS FROM
τηρ-
tēr-
To keep watch over, guard, or preserve.
“keep, guard, preserve” in this verse is tērēsēs. The keeping here is active guarding, not removal from the place where danger exists. The verse holds both realities together: you stay in the world, and you are kept from evil.
ALSO GROWS
tēreō: To keep or guard.
τηρέω
This is the dictionary form of the verb used here; its sense of guarding gives the prayer’s keeping an attentive, protective quality.
tērēsis: Keeping or observance.
τήρησις
This noun appears in the phrase “the keeping of the commandments of God” (1 Corinthians 7:19), showing the same root can name an ongoing state of keeping.
κόσμου
kosmou
GROWS FROM
κοσμ-
kosm-
Order or arrangement; κόσμος can also mean the world as an ordered whole.
The prayer leaves you within the κόσμος, the ordered world and human scene you inhabit. Its focus is not escape from that whole, but being guarded from evil while remaining within it.
ALSO GROWS
kosmos: World, order, or arrangement.
κόσμος
The same word names the place the prayer refuses to remove you from.
kosmeō: To arrange or adorn.
κοσμέω
This related verb carries the idea of setting things in order, echoing the ordered sense within κόσμος.
THE PATTERN
Divine keeping can preserve you within danger without removing you from the place where it acts.
The LORD watches over you from all harm; he watches over your living soul.These things have I spoken to you, so that in me you may have wholeness. In the world you have pressure, but take heart; I have overcome the world.As you sent me into the world, so I also have sent them into the world.THE THREAD
And now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you. Set-Apart Father, keep them in your own nature, those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are.John 17:11 uses the same Greek verb for “keep” as John 17:15. The repeated word ties being held in the Father’s name to being guarded from evil: the prayer describes one continuing act of keeping.
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