What Does John 17:18 Mean?
As you sent me into the world, so I also have sent them into the world.
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
As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.THE KEY
The world is not where the sending stops; it is where it multiplies.
THE MEANING
You meet a movement that does not stop with the one first sent: Jesus sends others into the world. The verse locates that work where human life unfolds, rather than in withdrawal from it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being set apart means being removed from the world: the verse places the sent directly within it.
THE ROOT
ἀπέστειλας
apesteilas
GROWS FROM
στέλλω
stéllō
To set or arrange; in ἀποστέλλω, to send out or commission.
English ‘sent’ can sound like simple transport, but the repeated verb carries the idea of a commission received and carried onward. The sender, the sent one, and the sending belong to the same word family.
ALSO GROWS
apostolos: A sent one, messenger, or emissary.
ἀπόστολος
It names the person who carries a sending forward, joining the identity of the sent one to the action in this verse.
apostolē: A sending or commission.
ἀποστολή
It names the commission itself: what Jesus receives from the Father is carried outward through those he sends.
THE PATTERN
A received sending becomes a sending carried onward into the world.
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am; send me.Then Jesus said to them again, Wholeness be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.THE THREAD
Then Jesus said to them again, Wholeness be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.John 20:21 repeats the same Greek verb for ‘sent,’ making the movement in this verse explicit: the sending received by Jesus becomes the sending he gives. One commission passes through him into the lives of others.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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