Jn 17:11b-19
[Raising his eyes to heaven, Jesus said,] 11“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. 12When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. 14I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. 15I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. 16They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. 17Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. 19And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
THE EVIL ONE: Scripture scholar Raymond E. Brown says that the discovery of the “Dead Sea scrolls” in the caves of Qumran in 1947 proves that at the time of Jesus, a variety of thoughts existed. Among these are ideas that would develop into Gnosticism in the second and third centuries after Christ. The stress of the Fourth Gospel on “dualism”—light and darkness, good and evil, “this world” and “not of this world”—is also that of the Qumran community. The Gnostics would push this dualism too far, saying that matter and the physical world are evil, while spiritual realities and transcendence are good.
In the concluding part of the Last Supper discourse, Jesus prays for himself (17:1-5), for his circle of disciples (17:6-20), and for those who will believe in him (17:21-24). The disciples are those whom Jesus chose in the world to represent him, in much the same way that Jesus represents the Father. Among other things, Jesus prays that the disciples be “kept from the evil one.” This is an acknowledgment of the certain truth: being representatives of Jesus, the disciples will face the reality of a battle. They will have to live and work in the midst of opposition. The “Evil One” (see Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:30) is the embodiment of all that is opposed to God, and of God’s ways and designs as revealed by Jesus.