Matthew Poole and continuators on John 17:8

8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me ; and they have received them , and have known surely that I came out from thee , and they have believed that thou didst send me r.

Our Lord here doth both justifie himself, and commend these whom in this former part of his Prayer he is commending to his Father; he justifieth himself, that he had not delivered any thing to them, but what he had from his Father; thereby teaching all those who claim the Name of his Ministers what is their duty, viz. to give to their hearers no word, but what God hath given them. If Christ confined his discourses to words which his Father had given him, certainly we ought to do so also. We are not to speak what we list, nor what men would have us; we are tied up to Gods word

He commendeth these his Disciples, that they had received them, not onely the sound of them in their ears, not onely the Notion of them in their understandings, but they had imbraced and believed them;

and had from the force and authority of them, given credit to him as the true Messias, who came out, and was sent from God. Tho they were not yet come up to a perfect faith in him as the Eternal Son of God; yet they believed him one that came from God, and was sent of God as the promised Messiah, which seemeth to have been that degree of faith which Christ most insisted upon as to his Disciples, until by his Resurrection from the dead, he declared himself to be the Son of God with Power; tho all along this Gospel, his discourses, and the miracles which he wrought, had a particular tendency to prove himself one with the Father, and the Eternal Son of God; and the Disciples had some weak perswasion of this also.

Marginal references: Chap. 8.28. and 12.49. and 14.10.; Chap. 16.27, 30.