IN HIS CUSTODY

Jesus keeps all He receives. The pattern of protection Jesus demonstrated for His disciples is the pattern we can expect for ourselves. "While I was with them, I, myself, was keeping them in your name which you have given to me, and I guarded them, and no one out of them was lost except the son of lostness, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12).

The two verbs for protection used here are probably used synonymously (NIDNTT, 2:135), although there could be slightly different shades of meaning between the two. The first verb (ετηρουν) meant to keep watch over or preserve (BAGD, p. 814) while the second verb (εφυλαξα) meant to guard or defend (BAGD, p. 868). Both verbs could be used for prisoners under the custody of guards.

The first verb (ετηρουν) is an Imperfect tense indicating action in progress or repeated action. Jesus was keeping watch over the disciples until this moment of His prayer for them. The second verb (εφυλαξα) is an Aorist tense indicating a summation of His guardianship. They were in His custody, and He lost no one out of the group (ουδεις εξ αυτων).

The exception (ει μη) was Judas. Jesus describes him as the "son of destruction" (ο υιος της απωλειας), an expression drawn from the Hebrew (Semitic) style of writing. The play on words with the previous verb (απωλετο) is hard to bring out in an English translation. Both words come from the same root meaning to ruin or destroy, and Jewish literature associated the word with the destruction of the world at the end of the age (NIDNTT, 1:463). The verb carries a sense of lostness and is used for the lost sheep and the lost coin in Jesus' parables (Luke 15:4, 8). People without God are lost. Lostness is the condition of their souls (NIDNTT, 1:464).

Judas and the "man of lawlessness" (2 Thess. 2:3) are both described as sons of destruction. It is a Semitic idiom like "sons of light" or "sons of darkness." The noun "son" (υιος) followed by the genitive expresses a quality or characteristic (Turner, Grammar, 3:207), not a prediction. Jesus stresses that lostness characterizes the condition of Judas more than He stresses lostness as the destiny of Judas (Morris, John, p. 728). A lost condition will eventually lead to a lost destiny. He is a ruined soul whose end is destruction apart from repentance. Judas is responsible for his choices, but those choices exhibit his characteristic condition as the son of lostness.

Jesus keeps us in His custody. We are "sons of God (υιοι θεου) being sons of the resurrection" (Luke 20:36). We are not sons of lostness just as the disciples were not! We are children (τεκνα) of God (John 1:12). Jesus holds His children in His custody forever. He will not lose a single one!