“I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. “Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.
Jesus is praying that He might resume now the full manifestations of deity. He had laid them aside when He came into the world, taking upon Himself the limitations of humanity. When our Lord was here He did not go around showing people how God behaved; He showed them how humanity behaved–humanity indwelt by God, as God intended humanity to be….
And all that you see in Jesus during the days of His flesh is a perfect humanity. His deity was hidden. He didn’t give it up–you can’t give up what you are–but He laid aside the exercise of it. Now He is asking that the Father will restore to Him that expression of deity that was His before the world was made. By this He is praying for the resurrection and the ascension to follow–that the Father would raise Him from the dead in glory and then later cause Him to ascend to heaven to be with Him as He was before the world was made. He needs this in order to perform the work of giving eternal life to all those whom the Father would bring to Him out of every succeeding generation. It is as God that He gives us eternal life.