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RIKIAT as
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME SIXTH,

THE GOSPEL OF ST JOHN.

First Fore-announcement of the Raising of Lazarus. The Honour
of the Son of God. Walking in the a The Setting forth,
ch. xi. 4, 7, 9-11, 14, 15, ;

Jesus and Martha. Second Fore-announcement : the Resaoition
and the Life, ch. xi. 23, 25, 26, : 4

The Sepulchre, the Stone, Faith, the Tianingvng to the Father,
the Raising, ch. xi. 34, 39-44,

The Anointing at Bethany, ch. xii. 7, 8; Matt. xxvi. 10-13; Mark
xiv. 6-9, ; .

Last public Declaration concerning his coming Death. The Corn of
Wheat, and his Discipleship; the Prayer of Anguish ; the Glori-
fication; the brief Continuance of the Light, ch. xii. 23-36, .

The Evangelist’s Summary of the Public ie of Jesus, ch.
xl. 44-50, . :

The Washing of the Feet, ‘en its iiss ae xill. 7 20,

The Second and more direct Indication of the Traitor, after the
Supper, ch. xiii. 26, 27, . : :

The Glorification of the Son of Man; the esis into the Inac-
cessible ; the New Citnhiheerate ch. xiii. 31-35, .

The First shitdinisies of Peter’s Denial, ch. xiii. 36-38; naa

xxii. 34, . ‘
Farewell Discourses of Jesus ¥: His Disciples until His Setting out,
ch. xiv. 1-31, : : ; : : :

Faith in God and in Jesus. His Going before into the Father's
House: Himself the way: the Father in Him as He in the
Father, ch. xiy. 1-10, : ; ; 4 :

Page

t=

20

33

175

181

1V CONTENTS.

The Greater Works ; the Praying and Loving ; Fellowship with the
departed Lord through the Comforter, in whom He and the
Father Himself come; Separation in this from the World,
ch, xiv. 11-24,

The Holy Ghost, once more, as Peaiiee at Rom sees the
Peace left behind, and Given anew through His Departure to
the Greater Father; the Powerlessness of the Prince of the
World in his Aggression upon Him, ch. xiv. 25-31,

Renewed Farewell Discourses during the delay of the setting forth,
chs. xv. xvi. Similitude of the Vine and the Branches, ch.
xv. 1-6,

The Interpretation of the Similitude : the ia of ae eer in His
Disciples bringing forth its Fruit, ch. xv. 7-17,

The Hatred of the World to the Disciples of their Lord: the tae
cusable Sin of Unbelief, ch. xv. 18-25,

The Testimony of the Spirit of Truth against the World: oo
tion to obviate Offence, ch. xv. 26-xvi. 4,

The Comforter obtained by His departure will Convince the World,
and glorify Jesus to His Disciples, ch. xvi. 5-15,

The way of the First Disciples, as typical for all Futurity, ees
Sorrow to Joy; the Joy of Birth; the perfect Joy of seeing
Him again in that Day, ch. xvi. 16-24,

Final Reference to the Great Future: now in Parable, then Ona
the Love and Faith of the Disciples in much Weakness: last
Consolation derived from His overcoming the World, ch. xvi.
25-33,

The High-priestly Prayer, ch. xvi. ‘ ‘ ‘
HARMONY.
Page
Matt. xxvi. 10-13, . ; 58 | ,John xii. 7, 8, ,
Mark xiv. 6-9, : : 58 », xiii. 36-38, .

Luke xxii. 34, : eae Wb

Page

418

Page
58

172

THE GOSPEL OF ST JOHN.

FIRST FORE-ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
THE HONOUR OF THE SON OF GOD. WALKING IN THE DAY.
THE SETTING FORTH.

(John xi. 4, 7, 9-11, 14, 15.)

WE already know the little household of Bethany, united in
the happy bonds of Ps. cxxxiii.: blessed before of the God of
Israel because of their religious mutual love ; but now still more
blessed, because loved with a special love by the Son of God
manifest in the flesh. Diverse in their temperament and dispo-
sition—as in Mary and Martha we see the one with more faci-
lity pressing on to the choice of the one thing needful, and the
other struggling with the needless unrest of her well-meaning
mind—they were yet one in God, and in sincere faith towards
Jesus, who therefore loved them all. This family of Bethany
was selected, that in it, and for it, should take place the final,
greatest, and most public miraculous attestation of the honour
of the Son of God; the witness, that is, that He who was about
to surrender Himself to death and the grave, was Himself the
Resurrection and the Life. The sacred love of their Divine

y
¢
7

Friend designs, by leading their weak faith through the bitter- ©

ness of death, to heighten its subsequent joy. We may well
suppose that the enmity of the Jews would hereafter the more
virulently burn against them in consequence ; and to our minds
the old opinion is not altogether so “untenable” as some now
think, that the reason is to be sought in this for the remarkable
silence of the Synoptics concerning the resurrection of Lazarus.’

1 Lange enters very cautiously and discriminatingly into the merits of
VOL. VI. A

24 THE FAMILY OF BETHANY.

This, however, is but one hypothesis, and much more might be
added in explanation ; so much, indeed, as effectually to shield
them from Baur’s insinuation against their historical credit in
relation to this matter.

Suffice it, that St John’s narrative in the eleventh chapter is
so transparently true, and so entirely stamped with those attri-
butes of historical simplicity and confidence which are impressed
upon all the narratives of his Gospel, that only the blind can
fail to discern the glory of God in it; and they to whom it is
obscure darken their own apprehension by their own critical
counsel. He presupposes an acquaintance with the whole

substance of the so-called Synoptical tradition, and with the

memorable sisters; for he indicates the tis ao@evav Adlapos first
generally as é« Tis Kouns adTa@v, and immediately afterwards
as their brother. Although he himself afterwards (ver. 5) ar-
ranges the three persons probably according to their ages and
external position,’ yet it is significant that in ver. 1 he men-
tions Mary first, who as a disciple was better known, and in-
wardly nearer to the heart of the Lord, and whose anointing was
to be spoken of wherever the Gospel was preached. It is
on this account that he presupposes in his readers a special ac-
quaintance with this circumstance, down to the wiping of the feet
with her hair—although himself afterwards commissioned to
record it. }

These sisters communicate to the Lord a very delicately
worded, but urgent request for help, for their beloved brother
lies dangerously sick. ‘There needs no proof that acOeveiy is
used of one in extreme peril of sickness (as Grot. remarks) :
comp. Acts ix. 87; Phil. ii. 26,27. They would hardly have
sent to Jesus so far, if there had not been danger of life; and
the Lord’s reply responds to the feared rpos @avarov. Vers. 21

the question, ascribing this considerate silence to their original traditional
formation, before the actual composition of the Gospels. On the other hand,
Luthardt summarily dismisses all such consideration as superfluous and
gratuitous. ‘

1 According to Lu. x. 88, Martha was the mistress of the house. Lazarus,
the youngest, who now sank into early death for a brief space, might have
dwelt with them, though neither ch. xi. nor ch. xii. 2 decides anything on
this point. Driseke suggests that Martha might be here mentioned first,
to show that she was equally dear to Jesus with Mary.

JOHN XI. 4. a4

and 32 afterwards show what they desired and hoped for. But
what refined humility and confident urgency are blended in the
message, as St John gives it to us in its most concise and simple
truth! There is no trace of any lamentation or protest that
one dear to the Son of God should be sick, as if that were a
thing unseemly ; it is only tasteless perversion of interpretation
to put such a meaning into their words: a thoughtful applica-
tion would learn from them, and teach, the truth that one whom
the Lord loveth may quite consistently with that high privilege
be sick. They may, indeed, presume that they have a claim to
His help for cure or rescue from death :—yet only the right of
grace on account of His love. They say not—He who loveth
Thee so well, but—He whom Thou lovest in Thy free and great
benevolence, whom Thou “honourest with Thy regard.” Yet
it seems to them too much to say at once (as Nonnus inserts)
ov didéets oxorriate. The simple “behold!” connected with
the “Lord!” which brings to mind His power, is enough for
them: no further expression of request or reliance was needed.
That He loves them too, his sisters, and for their sake will
restore their brother, is reserved in humble silence.

Ver. 4. “The Lord” (vers. 2 and 8) responds to such a sum-
mons in a very marvellous manner, and not now as elsewhere
to the urgent and unseasonable supplication of one altogether
unknown. That He does give a reply, admits of no doubt.
Schleiermacher, indeed, seems not to know “from this brief
account”’ whether this was His reply, or a notice which He gave
to His disciples concerning the character of the sickness(!)—
but we cannot suppose the Evangelist’s narrative to be so brief
as to have excluded the Lord’s response to the message. The
Lord assuredly gives a reply in ver. 4, although in strikingly
mysterious terms. It is not—I will come! and no express—
Let him be healed! His indefinite answer, which He gives
without any added promise of coming, includes, on the one hand,
a consolation which dispels the fear of death as the issue, but,
on the other, it leaves “ this sickness” to itself, to run its ap-
pointed course. Indeed, the concluding words, in their grand, —
indefinite generality, might have suggested to thoughtful pon-
dering hearers, that some mystery was involved in the apparently
plain “not unto death.” For the dd£a and Sofac@fvas had too

4 THIS SICKNESS IS NOT UNTO DEATH.

lofty a sound for any ordinary recovery or healing. This of

itself refutes the unhappy notion of many that the Lord Himself,

after the manner of men, expected or predicted a recovery in

these words; and Liicke, who inclines that way, finds the

orthodox exposition (as he calls the presupposition of super-

human foreknowledge, and with more propriety than he himself

intended) more easy. We do not deny that elsewhere a human
expectation or design at variance with the subsequent issue

might be possible to Jesus, without any disparagement to His |
Divinity, and this we have on some occasions maintained in
opposition to the general view: but here, in this narrative and
in these words, it seems a thing more unimaginable the more it
is reflected upon. The very beginning, airy 7) acbéveta, with
the decisive od« éott which follows, has a sound of full assur-
ance, as if He had said :—I know this sickness, and its issue, so
marvellously redounding to the glorification of God and Myself,
full well! (Grotius: Ostendit Christus, notum sibi, quod tan-
quam nescienti indicabatur.) He knows already everything
from the beginning—and this is the truth which pervades all
St John’s description of His mysterious words and acts. Yet,

the more closely we contemplate this first utterance, the more
“ designedly obscure” does it appear, with all its tone of promise.

It is abundantly easy to perceive that, if Lazarus died only that
he might be raised again on the fourth day unto the glory of
God, this sickness, yea, this brief death and sleep, was not essen-

tially wnto death in the ordinary sense, unto abiding death. The
Berlenburg Bible compares, with pious ingenuity, the passage

in the Psalm :—“ Thus sings the Messiah, Ps. exviii. 17, 18, I

shall not die—but died nevertheless!” We have here the

counterpart of 2 Kings xx. 1, where not only the history records

mine non (Sept. eis Odvaror, still stronger than our zpos), but the

Lord also Himself announces, by the prophet—Thou shalt die and

not live! If that declaration of God, revoked through prayer

in His Old-Testament condescension, was not untrue, still less

is the present word of our Lord, whose “unto death” can and

must be interpreted and understood in all its New-Testament

1 Schleiermacher : Formed an opinion and judgment from what He

. heard ; so that if the information should be found to have been insufficient,
His ‘‘ opinion” also might not coincide with fact !

JOHN XI. 4. 5

depth. The same may even be said in a certain sense concerning
the falling asleep of all whom the Lord loves, and who will
awake only at the first resurrection. But there is no room for
the further application which has been made by a spuriously
profound exposition, to the sickness of sin—It is not unto death
in the case of believers, but to the glory of the Son of God!
Such reflections abandon altogether the ground of exegesis.
Unto the glory of God (i7ép is presently explained by iva) :
—this promises a wonderful aid, just in the sense of ch. ix. 3.
But that this will come through the Son of God is here made
emphatically prominent, though obviously of itself to be under-
stood, because it was to be here made triumphantly manifest
that the honour or glory of God (ver. 40) is one with the glory
of His Son (ch. ii. 11). Thus it is a testimony similar to ch. v.
23; xiv. 13. The resurrection of Lazarus is the comprehensive

concluding symbol of all the miracles exhibiting the glory of ,

God in Christ.

We cannot doubt, though it is not expressly indicated, that
this single appropriately ordered utterance was the entire answer
given to the sisters; they received no subordinate reply which
St John has not recorded. The Lord’s dignity discloses itself
in the reserve with which, when He heard the message, He said
these words and no more; and scarcely can we suppose Him to
have even added—Tell them this! And what when this mes-
sage was delivered? Alas, it is highly probable that their
brother had in the meantime died! ‘Ebrard assumes, without
any reason, that Jesus afterwards went “slowly and circuitously”
on the journey, which required no more than a day, from the
south of the Jordan to Bethany ; and thus he interposes six or
seven days between this word and the resurrection. But how,
and: for what purpose, is this assumed? The reckoning of the
days in ver. 6 must certainly be taken in connection with ver.
39, so that the death of Lazarus occurred soon after, if it had not
already taken place when the Lord spoke the words of ver. 4.’
Ver. 5 must at least be as straitly connected with what follows
as with what precedes; for the Evangelist confirms the bold ov

1 So Lange, concurring with most expositors ; comp. Driseke’s Lazarus,
S. 64. This is more simple than Bengel’s assumption that Lazarus died
precisely when the Lord announced the xexo/wnras, ver. 11; although this

a

\

6 THE MESSAGE.

ireis of the message by his 7ydzra, as he continues: neverthe-
less, when He heard this dc@evetvy of him whom He loved, He
still delayed two whole days, after having given the indefinite
promise that the Son of God would be glorified in this sickness.
We may suppose that He jhad something to accomplish év 6 my
ro, or rather that He was not here, as anywhere, unemployed:
but neither the account in ch. x. 41, 42, nor the presently follow-
ing word of our Lord in ch. xi. 9, 10, leads to the supposition
of any specially rich and gracious sphere of activity; the latter
passage, indeed, seems to indicate the departure to awaken His
friend as His more distinctive work, the commission given to
Him for the employment of the little time that remained to Him.
So that it is at all events a useless controversy of the expositors,
which asserts (with Schleiermacher) or denies, that “the Lord
would sacrifice to the more particular and slighter necessities of
His friends in Bethany, the more general and important necessity
of His presence at the Jordan.” In the motives of His manner
of acting, as in the providence of the Father, many things were
at once and together and without any conflict between them
considered: but it is most conformable to the sense of the narra-
tive to admit a reference to the great joy which should be in
Bethany as the leading motive. His love wittingly delays, that
it may more gloriously console them after their sufferings. The
sickness and dying of those whom He loves is not a matter, gene-
rally, of such perilous and urgent moment; and this must His
beloved ones in Bethany learn, and ourselves from them; of
course there is no room for any obligation to hasten to their
help, unless other more important matters should prevent.
Lavater says somewhere: “Our Lord lets them only wait,
whom He loved most ; His keeping them waiting is just the sign
that He purposes to help them in His own way, that is, as God.”
And every candid mind must admit, what it was scarcely neces-
sary for Olshausen to enforce, that the dying of Lazarus was
intended to be to himself as well as to his sisters, an occasion of
spiritual good. Alford has lately excellently expressed himself
thus: “It need hardly be remarked, that the glorifying of the
would give profound evidence of that Divine knowledge of the sickness of,

His humanly loved friend, which we cannot suppose them to have in any
case lacked.

JOHN XI. 7, 9, 10. 4

Son of God in Lazarus himself is subordinately implied. Men
are not mere tools, but temples, of God.”

Ver. 7. There now follow our Lord’s sayings on occasion of
the departure for Bethany, which the disciples had ceased to
expect—the éuewev is recorded only ex eventu. “Aryew or ura-
yew is found also in the Sept. for Si2 or 329. But eds ryv
"Tovéaiav, again, is significantly indefinite; He does not speak
expressly of Bethany and Lazarus, as if the latter had passed
from His mind, or ver. 4 had already said all on that subject.
Hence the disciples, thus challenged by the 7d)up, express with
more than confidence their suspicions. Thus arises a further
colloquy with these disciples :—first, the removal of the hesitation
expressed in ver. 8, and then, the solution of a misunderstanding
indicated in vers. 12,13. ‘The disciples were certainly at rest
concerning Lazarus, although we should scruple to say positively
that “they discerned in the Lord’s answer a mighty decree of
healing,” or that “ His words must have been understood of His
communicating His distant power to save.” (Ebrard.) Even on
this assumption their object retains something of improper bold-
ness. Nodv, just now, very recently—the taking up of the stones
is still present to their eyes, and they calculate upon the con-
tinuance of that enmity and the consequent danger. They had
supposed from our Lord’s first message that He would not
entrust Himself to Jerusalem, and remind Hin, as it were, of
His inconsistency! They receive a twofold answer: first, in
vers. 9, 10, the general composing assurance as to His own
action and procedure ; and, afterwards ver. 11, a specific decla-
ration of His purpose and reason for going to Bethany.

Vers. 9,10. These words connect themselves with ch. ix. 4, 5,
as the first saying in ver. 4 had been a remembrancer of ver. 3
of that chapter: yet they do not express precisely the same idea,
as Rosenmiiller and Kuinoel think, and as Teschendorff super-
ficially concludes.’ Nor is the whole, as has been said, intended
merely as a rule of life for the disciples; but the Lord first of
all expresses the procedure, law, and obligation of His own
walk, and in terms which have a deeper meaning than that He

1 “ Nothing is done in the night, because there is no light. But now is
My day in which I can work : it will presently be over, and I can work no
more. Therefore must I go.” Nicodemus, 8. 143.

8 TWELVE HOURS IN THE DAY.

would walk in the daytime! De Wette (S. u. K. 1834, 4, 934)
regards as capricious and obscure the view of Olshausen and
Tholuck, which enters well into the spirit of the words, but the
fault of obscurity as to the profound symbolical meaning of such
words, and limitation of their wide range of application, is alto-
gether on his ownside. Let us calmly and thoughtfully develop
this saying, and we shall not go astray.

Are there not twelve hours in the day? This is, first of all,
to be clearly understood according to the Jewish custom; for
though it remains a difficult problem to the learned to decide
whether, and since when, the Hebrews knew or adopted the
proper division of hours (the "YY of Daniel is well known to be
indefinite)—it is, on the other hand, tolerably certain that in
later times the day, as extending from the rising to the setting
of the sun, was divided into twelve hours, longer or shorter
according to the season of the year; and Winer appeals to this
passage as sufficient evidence. (Article Zag.) According to
this, our Lord designs not merely to speak (as Schleiermacher
thinks) of public or concealed walking; for as in ch. ix. 4 the
expression “while it is day” cannot mean merely “before the
eyes of all,” so neither can publicity merely be meant here.
Wherefore then is the mention and the reckoning of the hours ?
The Lord manifestly first of all designs to signify by the day the
time of life allotted to Him, before the running out of which He
might not and would not cease to perform His works; a mean-
ing which coincides in its fundamental idea, as with ch. ix. 4, so
also with Luke xiii. 32. Yet not, as Liicke applies it—I have
only the twelve hours, and they are nearly run out : but rather
conversely—full twelve hours, and the last is not yet come!
Bengel: jam multa hora, sed tamen adhuc dies. I walk in My
day, that is (according to Hess), “ My vocation upon earth has
a proper relation to My time.” ‘The same Hess (whose exposi-
tions, sometimes original and penetrating, are now almost over-
looked) excellently paraphrases here: “Think ye, indeed, that
that which makes you anxious on My account, can take place
one hour before the time appointed of God brings it? Asa
traveller has his twelve hours for his day’s journey, so also to Me
there is a space of time appointed for My business; as long as
this lasts, I am as sure that no mischance can befall Me, as one

JOHN XI. 9, 10. g

who walketh in the day is more secure than he who trayels in the
night.” In which well-weighed comparative more secure it is
already intimated that the figure does not suit in its rigorous
letter. For we ought to be as much accustomed, as expositors
of the sayings of the Lord, to this incongruence in His simili-
tudes, as we are to the circumstance that He habitually makes
profound and many-sided applications of them.

This last He does here. De Wette is able to perceive that
the light of this world or the sun is not mentioned as a defence
against evil, any more than the night, on the other hand, can
indicate the lack of Divine protection; but that the words have
reference generally to some defence and security he also admits,
inasmuch as he rightly understands zpooxédrrew (stumble, fall)
of danger of mishap, and not directly in a moral sense. Liicke
perceives in it moral stumbling and falling, the danger of sin;
Baiimlein, stumbling against the Divine will! But the disciples
had not imagined the possibility of our Lord’s erring or sinning
- through inadvertence; they had only warned Him against
danger. We therefore hold fast our conviction (in spite of
Luthardt’s protest) that He does not justify His own action,
but reassure His disciples, in these words. Braune has dis-
cerned a further subtile allusion: “I fall not under the stones
of the Jews, stumble not against them.” Afterwards, indeed,
in the application which the saying makes to us, the simile
of stumbling may and must be regarded as signifying that
personal guilt is involved. But if the former mpooxomtew
did not speak of external danger at all, where would be the con-
nection between the Lord’s answer and the solicitous warning
of the disciples? It is manifest, however, that He here extends
the simile newly used in chap. ix., inasmuch as He introduces a

spiritual significance into the seeing the light, the express self-
direction according to God’s heavenly order of man’s day and
hour. And He further incorporates a second thought on the
same figure: “He does not regard the space and continuance
of His walking in the day till night alone, but includes the
difference between walking in the day and walking in the night.”
(Nitzsch.) De Wette protests against the general, significance
of this distinction, as pointing to moral purity or impurity, and
would rather refer it to “a sincere, open prudence in minister-

10 WALKING IN THE DAY

ing the truth ;” but yet he is constrained to give prominence to
the moral element too, in order to avoid falling into what he
rejects as a “frosty” interpretation, the mere injunction of fore-
sight. But whither does this minute precision in distinguish-
ing the thoughts of this full and profound figurative language
lead us? The Lord begins by speaking of danger, as far as
concerns Himself, and in harmony with the thought of the
disciples; but He goes on in the same word to set forth a
universal human rule, concerning the morally significant know-
ledge and avoidance of danger. We may say with Nitzsch:
“the seeing, provident, and visible walking” (a threefold meaning
at once!), “the walking in the day—is walking in truth and
righteousness, manifestly under the eye of God,” etc.

But, further, is not Jesus, according to ch. ix. 5, Himself the
Light of the world? Assuredly, but He is so only in that He
at the same time as man and as Son walks with the Father in
His view, lives in the life of God; hence, “I must and can,
_ within My prescribed limits, fearlessly await My vocation in My
own and the Father’s light.”* (Meyer.) His Brémew 70 das
is partly the cognitio paterni propositi (according to Grotius),
partly the obedience belonging thereto. Walking in the night,
unusual to Him, would be certainly an dtozrov, from which the
disciples undesignedly and unthinkingly seemed to dissuade Him
by their warning ; therefore the saying passes over to this mean-
ing, to the danger that (if He were like ourselves) anything
human might befall Him, or He Himself might make a false
step. In the former clause He condescendingly placed Himself
on a level, in a certain sense, with His disciples and other men
(therefore édy tus); but ver. 10 passes over into the opposite (and
ch. xii. 835 may be compared with it), according to Olshausen’s
perfectly correct remark: “the former clause has respect rather
to Himself, the latter to His disciples.’? To discern such na--

1“ The vocation of a man is the sun in the heavens of his life’—this
general proposition, which Driiseke derives from this passage, has its spe-
cific application to the Son of man.

? Lange (iii. 654), on the other hand, too much: The whole discourse, —
the whole simile is spoken rather with reference to the disciples than to the
Lord. For He begins with Himself as the walker by day, and then sets us
walkers by night in opposition.

JOHN XI. 9, 10. 11

tural transition and progression in the thought, is by no means
to confound different meanings. As the undertone, we hear:
Think ye then that I could ever be a walker in the night, mis-
taking My time and vocation, as ye might do? And further :
Fear ye not to go with Me! Walk ever with Me and in My light
(ch. viii. 12)—-as I in My Father’s light, which is in Me!

And this, finally, gives us the transition and key to the much
contested év avté.' For while Liicke truly says, that He now
speaks, not as in ch. ix. 4, of the night in which no man can
work, but of the night in which no man should walk—yet the
reason that the walker in the night is without light, must be
sought in himself. The figure is now, finally, and most signi-
ficantly, turned to an inward application.” To say nothing of
the artificial reference of év aivé to xocpos, philological argu-
ments have been used to remove this peculiar év;° but these
attempts deviate from St John’s phraseology, and fail to cor-
respond with the meaning of the Lord’s word. Lange discerns
the transition, to pursue it no further, when he says: “ it is per-
fectly in harmony with the optical relations of all our Lord’s
utterances, that He defines the light which enlightens man to
be an influence within him: hence He terms the eye the light
of the body.” (This nearly coincides with that of Grotius: év
avT@, in oculis ejus, receptione enim lucis et specierum fit visio.)
And does not the Lord make the deepest view of the figure turn
to the inward application? Is it not true of him who by his
own fault walks outside his vocation, without the obedient
reference to God’s will, that is, as here, in the night, that,
“ without the true light in him, no light shines upon him ?”
Shine it ever so brightly in the heavens, for his eye it exists
not. There is, finally, another interpretation, which Brandt
defends: He has not the light (naturally) in himself, he cannot
in the night, without light from above, care for, secure, and

? Comp. what we have said upon the ¢Ze:, ch. viii. 12, in Vol. iv.

2 Berlenb. Bibel.: ‘* Here Christ begins an inward application.”

8 And in 1 John ii. 10, oxazvdarov év wire assuredly does not mean, as de
Wette thinks, coram or in oculis ejus, as év éQdaamoics, Matt. xxi. 42. “Ev
piv ch. xii. 35in the plural (which de Wette also adduces), does not by any
means prove that vy stands here for wera. More pertinentis év ¢wo/, 1 Cor. xiv.
11 (apud me, "2 for *>—but comp. Winer, 3 Ausg. 8. 177, 331). Thesoftened
Juz ei non adest, ov BAéxes ro PHs—cannot by any method be established.

12 OUR FRIEND LAZARUS SLEEPETH.

direct himself. This is penetrating and true in itself , but far-
fetched as an exposition of this passage. The whole is well
summed up, when we understand by walking in the night, accord-
ing to Meyer’s note, “ work equivocal and without a calling,” that
is, rendered culpable by internal neglect of reference to God’s
will ; so that the same work which might and should have been
done in God, may be done by him who has not this light without
a call, without a blessing, and consequently without protection.
This is more than Lange’s “ prolongation of life obtained by
unfaithfulness—haunting the scene—having outlived himself.”
For the idea of an appointed time, with which the words set out,
is now in contrast—since the question is to know that time—
regarded inwardly as confidence and simplicity of walking :—
how could any one ever, when his day has ended, thus wander
about? There are hours of this day, first, following, and last,
for distinctive appointed works :— Watch for God’s hour, and
walk according to it, so wilt thou never suffer harm, and if thou
goest to thy death, it will be as thy Lord and Master going to the
resurrection of His friend. Only go with Him, even though at
first with the mind of Thomas! But if thou regardest man alone
and avoidest danger, thou art already wandering in the night,
and thy stumbling will surely find thee in thy weak retreating.
Ver. 11. Not till the Lord has given the disciples some time
to ponder His previous word, does He give unasked a more dis-
tinct explanation of His determination dyew eis thv ‘Iovdaiay
madw :—I will goto Bethany, to Lazarus, and, as I said before,
in order that God may be glorified in His Son! Whatever
doubts may rise as to whether St John has reproduced literally
all and every word of Jesus in His later discourses, no man can
deny that he has faithfully seized and exhibited the manner and
spirit of our Lord’s speech. But when we now see how simply
concise, how humanly plain and divinely profound, how sub-
limely dignified, were the utterances of our Lord in connection
with such external occurrences as this, we may gain courage to
take to ourselves such words—indelibly impressed by their cha-
racter, or brought back unaltered to memory—as the actual
words which proceeded from His lips. (Apart from the promise
of the Holy Spirit, John xiv. 26, whether or not referring to the
actual letter.) And as to this present word, how entirely and

JOHN XI. 11. ¥3

thoroughly characteristic is it, with all its plainness and simpli-
city! Have ye then altogether forgotten our beloved Lazarus
and. his sickness to the glory of God, and My glory? And would
ye not more closely experience the truth and essential meaning
of the word which I spake; would ye not sympathise and share
in the great event, and see how My glory is revealed—even
though ye suppose it has been already manifested? Therefore
Lazarus is at once mentioned without any preface : aname which
would, as it,were, recall to true consideration the fearful disciples.
And mentioned with the most affectionate condescension : 0 @idos
nov instead of dv did. Bengel: Quanta humanitate Jesus A
amicitiam suam cum discipulis communicat! He sleepeth—thus
the Lord speaks, as if He would make this last resurrection a
remembrancer of that first awakening of the sleeping maiden."
From all antiquity men generally, and the Israelites, had used
this euphemism in speaking of death, yet rather with regard to
its outward appearance, and to throw a softening veil over the
grave; but this phrase becomes a new and living one in the lips
of our Lord, to disclose the great promise which had hitherto X
slumbered in Himself. We find in Job: dv@pwiros xoupndels
ov pny avactn—xal ovx eEvrvicOncovtas é& brvov avtav (ch.
xiv. 12)—but the Lord promises here in simple majesty an
eEurvicw. To this endI go! The ropevouar instead of the
former &ywpev is naturally thus explained; but it contains at
the same time the gentle reproach— Will not ye fearful ones go
with Me to our friend, to see his glorious awaking ??

In this way, for no other expressions at first could have been
used, did the Lord speak wept tod @avatov aitrod; and with
the design, if not in the sure expectation, that they would at
once understand Him aright. Strauss wonders that they did
not understand Him; and no wonder that Strauss does so, for
his perverse wonder is always at hand. If it had been written
that the disciples understood at once, he would very likely have
thought that, improbable. We rational people reflect that our

1 Driseke’s reference of the saying to the former words concerning day
and night, is needless and inappropriate; for the subject there was a night
in which man walks and stumbles, not in which he sleeps.

? We cannot see why Luthardt gainsays this. The Lord plainly says—I
go assuredly ; and in this lies— Will ye not go with Me?

14 LAZARUS IS DEAD.

Lord’s categorical od zpos Odvarov would be likely to create such
a misunderstanding, even if they had been more accustomed than
we can suppose them to have been to such high phraseology.
The Lord had promised, as they thought, His healing; and
hence they think at once of a favourable crisis followed by a
cure. Not merely did the delay of Jesus, and the expectation
of a coming kingdom for all His friends, prevent them from
contemplating death in this case; but the declared promise of
the Lord had put it out of their thoughts. And they would
indeed be led astray by the circumstance that the Lord designs
to set out expressly for the purpose of awaking him ; but as they
are far from any thought. of death having befallen the friend
in Bethany, they interpret this strange word, as an affectionate,
and almost pleasant way of speaking on the part of their conde-
scending Master—And I will see how he wakes up and how he
is after his sleep. Or did they (as de Wette thinks), supposing
that in the design of Jesus the waking him was to be the means
of his cure, reply to their Master—lIt is altogether unnecessary
that Thou shouldst go there for that purpose, as he will already
have awaked of himself? I think not, for such a means of
cure was never thought of. Nor can I see why Luthardt (who
presses my words to their utmost [fast ein wenig scherzende
Rede] and forgets their qualification) should so peremptorily
reject the idea of the disciples’ receiving the Lord’s words as a
pleasant way of saying that He would go to see how His friend
was after awaking. For I still think that if we consider it well,
we shall find this view more tenable than Ebrard’s supposition
that they “knew not wherefore Jesus would disturb his bene-
ficial condition of sleep—expressed their surprise that He would
rouse him from so healthy a process, since men are not wont to
awake sleeping patients.” His controversy with this last saying
of Strauss has led him too far, for they could not seriously think
of a sleep which should last till they reached Bethany. But as
the Lord had spoken of going and awaking him, they seem to
adopt the same way of speaking which they impute to their

1 Tt is so well known that sleep is restorative in sickness (Hcclus. xxxi.
or xxxiv. 2), that we need no rule of the Gemara concerning signs of cure,
nor any other such learned reference as the hackneyed saying of Menander,
Vavos 08 raons totly vyicre voor.

JOHN XI. 14, 15. i an

Master, and reply — Wherefore awake him? let him sleep on in
tranquillity for a while, and thus be restored! Their earnest
meaning in the background rested upon the fear and hesitation
about entering Judea and the neighbourhood of Jerusalem
which still remained in their minds.

Vers. 14, 15. The Lord resolves their misunderstanding by
an answer which meets their words in a threefold way. He
opposes to their falsely interpreted ei xexoiunras the undisguised
amé@avev, which must have fallen upon them as a thunder-
bolt. As soon, however, as their cw@7jceras is thus taken away
from them, the Lord abundantly restores it to them in the assur-
ing yaipo as regards Himself, which promises and pledges a
glorious awakening out of that sleep. Finally, their unuttered,
but latent fearful hesitation is put to shame, and corrected by
the prediction of an increase of faith on their part, so that the °
drywwev may now be restored, after wopevouar alone had been
used in the interval. They who are capable of so thinking may
agree with Liicke and Neander, that a second message, announc-
ing, unknown to the disciples, the actual death of Lazarus, is
conceivable : for our own part we reject it on every ground. It
can find no place in the compact narrative of the Evangelist,
who, in ver. 11, says expressly cal weTa TodTO Aéyer; for that
would be a marvellously long peta rodro after the tadra eize.
And it is “an injury to the Divine glory of the Redeemer” to
regard Him as speaking thus oracularly and solemnly of a mes-
sage which He had received, without naming it—more befitting
Strauss than the historical Christ. Finally, it is inconceivable
that Martha and Mary would have immediately sent the imti-
mation of his death—for to what end? ‘That the Lord might
raise him up? We read afterwards that they did not contem
plate this, even when He promised a resurrection, when He
stood before the grave, when He commanded the stone to be
rolled away. Was it that He might comfort and weep with
them? Alas, their tone of mind ventured not even upon that,
they were absorbed in that one thought—If He had been
here—!! Then, indeed, would they have prayed Him to avert

1 As it regards any other having brought Him the intelligence—who

may interpose such a thought, instead of reading the Evangelist as he in-
tended to be read and understood ?

i6 THAT YE MAY BELIEVE.

death ; then, indeed, death would not have entered into the pre-
sence of their Lord. Both these, the more profoundly we pene-
trate them, give us to understand the Lord’s joy at that which
was their sorrow, viz., that He had not been there. The disciples
understood it first, Then would He not have been able to refuse
Himself to their prayers and to the work of healing—and there
is some truth in that. But Bengel’s words go deeper: “It is
consonant with Divine propriety, that no one is ever spoken of
as dead in the presence of the Prince of life. If you suppose
that death could not have touched Lazarus in the presence of
Jesus, the language of the two sisters, vers. 21, 32, attains thereby
a more sublime conception.’ ‘The Lord (as Neander reminds
us) assuredly does not say that He had kept aloof in order to
allow Lazarus first to die; He rather now is glad that, other
reasons having induced His tarrying, it had come to that. And
this joy expressly witnesses that this turn in the event had not
been immediately a design of our Lord. Yet He perfectly well
knew all things from ver. 4 onwards.

The tva mictevonte is closely connected, by a transposition of
the phrase, with the emphatic 6u’ twas. Here we have once more
the great word believe: comp. presently vers. 25, 26, 40. That
we should more and more perfectly believe on Him, the Son, in
whom the Father is honoured, is not only the end of all that St
. John wrote, but of all that Jesus did, and of the way in which
He did it. In particular, He permitted Lazarus, by not going
to him, to die, that he himself, his sisters, the disciples, and
many Jews (ver. 45), might believe in Him :—these last be-
ginning their faith, and all the others deepening and confirming
it. We may leave it undetermined whether the Lord referred
expressly (as Schleiermacher thinks) to their faith in His own
so often promised resurrection ; ver. 25 afterwards almost in-
duces such a consequence. Spinoza in Bayle is recorded to
have said that if he could believe the resurrection of Lazarus,
he would break his own system in pieces and become a Christian: .
but we may reply that, conversely, such a philosopher. must first
break up his system in order to be capable of believing. Any-
thing like an actual irresistible demonstration that Lazarus was
more than apparently dead was not possible even for those who
were then present, despite the 767 6% of Martha, ver. 39, and

, JOHN XI. 14, 15. 1'y 4

even if their senses had confirmed her words; for the effluvium
of sickness and that of corruption cannot in some cases be dis-
tinguished. Indeed, as Schubert says, “ putrefaction in in-
dividual members may consist with the ultimate movements of
latent life.’ As the “system” of Spinoza itself, in opposing
all self-deception, rests not upon any incontrovertible external
or internal facts, so there are no miracles, inducing faith in
Christ, from which, as dawopeva and Brerropeva, certain assur-
ance must methodo mathematicé follow. But for him who has
come to faith in the person of Christ and the testimony of
Scripture concerning Him, in the way indicated John vii. 17,
the a7é@avev of the Lord’s own lips would be better evidence
than all the visa reperta of the medical faculty.

He is dead: and yet—go to him! In this last rpds adtov is
repeated the promise of the évmrvifew for the xexotwnpévos. But
that now, after death is plainly mentioned, the Lord no longer
expressly speaks of éfu7vifew or éyeipewv, we shall resolve, with
Grotius (who sometimes is as subtile in his remarks as Bengel),
into a modestia.

St John does not tell us what either himself, or the other
Apostles, thought or said in connection with this word of our
Lord; but he records a highly characteristic word of the morbid
and hesitating Thomas, equally full of love and hard of faith.
He remains altogether in misconception, even after the misap-
prehension as to the favourable sleep had been removed ; but he
does not recede entirely into ver. 8. We have d@ywpev a third
time, coinciding with the first and the last word of our Lord.
It almost appears as if He would thereby overcome some re-
maining distrust and shrinking among the disciples :—What
remains then but that we follow and be where He is? That
per avtod does not refer to Lazarus needs very little demonstra-
tion, though many arbitrarily maintain it. Schleiermacher says
correctly, “Thomas and the other disciples belonged not to
Lazarus, the individual common friend, but to the Lord. What
’ kind of faith in Christ, and what kind of devotion to Him would
it have argued, if Thomas, in the presence of His disciples, could
have said that to die with another individual friend would be a
greater satisfaction to him than to live with the Lord.” Liicke
has most briefly and pertinently remarked, that in the cat nets

VOL. VI. B

18 LET Us GO AND DIE WITH HIM.

spoken to the ovppatyrais, there already is contained a ovy
avto, which is naturally continued in the per adtod. He is
the great Master, and we disciples belong to Him! We may
not so quickly rebut the other assumption, that Thomas had so
understood the Lord’s dywpev pos avrov as if the way would
Jead into the other world, where Lazarus then was. (So Bengel,
who compares 2 Sam. xii. 13.) We do not declare this at once
to be forced, but perceive an accordance between this mpos avrov
and Thomas’ words, which cannot be overlooked; though we
are less inclined to think that he so expressly interpreted and
understood the Lord’s saying, than that his troubled thoughts
prematurely imposed that meaning upon it. Thus are men
apt, in such a frame of mind, to dwell upon the last and most
mournful word, pretermitting or forgetting all else. Thus
Thomas has forgotten what had been said about awaking! But
Hanstein incorrectly paints Thomas, when he says, “ Now that
the friend in Bethany was actually dead, and the Master had
determined to awake him, to glorify the name of God, any
further interference would be indecorous (and not so before ?)—
and how unkind towards the family in Bethany! He will go
now and raise Lazarus—so might Thomas firmly believe (would
this ‘unbelieving’ one believe what Mary did not believe ?)—
but with equally firm assurance that the going to raise Lazarus
would be going to Jesus’ own death.” By this example we warn
preachers against neglecting exegesis ; and we enter so largely
into Thomas’ word, because such expressions of the disciples
exhibit the then influence of the Lord’s words in such a manner
as to shed a reflection upon their present meaning and force
for us.

Lampe’s psychology is at fault when he here asserts: “there
is something of murmuring here, in that he does not direct his
words openly to the Lord Himself, but spread them secretly
among the disciples, and thus sought to fill their minds with
disquietude and terror.” No, we have not the slightest trace of —
any such secret murmuring; he does not design to produce dis-
affection in his fellow-disciples’ minds, but to encourage them by

1 The opinion of Bartholinus (de morbis biblicis) is a curiosity of learning :
Thomas was here afraid that they might be subject to the contagion of the
body.

JOHN XI. 14, 15. 5 19

his calm ayopev to obedience. He speaks “without hypocrisy,
but without joy” (Roos). There is nothing of disquietude and
terror, but all is resignation—such resignation, however, as
mingles some degree of unbelieving doubt with the devotion of
love." Thus much is true, but there is no “ cowardice in the
words under the semblance of courage,” no “alloy of bitterness,”
as even Draseke is tempted to think, but the kernel of all is Jove
and devotion. ‘Thus is he the same Thomas, whose character
Hase defines as “ melancholy tenderness” —as in ch. xiv. 5 and
xx.25. All must die, His dearest friends, —and Himself,—then’
let us die with Him! Let all go as it may—with Him to death !
And if all the hopes of kingdom and life built upon Him come
to nought—the dependence of love should remain! In such a
mingled tone of mind, neither is the desire to die nor the fear
of death to be altogether involved or excluded ;? it remains an
indistinct, uncompleted word and feeling, as are almost all such
expressions of the various influences upon the disciples’ minds,
each according to his character.’ But in the midst of his un-
belief, it is the profoundest trust of his heart which speaks, and
which will not separate from Him; it is this which makes it a pro-
phetic and symbolical word, and therefore it is recorded by the
Holy Ghost through the Evangelist John. We, who have not
merely the resurrection of Lazarus before our eyes, but also the
resurrection and glorification of Jesus, should glorify the troubled
word of Thomas into a word of joy for the following of our
Lord ;—as Siegmund has done in his classical hymn, which is
not meaningless allusion, but good old symbolism :—Let us with
Jesus go—with Jesus suffer—with Jesus die—with Jesus live!

1 Braune : We would ofttimes rather lay us down weary in the grave, than
struggle on in the glowing hope of faith.

* By which we may correct the assertion of Chrys. in Klee, that the word
expresses fear, not desire!

5 If the Lord’s death were the question, they could only deprecate it, with
Peter; or die with Him, with Thomas. (Hofmann, Weiss. u. Erf. ii. 265.)

20 JESUS AND MARTHA.

JESUS AND MARTHA. SECOND FORE-ANNOUNCEMENT :
THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.

(Chap. xi. 23, 25, 26.)

It is not by a meeting between Jesus and the profoundly sus-
ceptible Mary, that the narrative conducts us towards the sanc-
tuary of this resurrection; but, before that, by His interview
with Martha, whose soul tarried rather in the outer court of the
life of faith. When Mary is introduced, the still procedure of
that interview and its most touching utterances are interrupted
by the surrounding éyAos of the Jews ; and thus the intense
interest of the situation, in its conflict between that which was
most internal and outward things, between the most sublime
emotions and the ceremonial of common life and death, is strained
to the utmost; and a typical-dramatical scene rises before us,
such as belongs to the most beautiful of sacred history, No
Evangelist, and assuredly no legend-making church-conscious-
ness (that Nothing which is now after eighteen centuries invented
to account for the Gospel narratives!) either would or could
have constructed such a history as this if the facts had not thus
taken place under the direction of that providence which over-
ruled even the prophecy of Caiaphas, and the evident stamp of
which is impressed with increasing distinctness upon events and
words, when they approach the pvorjpuov mpodopixcy of the
passion of the Son of God. The pen of John alone, under the
direction of the Holy Ghost, could do justice, in all its pure and
perfect simplicity, to the narrative which contains the symbol of
such a mystery; we might almost say that it was for this reason
that the Synoptics passed it over in silence, and left it to him.

In rigorously historiographical form St John first gives the
framework around the Lord’s words, the essential matter of the
whole ; and, to this end, he records the state of things which
Jesus finds on His arrival at Bethany. Thus the edpev of ver.

17 (strictly belonging to é\@yv) refers, in a certain sense, to the

JOHN XI. 23, 25, 26. 21
~

whole down to ver. 21; and by no means intends to say that the
Lord now first learned that this was the fourth day since the
death which He Himself had well known of. The dead friend
is in the grave, many Jews are round the Sisters as sorry com-
forters, Martha first hears of His arrival and hastens to meet
Him. The interment, contrary to the early patriarchal and
Egyptian custom, took place speedily after the death, probably
for the sake of avoiding as much as possible the Levitical
defilement. The topographical statement in ver. 18 gives the
explanation of the plentiful visitation of sympathisers from the
neighbouring Jerusalem, mentioned in ver. 19." Miserable
comforters aggravating their deep affliction, are most of them,
at least, in this week-long ceremonial of grief. “It seems to
have been a family of consideration,” as Hess remarks; more
subtile is Lange’s idea, that “some were the more zealous to be
there, as thinking the opportunity favourable for recalling a
family, which was well known to be attached to Jesus, from.
error to the safe way of ancient Judaism.” So under the sem-
blance of consolation, ungentle and afflicting reflections upon
the powerlessness of Jesus to help might be supposed to have
been hazarded : comp. afterwards ver. 37.

At length in His hour He comes, and as more than a com-
forter: He will show them the glory of God, and thereby
advance towards His own death. It is obvious enough, and
capable of much amplification, that the distinctive character of
each of the two women appears in their several deportment, just
as St Luke has described it; but we cannot regard it as imme-
diately illustrative of character, that Mary does not go forth to
meet the Lord. According to Niemeyer, “she does not appear
to notice the first rumour of His arrival” —but this seems hardly
consonant with the procedure of the event. Schleiermacher
says that the report of the Lord’s arrival had reached the sisters,

1Tds xepl Mapbav xa! Mapiayv, although the formula in Acts xiii. 13 in-
cludes companions, seems to us here to designate simply their persons (Gr.
of xepl and of &y@/), as the Syr. and Vulg. translate. Cod. D. omits ra
zepl, and Lachmann gives xpcs tyv. To suppose, with Luthardt, that they.
came to comfort the other attendant weepers also, has something strange in
it, even if they are regarded as sorrowful relatives; while tomake the airas

refer to Martha and Mary alone, is still more harsh, after such an interpre-
tation of rads weol.

22 |JeSUS AND MARTHA.

but that Mary nevertheless remained behind on account of those
who were with her in the house; but this is net to be supposed.
We think that the tidings of the approach of Jesus were brought
by some one’ to Martha as the mistress of the house, or, if it be
preferred, as the more accessible: of this Mary hears nothing, as
ver. 28 evidently shows. It is highly natural that Martha should
at once go to meet Him (the tayv explains itself) ; and that, she,
busied with the entertainment and reception of guests and apart
from Mary, should not go first and tell her sister, and take her
with her, is equally natural, without having recourse to the
explanation that “she forgot it through haste.” ‘“Exa0éfero is
not intended as the simple opposite of tmyvryce (as in Luther—
blieb Sitzen ; or in v. Ess—tarried ; as many explain it by the
Heb. 2¥™) ; more correctly de Wette, Kistemaker, Allioli—She
sate in the house, and therefore heard not, and therefore came
not. This éxa@éfero describes her whole deportment during
these days (Erasmus: desidebat)—it was varied only by an
occasional visit to the grave, and not, as in the case of Martha,
by other things. Thus did she this time not find the better part
allotted —“that of the sitting in ae and giving heed to the
condolences of friends.”

But let us return to the preliminary colloquy with Martha.
Her obscure and indefinite saying, vers. 21, 22, vibrating between
lamentation and hope, leads Him to utter the measured and con-
cise answer of ver. 23, which, indeed, absolutely promises her
brother’s resurrection, but in a general future for the excitement
of her faith. But when Martha evasively misunderstands and
retreats, He gives her, in vers. 25, 26, a great, decisive, and
penetrating declaration—not so much for application to her
brother as to awaken her apprehension of that now present life .
which no death can destroy, and of the true resurrection in the
inmost, spiritual meaning of the word; and pre-eminently to
excite within her the faith that He in His own person is that

© resurrection and that life.

What Martha says in ver. 21, and Mary jadi in ver. 32,
shows us what had been the main thought of ‘these four days ;
But hardly, as Driseke thinks, by a disciple hastening forward.

? Since, as Braune remarks, the condoling friends were received by the
members of the family, sitting.

JOHN XI. 23, 25, 26. 23
“t,

the thought to which all others led, and into which they returned
from every other consideration. In the frank truth with which
they present themselves before Jesus, the thought of their hearts
is the first word upon their lips. “ Alas, Lord—we have thought
it and said it a hundred times since our brother died”—they
must tell Him so as soon as they see Him. Neither of them
_ says—our brother ; for with all their sisterly communion, each
had been individually and in isolation moved by this thought.
Thus does poor mortal man look back with 7f in all his heavy }.
trials.” The dark mystery of His not coming, to whom they had
sent the intelligence and their request, is afterwards expressed
by Mary as the simple and sole outpouring of her heart; the
less simple Martha, on the other hand, seems to be reflecting at
once that the words might appear to involve a reproach directed
against the Lord, or a murmuring at providence.’ Not. that
she had indeed thought of any reproach or questioning, for she
says nothing about wherefore, and not even—hadst Thou come.
Of the message He had sent, she does not venture to think,
much less to mention it. Did He err this time in His promise
—“this sickness is not unto death!” Did He purpose to send
the healing power with His.word, and did it fail in coming?
Such questions concerning the dread mystery had departed, had
been fought away, by the time the fourth day came, so that only
the question of ver. 21 remained; but now that she had said
this in His presence, all those rise again to the quick thought of
Martha, and she begins to be careful whether He might not. so
have understood her. Therefore, instead of letting Him speak,
she herself continues (a venial unseemliness which Mary’s ten-

1 Martha’s éreévqxes instead of Mary’s exédave may very well be genuine,
in spite of the correction which would make them alike; for such a subtile
variation (the force of which we can feel) is quite in harmony with sacred
characterisation.

* It is wrong, however, to insinuate here a tone of vain wishing: Ah,
hadst Thou—then might—! As in the London Heb. N. T. we find 4? with?
following it.

3 And it must be considered that the brother, as before observed, might
have died before Jesus could have come, humanly speaking. On this sup-
position, there could not possibly have been any reproach involved; and
nothing remains but pure lamentation that He had not been there (as
Luthardt says, in opposition to Liicke). Still the lamentation has a tone
which borders on the complaining question—Why was it so?

ra

24 JESUS AND MARTHA.

der nature could not have fallen into) and improves upon her
own words. And all is perfectly true to the thoughts of her own
heart. The sterling expression of great confidence in ver. 22,
already seems to border on the Lord’s own word, wavroré pov
axove.s (ver. 42)—but Martha has not so elevated a meaning,
she apprehends the aitety tov Oeov in somewhat too human a
sense (Bengel: verbum minus dignum), almost as if she did not
yet recognise in Him the Son of God, like the man born blind
in his similar words, ch. ix. 31.

But what does she really mean, that Jesus might ask and God
would give? It is in vain to wish to remove from the words
the hope of miraculous help, even now after her brother was dead.*
Brandt’s Bibel: “She thereby only intimates that her faith in
Him, and in the special favour with which He was regarded by
God, was not shaken by what had taken place. Note well this
noble self-renunciation in her faith!” So that she merely meant
to say,—Although Thou hast permitted my brother to die, and
hast not this time done what we begged of Thee, yet I do not
doubt on that account that Thou canst generally ask of God
what Thou wilt? ‘This would be a strange avowal, and we feel
how artificial is such a connection with ver. 21, without any fur-
ther refutation. Still more utterly objectionable is Fikenscher’s
notion that “there is here a continuation of the artless lamenta-
tion—Thou mightest have prayed for Lazarus at the right time,
and have saved him!” All this is contradicted by the adda cat
vov. What shall we say then? Is it forbidden to refer these
words to the possibility of the dead man’s being raised, because
Martha presently afterwards, in ver. 24 and again in ver. 39, has
no presentiment of it? By no means. As she is suddenly be-
thinking herself to retract the reproach which might be implied
in her words, and in so doing recalls the promise of ver. 4, out of
y this rises an instantaneous hope which brightens her susceptible
thoughts: she utters her feeling at once, vague through timidity,
yet strong enough ;—but she scarcely herself knows what she
says, in the sudden excitement of her fleeting presentiment. It
is, as it were, a return to her earlier hopes before her brother’s
death, and she seems to forget in her confusion the amé@ave.

1 As e.g. Schleiermacher reads, against the literal words: If Thou hadst
been here, God would have given Thee the life of our brother!

JOHN XI. 23. hs.’ 25

Yes, Martha is at this point a heroine in faith—but only for a
moment, during the brief continuance of the involuntary presen-
timent which the Lord’s presence had excited : the spark is soon
all but extinguished, and the Lord begins to fan it again into
life.

Ver. 23. We have fully expounded her long and wavering
appeal, in order that the Lord’s sublime and concise wordsin ,
reply may be brought out in all the stronger relief. Schleier-
macher’s turning it to a question,—“ Dost thou mean that thy
brother is to rise again?” is passing strange, and not worth
serious reflection. ~Avactyjceras comes first, and then follows
the sympathising 6 adexdpés cov which enters into ver. 21. This,
without further entering into her vague expression, is His sole
lucid word, His first greeting, offered as soon as she gives Him\+
opportunity. Could not Martha, if she received these words as \
an immediate answer, which they really were, fully understand ’
what He designed to do, what He Himself thought of in so speak-
ing? “Now, if thou dost ascribe this power to Me, I will cai
viv ask that thy brother rise again!” He does not, indeed, say
this; or even—I will awake him! Thinkest thou, then, that I
cannot do this? or—Yea, verily, the Father giveth Me, as thou
sayest, all that I ask! We feel the serene depth of the union of
majesty and lowliness in the single dvaoryjcerat instead of all
. such words. Yes, John, thou hast drawn thy Christ to the very
life !—I must confeks that I do not share Alford’s doubt: “I
have to learn whether avacrycerast in this direct absolute sense
could be used of his recall into human life.” And therefore
“these words of our Lord contain no allusion to the immediate
restoration of Lazarus; but are pedagogically used, to lead on
to the requisite faith in her mind.” But to me it appears that
the meaning of the answer in ver. 25, coming home to the imme-
diate present, requires the common interpretation,—that this
awaking of Lazarus as an exceptional and typical case may well
be termed a resurrection.

We very much doubt whether Martha speaks the words of ver.
24 as “doubting, inquiring, and hoping.”* The great unquali-

1 So Lange, and similarly the Berlenb. Bible: ‘‘ She would give it to be

understood that she would fain know whether the meaning of Jesus’ words
only pointed to that final day, and whether He would not also show His

26 I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE,

fied word rise again is too strong for her thoughts to connect it
with the present; she starts off and declines into the common
faith and the common phrase—At the last day. She speaks
“ half susceptibly, half despondingly”—as Strauss for once well
says. Her susceptibility to the Lord’s meaning is in fault when
she commits by a second oiéa (a word in no case quite becoming
in the presence of the dsddcxandos) a yet greater impropriety than
that which she had just repaired. “ This I well know”— and even
without Thy new assurance—is her answer to thesublime promise;
as if the Master had only administered the current common-
place of consolation! ‘ But what does this avail my life, now
bereaved of my brother! It is long till then!” Lampe: “ This
is a very frequent infirmity of Christians, that they would self-
ishly wish to bring back their dead to the cares of this life, rather
than leave them in the peaceful possession of nearer communion
with God.” Or it might be said: This is the weakness of
immature faith, that it is unable to go beyond the limits of this
short life ; and that the consolation which can be brought from
the last day into the present scenes of sorrow is but faint and
unreal. We may indeed, with Lampe, find more excuse for
Martha than for Christians of our day; remembering her Old-
Testament position generally, and her expectation of the coming
kingdom of Jesus—which she would distinguish from the éoyarn
nuépa. But it may be asked, Wherefore interpret her words in |
any evil sense? Why not understand them, “ Yea verily, I do
assuredly stay my soul upon this, that it hath pleased God and
Thyself to permit my brother to die.” But the otda of opposition
in them does not permit this. The Holy Ghost does certainly
in this word of the most instructive narrative mark out a typical
expression of that weakness of spirit which itself removes into
the far distance the consolation of the Resurrection, and in the
lamentation of bereavement declines to take comfort from it.
And this requires us to regard the historical truth in her case
as corresponding to such a type.’

power in a specific manner at the present time.” Similarly Lampe, and
almost in the same words. Neander also: ‘‘ This I well know; but I wished
to hear something else from Thy lips.”

1 Draseke: ‘‘In the circumstances, this answer would be incomprehen-
sible, if the incomprehensible heart of man did not make it intelligible.

JOHN XI. 25, 26. 27 \

Vers. 25, 26. These words are, probably speaking, the centre of
the chapter and of the whole history; not the miracle of bodily
resurrection, which indeed was. to serve for the confirmation of
this testimony in the mouth of Jesus, of this reiterated éyo eiw.,
but for which, on the other hand, the(Lord would fain have founa .
a preparatory faith,)srounded on the word already received.—
The right apprehension of the two clauses, the remarkable inter-
changeable expression of which forbids us to regard them as
tautological, depends, though this is too often overlooked, upon
the right view of the two words which precede :— dvdoracts
Kal 7 San is, as it were, the theme, which is then unfolded in two
parts. It is clear, at the outset, that the connection requires
us first of all to understand bodily resurrection, for ver. 25 aims
to surpass Martha’s words in ver. 24: that which her languid
faith refers to the distant futurity, so that its power of consola-
tion is enfeebled, the Lord offers as in Himself for the immediate
present; by His emphatic eéu/, in the place of the future, and
by the impressive question whether she believed that,’ He excites
and demands her present living faith in His own Person, as
bringing that future time into the present, as making the Then
no other than the Now. “ As an answer to Martha the words
have the reassuring meaning, I am his (thy brother’s) awakener
and give him his life again! as we find that He was his awakener,
as the narrative goes on, and did actually give him his life again.”
(Hanstein.) But this meaning of the answer, as sufficing for
Martha’s immediate care, does not exhaust its meaning, as it
involves a deeper principle upon which even her consolation was
grounded ; still less does it exhaust the depths of this great
testimony as intended for all future faith in the speaker of these
sublime words.

What relation, then, subsists between the one double-dea re-
surrection and life? Wecannot say, with Liicke, that the Gon
is the positive result of the dvdotacis—for that is * too external

><

Half-faith always does what Martha here does. What one hand gives,
the other takes back. What lies straight before it, is sought in the far
distance.”

1 Christ here comes forward in the place of the living, life-giving God: }
comp. Deut. xxx. 20, where Luther probably mistranslates the 7™Nn S% ; }
the Vulg. gives it plainly, Ipse est enim vita tua.

~

7

28 I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. ©

sense, even in the case of Martha, whose meaning was to be sur-

passed; but conversely, the Lord profoundly reveals the life.

/ existing in Himself and passing from Him to all believers, as the

cause and sure principle of all resurrection. More correctly

Olshausen, “ the resurrection is no other than the {#7 in conflict
with the @dvaros.” Consequently, I am the resurrection, because
I am the life; further, as I am the life, in the same most inter-
nally true, and already availing, sense. According to this alone
can we distribute the progressive meaning of the two explana-
tory clauses; in which the Lord proceeds in such a manner as
to appropriate jirst the common phraseology and view of death,
in order then to exhibit all so-called death as abolished through
His life in the case of all who believe on Him. We may thus
embrace the two clauses, with Lange, providing we rightly un
derstand and interpret: “The dead will live again, the living
will never die.” But we must be on our guard against narrow-
ing and weakening the former clause! The extreme of this we
may illustrate by the words of the paradoxical though generally
orthodox Michael Weber, who maintained: The words o mio-
Tevov—tnoerat are not a commonplace, but contain a historical

lreference to the dead Lazarus, the friend of Jesus; thus—He

thy dead brother, who believed in Me (for it is not said was
6 mucTevov, but 6 micTevov without was) shall return to life
(not in the last day, as thou didst think, but this very day)—;
but the words which follow cat ras 0 Sav—eis Tov aidva—, are
not to be historically explained; they pertain to all the servants

| of Christ. Oh no ; although there is some truth in this most

immediate application to Lazarus, yet we feel that o morevwr,
even without the subsequent rds, must be spoken in the same
witnessing and promising sense throughout chs. y. and vi., the
words of which are here, as it were, condensed into a compact
epitome. (Ver. 26, especially, is an echo of ch. vii. 51.) How
then explain this? The «dv dzrofdvy contains a condescending
admission which is assuredly designed to testify that bodily death,
the fruit of sin, is not altogether abolished even by the redeem-. '
ing grace and victorious life of Christ; but the &joeras im-
mediately penetrates much deeper in its preparatory reference
to the second clause, being not merely one and the same with

the first dvacriceras in the place of which it now stands, any

JOHN XI. 25, 26. 29

more than the meaning of «dv dobry is to be restricted (as
in Sepp) to—even if he have died! Thus we do not accord
with the interpretation of Bengel, however attractive its sem-
blance of profundity may make it: “The former deals with the
case of believers dying before*the death of Christ; for instance,
Lazarus. The latter title treats of the case of believers falling
asleep after the death of Christ. The death of Christ deprived
death of its power. Before the death of Christ, the death of be-
lievers was death; after the death of Christ, the death of be-
lievers is not death.”* For such an interpretation of the two
distinctive periods of the Old and the New Testaments, and of
the dvdotacis, as disclosed in all its fulness of meaning, and in
all its power by.the Lord’s own death, is very far removed from.
the plain reference of these words in which Martha receives her
answer; no such allusion is contained in the dvdctacts Kai fon,
and the efwé has assuredly no such mysterious écowae in its
background. Still less can we distribute the meaning of the
Lord’s twofold assertion in the way which Klee adopts: “ All
have their life directly from Him, and as He here imparts the
life of time, so there He will impart the life of eternal blessed-
ness. The words obviously point to these distinctively. Ver. 25
refers to life temporal. Ver. 26 to life eternal.”

No, the former clause itself passes over, as we have said, into
that same meaning of life which is alone its true and essential
meaning ; that in which the Lord speaks, in chs. v. and vi. as in
all this gospel, of life in and from Himself, the fruit of His dis- x
ciple’s faith; and we may refer to all that is there said upon the
relation between the temporal and the spiritual meaning of the
word. It is not to be imagined that Jesus would here or any-
where give that name to a mere physical resurrection from death.

1 He boldly added, ‘‘It is credible that all who at that time saw with
faith Jesus Christ, and died before His death, were among those who rose
again, as described in Matt. xxvii. 52, 53.” We might with equal pro-
priety extend this strange interpretation of the promise in Cyceras (future,
death having yet the dominion) to all who before the manifestation of Christ
believed in Him as to come, and include their redemption from the king-
_ dom of the dead; we might, similarly, extend it further to multitudes who
have gone hence with a like fides implicita towards Christ, regarding the
second clause as distinguishing from them all who in this life were raised
to the full life of faith.

30 SHALL NEVER DIE.

~ He that believeth in Me—this is His meaning—shall receive at
once, in and through this faith, in Me, a life which death cannot
invade and destroy; just as, and because, it will be demonstrated
that I am the life by My conflict with death and victorious resur-

yection. It is not-so much,—Even though he die, he shall live
again ; as,— He shall dive on, he can never cease to live. On that
Snail it is Gjoeras instead of dvacryjcerat, and this of itself is
a denial of the dzro6vjocKew even while the word is used; so that
the true paradox runs thus, —«év arroPdvy, od pn arrobdvyn. “He
that believeth on Him, lives even if he dies; death touches not
his inmost life, it has become a sleep (ver. 11); and he that liveth
and through faith in Him has been raised up to a new life can no
more be affected by death, for he lives an eternal and imperishable
life which death can do no more than sublimate and perfect.” (Vv.
Gerlach.)

Tn these excellent words we have, at the same time, the only
correct interpretation of the ensuing cal mas o f@v, which,
strangely enough, the same writer immediately tries to overturn
when he says: “in the second half of the clause (whosoever liveth)
Jesus turns to those still in life who were then hearing Him, with
a mighty challenge, full of promise, to faith in Himself” The
Cav of the second clause, which is founded upon that of the first,
is ordinarily but improperly regarded as referring only to living
upon earth in the common sense. So Augustin. Tract. xlix.
Omnis qui vivit in carne et credit in me. Huthymius and Theo-
phylact even referred it specifically to the surviving members of
the family, in opposition to the already dead Lazarus; and de
Wette thinks their explanation at least “not amiss.” Then comes
Grotius, who finds a Hebraism here: quisquis vivens (vitam hance
mundi scilicet) mihi confidet—as if the Old-Testament ae)
could be reproduced here! Alas, even Bengel takes the same
view, misled by the semblance of strict antithesis (as is Alford
too): “that liveth, namely, this present life of the body; the
antithesis is, even though he die, ver. 25.” But he has failed to
/perceive that the Lord, after He has gone beyond the ordinary
‘ meaning and use of the aoOvjoxew by introducing Gjceras,
cannot possibly have returned again to the ordinary meaning
and use of the &jv. Olshausen’s remark is decisive, that if the
Cav is to be understood of physical life, then ex antitheto the

JOHN XI. 25, 26. 31

meaning must be accepted that the believer should not physically
die. So that Liicke is not justified in denying that o Gav im-
plies a continuous resumption of the meaning of &jceras. Lampe:
Doubtless, the Lord here understands life of the same kind
which had been spoken of before, that is, spiritual life. The

never dying again follows directly from the possession of this. _

life! The formula might be resolved into a év dca dvotv: He \
that liveth through faith,’ or he that livingly believes ; ‘still better,
the xai may be taken as a retrogressive because, just as in the
previous dvdotacis Kal Gon. All these reductions to our modern
phraseology, however, correspond but imperfectly with the full
expressiveness of the sayings in their original oriental-biblical
form. ‘The position of the mucrevwy in the second place might
be regarded as implying the condition that he who had received
life in the Lord must preserve his faith to the end; but we
leave this to the reader’s own feeling.” Suffice it, that he who \
lives in Jesus by faith hath in himself the principle of the
avdotacts, of the final victory over death; death must lose all |
its power and be abolished in him. He cannot and will not eh }
Lange says) “sink again into the essential ground of death” —
or in more scriptural language: there is no Hades that can hold |
his spirit. (Acts ii. 24.) /
In these words, “ we hear, as it were, a prelude of our Lord’s
own resurrection.’ (Herder.) Thus speaketh He on the way to
His own closely impending death! But He utters this éyo eis
in perfect devotion to the wucrevovres ; He promises also to them
that which is sublimely self-understood in relation to Himself.
Nothing distinctively appropriate to Lazarus is contained in the
sayings of vers. 25, 26; the promise that he should rise again
retires before a far higher and comprehensive truth to which the
Lord would elevate the doubting, faltering Martha; He turns
her attention from her brother lying in his grave to Himself,
the present life-giver, the present resurrection of all who be-
€ 1 Theod. Mopsuest. 6 Cav mere rijs-eis-tueaicrens. ) ~
2 But when Luthardt says, in his frequently too rigorously literal style
of criticism, that no expositor but Stier ‘would find in the position of zi0-
zevay the condition of living in faith to the end, I may remark that Lange’s
interpretation of the second clause is essentially no other: ‘‘ But in as far
/ as faith has become effectual in his life” (only mine is more precise, faith
has become his true life), ‘‘ there is no more death possible to it.” (iii. 656.)

32 BELIEVEST THOU THIS ?

lieve. Not, however, that she is to resign the hope of an
immediate, present fulfilment of the promised dvaornaetat 6
adedXgos cov—she is encouraged firmly to expect in faith towards
Christ a most glorious realisation of this assurance. Hence the
ov« eizrov cot of ver. 40, points back to these words.

Believest thou that? That is, that [am the resurrection and
the life? Then shall it be found true in the case of thy brother,
who believing in Me, and as My “friend,” has died! Her
answer shows that Martha thus rightly understood the inde-
scribably penetrating and mightily stimulating question. But
we, when we read it, must think of the multitudes who avow
and even preach that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and
who, nevertheless, properly speaking, believe it not, or only
languidly believe it. It is for their sakes that the Lord here
once for all uttered that gracious, but piercing and convicting
question —ITicrevers rovro; that it might for ever penetrate all
such unbelieving hearts. His own resurrection has now put its
profoundest emphasis upon this question. Thus, though no
Lazaruses may be any longer raised up, and we are left at the
grave to seek our consolation in the last day, yet the Lord gives
us here to understand what is the true “ resurrection,’ and shows
‘that it is to be experienced in the new life of His believing
saints. When the dead bury their dead, leave them at first to
their cries and lamentations until the élite of that anguish are
satisfied; and then let the voice of a preached Gospel sound intothe
sorrow, it may be to the awakening of the dead who are burying
their dead. But when the living bury His living —nothing should
be heard but resurrection-joy, no traces but of that should be left!
Should be, only that our faith is often but too weak in the midst
of the sorrows of death! It is for us to strengthen it for ever by
the great truth—“ TJ am the resurrection and the life!” the com-
forting power and the convincing force of which can never be
sufficiently either expounded or felt. When the angel Jehovah
at the burning bush called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, the living God of all who had died in peace but who
still lived to Him, that was indeed a great word, but it was
spoken out of the darkness, and its assuring truth could burst
forth into life only after the passing away of more than a thou-
sand years. But here the great word in the lips of Jesus is

JOHN XI. 34, 29-44. 53

mightier still, and is spoken out of the light itself; for here
stands that same covenant angel, the eternal Son as man in our
body, on the way to die for us in the grave of humanity; and
He graciously asks for our faith in His—I am He! All other
grounds of immortality and longings for resurrection life receive
their realised confirmation only in the firm faith in His person
and His word—J/ And here we gladly bring to mind the
words of Ullmann, coming from the very heart of faith, where
John Paul’s saying, “ were there no other, yet Christ is Provi-
dence !” is repeated and raised to higher grandeur— Were there
no other, He must be the resurrection !

THE SEPULCHRE, THE STONE, FAITH, THE THANKSGIVING TO
THE FATHER, THE RAISING.

(Ch. xi. 34, 39-44.)

Martha’s answer, with its earnest, though only half under-
stood confession, nay be compared with that of Simon Peter
(ch. vi. 69); there is something more of evasion, however, in her
case, since she does not understand the “living though he die,”
and the “never dying,” even so well as Peter did the words
which had been spoken concerning the flesh and blood of the
Son of man going up again into heaven. In both instances,
meanwhile, the gist of the confession is,—Even that which I
cannot understand must nevertheless be quite true, for one thing }
is quite certain to me, that Thou art the Son of God! As the
man who had been blind promised Jesus beforehand that he
would believe on the Son of God, because he already nde
than suspected Jesus to be He—so do such souls as Peter’s and “
Martha’s believe (in their several way) beforehand in that eternal
life of which the words of Jesus speak, without comprehending
all at once the when, the where, the how, or the secrets of
God’s power in the resurrection which precedes. ‘The first yea
of Martha, consequently, is spoken with absolute subjective
truth, although she does not know that she is uftering it very
much as the disciples did in Matt. xiii. 51. Indeed, Martha
does no more believe in the full meaning of the todro of the

VOL. VI. Cc

34 JESUS AND MARTHA.

Lord’s question, than the disciples there understood all that He
had been saying to them; but the dre od ef 6 Xpuords which
she avows instead, admits and includes all that He would testify
and do as such. She marks out His person in her confession
by the three several predicates which were known to her;* to
the general popular term by which the Jewish expectation was
expressed, she adds the declaration which was but obscurely if
at all apprehended by the Scribes and learned of the day, that
that Christ was also the Son of God; and both are conclusively
supplemented by the o épyouevos of expectation now fulfilled. —
This is not, indeed, as Luther has it,—Who is come (Vulg.
venisti) ; but as always,—Who was tocome; yet the od &
includes His having come, and hence Erasmus gives it best, —
qui venturus erat. It is not now that she begins to believe all
this; but the wemiotevxa means actually that conviction which
the Lord knew she had long felt, and which prompted the jirst
xupee of ver. 21, although then in ver. 22 her hesitation had not
permitted her to use Tov atépa instead of Tov Oeov.?

» And now she is prepared; she pauses not in contemplation,
evidently has no repose of mind for any longer continuance in
such high words and things. Quasi re bene gesta she becomes
Martha again; she bethinks herself of the propriety of sum-
moning her sister, forgotten before in the hurry of her going
forth to meet the Lord, and expresses that snmmons as if it was
a direct commission from the Master. We by no means think,
with most people, that Jesus had actually spoken any such words
(Pfenninger : “Where is thy sister?”), for St John would have
related it. But she thinks, what the Master now speaks is rather

1 “Her fervour and energy of mind had brought at once into combination
all that was said concerning the Saviour, all the three tokens and signs of
His character.” Braune. This is quite true. Luthardt (i. 122) imputes
to me the exposition, that Martha would swiftly despatch the matter, and
therefore said at once all that she could say, not tarrying in the believing
contemplation and adoration of the person of Jesus; but this is one instance
among many of his own habit of swiftly despatching his notice of my
meaning. Where have I said this ?

2 Hezel, who understood by the last day of ver. 24, ‘‘ the Messianic
period after the termination of the Mosaic,” would thence prove that that
period had been still far in the future to Martha, and therefore again that
she had hitherto not regarded Jesus as the Messiah !

JOHN XI. 34, 39-44. oo

for my sister'—and regards His presence and His thus speaking
as an indirect calling for that disciple who had been so pecu-
liarly susceptible to His instructions. Therefore we have now
SuddoKanos instead of xvpios.” She calls her secretly, in order
to prevent the concourse of Jews, who were in part opposed to
Jesus, and whose presence certainly would be, in her estimation,
an interruption. Mary came quickly; and this is mentioned
only in her case (without altogether denying it, however, of
Martha’s imyjvtnoev), because the double fact, that Jesus was
there, and that He had to send for her, gave wings to Mary’s
haste. Jesus remained without, He had not at once gone, nor
did He now go into the house of mourning, nor even into the
village; He would doubtless avoid encountering at once the
multitude of guests; but did not aim, as Hess assumes, to
secure as much privacy as possible for the performance of the
intended miracle. For He well knows that Lazarus is in his
grave, and that many comforters would be there, the inevitable
witnesses of the resurrection. Consequently, we prefer saying
with G. Miiller, that, “at the raising of Lazarus, He seemed to
make it His aim, for the satisfaction of all the demands of His
enemies, to perform this most wonderful of all His miracles in
the most public manner possible.’* Comp. ver. 42. And in
this both ancient and modern expositors concur. “ He repaired
immediately to the neighbourhood of the grave,” as Lange tells
us, deducing this rightly from the circumstance that in ver. 31
the Jews understand Mary’s way to Him to be her way to the
grave. And if anything is perceived in this contrary to the

1 She cannot sustain the force of this great declaration. It is too
much for her. Then began she to find her needof her hitherto for-
gotten sister. Mary must hear this. It was for her above all others.
Driseke.

2 “They have no other Master; and this friend of the family is thus
sufficiently designated.” Braune. Ita solebant inter se loqui de Jesu.
Bengel. Here again I am at one with Luthardt, although he charges
upon me the idea that it was merely in allusion to the previous distinctive
relation of Mary to Jesus as hearing His words, that d:dz0xaaAos is used.
This is doing me injustice.

3 Vom Glauben der Christen, i. 401. Driiseke derives the same from
Jesus’ own word—lI go that I may awake him; and adds, ‘* The Hero can-
not be absent from the scene of his exploits.”

36 HE GROANED IN SPIRIT.

custom which required that the mourners should be visited in
the house, it makes the specific design all the more obvious,
and this is the meaning of ver. 30.

The miserable comforters will not allow the poor bent mourner
to weep as heretofore, alone at the grave; they persecute her, as
it were, with their unfeeling presence and sympathy. And she
herself has no other word for Jesus at first than her sister’s ;'
but more simple than Martha, she adds no apologetic réflection
to the expression of their common grief and perplexity; in-
stead of that she falls in full devotidn at His feet, which
says much more than Martha’s hastily satisfied reflectitaen ; she
understands her own words in a much deeper sense—“ Yea,
verily, where Thou art no man can die!’’ It goes to her very
heart that He should have had to send and summon her, and
this it is which throws her in the profoundest lowliness of de-
pendence at His feet.

Ver. 34. The simple word here spoken by our Lord springs,
according to St John’s report, from a strong emotion, the precise
definition of which has given great trouble to the expositors, and
especially to those who are themselves deficient in that pene-
trating sympathy with the occasion which alone leads to a right
understanding. We must not shrink from a close inspection of
this éve8piujoaro. All whom Jesus now sees around Himself
are weeping—good and bad, friends and enemies—for the sad-
ness of death overpowers them all.” But it was when He saw
Mary also weeping that the measure of overpowering influence
upon even the Son of God in the flesh was fullwhat an
exquisite feature in the picture is this! Of what nature, then,
is His emotion? Bpmdto, Bprpaivo, Boywdopar, Bpypoopar, all
from Spiun (power, strength, anger, threatening) signify in their
derivative meaning, to be angry, to rebuke, to threaten, to
express vehemently, quite corresponding with the Latin fremere.
Hence éuSpipaoOa here assuredly indicates a gravis animi com-

‘ Luthardt adds, ‘‘it is probably not immaterial that “od is placed first
in her words, while in ver. 21, on the other hand, it is only appended to
aOEADEs.””

? Thou art ashamed to weep beforehand at the thought of thy own coming
grave ; but would not that be better, more profitable, and more sincere than
merely the common weeping with those who weep?

JOHN XI. 34. 37

motio, which it is vain to require our understanding in sensu mol-
liore. Vulg. infremuit; but the Heb. New Test. incorrectly M38.
(In Isa. xvii. 13 for 133 Symm. has éuBpipacbat, Aquila éreripay,
—in Ps. xxxviil. 4 for O91 both have éu8p. In New Testament
see Matt. ix. 30; Mark i. 43, xiv. 5.) Since, however, anger,
at this time of general weeping, appears hardly consonant with
our Lord’s character, recourse has been had to a subordinate
meaning, “to mourn;” and Olshausen precipitately declares this
sufficiently established by its correspondence as to this twofold
meaning with the Hebrew 4}?! This last may be true (see
Tholuck) in itself, but it decides nothing as to the Greek usage ;
since we cannot find in the LX -X. éuSpiaoOar used for sorrow,
though we do find in Lam. ii. 6 éuPpipnpare opyfs for IBS“DyrA,
The old Greek expositors of St John understood in mass no
other than the being angry ; Liicke admits this invariability of
the usage, although he afterwards decides for “a sadness bor-
dering on displeasure.” We agree with Lampe, who condemns
the multitudes of expositors whom Grotius represents, “ who con-
found this indignation of our Lord with His tears” —and main-
tains his own well-grounded protest, sed obstat constans verbi
usus. For the word was never regarded by the old standard
lexicographers as having the twofold meaning of anger or sorrow ;
and this may be observed beforehand against Lange’s opinion.
Thus, vehementer indignatus est. Strauss in this case is quite
right, It is an emotion of anger and not of grief. But wherefore?
Not because of the enmity of the Jews who flocked round ac-
cording to the petty interpretation of Michaelis, Storr, and
Kuinoel, who seem not to have read the as efdev of ver. 33. Nor
is He angry with the weepers because they weep in their weak-
ness, for that is opposed to the gentle love which always accom-
panies our Lord’s majesty ; and hence we find no avrois added.
Cyril and Euthymius (see in Liicke) referred it to an internal
process of self-conflict, in which the Lord vehemently repelled
and suppressed the strong sympathy of His human nature which
disturbed Him. But 76 avevdpare is not to be taken as a dative,
marking the wd@os which the Lord rebuked ; for this would be
to oppose the meaning of the word mvedya and to forget the
parallel érdpafev éavtov. Nor can we by any means understand
that the emotion which our Lord might suppress, could be the

38 HE GROANED IN SPIRIT.

pure and holy sympathy of grief. We trace, however, in these
ancient attempts to find the object of this displeasure in Jesus
Himself, the right clue to that meaning which alone we regard
as the true one. And that is almost the same (for in the defini-
tion of deep feelings individual expressions are not easily adjusted)
with Lange’s view, which corrects his former opinion:'—a strong
feeling of voluntary counteraction to the mighty influence upon
Himself of the tumultuous scene of sorrow. But Lange should
have said (what others also omit) that Bengel was upon the same
track.” It is assuredly something akin to a temptation, which
springs from the mere lamentation over unconquerable death
around Him, and would almost hurry Him away; for He must
be regarded as carrying His sympathy with every human im-
pulse, even to the very extreme edge of what was lower than
Divine. Thus it is not over the weeping of these weepers alone
that He is moved and incensed in His inmost being, where
Divine thoughts and impulses take the form of human ideas
and feelings—but over human misery generally as at that time
exhibited, over the bitter death-lamentation of a world of sinners,-
but especially, as scarcely needs to be asserted, over that essential
misery in misery, death in death,—sin, and that as specifically
here, unbelief, which will not and cannot apprehend any resurrec-
tion at all, yea, the same unbelief in His beloved believing
ones, and even of His most beloved Mary! Briickner properly
says, “It is the holy indignation of the Redeemer, misappre-
hended by His enemies, and misunderstood by His friends.”
This must be included, though the central emotion was sorrow
on account of sin, and wrath against death as the wages of sin.
Luthardt (S. 217) not only coincides on this point with Besser,
but even with myself; why then should he oppose what ob-
viously belongs to the truth which he admits, the displeasure at

1 In the fourth volume of his miscellaneous works. He there decided for
a mixture of anger and sorrow ; justifying the former, and approximatively
interpreting the whole aright. His finding sorrow in the ¢uGrimaobas was
contrary to the genius of the language.

2 On ver. 33. ‘Thus it was that, by a more severe affection of the mind,
Jesus here restrained His tears, and presently after, ver. 38, broke off His
tears ; and, by that very fact, the influence produced by them was greater.”
On ver. 38. “By this groan Jesus also repelled the Jews’ gainsaying, lest tt
should tempt His own mind.”

JOHN XI. 34. 39

Mary’s unbelief and the blindness of His foes? Much various
emotion is involved, indeed, in the depths of our Lord’s sensi-
bility at this time. How much more profoundly than that of man
does it penetrate the principles and reasons of emotion! Again,
He is not so much indignant at the horrors of death as some-
thing alien to Himself and confronting Him from without ; but
His holy wrath is called up by the sympathy by which He at
the same time as man stands within the sphere of this humanity.
Thus must we interpret, not this crisis simply, but the whole
conflict and victory of the Son of God in His weak, tempted
flesh : this is the truth lying at the foundation of the exposition
which makes €u@piyaobar to mean sympathy. If that which
excited His indignation did not so closely and intimately press
upon Himself, why the passion of repelling vehemence? But
the fellow-feeling with such misery is presupposed; St John’s
words give only “the resentment of the power of death” —as
seen, too, in unbelief of the glory of God! Thus, as Lange
saw at first, in the background wrath against Him, who holds
this power of death over man! ‘That here, according to Kling,
“sacred indignation and most inward sympathy coexist,’ that
He, according to Pfenninger, was “ moved deeply and with in-
dignation,” must assuredly be understood. This rather than
B.-Crusius’ question, “ Is it not according to analogy that sym-
pathy should precede active communication of help?” For the
Godman cannot be thonght to have been angry at wickedness
otherwise than as that anger was connected with that grief of
His sympathising, redeeming heart of which Mar. ii. 5 is the
normal text. This intermingling of emotion is attested in Lu.
xix. 41-44, and in our present passage by the tears which after-
wards flow.

It is in this feeling and passion,’ into which the Lord is moved,
even while He voluntarily and consciously surrendered Himself
to it,” that He asks the question, Where have ye laidhim? The

1 Our readers will not require us to defend further the position, that (ac-
cording to Rothe’s Ethik 1, 303), ‘‘an instantaneous pathological passion
might find place even in connection with the most perfect normal moral
development.”

* For this is the subtile modification of St John’s trapazev éxvrev; ad-
mitting whatever measure of truth there is in the old orthodoxy.which denied
any mere passivity to the Godman.

40 JESUS. WEPT.

traces of the emotion which accompanied this were visibly and
physically to be seen ; but the Evangelist explains to us what He
really was 7 wveduatt. Hither the Lord does not know the
specific [Tod of the sepulchre, which is not supposable after what
has been said, or the question was designed to announce before-
hand what He had determined to do. Assuredly the latter,
although He was not so understood ; and this anew excites His
indignation. He does not say, the body ; but adrév (just as ver.
15), in order to intimate the continuous unity of the man in body
and soul even after death, confirming, in spite of all sophistry,
this natural mode of expression.

Now first the come and see! bids the hitherto pent up tears ©
overflow ; now first does indignation against the EVER ATTLOTOS,
and the power of death which would seize even His own spirit,
resolve itself into the gentler sorrow. This éddxpucev o’Incods
has been made a verse of itself, with the pause of mep after it !?
St John also has given the clause its isolated position ; this and
nothing else befel, on His part wliile going to the sepulchre, the
Raiser went on His way weeping. ‘The sorrow of this lamenta-
tion over death has its divine propriety in this, for death is the
wages of sin. That marvellous orthodoxy which would make
Jesus weep merely as an example needs scarcely to be mentioned
even in warning.”

Vers. 36, 37 exhibit a twofold influence upon the Jews of
the sight of Jesus weeping—a better and a worse. The one
part errs half in good-nature; the other with an admixture of
malignity. That He had loved him, is indeed true; and ver.
36 gives us a beautiful funeral text at the grave of the friends
of Jesus, encouraging us to place His love to the deceased above
our own. And we may more truly say: How did He love all
us men, when He could be angry and weep at our unbelief in
His gift and grace! Ver. 37 must be more closely observed.
Strauss captiously asks, why they say nothing about earlier re-
storations to life; and the answer which lies most immediate

1 Although it would be very incorrect to say, as Nonnus does here, that
Jesus very seldom wept—éumaoiw dxrcvroiwi cinbece daxpuae AciBav.

* Basil. M. hom. de gratiarum actione (Opp. II. p. 29): odx guaadés qu ro
Saxpvoy Tov xvplov, dAAE Osd0acxaHALxov. Driseke, on the contrary: When
His eyes thus overflowed, the Son of God was, in the fullest sense, Man.

JOHN XI. 36, 37. 41

is this—Those were Galilean reports, and not so firmly esta-
blished in the faith of the Jews as the recent healing of the
blind man in Jerusalem. Further, no man ever ventured to
demand of Him a resurrection from the dead; even Martha
and Mary, who must have heard of former instances, dare not
hope this for their brother—now four days dead! and surely we
cannot attribute to the unbelieving Jews more faith than theirs.
Teschendorff goes too far when he says, “ they interjected their
hissings, just like the serpent which leaves its venom even on
beautiful flowers ;”’ but we certainly perceive the traces of
malignity in these perverse reflections. They cannot imagine
any help now after death; but on that very account their objec-
tion (which is the open expression of what Martha and Mary
kept in the background) goes back to a former time, and asks
wherefore He should allow matters to reach this extremity in
the case of those whom He loved. Wherefore did He not so
order matters that this man should not die? And now He is
constrained to pour forth tears at the grave! The first and
most rational thought would be, He must have willed this, loving
him so much; thenifors i in this case He could not effect it, this
sickness passed His power! But instead of uttering ice first
reflections, which are to be taken for granted, they give expres-
sion to another springing from them, and which leads them
astray :—To open the eyes of a man blind from birth is more’
than the cure of any kind of sickness—oughé not this man to
have been able? And this would have a twofold meaning: either
involving a reproach of neglect, or (as, since Euthymius, it has
been generally understood) that they speak eipwvevouevor and
mock His impotence, advvayia. Jlee, holding this latter mean-
ing, says, “ They designed thereby to bring that other miracle
upon the blind man also into doubt; if He could not save this
man, what may we not think about the healing of the blind
man?” ‘This would be, in genuine irony, the perfect reverse
of what they say; but such intense bitterness, in the midst of
universal weeping, seems to us to be psychologically inappro-

1 Liicke, correctly: ‘‘ in fact, ver. 87 should be rather an argument a
majorit than ad majus.” But we cannot so easily admit the reference to.
their regarding the excitation of an apparently dead man, a case frequently
occurring, as less than opening the eyes of the blind.

42 TAKE YE AWAY THE STONE.

priate; and the reference to this utterance of the Jews seems
to us more certainly to be a supplementary testimony to the
truth of that admitted miracle.* Finally, ver. 27 might be
regarded as a well-meaning but feeble echo of vers. 21 and 32,
Alas, if He had come, if He had been here at the right time!
Wherefore could He not, or should He not (in the mysterious
adjustments of God) have been here with His timely help? But
this suits not the rigorously interrogatory form in connection
with the striking 7#dvvato, nor the contrasted rwes dé, which
seems to be intended as dXov dé elsewhere.

Ver. 39. Suffice it that this superficial interpretation of His
tears, shed not’ merely over Lazarus, and the unbelief connected
with it—this ov« dv éreOvixet, ovx av a7éPave, now become
the third time iva pu) a7roGavn, nothing but death and the indis-
soluble bonds of death in the thoughts of all—excites in the
Lord yet another emotion of displeasure rising above sorrow.”
Thus prepared by these blended and alternate emotions,’ He
reaches the sepulchre; rather, efs To uvnueiov, that is, He ad-
vanced into the interior, broad opening of the great cave, in
the narrow background of which the corpse lay, concealed by
a stone laid before it. The human shuddering at that death
which by Him was to be overcome, being put into His power ;
perfect sympathy with that anxiety of the sorrow of His most
believing and most beloved friends, against which their faith
in Him has to struggle; deep indignation at the perversion and
folly of those opposed to Himself; all this had occupied His
mind, to such extent as it was possible for His soul to be so

1 Thus did I plainly express myself. Yet Luthardt opposes Stier’s notion
that these Jews did not acknowledge that cure and the miraculous power
of Jesus! Why did he read so cursorily, and attribute to me an opinion
which I quote only to reject?

2 Schleiermacher, indeed, thinks, ‘‘ that the Redeemer was too much
engrossed in His own thoughts, and the deeply mysterious connection of
the event which was about to take place with the Divine plans, to pay
much heed to the remarks which were being uttered around Him!” Oh
no, the Lord was never so entirely wrapped up in His own thoughts; even
on the cross He gives heed to every word and every movement around Him.

3 Weeping and anger alternated in the bosom of Jesus at the sepulchre
of Lazarus, within the space of a few moments. Kleuker.

JOHN XI. 39. 43

occupied: Then said He—Tuke ye away the stone !* What
majestic composure, and self-possession in the midst of this
mighty emotion! Step by step He approaches gradually the
great act, in order to qualify the amazement of poor mortal
eyes on beholding the glory of God. He might indeed have
Himself commanded the stone to roll itself away, as a mountain
or a fig-tree; He might even have commanded Lazarus to come
forth through the impediment of the stone. But the miracles
of God avoid with the supremest propriety all that is super-
fluous. “ What men’s hands might remove, He commands
them to take away.” In His dignity He had let the confused
remarks pass in silence, as previously the words of Thomas con-
cerning dying with Him; but now shall the act itself speak and
give answer whether it was the death of His friend alone that
had made Him weep, and whether He could or could not suc-
cour him from death.

Among the Apostles a presentiment doubtless arose of what
was now coming; Mary assuredly understood for what and how
He would take away the stone from death and the sepulchre. It
was only the careful Martha, ever anxious about circumstances,
who could blindly suppose that He only desired to see the body
once more : therefore she opposes to the Lord the frightful idea
of its corruption. We leave those who are so disposed to con-
tend whether this 757 6fv was merely the supposition of Martha
(the following ydép being thought decisive), or a historical inti-
mation of the effluvium which actually penetrated through the
stone. Certainly we cannot permit ourselves to adopt in the
translation the words of Stolz, “ By this time he assuredly
stinketh!” We shall not enter into the needless question
whether the revivification of a decomposed body would give to the
miracle a monstrous character, as Olshausen thinks ; nor examine
Lange’s positive assurance’ that the Lord on this occasion had
designedly suspended the process of decay. We cannot be

4 “With what tone, we may imagine”—says Br. Baur, mockingly, on
account of the indignation. Yes, indeed, we can imagine, but very diffe-
rently from this frenzied mocker.

2 Who thinks, with many, that the ointment of chap. xii. had been de-
signed for the embalming, which had been left unaccomplished.

44 THE GLORY OF GOD.

assured whether Lazarus stank or not;' but this we do know,
that the power of God in Christ, which at the last day will
bring together all the scattered members of the body, would at
this time not pause before the slight commencement of decom-
position. Thus we best adhere to the simplicity of the Gospel
narrative, without in any way confusing the economy of the
Son with that of the Father, who might be regarded as alone
the Creator : for in every miracle God doeth a new thing (Numb.
xvi. 30), so that the pretended limits are quite indefinite to our
view.”

Ver. 40. “ Graciously, and yet with some slight displeasure,”
the Lord speaks (as Pfenninger thinks) this word, which now
takes the place of His tears. Once more He is moved, though
more gently; and now gives His own explanation, and in the
most condescending manner, of the predominant reason of His
anger. It is the unbelief of even His believing. followers while
under the ban of visible death! He had said that faith should
behold the glory of God, especially in ver. 26, so also in ver.
28, and yet further back in ver. 4. The expression d0&a Tod
Geod is derived from this last quotation, and the Lord’s words
mean, generally, —Have I not told thee from the very begin-
ning, promised thee again and again! But by this repetition the
simple clause becomes a new, great universal truth and promise

1 Tt is to us, however, more probable ‘‘ that the Evangelist reports the
cause as it really was, making Martha’s statement his own”—quoting the
language of Br. Bauer for once, who on this chapter generally gives full
scope to his harebrained malignity. De Wette regards it as in the highest
degree improbable that the body was not embalmed, considering the emi-
nence of the family and the provision for the purpose actually existing, in
the house; but it seems to us natural enough, when we remember the hope
which had been entertained to the last, and the prostrating revulsion of
grief afterwards. For this reason we cannot think, with Lange and Luthardt,
that the ointment (chap. xii. 3) had been bought for Lazarus; nor that the
embalming had been deferred from day to day till Jesus should come.
Was Jesus to confirm the actuality of death? or did they expect the ensuing
resurrection? Assuredly not! Vers. 21, 22, refute all these suppositions.

2 Thus the “ difference between the new-creating resurrection at the
last day and the actual vivification of the old mortal body” (which Luthardt
blames me for overlooking), is not so rigid and definite, but that this singu-
lar and pre-eminent instance might anticipate in some sense, and be an
example of the former.

JOHN XI. 40. 45
—-that, everywhere and aiways, faith, especially in the presence

What an inexhaustible, all-comprehensive text is this for the
preacher! The great condition, as it is here laid down first, is,
and must ever be, faith. Unbelief, even that which, alas, still
more or less clings to unbelievers, but especially unbelief in its
absolute sense, seeth indeed something, but only what comes}
before its pea) eyes. It may be that it sees only the wretched-
ness of man’s human life, and that horror of death which ends’
it with presentiment of something worse;—or, still worse, turn-/
ing wilfully away from that view of things, it may contemplate,
the glory of the flesh, as if it would never fade, the glory of the -
world, as if it were a reality and not a delusion ;—or, worst of /
all, it may fix its proud regard upon its own imagined glory and‘
might. And yet, what is all this but the stone, which falls at
last crushing upon the grave and the poor spirit within; the

:
)

and amid the tokens of death, shall see the glory of God! 3Y

stone which Christ alone can remove. But faith already sees, “

after the manner of its own higher, and more assured seeing,

something beyond all this, even the glory of God: and that in a -

manifold sense. First of all, even that glory of the Creator
which is still upon and in the world, the didvos adtod Sivapus
xat Gevorns which is yet to be seen in spite of sin and death—
the token and prophecy that the ban and curse is not irremedi-
able, that the kingdom of death is not absolute upon the earth.

(Wisd. i. 14.) Then, as faith in Him who is come, it sees the
glory of the Redeemer, of Christ in His kingdom, His church, ’

and His spreading Gospel. This, indeed, goes beyond, it is no

other than an actual dvdotacis of the spirit into life which 3

everywhere conquers and banishes death. And this seeing faith
has the promise of exceeding greater things; of beholding and
experiencing that final quickening and glorification unto victory,
M2 (Isa. xxv. 8), of which the restoration of Lazarus from the
grave was but a slender pledge. But the sure foundation for
such faith is after all no other than His word. Is it not enough
that He hath said it? And in His love how often has He
spoken it: after every minor and preparatory fulfilment point-
ing back to His own words, to shame and elevate His weak ser-
vant— Did I not say unto thee? —But how deeply rooted in us is
unbelief! Was it possible that the Raiser of Lazarus could re-

\

SA

46 FAITH AND THE GLORY OF GOD.

main in His own grave? Yet did not He, who predicted His
own rising again on the third day, find it needful to demonstrate
in His own case the truth of His own reproving question? They
none of them believed, John no more than Thomas. (Ch. xx. 9.)
Yet He rose again among them and for them; and from this
we learn that the condition éav wictevons is not so rigorously
intended: but the beginner and finisher of our faith strengthens,
rewards, and consummates the weakest faith which He beholds.

Thou shalt see the glory of God; that is, with joy, for thyself
- —for fn the end even unbelief must see, though only to its guilt
_ and condemnation, even as the Lord’s enemies see with their
own eyes the miracle wrought upon Lazarus. In the most im-

mediate sense, notwithstanding its profound prospective refer-
"ence onwards to the last day (ver. 24), the d0€a tod Oeod is
here, as in Lu. ix. 48, used in the sense of peyadevorns ; com-
pare, in Ex. xvi. 7, the same expression used for the revelation
of the might of His unshortened arm. The glory of God is that
power which victoriously protests against every appearance upon
which unbelief has fixed its eye: in the present case against the
conviction of the dead man’s corruption, as — by Martha
in words which may serve as the protest of men’s senses every-
where against the resurrection.’

“fe whose mind is biassed against the narratives of miracles
in the Gospels, and generally in the Bible, would regard this as
a good opportunity for Jesus to put an end once for all to the
faith which rests on signs and wonders ; instead of calling back
a dead man to life, He might more profitably have occupied the
company with pious discourse upon death and life, time and
eternity, and have thereby annihilated the hopes of all who,
then as afterwards, might demand miracles as evidence.”
(Hess.) But not so! He performs the miracle as a testimony;
He stoops to the weakness of existing faith, or to excite faith
where it existed not, and gives a “rehearsal of the great scene,”
when all the “corrupted members of humanity shall again be
reconstructed in perfect harmony.” (Kleuker.)

1 B.-Crusius: ‘‘ The word of Jesus in ver. 40 stands in opposition to the
Jewish (wherefore merely Jewish?) abhorrence of the grave and its con-
tents. Here there is no revelation of death, but a Divine revelation of
power to be expected.”

JOHN XI. 41, 42. 47

Vers. 41, 42. But in connection with this last great public
miracle the Lord utters a declaration which holds good of all
His miraculous acts,—intimating, first, their proper design to
lead men to believe in His person and mission; and then giving
instructions as to the instrumental means by which He acts
in the power of God. It is not as the ancient dogmatic, and
the opinion of many of the pious concurring with it, think :—
that the man Jesus accomplishes His wonderful works in the
immediate possession of almightiness; but He performs them,
like man, through prayer and faith. ‘This alone is in harmony
with His state of humiliation; and the difference between the
miraculous working of others both before and after Him and
His own, consists in this, that He alone is absolutely and su-
premely full of faith, and always heard as the Son of the
Father. “He did, indeed, effect all His miracles in faith, but
in that faith which was quite peculiar to Himself, as being the
Son of God manifest in the flesh.” (Rieger.) Klenker, after
having so profoundly spoken of “the Son of God and of man,”
nevertheless embarrassed himself by saying (Mensch. Versuch
S. 238): “Jesus did not pray for an impartation of higher
strength from heaven, for where He was, there was the Father,
and all life and power: but He prayed, that they might believe
that He was sent of God.” Oh no, He did here, as well as in
all His miracles (comp. Mar. vii. 34, and our exposition), pray
the Father that He might now make manifest in Him and by
Him His power. Indeed, this prayer of Jesus in its sacred
mysteriousness was never audible to man, many times it is pre-
supposed and wrapped up in His instant word of power. And,
generally speaking, every petition of the Son to the Father—
apart from His youth-development, and the first and last con-
flict ((n which He yet more profoundly empties Himself)—
must be regarded as rather an expression of thanksgiving for
being certainly heard already. So here, it is not now that He
prays; but, in His supreme dignity and truth, thanks His God
for the hearing of the prayer which must be placed as far back,
it may be, as ver. 4. He had received even then the answer from
the Father as to the issue of this sickness.’ The supposition

? Hence we cannot, with Albertini, term this, which is no longer suppli-
cation, a ‘‘ heaven-enforcing prayer.”

48 THE PRAYER.

which some have most erroneously hazarded, who connect this
present thanksgiving with the Lord’s observation of Lazarus’
life when the stone was removed," is protested against at once
by the words which immediately follow, by the 7éev and the
Evangelist’s declaration that the Lord refers to His prayer
and thanksgiving for. the people’s sake alone. In order that
they might not, beholding the omnipotence of God thus ex-
hibited in His wonderful work, idolatrously worship Him,
thinking Him man, “as a God” (see our remarks on ch. x.
34-36)—He himself prays as man to God, and gives as the
Son to the Father His honour. This was a testimony, pro-
minent and conclusive, given to Him before His final sufferings;
and therefore the dynos mrepecT@s is not sent away, as in the
case of the first raising from the dead. For all things have
their time and order.

It is with difficulty that we condescend to the unfounded
objection which has been urged against the praying for the sake
of the hearers—an objection which Strauss, an incompetent critic
in anything which concerns prayer, has carried to its highest
point of offensiveness.?, Our Lord’s declaration, that He thus
prayed and gave thanks on account of the people, has, alas,
always been more or less repulsive to many :—a sure sign how
few are able to place themselves with simplicity in the position
from which our Saviour’s life can be profoundly understood.
Dieffenbach even resorted to the expedient of supposing an

1 Being embarrassed by something like the opinion of those whose theory
here is that of a seeming resurrection :—He now saw that Lazarus was not
dead, and that He could ‘‘ awake” him in the presence of the people!!
Chrysostom and Lampe, with others, assume the revivification to have
taken place before the eiyepiora oot, but this we must reject. Alford
rightly regards this as ‘‘ bighly improbable ;” and, referring to ch. y. 25,
28, regards dxovcavres Cyoovres as being the physical as well as the
spiritual order of things.

* To him, such prayer of cold accommodation (as he chooses to term it),
such an acting of prayer, is repulsive and hateful: and so we suppose would
be the most internal prayer of the solitary child ; for what does he under-
stand of praying, to whom every address to God as independent of the
spirit of man must be an offence? Br. Bauer outdoes his predecessor,
babbling here of a ‘‘ prayer which explodes in irony upon itself,” and other
monstrosities, not here to be quoted, which carry enmity against St John’s
Gospel to its most fearful excess!

JOHN XI. 41, 42. 4G

interpolation. lLiicke, who does not scruple to regard the
addition éym 6é 7dew as a reflection of St John, and seizes this
opportunity assiduously to vindicate such half-unbelieving views
of the Evangelists’ composition, admits that praying aloud in
no case excludes reference to the edification of others. This
incontrovertible commonplace requires no confirmation to the
minister, who feels in all his liturgical prayer the propriety and
obligation of keeping this reference in view; nor even to the
Christian priest in his household who prays in the presence of
his children and dependents. Lange speaks with much dignity
and felicity upon this point, showing how much the critics are
below the height of this prayer, and that perfect filial’ supplica-
tion, being without all restrained and vehement inwardness and
exclusiveness, may in its simplicity reflect externally upon the
present hearer. Did not the Lord pour out the prayer of ch.
xvii. to the Father, with a view to the disciples who should hear
it?! Did not the Father Himself, ch. xii. 28, 30, answer the
Son—not for His own sake, but for the sake of the people ?

But the real element of difficulty in this application, one
which de Wette thinks “must be acknowledged,” lies in this,
that the Lord Himself says it in His prayer to the Father—I
pray for the sake of the people! But we must reply that in
this is exhibited the transcendent simplicity and truth of Him
who had become man for us, who lived, who taught, who
worked, who prayed for us; so that not only was the “ for you!”
of His whole life never in any opposition with any “for Me,”
but according to the very nature of His mission He is con-
strained to give perpetual testimony to this. And this extends
far beyond the analogy of the priest in the household praying
in the presence of his family! In the high-priestly prayer, ch.
- xvii. 13, the Lord utters before His disciples the same express
declaration—that He spake His prayer for their sakes—which
He now utters before the people.’

1 So that this of ch. xi. is not to be regarded as ‘‘ the only public prayer
of Jesus.”

2 Thus it is certainly not todo away with an objection, that I would
follow Miinchmeyer’s counsel to explain artificially (with Baumgarten-
Crusius and others, which he does not add), as if in e/rov an earlier suppli-
cation were referred to: For the sake of the people | uttered the request !

VOL. VI. D

50 LAZARUS, COME FORTH.

And what a crisis was this, for the establishment of the appeal
to the Father in the presence and for the sake of the people !—
bringing to mind Elijah on Carmel, praying to be heard, “ that
this people may know that Thou, Lord, art God!” (1 Kings
xviii. 37.) But how much more important thismoment! “ The
sion here to be given was to decide upon the truth of His life,
as far as concerned the circle around [Him”—says Lange.
Hanstein, yet more strongly: “ Then stood collective humanity
waiting in spirit at the grave of Lazarus. And the great
question—whether God would hear or would not hear His only
begotten, whether He would authenticate or desert the work of
Christ, whether He would confirm or bring to nought His once-
uttered word—must here be decided!” Rhetorical, indeed, but
founded upon truth; for in the éyAos and in the 6Ts ov pe
amvéotetnas the Lord Himself feels and indicates the historical
as well as the typical-prophetical significance of this moment, of
this glorification of the Father in the Son through the coming
forth of the dead at the voice of the Son of God. Understand
—eizrov, Therefore was I constrained to say it, and that Thou
knowest! Hbrard’s well-meaning remark, “herein lay at the
same time a request that the Father would impress the event
upon the hearts of the people, and draw them to Him,” is not
in itself to be quarrelled with; but we would prefer to omit
such a reflection from the sublime evyapioT@ oot, in which He,
conscious of His own glory from the Father and in the Father’s
sight, rather expects than prays for the subsequent faith of all
who were susceptible of faith, and, as it were, gives thanks for
them already by anticipation.’ And this is He, who. Himself —
after a few days goes to His own death, Whom they decree to
kill because He raised from the dead !

Vers. 43, 44. In regard to what has His Father heard Him? >
That He would cause that this dead man should be dead no
longer, but live again and arise? and that now before our eyes ?
Yea, verily, then will we believe! But how will, how can such
a thing be? The Lord, unexpectedly even to the thus matured

1 “Thus He thinks not of His own honour, only of the people’s believ-
ing, by which they would be saved.” So Braune with a good meaning, if
rightly understood ; but the salvation of those who believe reflects back
again, on the other hand, His own glory.

JOHN XI. 43, 44. 51

expectation of the people, at once utters the awakening word in
its simplest expression. And with a loud voice: assuredly, for
the people’s sake again, that every one may hear ; as well as on
account of the dignity of the moment, in its typical significance
as a prelude of the final voice at the last day. Then was that
brought to their eyes and ears, of which the church afterwards
sang: Tuba mirum spargens sonum, per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum—wmors stupebit et natura, cum resur-
get creatura, Judicanti responsura. Kpavydf is more than
xpatw (ch. vii. 87)—it is used here only concerning Jesus ;
comp. Matt. xii. 19, ovdé xpavydoer: see the expression else-
where, Matt. xv. 22; Jno. xviii. 40, xix. 6,15; Acts xxii. 23.
This loud call, at the same time, is in suggestive’ contrast with
the magical whisperings and murmuring incantations of unholy
traffickers with death—as the remark of Grotius intimates, non
magico susurro. (Comp. Isa. xxix. 4, viii. 19, the }¥2¥ in con-
nection with the vine), But how runs the loud word? Not,
Thou dead one, live again! Nor, Arise! as elsewhere; but,
instead of naming the grave, it is merely é€w, merely a gracious
summoning dedpo. Just as it might be spoken to the living, as
if the dead were not dead. Had he then been already revivified
through the Father’s answering might,’ and was this call not
properly the awakening call, and this not the moment and crisis
of the miracle? By no means: for this would go counter to the
unity of the Father and the Son ; it would oppose the plain ex-
pression afterwards used—-whom He called from the dead into
life! Against this testifies the analogy of *2:?, Mark v. 41, éyép-
Onze Lu. vii. 14, as well as the dxovcavtes Sjoovras Jno. v. 25,
28, to which we have already with Alford referred.2, We think
that the sophistical distinction, in connection with this sublime
reality, is as ridiculous as the contest upon the twofold truth—
Jesus rose again, and the Father raised Him from the dead.
The Father had already given Him to perform this work, so that
He can by anticipation give thanks; at the same time, never-

' Lampe: ex quo nostra hypothesis, qua credimus, Lazarum ante eucha-
ristiam Domini vitam recepisse, non parum constabilitur. '

* The immoderately paraphrastic Nonnus sets out quite correctly here
with ArroQdeyyoso 2 vexpov d&rvoov dbixwoe demas vexvacos yb»

52 LAZARUS, COME FORTH.

theless, the Father giveth it to Him now first at this moment to
perform it through and in the Father’s power.

He that was dead comes forth ammediately : not, as is usual
in waking from deep sleep, gradually aroused,tirring himself,
reflecting, and setting himself free. He who thus depicts the
scene to himself, misses its sublime truth. It was the dead man,
as he had been before death, sound as before his sickness ; La-
zarus himself, given back once more to earthly life ; for indeed
—“ Christ could (and would) restore men as they had been; be-
cause they must be again what they had been in mind and func-
tion; not glorified men after the fashion of Moses and Elias,
for such would not have been for an earthly life.” (Kleuker.) An
old legend preserved in Epiphanius (Heres. 66, 34) informs us
that Lazarus was then thirty years old, and lived afterwards other
thirty years, and this might seem to harmonise with internal
propriety. We cannot positively decide, in relation to Lazarus,
that the souls of those who were raised by Jesus had never passed
into the final actuality of death, into the full consciousness of
another state. Though they, “according to the plain description
of all the Evangelists, awake as from a sleep,” this does not
decide that “‘ Lazarus had nothing to tell of another life.” This
last we fully believe, because the lifting of the great veil by
means of individual persons would have been opposed to the
whole profoundly planned economy of God; because the design
of these resurrections was only to manifest the glory of God,
and not to gratify an improper curiosity as to the concealed
Hereafter. But to that end the remembrances of the returning
man might be blotted out; though we cannot unconditionally
deny that Lazarus might have related in deep secrecy something
to his sister Mary or to an Apostle. In all these mysteries we
are bound to silence, even as the Scripture is silent.’

Lazarus walked, when he was under the mighty enforcement

1 This, in allusion to Ebrard (8. 401), who too boldly maintains that
‘* all the dead who were raised by our Lord, although their souls were sepa-
rated, and their bodies beginning to undergo corruption, are manifestly
distinguished by this declarative xoiwd&odai as still capable of being awakened,
as not having come under all the relations and consequences of death.” For
does not the Apostle speak in precisely the same terms of the dead at the
Jast day ?

JOHN XI. 43, 44. 53

of the call of Jesus to come forth ; that is, he moved as well as
he was able: he could not at once walk perfectly, not, however,
through want of strength, but because the xevpias hindered him,
and the napkin upon his face prevented his seeing. Thus much
we gather from the simple narrative. We are not sure what
was the custom among the Jews of that day, in the wepioTédnew
70 coma (Ecclus. xxxviii. 16); and the rods 1odas Kat Tas yelpas
of the text does not decide whether, as in the case of the Egyptian
mummies,* each foot and each hand, and each finger was wound
round. We cannot therefore assert anything positively on the
question of the motion of the bound man. The simplicity of
faith once thought that there was here (according to the expres-
sion of Basil) a adua év Cavpatt, a moving where moving would
have been otherwise impossible; nor is there any sure ground
upon which this may be contradicted, and the controversy upon
it is as needless as in the case of the 76n df before. For our
own part, as we were there inclined to think that St John de-
clares through Martha a fact, so we here think that the dede-
évos, almost parallel as it is with reOvnxds, and strikingly con-
trasted with the é&ev, indicates something wonderful, and
according to appearance impossible. One who was dedepévos
Tovs mooas, taking the expression in its simple meaning, could
not ordinarily move; and we have no sure ground for lowering
its meaning, any more than we have for understanding the dys
of the forehead merely (though the word is certainly so used, see
Jer. ii. 3, Sept. for M39).2 Some prefer to think that the en-
veloping was but loose, as the embalming was to come afterwards,
and that in moving it became still looser; against this we offer
no argument, but to us the word of the Evangelist and of Jesus
seems to intimate another meaning. For the rest, the restraint
and wrapping in which the dead man first comes forth, contains
an allegory capable of discreet application to spiritual quicken-
ing. The relics of the grave which still hang around our limbs
and face are to be removed by the Lord’s appointment through
the further ministries of men.

Not without awe and. dismay to the beholders did this coming
forth take place. The first aspect of the corpse returning to life

1 ‘Whose custom the Jews followed, according to Tacitus. Hist. v. 5.
See Klee’s intelligent note upon this.

54 LAZARUS, COME FORTH.

was spared to them through the human provision of concealment;
but sufficiently fearful was the appearing of the enfolded form,
the sudden conjunction of all the apparatus of death with the
realities of life.’ But we must not overrate this, as Teschendorff
does, who makes even the sisters fall at the feet of Jesus, crying,
“ Lord, Thou dost astound us to death !”” who speaks of the blank
horror of all hearts (of Mary’s, John’s, and Nathanael’s?), indeed
represents the hollow voice of the dead man interposed, “ Who
has called me forth? Wherefore left ye me not in my slumber ?
And art Thou here, O Master! I long tarried for Thee. Joy to
me that Thou art here!” Such human additions serve only to
make more impressive the simple silence of the sacred narrative.
Pfenninger better represents the diversified influence of the scene
upon the general multitude: “ A hundred voices broke forth in
cries of amazement; a hundred hands were stretched forth to the
everlasting heavens; hundreds sank down upon their knees;
hundreds smote upon their breasts; hundreds stood as if petri-
fied—among these last the sisters themselves.” /

The Lord alone was serene and collected, as if nothing unusual
had occurred :—this is testified by His final word, in. contrast
with the silently intimated excitement of all the rest. It is no ap-
pearance, but the living Lazarus—venture therefore to approach
him and set him free! Not only does he live, but in all his vigour
and soundness—hold him, therefore, and lead him no further—
Let him go!* As He before caused the stone to be removed, so
now human hands are to do the rest; He Himself at first lays not
His hand upon His friend. Without His commandment, point-
ing to their most natural and obvious duty, no one would have
dared at once to approach the moving man. By the loosing, the
restoration to life was completed and confirmed, as by the food
given in the case of the maid; and “ Lazarus was now brought
to contemplate himself.” He was to i7rdyew, that is, to go to his
house; where he would have time and place to utter his thanks-
giving and show his love. The multitude should not then dis-

1 No human eye, at His resurrection, beheld Jesus in His apparatus of
death !

? Lange: ‘Hold him no longer, as if he needed support. Nothing more
is wanting but to release him from the external bonds of death ; the inter-
nal are broken already.” 5

.

JOHN XI. 43, 44. 55

quiet him by looking and touching; they were not even to go
with him, but agere bdyew. This applied to all who had come
around Mary and Martha, to the dynos mrepveorws ; and the first
word Avcare was indefinitely spoken as an appeal and command
to the multitude (avzois). Who executed it, what further was
spoken or done in the house, whether the Lord Himself went
with them immediately or first spoke to the people, or whether
(as is most probable) He até once retired and concealed Himself,
as ver. 54 seems to intimate afterwards—the narrative informs
us not. The Evangelist has recorded the great event; and now
hastens, with sublime brevity, to the general consequences of this
miracle.

The tuvés dé, ver. 46, are certainly not believers, as they were
to whom they are opposed ;* and now Lu. xvi. 31 is strikingly
fulfilled. The glory of God is before their eyes, but is not seen.
The things which Jesus had done are not maliciously denounced
to them, but reported indifferently ; andin the high council held
thereupon, their “ deliberations begin in the most unadvised
manner.” The Son of God remains to them odtos 6 avOpwrros!
The ronda onpeta do not divert them from the idea that they
must do something in order to prevent His being thus left alone,
as if this lay with them. They feared that all men were believ- °
ing on Him, that is, would accept Him as King and Messiah, so
that then their dominion would come to an end. This is their
especial fear and prompter; but in their hypocritical sanctity
they seem to impose in some degree upon themselves, and, devis-
ing a pretext as such evil ones holding counsel together with
some remnant of shame are wont to do, they speak of the Romans.
That todos (according to 2 Macc. v. 19, comp. Acts vi. 14)
signifies, first of all, the temple, and at most the holy city in

1 Some have very inappropriately interpreted the 22 «img, which certainly
is used with reference to the previous éz tay *Iovdeiav, as if it signified some
of those who believed! (So Braune, who points to the dependence of
these believers upon the authorities.) The d¢ intimates a contrast; and
Alford very properly observes, that this Evangelist, who is very consistent
in his use of particles, carries onward the manifestation of the glory of Christ

by ov», whereas 32 generally prefaces the development of the antagonist
manifestation of hatred and rejection.

56 IF WE LEAVE HIM THUS ALONE.

addition, must be held fast as phraseologically correct, in spite
of Luthardt’s contradiction;! while undoubtedly the expression
passes over afterwards into a similar common phrase, such as
Luther translates, “ Land und Leute,” land and people. (Non-
nus: vos ouod Kal ySpov.) The Romans, indeed, had the land —
already ; but they had hitherto spared the rights of the sanctuary,
and the freedom of the people (€@vos differently from Xads after-
wards).? All this these hypocrites regard as endangered, if this
Messiah, who is no Messiah, this wonderworker, who yet will
not contend and save Himself, should proceed a little longer on
His course. We may spare ourselves the trouble to disentangle
the foolish confusion of these thoughts ; Caiaphas pronounces the
true judgment upon them—dyels ov« oidate ovdév. But what
better, then, does he know? Cunningly enough relieving the
scruples of many; and yet with a proud dictatorial tone, as if
commanding the reasons of all, he helps the assembly to the issue
of all their thoughts. Are we to have done with this one man?
To speak plainly what we have all long wished—Let hem die !
(He, who has just raised from the dead, or whatever else was the
truth in this new onpeiov.) That is the better, instead of a
destruction of the whole people. And if he is no more than an
innocent enthusiast, who commits nothing worthy of death, let
him be a political sacrifice, iép Tod Aaod.”

‘In this word even the mouth of Caiaphas is constrained to
prophesy. Although in spirit he is no other than one of them,
he is yet by office the high priest of this great year, in which, on
the true day of atonement, the typical priesthood and sacrifices
ended ;* the last of those high priests, many of whom irregularly
ruled only for single years. That a popular sentiment at that
time ascribed to the office the gift of any, even unconscious pro-

1 Who too critically supposes that the wipes, to take away, wrest from, is
only applicable to the territory, and not to the temple.

* Neander paraphrases correctly : the Romans will make this an occasion
to take away from us all that they have left.

3 We doubt much whether, as Miinchmeyer says, awdés and ¢évos are used
promiscuously in Scripture.

-* Compare Luthardt’s excellent exposition, i. 87 ff. Alford does not ad-
mit this significance in the expression, but understands the words to refer
to some official distinction from Annas (the high priest de jure), the exact
nature of which is lost to us. But this has force rather in ch. xviii. 13.

JOHN XI. 43, 44. ot

phecy, cannot be proved, and is rather improbable ; for Philo’s
subtilties do not represent the people’s faith, The Urim and
Thummim cannot be appealed to here, since (as Lange says) it
was only the decisive vote of the high priest in theocratic ques-
tions generally which was thereby signified, and not any distinc-
tive expressions or oracles; and, further, they had been long
extinct in practice. There is here no “relic of Old Testament
faith in Urim and Thummim” (De Wette), but something very
different. St John explains to us that Caiaphas here prophesied,
and that as high priest; and this has its justification and war-
rant in the dealings of God from all antiquity,’ and especially in
the history of His Son upon earth. As Pilate, the representa-
tive of this world’s power, was constrained to bear witness, in the
superscription upon the cross, of the King; so must we regard it
as a grand irony of a most special Providence at this crisis, that
the retiring high priesthood should unconsciously and involun-
tarily by its last representative speak of the true sin-offering.
Thus St John rightly discerns in these words of political ex-
pediency, a dédvova imposed upon them by the Spirit; yet he
himself extends and corrects the limitation of i7rép tod Xaod (for
which he sets the explanatory €@vous), and carries us back to the
Lord’s own word, ch. x. 15, 16.

The decree of death is decided. Jesus knew that His con-
summation was appointed at the paschal feast, neither after nor
before ; He therefore withdraws after the manifestation of His
glory; and, further, the concourse and tumult of those who had
become believers compels Him to depart. For this faith was,
certainly, as Braune strikingly says, on the part of many
“simply a faith in which the understanding did not say no, but
the heart did not yet say yes.” - We know not with certainty,
even after Lange’s disquisition, where Ephraim or Ephrem was
situated. But by the report of the excited suspense of the people
— re ov pun EXOn eis THY Eoptnv;—the Evangelist prepares the
way for all that follows, the secret and undisturbed anointing at
Bethany, the public tumultuous arity into Jerusalem, the last
catastrophe.

1 De Wette groundlessly maintains that prophesying with a double mean-
ing is altogether foreign to the Old Testament. (Stud. u. Krit. 1834. 4.
937.)

43: THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY.

THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY.
(John xu. 7,8; Matt. xxvi. 10-13; Mark xiv. 6-9.)

We cannot harmoniously arrange this exposition of the Lord’s
discourses otherwise than by giving undividedly the whole of
what St John so characteristically records down to the end of
ch. xvii.; although the sixth part of the work must commence
anew with the Synoptics concerning the preparation of the
paschal lamb, and then join with St John in the details of the
imprisonment and the remainder. We therefore renounce the
special harmonistic adjustment of the last discourses in St John ;
much difficulty attends it, the solution of which subserves but
little our understanding of them. In this distribution,’ which
leaves each Evangelist as much as possible in his own propriety,
we have already closed with Matt. xxv., Mar. xiii., and Lu. xxi.;
now we encounter in St John the anointing, which St Matthew
and St Mark record in another place; and we shall of course
introduce them as parallels.

From Ephraim (if we reconcile them all) the final way of
our Lord is to Jerusalem through Jericho, where He heals the
blind men, and enters the house of Zacchzeus; His sojourn in
Bethany, before He provides the ass and rides upon it, is to be
inserted at Luke xix. 28. Not that this plainly coincides with
every expression of the synoptical narrative, for each Evangelist
simply records what the Spirit makes prominent to himself for
his own plan, unconcerned about the day and the hour, and such
other petty circumstantials as so much embarrass our modern
historical criticism; but, on that very account, we also uncon-
cernedly regard as perfect truth in essentials everything which
each Evangelist records. St John, always precise in his chrono-
logy, where he gives it, assures us that the anointing in Bethany
took place sia days before the Passover ; consequently the old
supposition must be true, that St Matthew and St Mark insert
the same incident retrospectively, in order to indicate the occa-

JOHN XII. 7, 8. 59

sion of Judas’ betrayal and thence of the Lord’s imprisonment
at the feast at the same time suggestively—to place this “ anti-
cipation of the burial” at the commencement of the history of
the passion. Our readers will take it for granted that we are
fully acquainted with all the subtleties of controversy which has
raged around these circumstantials; but they will be well con-
tent with our well-weighed opinion merely, as we hasten on to
greater matters. We think it most probable that Jesus came
to Bethany on the Friday evening, at the commencement of the
Sabbath, that He might spend one calm Sabbath there before
the entry into Jerusalem; the meal will then be rightly placed
on the Saturday, on the Sabbath itself.’

He had obviously not been there again since the resurrection
of Lazarus; it is highly improbable that any express invitation
had induced Him to come, for their profound reverence would
permit them only to wait for Him. But when He had come,
and that on the Sabbath, their thankful devotion ventures some-
thing more: they provide Him a festal repast—that is, the faith-
ful disciples of Bethany (Lampe : quod numerus pluralis suadere
videtur). And it is quite in harmony, that according to St
Matthew and St Mark, this de?mvov was in the house of one
“ Simon the leper ;” obviously, as Chrysostom remarked, one
healed of his leprosy,’ and is it not obvious again, healed by
Jesus Himself ?* As a thankful memorial he retains the name
of his former humiliation and sorrow, that is, among the dis-
ciples ; just as Lazarus is called here, o re@vykas, ov iryerpev.
The former expression must not be lightly given up, with
Teschendorff : it evidently belongs to the full-toned description.
Among the living and eating was the dead and risen again: the
Evangelist does not so speak for the sake of a petty confirmation

1 Luthardt places it on the Sunday, which does not appear established
by his data, nor consistent with the Sunday-entry. Neander holds it the
last and best solution of the difficulty, to fix Christ’s coming to Jericho on
the Friday.

2 For it is a most marvellous supposition, devised by some, that this was
a family name, after the manner of the Romans in their Claudii, Ceci,
Balbi, etc. !

3 An old legend makes him the father of Lazarus ; and some glosses are
to be found which convert him into the husband of Martha !

60 THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY.

of the miracle, but to depict the scene in all its significance, as
we find still more evidently in ver. 2—eis Tév avaxemévov
evidently indicates, at the same time, that he in this house was a
guest with other guests. Silent, and solemn, and self-involved
we may suppose this dead man restored to life for a long time
afterwards ; certainly so now in the presence of Him who raised
him : between the raised Lazarus and the healed leper the Lord
probably sits as between two trophies of His glory. It needs
no explanation that Martha finds means to serve, even in a
strange house, where she might serve Him; but Mary (whom
St Matthew and St Mark mysteriously call only “ a woman”)
shows herself in all her greatness, in the still, internal glow of
her love to Jesus. She honours and anoints Him, as her heart
prompts, with all the magnificence and costly tribute which is
in her power. St Matthew and St Mark term the vessel a\a-
Baotpov, as we find also in Luke vii. 387: and this might be
(according to Pollux) a term for any vessel containmg unguent,
or pupnpov, as Theocritus Idyll. xv. 114, signs of golden alabaster
boxes of Syrian ointment. The costliness of the wdpov (a gene-
ral name for all sweetly-smelling fluids) is made prominent by
each of the three Evangelists: for the same reason St John
gives the weight. It was nard, celebrated in all antiquity, and
also in the Ola Testament (where 773, however, occurs only in
the teapelen) among odoriferous pintrdemiet) ; but as to the muo-
TuKn* (which, however, i is a specific term, since two of the Evan-
gelists agree in its use), we may say in the blunt language
of the Besleah. Bible: “ we leave others to trouble themselves
about it, who love to meddle with such matters; and who are

1 Nonnus retains zicr:xés, but scans the middle syllable long. Vulg.,
in St Mark, has nardi spicati (but in St John pistici), hence many have
assumed a transposition for this Latin word (Kistemaker : of ears of nard).
Others interpret it, drinkable or liquid; and Fritsche prefers this. But
most probably it is, according to the later Greek usage (in Aristotle), quod
fidei est exploratee—thus genuine, Indian, not Pseudonardus, as Pliny says
(Theophyl. dd0v0s, Euthym. éxpxros). The Syr. 8% points that way.
Others have derived it from the name of a place—but without grounds.
And what more is wanting? The word in its precision serves to assure us
of the historical truth of the occurrence. Sepp (iil. 175, note), following
Friedlieb’s Archiologie der Leidensgeschichte, has treated the question very
learnedly.

JOHN XITEI7, 82. 61

wont to weary the brains of the people about them, instead
of setting them forward on their great pilgrimage, showing off
at the same time their learning and great reading.”

Breaking the vessel (probably only above the neck, hence the
Syr. in St Mark has nnn) ,—and opened it; fhe probably
also for the sake of pouring all forth more adiciily) she anoints
not the Lord’s head merely, but in the superabounding fulness
of her love and humility, as St John significantly supplements,
His feet also, which she wipes with the tresses of her hair. All
sprang from the deep, unhesitating impulse of love, the symbol-
ical expression of mighty emotion. St John remembers that the
house was full of the odour; and mentions this not without
allusion to Cant. i. 12. “ As if her soul would pour itself forth
as a sacrifice of sacred love and faith,”* but, alas! not all hearts
are full of the sweet odour, or enter into the spirit and meaning
of her beautiful act. Even in the circle of the Apostles there is
murmuring blame; for this scent is odious to the nostrils of the
traitor Judas. Itis a false view to regard him as only sharing
the sentiments of all. (Driiseke, “ and he murmuring concealed
himself behind the others.”) That he, on the other hand, was
the originator, St Matthew and St Mark do not indeed expressly
say; but they plainly hint as much in the connection (not
otherwise discernible) of this with his immediate departure to
the high priests. He may have begun gently, and the other
disciples, “ whose love was not yet much acquainted with the
external developments of love” (Niemeyer), suffer themselves too
easily to be led into concurrence. For “ censure infects like a
plague” (Berlen. Bib.). Could we but know the wicked origin
of many of the judgments which we thoughtlessly echo, the
Judas-heart from which springs many of the current criticisms
of books and of things—how should we recoil from them! Made
bolder, at length, Judas speaks out aloud his censure; not, how-
ever, “blustering and vehement” (as Teschendorff thinks), but,

1 So in Pape’s poem, Christus. §. 118. Horch’s mystical and prophetical
Bible speaks, however, in another style: ‘‘ The broken vase with the pre-
cious unguent represented the breaking of His body, after which His name
was to be as ointment poured forth, through the preaching of the Gospel,
etc., according to Cant. i. 3. Might not the Lord’s words, Matt. xxvi. 13,
have such a thought in the background ?”

62 JUDAS.

rather, in the most measured style. The act was an amore,
a useless, yea, sinful waste!" What a contrast with this Judas
is the affectionate heart of Mary! What a contrast, generally,
between woman’s spirit and that of the men of Israel, His
enemies! How could he who had no heart for the love of Jesus,
apprehend that of Mary? Zo him it has been long insufferable
that Jesus should be honoured by many in such immoderate
ways; to him, “who would rather have money in his purse than
the Saviour in his heart.” And now so precious an ointment is
spent upon the very feet of the Master! That Mary should go
to such an expense, he might have put to the account of appear-.
ance and excess of display; he reckons it up quickly in his mind
—Three hundred pence are wasted here—indeed more than
that (according to St Mark).

But he is aware of one very specious objection; for the Lord
had often enough exhorted them to take care of the poor, while
He had never, on the other hand, desired for Himself such dis-
tinctions. ‘The comment would admit of a very rational expo-
sition and justification :—How inconsiderate is the act of this
Mary—how many poor in Bethany and elsewhere might have
been solaced with such a sum as this, whereas now Jesus and we
all derive from it nothing but a transitory scent, etc. Eis ti—
of what use to him or to any is this waste? It is worth so much,
and yet too little for such a purpose—why was it not more pro-
fitably applied in the right direction? Had this “ pious enthu-
siast” but thought better of it, sold the ointment, and given the
money to the poor! We doubt whether Judas meant—to us
poor Apostles; but St John’s explanatory remark? seems to inti-
mate his meaning to have been that she should have given it to
that end into Ais keeping, to be put into the common chest ;

1 Bengel hesitates not to ery out—Imo tu, Juda, perditionis es.

2 Which well agrees with the notice of St Luke viii. 3; and shows be-
sides that out of the poor bag of Jesus alms were sometimes given to the
poor. That 2Bcéoree signifies auferre or defrauding (Nonnus: avacpraCery,
Theophyl.: xagrrew) we do not believe, in common with many others,
Braune, for example; for the phrase does not admit such a meaning, and
such a meaning does not suit the ré Buarcueva. We have no sympathy
with the style of treating Scripture which allows Neander to think that this
was a human error of the Evangelist, who was misled to discern ex eventu
earlier signs of Judas’ covetousness in this transaction.

JOHN XII. 7, 8 63

that so he might by degrees expend it in alms and defray their
coramon charges. The yAwocdxouov was then probably empty,
since Jesus was far removed from Galilee; but after all this
hypocritical lamentation over the money stands in close con-
nection with the traitorous and thievish lust which afterwards
moved him...

We shall not spend time upon the question, how St John
came to know that Judas was a thief:—that may have made
itself plain in some way afterwards; or let every one explain it
as he may. But we shall enter carefully, in order to understand
and apply the far-reaching word of Jesus in all its significance,
into the general scope of the blame which was expressed, as it
bore a typical character. And that, not simply because the
original principle in Judas was so evil, and its semblance of good
such rank hypocrisy, but because the other disciples could with
no guilty intention so easily concur in it. We have here an
example of all those views and of all those judgments which
have their foundation in the favourite principle of utilitarianism,
and which may too often be applied falsely,—to the wounding
of pious hearts, and to the damage of that justifiable cultus in
the Church of God which aims worthily to express the sentiments
of reverence and love, or which in itself is productive of highest
blessing. This lays bare the root of many evils in our own day,
from the parsimonious dealing of statesmen and boards for ec-
clesiastical objects, and the suspicion with which missionary
offerings for the extension of the kingdom of Christ are looked
at “because of the poor whom we have at home,” down to the
slightest exhibitions of this feeling, calculating by the pettiest
and most inapplicable rules. We have here, further and more
generally, an example of all “cold judgments passed upon the
virtuous emotions of warm hearts”?

—of all more or less con-

1 «* Benevolence covered theft ; the mask of good works inward hypocrisy.
This is the consummate picture of hypocritical display in conjunction with
dead works.” (Harless.)

2 See Schlosser’s Essay with this title in Pfenninger’s Sammlungen zu
einem christol. Magazin, 2 Band, 2 Heft, 8. 63, and which exhibits the
** displeasure” of the disciples as not entering into the spirit and sentiment
of Mary’s heart !— But we very much doubt whether, according to Rothe
(Ethik iii. 823), our Lord here in a general sense vindicates a lawful luxury;
or whether, according to Schleiermacher (Homil. iiber Johan.), He here

64 JUDAS,

scious or unconscious censures of the artless outgoings and acts
of honest feeling-—of all narrow-hearted criticism of others ac-
cording to our own mind and temper—and, finally, of that slavish
spirit which would mete out all good works in the service of God
and our neighbour by rigid rule, and against which we should
cry with all our hearts, “ Pardon us, Lord, our methodical
goodness and our methodical devotion!” Against all these, and
everything like them, the words of our Lord Jesus most de-
cisively protest; words in which He condemns those who con-
demned, consoles and dignifies His servant Mary, reveals even
the prophetic spirit as suggesting to her this action, places every-
thing in its own propriety, and thus, finally, resolves the discord
which had arisen in their thoughts into the most lovely and noble
harmony —for all except Judas.

There are, properly speaking, four words, the succession of
which St Matthew, as always in our view, most accurately pre-
serves, St Mark agreeing with him. The justification of the
wounded Mary naturally comes first. With this is cofinected
the acknowledgment of what was right in their care for the poor,
for the sake of giving the other disciples their due; yet even in
this there is a transition from these poor, always with them, to
Himself who was about to leave them. Then follows the expla-
nation—She hath anointed Me to the burial! Finally, and this
could have been nowhere but at the close, the promise of a me-
morial throughout the world. St John, following his design,
or according to his own sentiment and remembrance, places the
évtadiac os first, as the true xadov épyov; he omits (in fulfilling
it himself) the final promise, in order that he may close with the
sorrowful words, which prepare the way for the Lord’s departure
—Me ye have not always! ;

St Matthew and St Mark Aint that Judas, commenced this
crimination; and St John further hints that the other disciples
concurred with him, though without malicious intention: the
sing. &des in our Evangelist is directed to Judas, the éyere to

admits the propriety of gratifying the pure tendencies of our humanity by
applying our earthly goods to the amenities of social life. Mary’s view
was something quite different from this; her beautiful act was not a tri--
bute to social feeling, but an act performed on Jesus in worship, from holy
and profound emotion.

JOHN XII. 7, 8. 65

all the rest. Thus the first word was one which stilled their
murmur, reflecting back their blame upon themselves, — d¢es or
adete (the latter according to St Mark, as in the Vulg. Sinite
though not in all the Codd.) ; and it simply said—Cease these
thoughts and these words, they please Me not! In this single
expression He utters His calm and dignified decision, admitting
no appeal; but, as He is speaking in the circle of His disciples
and friends, He proceeds to give the reason of His judgment.
Instead of this St Matthew and St Mark have an additional and
yet stronger protest against them. Why trouble ye, distress, and
afflict—xorous mapéxete TH yuvacxi or ait? He does not say
— Me, although He might, humanly speaking, have felt Himself
aggrieved by their estimate, that such honour and anointing was
too great, too precious for Him! But He is wounded in the
wounding of Mary, troubled in her trouble; and this He utters
therefore all the more emphatically, making her cause His own.!
Thus this calm joy of love is embittered to Him; for in this
perverse generation some drop of suffering must be infused into
all His consolations. (Pfenninger: “ Joyful as was this Sabbath
meal, it ended not without trouble and disquietude.”) How pro-
foundly and affectionately does He sympathise with what Mary
must have felt, who finds herself so unexpectedly misunder-
stood! “The delusion, that all must love what we love (and as
we love) is so natural”——but now she is undeceived by a cold
word of the Apostles, spoken in the midst of the warm impulse of
her love. Albertini preaches incorrectly —“ There dwelt in her
secret heart a blessedness which could not be affected by any
external circumstances; and she expected nothing other than the
blame of the disciples. Nevertheless, when this was expressed
so warmly, a slight cloud may have shaded the heaven of her
soul.’ Ohno! How could she have expected blame from the
disciples? and when this was expressed not warmly, indeed, but
with the semblance of truth and reason, this xo7rovs rapéyere
was more than a passing cloud. She may have thought, “the
disciples are right, I have acted inconsiderately, it will not please
Him.” On that account it is that the Lord surpasses their
blame by His own instant praise and consolation ;—not merely

1 Yet, again, without mentioning Mary, or giving her any endearing
name! That would have been derogatory to His dignity.

VOL. VI. , E

66 SHE HATH WROUGHT A GOOD WORK.

has she done nothing wrong, but a beautiful and noble deed.
This xaddv is more, indeed, than ayafov; and the translation
should hit the precise force of this expression. Affectionate de-
votion at the right time, the thoughtful, corresponsive expres-
sion of the deepest feeling—-is not that lovely? Not merely
does Mary perform a work in this anointing, as much as her
sister’s in her serving;' but her work is the more noble, if we
understand and estimate it in its spirit and meaning. Behold
here the moral esthetics, as it were, in the estimation of human
acts, which the Lord teaches and requires, Elsewhere He com-
mends faith or love; here, because it is assailed, He commends
the deed; but derives its profound value from the state of the
soul, which is expressed by external act. He corrects, by His
lofty decision, the manifold errors of human judgment as to
what is good, and what is noble, in human works. It is not
necessary that they be great, and widely influential acts, for
the result gives them not their value, but the intention; still
less are we to apply everywhere the standard of common bene-
volence or usefulness, for an apparent waste may be deserving
of commendation. Finally, He does not omit to add, as the
deepest ground of His supreme verdict—She hath done it unto
Me! (Matt. eis éué, Mark év éuol.) Not so much to complain
—Ts that then of no importance? Am I not worthy of this
honour? as to teach generally by this specific instance what is
the first, and most essential regulating measure of all good and
lovely works. “ The first command is, To love God above all;
and then, our neighbour as ourselves.”” Of what value is all
our vaunted love of our neighbour and of the poor, without
the love of God therein?* But He places Himself involun-
tarily and naturally in the stead of God, even in the midst of
His self-renouncing, sympathising humility: for He could do
no otherwise. Humbly self-renouncing, as a Friend in the

1 The sleyacaro with Zeyov is more emphatic than a mere évoinoey.

2 So Lossel on the passage, in his Wort und Leben, Betrachtungen nach
dem Ey. Matth. §. 503.

8 “* Not, as men are wont to say, for God’s sake!” So Diesterweg. Harless,
on the other hand: ‘ Judas, the hypocrite and traitor, was the first preacher
of that doctrine of the exclusive value of s0- -called good works, in the New
Testament.”

JOHN XII. 7, 8. 67

circle of friends, He began; majestically, judicially self-assert-
ing must He continue and end. Both are suddenly combined
in one brief sentence—and this is the authentic style of the
words of Jesus! Done unto Him, not done unto Him—this will
finally arbitrate upon all the works of men. Be confident, there-
fore, misunderstood soul: He knoweth thee and thy purpose.
And even if His disciples blame thee, He will justify thee both
now and hereafter.

The poor, of whom ye other disciples speak with good inten-
tion and partial truth (all three have the article)—are never
wanting to you. It is probable that the Lord, recalling a pas-
sage of Scripture, said only this, and that the addition of St
Mark is an explanatory reflection; yet this deduction seems
very appropriate in the connection. “Otay @é\n7Te would then
contain, at the same time, a gentle ironical intimation of the
absence of earnest intention on the part of Judas; while the
avTovs ev Tovjoat would be the corresponding counterpart to the
Kanov épyov év éuoi. The passage alluded to is Deut. xv. 11,
which must be taken with ver. 4 of the same chapter. In con-
nection with the remission of debts in the year of jubilee it was
said, {828 J2 7 N? ‘D DES—where the ‘2 DES may be under-
stood variously." Not, to the end that no poor may be among
you. Rather, with Michaelis: unless there be no poor needing
‘remission—yet he is opposed, as Meyer well remarks, by ver. 11
afterwards. Since elsewhere (e.g. Num. xiii. 28; Amos ix. 8;
Judg. iv. 9, see Nold. Conc. part. who adds our passage with
hesitation) ‘2 DDS is tamen, veruntamen, a promise has been
found here as a ground of encouragement for the remission :—
Ye shall do yourselves no injury thereby, in making yourselves
poor; for the Lord will bless you in your obedience to His com-
mandments. But this is forced, and the {128 is still the same,
in whose favour the remission is to be made. Consequently, the
only right meaning is (that to which Aben-Ezra’s expression,
misunderstood by Rosenmiiller, pointed)— Nevertheless or in
truth there would be no poor among you, if ye obeyed My com-

1 But not, with Luther, that it is not a conjunction at all. He makes
an inappropriate distinction between the ‘‘ beggar,” ver. 4, and the ‘‘ poor,”
ver. 11, and thus makes a Bible-sentence very often used by the uninformed.

68 THE POOR YE HAVE WITH YOU ALWAYS.

mandments, etc." With this is placéd in significant contrast
the subsequent prediction of ver. 11, 287 27pp jhs oan No
the poor will not be wanting, they vill not cease; instead of
which the Lord says, wravrote éyete we Eavt@v, in order to pre-
pare for the antithesis—but Je ye have not always. Thus,
that there always are poor rests, according to the whole internal
connection of that chapter of Moses, which is at once the solu-
tion of the fact and true in history, upon the sin of Israel, which
yet by full obedience might be capable of blessing. The Lord
now confirms the same in His word to the disciples (which like
every such word is designed also for the future of His people)
with regard to the Christian commonwealth. Diesterweg in his
book “ Der Lebensfrage der Civilisation,” maintains boldly that
“it was not the eternal Creator who established or produced
the present system of social life,” and he is so far right as our
sin is certainly the original cause, as of every evil, so also of our
pauperism. But when he altogether denies the Divine dispen-
sation of poverty as the punishment of unrighteousness, and
lays all its blame upon the not giving of those who have the
means, he is entangled in that great error of a civilised age
concerning this question of life which has only made the matter
worse with its help. In effect, no reiterated lex agraria can
abolish the poverty which is ever being reproduced, no St
Simon or Bettina can stop this fountain; we must, indeed, give
with the wisdom of charity, but without hoping that that will
make poverty cease. The Lord’s wavrore approves its truth
to our own day, on account of sin, indeed, but also as a conse-
quent counsel and will of God; Christian people must humbly
adapt their views to this fact, and thoughtfully consider that the
giving ‘of alms is not the only benevolence to the poor. And to
this the ed moujcar ot St Mark might point! Show to the poor
by thy own shining example, how He is loved and honoured
— this is here the one thing which is needful to needy man.

1 See Baumgarten’s Commentary, who compares for vex, Numb. xxii. 35,
and beautifully deduces that Israel was to see in every poor man a testimony
of the (already presupposed by the law) disobedience of the people; and
consequently should on that account help his brother. Compare Jarchi,
who simply unites vers. 4 and 11—If in one case ye do, and in the other,
do not, God’s will.

JOHN XII. 7, 8 69

The Lord has thus admitted all that was right in the thoughts
of the disciples who were misled by Judas; for the traitor and
thief himself He has nothing more to say, although He looks
through his soul at this moment of murmuring hypocrisy. He
does not rebuke them in common— Ye have spoken a false and
evil word concerning her noble act; for that would be too hard
for those who were led astray with a good intention. He does
not detect and expose the wicked spirit of their misleader—for
“ He is not just now disposed to inflict severe condemnation.”
Sorrowfully—as He thinks of those fittest Scripture words which
speak of the sad continuance of the poor, with all its profound
meaning for all times—sorrowfully He leads them back to His
own person, for which this was thought to be too much honour :
But Me ye have not always! In a manner almost marvellous,
He places Himself, to whom all actions of thanksgiving and love
are due, in parallel with the poor on whom we bestow benefac-
tions, and by Him, in His human tenderness, the separation
from the earthly fellowship of His own is keenly felt. All that
He had already foretold concerning His departure is brought
to their remembrance by the gentle but emphatic od mavrore—
as if He should say, Have ye then forgotten that I shall be but
a little while longer with you? But in the symbolical meaning
of the whole, since we also may anoint Him like Mary, and
thereby do better than by all our “ confederations for elevating
the working classes” without Him,—we may properly refiect in
what sense we also have Him ot always so near in His spiritual
presence, and therefore that the right opportunities of present-
ing our offerings of thanks and love to Him are to be jealously
seized. If the Lord spoke, in the former clause, for distant
futurity, He may probably also have thought, in the latter, of
that which we have now expressed.

We remarked above that the words which St John has placed
first are to be regarded as spoken now :—She has, in truth,
paid Me the “last honour,’ for death and the sepulchre are im-
mediately before Me. At the moment of His kingly anointing,
He speaks of dying; for thoughts of death now continually fill
His soul, and images of physical death float before His eyes.

+ Albertini in the sermon before quoted.

70 MY ANOINTING.

In the midst of this festal joy He sees His anointed body as an
embalmed corpse in the sepulchre! Into what a depth in the
human consciousness of Jesus does this inexpressibly touching
utterance—which suppressed all discord in every heart but that
of Judas—permit us to look! The évtadidoa or évtadvacpos
is found in all the narratives—it includes the whole interment,
to which the anointing also belongs. St Matthew expresses the
essential ground-thought in the simplest and most intelligible
form,—In that she hath poured it on My body, she did it for
My burial. St Mark introduces a more specific feature in the
mpoérae—She hath come beforehand, or hath anticipated it ;
and the meaning of this, as reconciling all the accounts, can only
be that she performed on the living body that which was. not
performed on the dead, being both needless and unpermitted.
St John, although he reverses the order, appears to us here also
to preserve the original expression used by our Lord in ter7-
pnkev. This word is obviously opposed to the érpd@n and
€600n.in which Judas’ desire had been expressed :—She has
done rightly not to sell the ointment (which she possessed), but
to preserve it for use on this day. Whence and for what pur-
pose Mary obtained this pvpov (whether for the interment of
Lazarus and his delayed embalming, as mentioned above) is a
question not alluded to here, and all suppositions are free; but
we, for our own part, think a provision made for the embalming
of her brother, whether before or after his death, altogether
improbable. The other anointings of the evangelical history
give us instances of ointment being kept for sundry purposes.
The Lord goes not beyond the fact of her having it in posses-
sion, as the disciples thought desirable another application.
And we may say, in some sense, with Rieger, “ she must have
reserved it under the guidance of a higher hand,” for the Lord
establishes from the providential significance of her action tts

1 Lachmann’s reading iva rupyoy, approved by Luthardt (Vulg. ut servet,
Nonn. éQpa Qvacéy), Liicke properly regards, notwithstanding its diplo-
matic pretension, as incorrect; for the Lord takes the present day pro-
leptically as the gucpe rod tvraQsaouov (and according to St Mark’s
xpotrafev). Alford, similarly. The rec. reading seems to be an adaptation
to Mark xiy. 8, in order to escape from the difficulty of understanding how
she could keep for His burial what she poured out now

JOHN XII. 7, 8. 71

moral propriety also, the genuine acceptableness before God of
the sentiment and its expression.

Mary, however, thinks of nothing more than paying the Lord
a tribute of, honour at this feast,.she does not refer in her own
thoughts to His entombment or embalming. Many are not
contented with this, but ascribe to her, according to the letter
of the Lord’s words, which certainly point that way, an actual
consciousness of the near approaching burial of Jesus. (So
Stiickelberger, e.g., among preachers: but the view has always
been attractive to many. Driseke says, “as she could not avert
His fate, she would at least consecrate Him to His sad destiny.”)
This would be an impressive contrast with the deep blindness of
Judas upon the future of Jesus,' as exhibiting the keen insight
of a loving soul, or, at least, the half-conscious presentiment
which overcame her on such a day and at such a critical moment
(as He sat, that is, by the side of Lazarus, for whom the anoint-
ing should have been; and is purposing to go to Jerusalem
among His enemies) :—“ Alas, when Thou diest, none will
anoint Thee; I will therefore do it beforehand.” There is some-
thing so attractive in this, that we dare not unconditionally deny
it; but to our mature consideration there appears in it also some-
thing which is out of harmony with the plain simplicity of the
whole procedure. We, therefore, hold to the common view,
which every one can understand, that the Lord simply ascribes
His own thoughts to Mary, and now -by a prophetic word ele-
vates, interprets, and glorifies her cadov épyov of affectionate love
into a prophetic act. And here we are at one with Luthardt:
“Her action becomes, without her knowledge, a symbolical
token of what was to befall Jesus.” This corresponds with the
unconscious significance of many other actions and words during
these His last days. Mary like Caiaphas!) This was the most
ancient notion, as witnessed in the Peshito, which adds in
Matthew and Mark a J'8:—as if or as it were for My burial.
And it would have to the disciples the impressive meaning,—
Would ye blame her, if/—I were laid in the sepulchre dead ?
Would this anointing be too costly if it were actually for My

1 For by means of the greatest sinner among the disciples, him who least

understood the counsel of God, must the fulfilment of that counsel be
brought about.

72 SHE HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD.

évradiacpos? Now, then, I tell you (do ye yet not know it of
yourselves ?)—it is near enough, and her deed has the value,
before God and before Me, of an anointing for My burial !* (See
in Grotius the striking amplification of this thought.) -

St Mark, finally, gives-us another beautiful and undoubtedly
genuine word, though he places it before us transitional,— She
hath done what she could! The écyev of this phrase certainly
cannot admit of any petty application to her wealth; we cannot
tolerate such an interpretation of the Lord’s sentiment as, in
Judas’ reckoning spirit, would make Him say—In the case of
one more needy than she, such an objection would be ungra-
ciously applied, but she, over and above, hath the means! Oh
no, even if she, like the poor widow at the Treasury, had applied
her utmost all to this purpose, Jesus would have likewise digni-
fied and commended her act. Nor must we translate with
Bengel’s translation (though not in the Gnomon): What she
had to do she has done,—what was appointed to her and there-
fore obligatory. This is opposed to the grammatical meaning ;
but to take yew for having in one’s power or being able, is
sound and safe. Thus, as it has been almost always practically
understood in the church, it is the most gracious and the highest
praise which any one can receive from the Lord’s supreme esti-
mate of his acts—What she could do, she has actually done!
Mary was made capable of this noble act by her strong internal
love—therefore she restrained not its expression, kept back
nothing. Humble thyself, reader and hearer, in the presence
of this Word, and think how great a thing it is, and how seldom
it happens, that the Lord can say this'of any man! But under-
stand, also, from this, wherefore He has ordained a memorial of
this deed for all futurity.

She hath done what she could! She has, even down to our
Lord’s sepulchre, performed on Him the beautiful offices of
thankful love! This shall be the inscription over her, her memo-
rial in all the world,’ inseparably bound up with that Gospel
which tells of the death by which life comes to the world. The

1 Augustin de Civit. I. 13 justifies, by Mary’s commendation, the expres-
sions of love and honour paid, generally, to the corporibus defunctorum :
Nec ideo tamen contemnenda et abjicienda sunt, etc.

? Mynycovvoy in the Sept. for }"21 and "21, also in Esth. ix. 32 for “222.

JOHN XIl. 7, 8. 73

more unexpected and unusual is this utterance of our Lord, the
more unhesitatingly we receive it from the hands of the two
first Evangelists. It is (as Niemeyer says in his Characteristik)
“the only time that the Lord has mentioned its reputation as
the reward of a noble work.” We must not shrink from admit-
ting this because all glory belongs to God alone; in the words
of Jesus “such remembrance is recorded as a good thing which,
in a certain case, appertains to recompense” (Palmer, Kate-
chetik. S. 164). But we must more deeply consider, that just
now, when the question was of the oblique censures of men, and
the vain show of supposed good works was in contrast, Jesus
confers such honour upon a deed of love which even the disciples
misunderstood and the world would think n¢thing of. “ While
He well knew that even in Christendom such perverted views of
merit and fame would arise, He took this occasion to prescribe
what should be true fame and true worthiness, and to assign to
those who deserve it an abiding remembrance—zin order that
here, at this last cross-way on the way to His cross, all His fol-
lowers should discriminate and decide.” (Lossel.) Although the
act had the appearance, and it was so interpreted against Mary,
as if she designed by this costly anointing to make herself pro-
minent, yet Mary in reality thought of nothing so little as her
own honour; it was under the irrepressible impulse of her emo-
tion that her silent, diffident spirit overcame itself and thus come
forward. She sought no more, as Hase beautifully says, than
a gracious glance. Nevertheless, and on that very account, the
Lord predicts and appoints that she should be praised from
generation to generation upon earth. Who but Himself had the
power to insure to any work of man, even if resounding through-
out the whole earth in his own time, an imperishable remem-
brance in the stream of history? Behold, once more, here the
majesty of His royal, judicial supremacy in the government of
the world, expressed in this ’Apajv Aéyo dyiv! |
Yet He does not say at once and without qualification eis
erawvov or eis Oo£av avtijs ;* but that which should be spoken as

1 Although the good Sepp, with great simplicity, makes the Lord glance
at the future of His Church and the veneration of relics! But sis wunpcovvoy
autayv AnArnOyosras 6 éxoinsay—at this limit the ‘‘ veneration” should re-
strain itself.

74 MARY'S MEMORIAL.

a memorial of her, He applies to our instruction as an example.
Similarly, Mary’s deed obtains this undying remembrance only
through its connection with Him and His Gospel. By év dr@
T@ Koop (Mark, eis 6dov Tov Kocpov) He already here testifies
what He afterwards prophesies to His disciples, Matt. xxiv. 14.
This Gospel: that is, the message of peace and blessedness which
should spring forth from His death, the kernel and centre of
which should be His dying. This Gospel is not so much doc-
trine as history; this history is great and significant in all its
lesser circumstances, the selection of which, under God’s dis-
posal, should be the «7puyua :—all this lies in the simple word
which was spoken to this intent. Vainly does Br. Bauer's
frenzy rage against,the Lord’s counsel—“ Alas, that one must
speak of such things! would that they had fallen into the oblivion
which is their meet lot!” In vain he imagines that he “ shall
say such keen and annihilating things as shall render needless
any further mention of them.” Many other mockers’ and blas-
phemers’ names have been blotted out and their memory for-
gotten—but that which Mary did in secret Bethany has been
spoken of till now; and will be spoken of to the end of time,
because the Lord has so decreed by one of those words not one
of which shall fall to the ground. Therefore the fourth Evan-
gelist gives us her name ;* therefore St Matthew and St Mark
place the history at the commencement of the Passion, that it
may for ever excite, in connection with the sufferings of Christ,
the feeling thought, All this He did and suffered for me—what
do I for Him? Have I done what I could? Thus was it fore-
seen and provided: and Mary not only predicted the death and
burial of Jesus, but preaches now throughout the world in this
Gospel :—His alone be the love of all, let all be done to His
honour and in His service, even all charities to the poor.

1 Here in the repeated narrative, and in ch. xi. 2, presuming an acquaint-
ance with the narrative.

ae |
Cr

JOHN XII. 23-36.

LAST PUBLIC DECLARATION CONCERNING HIS COMING DEATH.
THE CORN OF WHEAT, AND HIS DISCIPLESHIP; THE PRAYER
OF ANGUISH; THE GLORIFICATION; THE BRIEF CONTINUANCE
OF THE LIGHT.

(Ch. xii. 23-36.)

All this we embrace under one head; for it is manifest that
through all the fulness of these utterances of our Lord, the con-
tinuous fundamental thought of His tmpending death may be
distinctly traced. As at Bethany in the circle of His friends, —
Me ye have not always; so now in the temple aloud before friend
and foe,— Yet only a little while is the light with you! And
this is the reply to the people’s question, how the being taken
away from the earth could suit the Messiah or the Son of man ;
it comes conclusively after profound sayings concerning the ne-
cessity of His death in order to His fruit and glorification, after
a public exhibition of the commencing anguish of His conflict,
in which the Father promises from heaven and confirms to Him
the victory. Thus the correct superscription of the whole is-—
The Lord’s last public declaration concerning His death.’

St John has recorded after the anointing the Entry into Jeru-
salem, like the Synoptics ; but he has further mentioned the con-
nection between the people’s jubilation and the resurrection of
Lazarus. The disposition of the Pharisees, as opposed to the
people, is here in ver. 19 the same which Lu. xix. 39 reports, —
but it is described as more bitter, its internal vexation being more
fully exhibited. As already in ch. i. 26, the disciples of the
Baptist hyperbolically complained that all men came to Him; as
in Mark i. 37 the disciples announced, all men seek for Thee ;
so now, but with more appearance of absolute truth, they say
that, in spite of all their precautions, The world is gone after

1 More correctly than Lampe’s Valedictoria gloriz Christi in templo mani-
festatio—although he is so far right as concerns the glory of Christ. It is
the last public discourse generally (de Wette), only in the Gospel of St John.

76 THE LAST FOREANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEATH.

Him! In these words, too, there is an enforced prediction. For
although the speakers used the expression only according to the
current meaning of neiy and 89) (everybody, all men)—yet
would all the people of the world be drawn to Him, after the
vanquishing of the world’s Prince by His death. It is, most
significant that immediately afterwards a pledge and earnest of
this is afforded in the desire of certain Greeks to see Him.

As the Lord on Monday at the cleansing of the temple testi-
fied that this house of God should be called a house of prayer for
all nations (Mark xi. 17), so even now already on the Sunday,
the day of His entry, this had received a fulfilment in the coming
of these Gentiles, according to the original decree of 1 Kings
viii. 41. We have in our table placed this incident of the Greeks,’
and what followed it, on the first day. Many, indeed, think
that it should be placed, if not at the close, yet several days later
than the cleansing of the temple, since according to the Synoptics
Jesus spoke several times afterwards publicly to the people,
whereas here after ver. 36 He departs and hides Himself. But
this hiding, the like of which occurs before in St John, must not
be regarded as final and definitive ; it does not exclude a return
to vindicate the temple, and a daily teaching afterwards. In-
deed, it thus maintains its historiographical truth according to
St John’s plan, which presupposes and passes by everything else
in order to exhibit this scene of the first day as the closing scene,
and this discourse as the last public declaration in his Gospel.
For ver. 20, in its close connection with ver. 19, seems still
actually to belong to ver. 12.

1 Properly, follows Him, adheres to Him, forsaking us! Mark the lament-
ing éxqdev, here different from Mar. i. 20. Ye see it that Caiaphas is right ;
we must not let Him thusalone, all men believein Him! Ye see that ye do
nothing with your sparing half-measures! Ocwpsire is not, as Erasmus
thought, a question. Nor do we prefer with Bengel (on account of zpos
saurods, the dQscAcire being copied from the é:wpeire) the reading dPercduev
(retained in Vulg. and Nonnus, but not in the Syr.). The vigorous party
speak to the timid—Follow only the counsel of our prudent high priest !
Lange is altogether wrong in thinking it the helpless wrath of impotent
opponents, mocking one another.

2 Whose announcement to the Lord Lange reckons as the culmination of
our Lord’s influence upon the people on the Monday ; while Neander assigns
it to the day of entry which excited so much public attention.

JOHN XII. 23-36. Ts

More important than the definition of the time, which we
simply give according to our own unprejudiced view, is the cer
tainty that the “EXAnves were not Jews (proselytes), not even
proselytes of righteousness, but at most proselytes of the gate,
and certainly no other than heathens: see our observations on
ch. vil. 85, and the connection of this event with what follows.
The Vulg. translates Gentiles, and, according to St John’s phrase
in ch. xix. 20, they were probably Greeks proper. They were
éx Tov avaBawvovTwr, which Glass., Grot., Beng., etc., under-
stand—who were accustomed to come up yearly or oftener ;?
such ceSopevor “EdAnves as are alluded to in the Acts of the
Apostles. They came up not, strictly speaking, to keep the feast,
but merely iva rpockuvjcwct. It was not, however, the pre-
sence of these Gentile guests at the festival which was remark-
able and typical—that was a frequent occurrence ; but that these
heathens should ask just at this time for the Lord, should desire
to see Jesus. ‘The reason for which they turn to Philip seems to
be intimated in the otherwise useless addition, that he was of
Bethsaida in Galilee (according to the older and wider meaning
of this name); either he was known to them as on the borders
of their land (against which Bengel objects the xtpie, but too
critically), or they observed that he understood Greek, or what
else may be suggested.’ Philip, at first, probably, regards their
desire as an unreasonable curiosity; he then counts it remarkable,
does not venture to repel them, yet still less to bring the matter
forward alone :—for would the Messiah, just now proclaimed,
and triumphantly entering, receive Gentiles at once into His
presence?* He therefore confers with his countryman Andrew
(ch. 1. 44).

We would see Jesus ! Words these of deeper than their appa-
rent meaning, and in this typical history of such significance that
they have been regarded by a profounder exposition with perfect
propriety as an expression of the desire of the whole heathen

1 Sepp sees in them Armenians, the deputation of King Abgarus!

* Lampe: qui non casu aliquo sed fixo more festa Israelis frequentabant.

® Nonnus contents himself with an dyyiucraw Diaizro, that is, who met
them accidentally.

* It may be supposed that the Lord was in the interior of the tenho, in

the court of the women (ch. viii. 20), into which no Gentiles dared to intrude.
We do not agree with Luthardt as to the improbability of this.

78 WE WOULD SEE JESUS.

world, and used as a great Missionary text. The simple idet
means more in those who now utter it than the iéety tis éore of
Zaccheus ; it is a modest expression, which Beza rightly inter-
prets—ut privatim convenirent Jesum. ‘The glory so strangely
mingled with lowliness at the great entry, the fame of His deeds
generally, and of His raising the dead, the hostile influences
which they saw at work against Him,—all these combined to
stimulate their attention, and to awaken within them a concealed
longing after that which they felt wanting, and might find in
Him. Thus do they, in the name of their nation, and of all
nations, coincide in the desire of the true Israel during all ages
from the Father’s time (Lu. x. 24), to see what here is to be
seen; thus unconsciously do they speak, for the Evangelists’
and our right understanding, in the name of the world of hea-
thenism, the highest @é\ew of which in all times has this for its
goal—to find and to knowa Jesus. These men from the West
represent at the end of Christ’s life that which the wise men
from the East represented at its beginning; but those come to
the Cross of the King, even as these came to His manger, and
receive presently more full intelligence. That which the Lord
takes this opportunity to utter is also a concluding discourse, even
as are the subsequent ones in the former Evangelists; and it
was not simply (as B.-Crusius thinks) “ according to the design
of this fourth Gospel to give the final utterance of Jesus over
Judaism,” but these words were actually spoken in the spirit
of that fundamental idea which runs through the synoptical
discourses also—Israel’s rejection, and the passing of the king-
dom to the Gentiles. Yet Herder, likewise, says not without
truth, “Happy John! It was for thee to change the denuncia-
tory symbols of the other Evangelists exhibiting the rejection of
the Jewish people, their terrific woes against the Pharisees, into
a joyful outlook over all those nations whose language thou didst
employ! (ch. xii. 37-50). For time had confirmed this wide
prospect of Christ.”

Ver. 23. Did then the Lord refuse the admission of the
Greeks, as Lampe and Kleuker in particular," Meyer, Braune,

hy "He denied their request, and said: What more would these Greeks see
in Me? The time is come for Me to die; and that will be followed by a
glorification which strangers and eteeaad shall come to know, without the

JOHN XII. 23. 79

and others, suppose? Can this be discerned in His answer?
We think not, but should be more disposed to interpret it thus:
They have come at the right hour of My glorification before all
the world, they are justified in their desire, in a sense much
deeper than they suppose.? But even this seems a superficial
view of the connection, and a more profound sense must be
sought in the fundamental idea of the glorification of the Son of
man which now fills the soul of our Lord, for the more complete
exposition of which, however, we must refer to His second utter-
ance, chap. xi. 31, 32. The avrots after amexpivato appears
(as Alford maintains) literally to point to Philip and Andrew
alone. (in the presence of the other disciples) ; but we must not
forget to take into account the compression and comprehensive-
ness of St John’s historical style at this crisis, the abruptness
with which he elevates the hidden meaning and passes by the
detail, while preserving of course absolute truth in every inci-
dent that he records. It is assumed by many that after the Lord
had received the Greeks and spoken something to them, He ad-
dressed the disciples at more length, as here recorded ; but this
is contradicted by the strict connection between the dzrexpivato
and the Aéyover of ver. 22. And are we to suppose St John to
have omitted what Jesus spake to the Greeks, just at the time
when he is making their desire so significantly prominent? We
cannot, with our views, avoid referring the adtois to the Apostles
and the Greeks together. This is an allowable and intelligible
conciseness ; for the granting of their request is left to be in-
ferred by the attentive reader from the whole scope of our Lord’s
words. Either the Lerd spoke in Greek (as, doubtless, else-
where often), or the Greeks understood, which may without

necessity of any personal knowledge of Me. For this they could not as yet
behold in Me.” In his treatise, Johannes, Petrus, und Paulus als Christo-
logen, S. 121.

1 Laufs (in Stud. u. Krit. 1853, 2, 379) also maintains that Jesus
throughout held fast His mission to Israel alone. Schleiermacher, on the
other hand, thinks it may be assumed, despite appearances in the narrative,
that Jesus did not leave this laudable desire of the Greeks unsatisfied.

? Driiseke expounds: ‘‘ They should see Me, they will see Me, and soon
shall they see Me. For the time when the world shall know Me, and shall
behold the glory of God manifested in Me, and through Me in nga, is
already come !”

80 THE GRAIN OF WHEAT.

scruple be supposed, the popular tongue of Judea. Suffice it
that we cannot otherwise understand the Evangelist than that
he presupposes the Greeks to be hearing the discourse af | Festis
with the rest, and, indeed, that the first portion of it was specially
spoken for them. Meyer's note correctly finds here “an in-
struction designed for the sensuous eye of the Greeks.” These
guests at the feast were to see the Cross succeeding the trium-
phant entry—and He presents to their reflections beforehand
the solution of the mystery, and a relief to its offence, in His
words concerning the grain of wheat. Thus, in a way in which
no didécodos had ever spoken, “ He explains to them in brief
His system.”+ The disciples with the Greeks, and the Greeks
with the disciples, expect after the Hosanna still greater things,
His universal glorification; and the Lord tells them,—Yea,
verily, the hour is come, but My glorification will proceed diffe-
rently from your thoughts of it. As King, rather as the Saviou
of all people, shall I soon be glorified : and deeper still, —as the
Son of man, the normal and central Man, the second Adam.
But only by My dying will the Divine energy of My. humanity
be set free and exerted for all mankind.

Ver. 24. For this He does not appeal to the testimony of the
prophets (evidence, too, that He is speaking to the Greeks also),
but to a secretly prophesying similitude of nature which His
words immediately elevate and explain ;—of that nature, the
manifestations of which “ the sensuous eye of the Greeks” had
profoundly observed without profoundly understanding. For
that He signifies Himself by the grain of wheat, is evident from
the connection with the former clause, as also from the “App
aunv. Yea, not only prophecy in Israel, not only the pre-
sentiments and dreams of the heathen world, in which the dim
traces of a primeval prophecy are to be discerned, but Nature
herseif also speaks of the mystery of a redeeming death. That
from death generally, which is the wages of sin, and, as properly
death, came first into the world by sin, new life is brought forth
—is now a phenomenon and symbol everywhere witnessed. But
indeed, the caterpillar which becomes a moth, and everything

1 Lange agrees with this, and regards these words of Jesus as the ex-

pression of His first historical introduction and greeting to the Hellenic
national spirit—-the Gospel for the Greeks.

JOHN XII. 24. 81

else of the same kind in the animal world, must be regarded as
on that account appertaining to the after creation of insects and
worms, which was heralded by the change of the serpent-form,
and was then the produce of death and corruption.’ Neverthe-
less, since the Fall was foreseen, and the redeeming death of the
Son of God and son of man already lay in the deep counsels of
eternity, the Creator implanted types of it in His pure earthly
creation before the Fall. Thus we have here in the Divine
ordinance of the fruit springing from the seed, of the new growth
springing from the death of the old, the most primitive prophecy
of the mystery of atonement and sacrifice which the pure crea-
tion contains. And St John now discloses the inmost kernel of
the synoptical seed and harvest parables, and of that first dis-
course of our Lord concerning sowing and reaping which he
himself recorded in ch. iv. 35-38. As firmly established as
the covenant of God touching seedtime and harvest, is His
counsel touching the death of Christ and the life of the world.
As in the present process of digestion the food perishes in the
stomach to reappear in vivified flesh and blood, so in a symbol-
ical analogy the seed-corn dies in order to bring forth fruit.
_“ This holds good generally of all seed (citou #} twos TeV dol-
mov, 1 Cor. xv. 37), but the Lord, not without meaning, specifies
grain, the noblest, that of Palestine, wheat :—partly, because it
is the most important in man’s yearly sowing and reaping, and
partly, because in fact (as Wesley remarks) the corn of wheat
does according to the laws of nature more effectually dissolve
and perish in pushing forth the all but invisible germ, than other

1 The butterfly is not an image of the rejuvenescence of life—‘‘ such as
may take place in unfallen planets, and might have taken place upon the
earth if Adam had not fallen—that form of change by which the paradi-
saical man might have made the transition from his first into his second
life” (Lange). For what purpose would then serve the pupa state, and the
chrysalis? We cannot imagine the caterpillars in Paradise. As it respects
the “‘ after creation of insects and worms,” which my critic Minchmeyer
excepts against, this is not my ‘‘ subjective notion,” nor is it an offence
against Scripture, but a tradition of old hidden doctrine well known to
the learned, as may be seen in V. Meyer's ‘‘ Bibeldeutungen,” S. 129.
Bleek (Stud. u. Krit. 1831. 3. 8. 498) admits the notion of the Zend
Avesta as presupposed in the Pentateuch, which indeed only borders on the
truth.

VOL. VI. F

82 THE GRAIN OF WHEAT.

kinds of seed which serve it as a permanent covering or as sus-
tenance under the earth.’

As in nature, so in the life of man, in the history of nations,
of which the Greeks were directly reminded, it is a law of uni-
versal operation that out of a self-renouncing, self-sacrificing
resignation of all, the benediction of a richer fruitfulness, of a
glorified and. Hiidyhidd existence, springs forth. When that
which a man possesses, is—to use the words of Beck (Lehrwis-
senschaft i. 520)—“ not appropriated and enjoyed according to
the desire of the present moment, but foregone, as in the case
of the seed which is sown, in reliance upon the Divine law of
the benediction of increase, which pervades the whole economy of
things’ —there follows most assuredly in every case a rich har-
vest! We may well suppose these pondering Greeks to have
cried— This is the truth, Thy wise saying does verily hold good,
Thou wonderful Son of man in Israel!» Yet the last and high-
est illustration of this truth in His own person, they could only,
like the Apostles, understand when the great. event had taken
place. Had this first seed-corn died and fallen into the earth,
it would have been alone in its own peculiar pre-eminence—just
as Jesus stood in His power of the Spirit, His Divine-human
life and energy, incommunicable, independent of and above
the rest of the human race, before He died. But now what
thousand times thousand fold fruit does He bear! From the
‘ time that He gave up His soul as an offering for sin, He sees
His seed and prolongs His days (Isa. li. 10). This is what
was meant by the M¥ of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Zechariah ; and by Ezekiel’s nv yw, ch. xxxiv.- 29. Aa
further, in this word of our Lord lies the germ of St Paul’s
resurrection doctrine in 1 Cor. xv. They assuredly err, who
too narrowly confine the application of the fruit-bearing seed-
corn to the body of the Lord as expanded, after His glori-
fication, in the Spirit-pervaded congregation of His people;

1 Singularem id emphasin habere circa frumenta notant histori natu-
ralis scriptores, quia in eo differunt a ceteris plantis, quod omnium(?) ali-
arum plantarum semina, ubi radices emiserunt, soleant reliquas quoque
partes conservare et foras protudere, sed partes seminis frumenti sola radice
separata, quee ex terra protuberat, corrumpantur ac pereant. Thus we read
in Lampe.

JOHN XII. 25, 26. 83

it is rather the whole heavenly Son of man as such who
voluntarily sinks down into this earth of death and the curse,
into the domain and destiny of sinful men, not to remain
there, but te rise out of it as the glorified Glorifier, the risen
Raiser of men. It is true, nevertheless, that as the whole
Humanity is intended, so the death and resurrection of the bodt-
is included; yea, its glorification finds its consummation in cor-
poreity, the fruit-bearing is mediated by that, the Spirit operates
and continuously flows forth from that same flesh and blood
which became dead, and in which before His death He abode
alone, incommunicable and in mysterious exclusiveness apart.*
Vers. 25, 26. But now the Lord goes on at once to declare,
and this is the immediate design of His present words, that there
is no other law of life for His servants and followers ; that there
is no other way to preserve or redeem again ourselves, than by
the self-hating and self-renouncing surrender of ourselves to
death. That which holds good of Himself in its own peculiar,
unapproachable sense, as of the seed which He alone could sow,
the sacrifice which He alone could offer—is not the less on that
account a type for us, and is fulfilled in us, even to similar vic-
tory and blessedness in His fellowship. This is a thought made
familiar to us by many of our Lord’s other discourses through-
out the Evangelists. Even the first sentence here, in ver. 25,
is almost literally the same which is spoken in the Synoptics,
Matt. x. 38, 39; Lu. ix. 23, 24, xiv. 26, xvii. 33; so that we have
not now to expound it for the first time, but may refer to our
exposition of those passages. rom this verse we may under-
stand the twofold meaning of wuy7, as also the true significa-
tion of gidciv and pucety, the latter being understood to be the
true loving and preserving. Instead of the owce: and Swoyo-
vnoet of those parallel places, we have here uA ad£es, which de-
fines more sharply the identity of the surrendered and regained
life ; further, we have here an addition which specifically corre-
sponds with the connection, wcdyv—év TO KOT Ue TOUT.
For, as Bengel says, hic mundus ad amandam vitam per se trahit

1 I am perfectly of the same opinion with Luthardt, that here the neces-
sity of the death of Christ ‘‘ in order to His self-communication” is main-
tained. But I cannot admit, with him, that the concomitant reference to
the curse and penalty of sin is excluded by this fundamental idea.

84. WHERE I AM, THERE SHALL MY SERVANT BE.

—consequently this is the strength of warfare and victory, to
hate our own life in a world which for ever solicits to mere false
self-love, and lives in nothing but the element of self-destruction.
Compare the same addition in 1 John iv. 17. In this alone
consists the true following of Christ, that which He requires
of all who are willing to serve Him, to honour His supremacy,
and pledge themselves to His rule. I will have, He says, no
other “ serving” than this following,—and in the second clause,
that which contains His promise, He means by dvdKxovos and éav
dvaxovn only this service in the genuine spirit of truth.

Where I am, there shall or there should also My servant be!
It is needlessly disputed whether this is an added condition or a
promise and reward, for in the church of all ages the Spirit has
taught the double application of this word. For this is one of
those ambiguous sayings which embrace in the very expression
used the transitional idea of the thing expressed :—here as there,
now as then, in the cross and death as in glory-and life, in the
conflict and in the victory, in abasement as in exaltation, the:
true servant of Jesus must be and will be there, where He is.
The two senses pass into one another, the requirement itself
becomes a promise, includes it as the sweet kernel within the
bitter shell; this is so true, that, as all right experience attests,
we, as followers, and bearers likewise of the cross of Christ, are
conscious of having our conversation with Him already in heaven.
But to weak faith, which can scarcely in the gloom of conflict
grasp this truth, the words just as they stand have the force of
a mightily convincing consolation :—Art thou not in His way
of reproach, suffering, and death, in this present world, wilt
thou not be found there with Him, where He is? What more
wouldst thou have? Thou must tarry where He tarried, and
attain to the same goal by the same way! “Ozrov ciul éy has
not, as is commonly said, precisely the same force as in chs. xiv. 3,
xvii. 24,—but this Future is here first regarded as growing out
of the immediately following Present in the viv of ver. 27. When
the Lord would utter the promise unrestrictedly, and in all its
emphasis of attractiveness, He assures to every one (without dis-
tinction, tis) who serveth Him, the great prerogative, nowhere’
else so fully expressed as here, tounoes adtov 6 tarnp. This
is the correlative of His own dofac@jvar: honour and glorious

JOHN XII. 27, 28. 85

manifestation in addition to the saved and regained life. What
shall be done to the man whom the blessed and only Potentate,
the King of all kings, the Creator of the universe, the Father of
Jesus Christ delighteth to honour to the utmost? (Hsther vi. 6.)
Here are all our anticipations weak before the unimaginable
height and glory of our assured hope.

Vers. 27, 28. But there is a sudden change in the intense
thought and feeling of our Lord, such as we often find Him
exhibiting in testimony that the Son of man is one of ourselves
(but most often towards the close, and in St John especially) ;
and now the Lord is seized by an affrighting apprehension of
that conflict of suffering and death unto victory, of which He
had so serenely spoken. Not “ confounded” (as the Berlenb.
Bib. translates), but amazed is His soul, moved to its depths by
the disquietude and terror of the coming hour. We have here a
prelude to Gethsemane, the lamentation, the petition, the resig-
nation, all now even as then. St John’s record of this crisis of
foretaste is as real as the synoptical record of the subsequent
consummate conflict; the two accounts explain and supplement
each other. We have no more now to say, preparatorily to a
deeper exposition when we reach Gethsemane, than that it
must have been more than a mere mortal apprehension of death,
it must have been a conflict and agitation of a peculiar and
unshared kind, which could thus disturb the Son of God as the
Son of man while in the midst of His testimony to His own
doa! And—“ He lets us know His feelings,” tells us plainly
for a witness to all people (ver. 29)—Now is my soul troubled!
Not as if the overpowering might of passion had constrained
this utterance :—we see that He afterwards in perfect self-pos-
session commanded the outburst of His sorrow and dismay, until
the time and the witnesses were appointed. (Matt. xxvi. 36, 37.)
But it is His will not to conceal it, and even this mightiest pas-
sion is exhibited in the calmness of connected, progressive, and
measured words.

All the typical appeals and supplications of the Psalms, in
which, with various application, the cry so often recurs, My
soul is cast down (Ps. xlii. 7 literally), and, Lord, be Thou my
helper—reach in the lips of our Lord their full, distinctive,
Messianic meaning. And it is not without significance, that

86 SAVE ‘ME FROM THIS HOUR.

here and at Gethsemane alone does Jesus say concernng Him-
self, My soul—which is to be distinguished from His spirit.
Father, save Me! has been by many punctuated and explained
as still a question ;* but to us this is quite improper, as well as
unreal, To our feeling, it is inharmonious to make a prayer,
which springs from the deepest impulse, begin with a question
—Should I so pray? so speak? Further, the Lord does not
speak in any doubt or uncertainty —What should I choose? but
merely— What shall I say? But this must be rightly under-
stood! The two opposites pressed hard upon Him, in an in-
finitely deeper and more actual sense than upon His Apostle
afterwards :—the cry for help, and submission to the Father's
counsel. (Bengel: concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedi-
entiz.) Human language is not sufficient for the combined
utterance of both, as both were perfectly combined in Him,—
hence the ré elim. Therefore He utters them one after the
other, the one being as earnest and solemnly intended as the
other.” First the human dismay—Help Me! but immediately
follows the cry, which coincides with the perfect submission of
Gethsemane,—Glorify Thy name! The intermediate founda-
tion of both is a clause which on account of the 61a TodTo
demands a nearer contemplation.

It does not admit of question, after the evidence of all the
Evangelists, that by this hour we must understand the time which
had been so often declared to be not yet come, but which had
now arrived in its immediate preparatory tokens; the time, that
is, of His final specific suffering unto death, of His distinctive
atoning passion. Certainly, there lies in the expression itself
an allusion to the transitoriness of even this crisis, as mapavtixa
éxadpov (2 Cor. iv. 17) in comparison with eternity; but, on
the other hand, the same word describes the oppressive might
of the temporal present, of the viv, into which the Son of God
appearing as the Son of man in earthly life and earthly expe-

1 Griesbach, Knapp, Schott, Hahn, Schulz, Lachmann doso; and Schleier-
macher adopts this interpretation. .

* Lampe: Sed tamen ab alteraé quoque parte non caret difficultate, si ad-
mittitur interrogatio, quod tum Jesus videatur corrigere velle verba, quz in se
erant xquissima, queque argumentum precum Messize secundum prophetias
esse debebant.

JOHN XII. 27, 28. 87

rience had so profoundly sunk, that there remains for Him only
a cup which He must drink to the last drops, a baptism of all but
overwhelming violence from without ;* and not only so, but the
peculiar and unexampled intensity of this death-passion of the
Living One, of this sin-bearing of the Holy One, from the might
of which alone our suffering derives its virtue to insure our d0£a,
exhibits to us in this suffering a corresponding—xaf? irepBornv
eis UTrepBonyy aidviov Bapos OXixrews. This emphatic signifi-
cance of the word dpa of itself confutes the view which Baum.-
Crusius gives of the intermediate clause :—“ Here must airn 7)
apa mean something different, namely, the present time of His
life, and the meaning is, The circumstances of My whole lifetime
have led Me into a constant conflict with sufferings!” Oh no,
this meaning is quite discordant with this normal language of the
Spirit; and we nowhere find in Scripture that the entire life of
any man is termed an hour;” most assuredly this hour here is
the same in the second as in the first clause, and that distinction
disturbs the impressive emphasis of the connection. As certainly
as the viv terdpaxras holds its truth, even so the Lord may
justly say thereof —7 Oop eis THY pay TabTnv. But what means
the éva todro therewith? The expression of, emotion is pregnant
and hints out its meaning. Are we to understand, with Olshausen,
“in order to redeem mankind, and finish My work?” That
involves something not now expressed, hinted at only in the
much fruit of ver. 24; but the rodro must mean something nearer
and more obvious, if it were only because of its condensed and
pregnant utterance. Consequently, that also is too far-fetched,
which Liicke supplies :—the hour that the Son of man should
be glorified: and we agree with Kling’ in rejecting this, and
clinging to Bengel’s perfectly unexceptionable view— Propterea
venti in hanc horam, ut venirem in hanc horam, eamque exantlarem.
Thus only, according to our feeling, is justice done to this most
impressive utterance, in which the most vehement tapdcoecOat
is accompanied by the most tranquil self-possession, and which
has no other meaning than the obtw Se? yevéo Oar of Matt. xxvi. 54.

2 Compare our observations upon the cup and baptism in vol. iii.

* Although Klopstock’s well-known hymn terms this life only a brief
hour —in contrast with eternity.

® Stud. u. Krit. 1836, 3. 675.

88 THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN.

And the Berlenb. Bible is not far amiss—“ Would I be saved
out of this hour, I must first enter thoroughly into it.” Luthardt
too, He says now, “for this cause, that I might drink of this
cup to the dregs, and exhaust it, have I placed it to My lips.”
In this application, finally, are we to seek the depth of the
meaning, as Bengel intimates it by his exantlare. The ova
tooTo, that is, refers immediately to the preceding cdcov pe;
the thought which harmonises the great contradiction, which
unites in one the supplication for help and the resignation to
God’s will, and which perfectly responds to the 71 e’7rw; is no other
than this: —The entering into this hour is the being brought
out of it, the suffering is itself the deliverance! And thus the
tranquillised soul reposes in the prelude of victory which sounds
in the final clause, — Father, glorify only Thy name! Certainly,
there is in these words also the feeling which Bengel expresses
—quovis impendio mei, not as My horror mortis would with its
cacov pe, but as Thou wilt! Nevertheless, this glorification
is not of the Father Himself, which first fully comes out in
ch. xvii. 1, 4 (see, however, ver. 6); but of His name, of that
revelation of Himself in the Son which again is one with the
glorification of the Son of man, ver. 23. This the Son knoweth,
and thus He returns at the close of His words to the thought
with which they began.

The significance of this crisis is great, and is but dimly appre-
hended by those who see here only a parenthetical occurrence,
having its origin in a momentary emotion. The three voices
from heaven, by which the Father spake over the Son, indicate
to us the right way to regard it. At the beginning, in the
middle, and at the end of the Messiah’s course respectively,
there was given to Jesus such a high and most distinctive attes-
tation; and all three times in relation to the assumption on the
part of the self-sacrificing Son of His destiny of death. “ The
third time had Jesus now solemnly announced His destiny of
death; as first in the presence of the Baptist, the second time
before the Lawgiver and the Prophet of the Old Testament, so
now in the holy place of sacrifice itself, in the tabernacle of

JOHN XII. 27, 28. 89

God. And the third time does the voice like thunder resound,
by which the Father accredits the Son and justifies His work.”
(Ebrard.) Moreover, the progression in publicity which is evi-
dent in these three occasions must be distinctly noted; the
perfect contrast between this voice as uttered, before all the
people in the temple, and the first still revelation between
John and Jesus alone. :
We shall not involve ourselves with the question, which has
been very foolishly dealt with by too many, as to whether the
later and dubious doctrine of the Jews concerning the Bath Kol,
audible since the period of the second temple, is to be introduced
here. This notion of the Rabbins had by no means become an
article of popular faith, for the people on the present occasion
think of nothing of the kind. We must not here, any more
than at the Baptism and Transfiguration (let not these parallels
be overlooked !), think of any mere omen-like "iP or Bpovrn, the
signification of which in the Spirit (the daughter of this voice)
Jesus might first have uttered or heard. ‘The assumption of an
immediate voice from heaven does not rest (as de Wette says,
Stud. u. Knit. 1834. 4. 939) upon an “ indistinctness of
thought ;” but upon the plain and certain record of St John,
whose words allow no other supposition than that it was an
actual voice, uttering the cited words. We may admit the cir-
cumstance, related with equal plainness, that a portion of the
people nevertheless heard only thunder, without by any means
admitting “that the people’s sense of hearing declares it to
have been no other than a sound like thunder.” This was, in-
deed, the sense of the most unsusceptible of the peopke; but
others, though de Wette rejects them, heard what they term an
actual XeAddyKev, ascribed by them to an angel. That St John
heard and understood the words of the dary is to be gathered
from his plain statement, which records them with the same
historical simplicity as all the rest; and when he says that only
the people misunderstood the sound, it is implied that all the
disciples, at least, understood them equally.with himself.t “The

1 Klee: ‘‘ The disciples doubtless understg6d: otherwise St John would
not have failed to remark that they did not hear or apprehend the words.
It is the people whom he exhibits as entirely or partially mistaking the
sound.”

90 THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN.

Evangelist declares it to have been no more than a supposition
of the people, that thunder had been heard”—as Kling very
properly says. The loud and awful voice was, indeed, “ like
thunder ;” but it was at the same time an articulately speaking
voice. Now such an objective mystery as this, a sound from
heaven, from the world of spirit, demands most assuredly a
specific susceptibility on the part of earthly man, if it is to be
rightly perceived and apprehended by him:? hence the half-
hearing of the people then, just as in the present day, when,
amid the plainest and most articulate preaching of the glorifica-
tion of Jesus in the word and power of the Holy Ghost—an
dydos éotas Kal dxovcas often hears nothing but a thundering,
amere predication. For, as Hamann says, “ before men will
see (hear) and believe in God, they will resort to all kinds of
imaginations of thunder and angels.” A mere literal thunder,
however, as the voice of the Father over the Son, which He
must then interpret as in the case of the Bath Kol of the Jews,
is altogether derogatory to His honour: he who feels not this is
beyond the reach of ar cument.

The words themselves, as they give an assuring answer, not,
however, with a simple dofdcw ticks with cat esdhuee as ths
foundation of that, have been for the most part either wholly
misunderstood or interpreted in a very narrow way. ‘That view
of them which, under various modifications, refers the xai
édo£aca to the present crisis, has a strong appearance of pro-
fundity. Bengel: “ By the word I have glorified, the entrance
of Christ upon that hour is accepted ; by the word J will glorify,
there is promised the glorification of the Father’s name through
the glorification of Christ by His passion. To the twofold
speech of Jesus, the twofold reply of the Father corresponds.”
So von Gerlach, with a somewhat different application: “ The
Father had already glorified His name internally, through the
perfect obedience of the Son, who had surrendered Himself up
in perfect sacrifice through His whole life, and now once more
most fully ; and He would glorify it again when this offering of
the Son should be externally perfected, and He Himself, through

1“ The necessity of a fit disposition of the organ, however, does not by -
any means remove an objective matter into the domain of the internal.”

JOHN XII. 30. 91

4

His resurrection and ascension, should be acknowledged before
all the world.” And Brandt goes still further: assuming that
the name was already glorified in the present victory of the
wrestling spirit of Jesus, and that “ the True and Faithful One
now assured Him that in His future similar, but more sharp
and continuing agony, He should once more most gloriously
conquer.’ Whatever semblance of right all this may have, we
regard it as too petty an interpretation of the Father’s voice,
which now (as on the two former occasions) must embrace and
express the whole eternal relation, entering into time and pass-
ing beyond it, of the Father to the Son; and every immediate
reference to this crisis itself must be too narrow, for the xat
éd0faca Kai S0&déc has a tone which comprehends all the Past
and the Future. Thus it is no remembrancer of this or that
glorification which had already taken place; for (as B.-Crusius
rightly says) “ the éd0£aca and dofdcw are not to be referred
to any single circumstance past or future, but to the whole pro-
cess of the great events.” Nor can we understand, with Lange,
“in the New Covenant as in the Old;” or, as Schleiermacher
better puts it, the contrast between all the past of Divine mani-
festation and the kingdom which should begin with the death of
Christ. This reduplicated word, used emphatically on account
of the dd£acov to which it responds, is fundamentally one with
the former voices which testified generally — Thou art My Son !*
Thou art My Son, in whom I have ever, since Thou wert, glori-
fied My name; consequently, therefore, as certainly will I
glorify it in Thee through Thy now beginning passion. Thus,
it is the distinction between the past and the future which is
here the great turning-point ; the 7rd)wv also is no mere continu-
ous or repeating “jy, but a simple corroboration; since the true
and complete glorification, the renewal and increase, rather the
consummation of the former glorification, is still in reversion,
as Jesus has said.

Ver. 30. In this simple word of our Lord, which may be read

1 But the Thou of this address is the Son of man, though as the expected,
secretly present angel of the covenant, mediating the revelation of every
age. Augustin goes too far back when he adds to the 20¢ae0—antequam
facerem mundum, taken from ch. xvii. 5, to which this belongs. Comp.
rather Ps. xxii. 10, 11.

99 FOR YOUR SAKES,

too lightly, there are two things which must be carefully ob-
served. In the first place, the “ not” is not an unconditional
negation, but only relatively so—not alone, or not so much. For
it is not His design to deny that the voice had a purpose also
for Himself, invigorating Him and leading Him onward to the
great hour; He does not really contradict (though this has been
affinticd) the people’s ai7@ Aedadnker, for this would involve
an application quite inconsistent with His sacred humility, and
which we leave such as Strauss to find in it,— But take care not
to think that I find necessary for My own person any such
assurance and consolation! Had He not prayed? And does
not the confirming answer rejoice the Petitioner, even though
His perfect assurance from beginning to end lay in the Amen
of His own prayer? But it is the publicity and solemnity of
this last voice from heaven which the Lord now makes so pro-
minent and urges upon their attention. He refutes their words
about the thunder by the repeated dwvy: but He does not go
on to correct their error as to whether an angel, or the Father
whom He addressed, had spoken; for that would have been a
criticism of their words unseemly at such a crisis, the influence
~of which should still work on. It is this influence alone which
He would carry on and guide. Although the people had not
heard and understood it, He nevertheless assures them—and
this is the second point—that it came for their sake! His &’
jpas does not refer merely to the more susceptible among them,
the commencing disciples, but He makes all “in a certain sense
responsible for their understanding, because they might have
been able to understand.” (v. Gerlach.) This saying may be
extended to all the signs and attestations of Jesus which had
taken place ; all for our sakes, that we might hear and believe!
But we must carefully apprehend the relative bearings of our
Lord’s manner of speaking here, as it is condescendingly adapted °
to the children of men. Essentially and supremely, all things
are and take place for the Father's sake (Heb. ii. 10; Rom. xi.
36), for the glorification of His name—the redemption as well
as the creation of the world. Thus the Son had just before
spoken, for thus only it became Him to speak. Nevertheless,
He did not the less on that account speak also of His own glori-
fication, yea, He began with that ; for all must honour the Son

JOHN XII. 31. 93

even as they honour the Father, the honour of God consists
conclusively in this, that the Father is honoured in the Son
(ch. v. 23, xi. 4, xiv. 13). The passage of ch. xvii. is finally
condensed into that one single petition, And now glorify Thou
—Me! Therefore we rightly supplement the answering voice
thus—édcéaca Kai d0fdcw pou To dvowa; yet it is not without
significance that these last words are wanting, for the answer
comprehensively holds good also of ver. 23, and the absolute
do€afew signifies—Me in Thee and Thee in Me! This is that
perfect intercommunion of working and love, by which the Son
will glorify the Father and the Father the Son. But, once
more, this d0&a is revealed and perfected in the blessedness of
the redeemed, on whom the Father confers the honour (tTiyoe,
ver. 26), of being capable eternally to honour Him in the Son
with body, soul, and spirit. Thus, as Jesus previously thought,
in His dsa todro, of the immediate necessity of His redeeming
passion (this hour), as the way of transition to eternal glory, and
rested serenely in this; so now the observation of the unin-
telligent people upon the voice brings before Him the third
fundamental thought, to which He in perfect self-devotion con-
descended, or, as we may say with equal propriety, in pure and
most elevated contemplation raised Himself. Regarding now a
world of sinners all was one é¢ tyuads. And to this, too, the
salvation of the world, is subordinated His &/ éué, to be found
again ; even as the c@adv we was merged in the honour of the
Father. By all this we may clearly comprehend how the deep
internal current of our Lord’s thought made it necessary that
He should now go on to speak of that redemption of the world
which His sufferings and self-renunciation should effect.

Ver. 31. But in connection with this comes forward, as na-
turally as necessarily, the thought of the power of Satan, the
false god and anti-god, which is to be abolished. Our dogmatic
theology has much work to do, before full justice will be done
to all the aspects and relations of the mystery of the Cross, as
they appear interspersed through Scripture; before they are
all gathered into one unity, without the undue preponderance of
any,—the revelation of love, the vindication of right, the recon-
ciliation between the world and God, the mortification of sin in
the flesh, the abolition of death, the breaking down of Satan’s

94 THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD JUDGED.

power. This last aspect of it was more fundamentally viewed
and exhibited in the ancient teaching of the church than in
modern times; and we may refer in illustration to Oetinger’s
remark on Luther’s Catechism: “Thus the simple notion of
‘Redemption is the swallowing up all that in victory which is
contrary to man, and caused by Satan.”* Compare Heb. ii. 14;
Col. i. 13, ii. 14, 15, etc., etc.

The viv is the same immediately impending, already com-
mencing now as in ver. 27. The world is not, indeed, to be
damningly judged, but redeemed and saved: this very redemp-
tion, however, is itself a judgment. They miss altogether the
deep meaning of this word in this place, who arbitrarily make
kpicws without any qualification mean—setting free, salvation,
justification. Thus Augustin understood it of the separation of
those who were delivered from the devil; Chrysostom substi-
tuted an éxduxnoeras 0 Kocpos atras ; and Cyril, dmandarrecOar
Tis TOD SiaBorov TAcoveEtas. (See in Klee.) Grotius resorted
to an unsound philology—x«pivew seepe apud Hebreos est in
libertatem vindicare. Id quim faciebant DMBIY. No! ch.
xvi. 11 must be taken in connection with the present declara-
tion, and consequently the ungodly world is in a certain sense
judged in its prince, even while it is saved. Thus we cannot
solve it by that other interpretation, which is resorted to by most
practical expositors ; as by Bengel—“ «dcpov is the genitive of
the object ; the judgment concerning the world, is as to who is
hereafter to be the rightful possessor of the world.’ Assuredly,
there is such a process of decision as to who should possess the
world, and the judgment becomes for the world an emancipat-
ing judgment of grace; yet no otherwise than because the
world, as the world and ungodly, is subjected to judgment with
Satan; inasmuch, that is, as its sin, that which Satan has in it, is
judicially abolished and thrown back to Satan whence it came.’

1 In the Worterbuch s. v. Auskaufen, S. 53. Similarly S. 177 s. v.
Erlosung, “tin the great word Redemption what a number of thoughts
come together! Christ has redeemed us from future condemnation and
wrath, from the law, from our vain conversation, from death and from the
devil.”

2 Which, however, is not the same with Hilgenfeld’s interpolated thought
—Now is the world’s judgment, and not hereafter only.

JOHN XII. 31. | 95

Prince of this world is an appellation which now first comes
forward, but with which we shall hereafter become more fami-
liar : Boe sendis to the Rabbinical peiyn 1’, for the form of
our Lord’s doctrine lays hold of every torte of truth which
had been developed rightly from the Old Testament. The Lord
further speaks of the devil without any direct external induce-
ment, from His own spontaneous impulse: and His saying is
uttered not simply before the disciples and the people, but before
the Greeks, who, as we found before, were still His hearers, and
would be the specific representatives of that which xocpos to
Jewish ears would signify. The glance over the world of heathen-
ism is continued in the zravtas of the following verse. It has
been rightly observed that never had the prince of this world
swayed a more unrestricted and uninterrupted dominion upon
the earth, than was exhibited in Heathenism and Judaism at
the time when Christ came. But this is the great viv, when and
from which time forwards, he should be cast out! There is a
special emphasis in the é&w as added to ékBrAnOjcetarc—but from
what? Theophylact held fast the superficial meaning which a
figurative acceptation gives—the casting out from the place of
judgment of one who is cast in the suit.’ In the opposite ex-
treme, something quite inappropriate to our passage (see the
exposition in Lu. x. 18) has been. found in it by those whom the
reading xdtw instead of €& has misled, and who understand the
casting down from heaven. (Crusius; out of the zravyjryupis
ayyéxov [Heb. xii. 22, 23].) Better than this would be the
simple out of the world, the occupant of which he had hitherto
been ; out of it as “his territory” (which Luthardt sanctions) :
—for this is strictly true. Yet since, as the Lord has just said,
the world itself in a certain sense is also “ judged,” that modifi-
cation of the thought is the only perfectly appropriate one,
which Grotius (after Euthymius and others) refers to—é&w ex
voce dpyev interpretandum, é«.tis dpyis.” Of course, it is
self-evident that this future, as in the entire work of redemption,
is already fulfilled only jure et potentia ; it is to be fulfilled facto

1 “ Removed from the Judge’s presence” —as Hofmann (Schriftbeweis
i. 396) weakens it.

2 Nor can we understand why Luthardt should declare this to be ‘‘arti-
ficial,” since “‘ territory” here can be no other than territory of dominion.

96 I WILL DRAW ALL MEN UNTO ME.

et actu gradually, and by a very long progression. This casting
out of him who is cast out goes on from age to age down to the
final victory.

Ver. 32. The éyo of our Lord takes the place of the ejected
dpyev; but His new é£ovcla maons capkos (ch. xvii. 2), is no
other than an attractive power exercised upon all whom the
usurper can now no longer keep back, if they refuse him, and
follow the Lord’s drawing. That all men might be drawn to-
wards Him, is the fruit and consequence of the death of Jesus, as
was already declared in ch. x. 15, 16, of that same death which
has been the subject of discourse since ver. 23. It is most cer-
tain, consequently, that the lifting up here, as in ch. ni. 14, and
ch. viii. 28, has as direct reference to the dying itself, as to the
glorification and universal exhibition attendant upon that dying;
and it plainly alludes, as we saw upon those passages, to the
cross. But it is doing injustice to the Evangelist, to regard his
interpretation in ver. 33 as being restricted to the crucifixion
alone, especially to the mere externality of the exaltation upon
the cross. (Baum.-Crusius: “ The Evangelist deems the second
signification the only one.”) For this enuaivwv' which he uses,
when compared with ch. xxi. 18, 19, Rev. i. 1, does not mean
a plain declaration (as when employed by St Luke in Acts xxv.
27, and xi. 28), but a hinted intimation; and hence the London
Heb. New Test., which we so often quote, well renders it by
a7. Nor can we doubt, when we enter as we ought into the
profound meaning of St J had s words, that in this tol@ Oavate
(which, indeed, in ch. xviii. 32 does refer only to the kind of
death) he asic comprehensively to express all that our Lord
had said concerning the significance, the power, and the fruit of
His death.? For the being lifted up from the earth indicates, as

1 Concerning which Baum.-Crusius arbitrarily decides that ‘‘it has the
force here neither of an obscure, nor of an incidental, allusion.”

2 Lampe: Phrasis roi# éavars non nude significat quo genere mortis, sed
in sensu latiori qualitatem mortis, etiam internam involvit, adeoque ad
fructus etiam hujus mortis respicit. Miinchmeyer, on the contrary, insists
that the éxodvjexey permits us to think only of the manner of death—the
significance, power, and fruit of that death being altogether out of the ques-
tion here! I envy not such a perverse and wilful spirit of ate:
Even the ancient Nonnus inserted — zol/w Cuapxts rotmu,

JOHN XII. 32. O7

the Lord here uses it, more plainly than the mere inywOjvae and
inywonre which had been used before, an emancipating and glo-
rifying power in His death :—the falling into the earth of the
grain of wheat is now marvellously at the same time an exalta-
tion above the earth, and this is symbolically represented by the
cross. The tree of the curse and of death planted in the earth
remains not withered and dry, but grows up towards heaven as
the tree of life and blessing.

The reading wdvra, which, as followed by the Vulg., Augustin
so strangely expounds, is defended now by no one. As in ch.
xill. 3 wdvta alone could be read, so here it must be wayvras.
They all are as personal as the prince of this world; they are his
subjects now set free, especially the Greeks and heathens :—and
thus does the Lord give the late answer for ver. 21. He who
being crucified, and by the cross lifted up to heaven, exhibits
Himself by His word and Spirit to the souls of men as crucified
for them, in all the love of redemption, draws them to Himself
by the might of His love: a truth which has in modern times
assumed a classical form to all the friends of Missions in the
well-known sermon of James of Birmingham on the Attraction
of the cross,’ I will draw them unto Me: and this means ulti-
mately, away from the earth into heavenly places (Nonnus:
és ovpavov evptv) ; yet only through the cross, arfd therefore first
of all to Me on the cross.’ This is in the sense of “ where I am”
(ver. 26). That before the glorification of Christ (to the world
and the individual heart) the Father pedagogically and prepa-
ratorily draws to the Son, while afterwards the Son Himself
draws immediately, is a distinction of great moment, as we have
observed upon ch. vi. 44. Finally, let it be clearly apprehended
that the promised drawing of all men does not insure to all men
that they must and will come; for the drawing is no enforcement,
as chap. vi. made clear. Schleiermacher would, indeed, under-
stand the word without any restriction, and founds upon it the
hope that the Lord will actually yet redeem all men, and bring
the entire human race to salvation. Even Olshausen is disposed
to concede that the “draw to Myself” might seem to allow no
room for the opposing energy of man, and thus give plausibility

1 Translated into German at Niirnberg, 1820. ’
2 Driiseke: ‘‘ The church is built up around the Cross.”
VOL. VI. G

98 WHO IS THIS SON OF MAN?

to the doctrine of universal restoration. But let the emphasis
be laid upon the first word “draw to Myself,’ and all is plain.
Does not the Lord actually draw all men? Does not the abso-
lute predestination theory contradict itself necessarily in ‘all
practical preaching, which is sent unto all? Does not Augustin
himself say—Si non traheris, roga ut traharis— ?

That the people did certainly understand the Lord’s words of
dying, is made plain by His subsequent “yet a little while.”
They had heard out of the daw, that is, here out of Scripture
generally, something concerning the Messiah’s eternal continu-
ance; and, rightly interpreted, their supposition was Correct.
But they did not hear it aright; and as they now (let it be
noted !) take it for granted that Christ is speaking of Himself
as the Messiah, they find it hard to reconcile His being taken
away and lifted up with this abiding. They tell Him this, not
apparently with any malicious motive, but as a confident appeal
to Him springing from eagerness to know. For pevery in popu-
lar use equivalent to not dying, comp. chap. xxi., xxii., xxii.
It has been needlessly sought to find partici paohasis of
Scripture to which the people might refer. Surenhusen sup-
posed that Ps. cx. 4 must be joined with Dan. 1. 44, vii. 13, 14;
the eternal priesthood with the eternal kingdom. But there
needs not at tHe outset any particular expressions to establish
the universal teaching of Scripture according to the Jewish
notion,—that the Messiah would set up a permanent earthly
kingdom, and consequently (by a very natural inference) remain
ever upon earth. Yet the saying “Son of man” does seem to
refer more directly to Daniel; and that even the people assume
Christ and Son of man to be synonymous, is very important for
the establishment of the meaning of the latter phrase as used by
Jesus. He had not indeed now said, according to St John, If
the Son of man be lifted up; but ver. 23 had set out with this
expression, and the people had been by Himself accustomed to
understand this as a designation of His own person. They are
reminded, consequently, of the words of ver. 23; yet this is not
all that we are to assume, as Luthardt thinks, who denies all

1 For the confusion of the Rabbins upon the question, to their blindness

incapable of solution, Whether the Messiah should die ? compare Eisenmen-
ger Th. ii. Kap. 15, especially trom 8. 812 onwards.

JOHN XII. 35, 36. 99

reference to Dan. vu. For how should that be? This great
central prediction was assuredly known mediately to the people,
even as the Lord’s discourse had pointed to it: only on this
supposition could they have understood ver. 23 of the Messiah.
They, therefore, conclusively ask,—Or dost Thou speak in this
def tywOjvae (not a literal quotation of His words, and remark-
ably coinciding with chap. iii. 14) of a Son of man who is not
the Christ? Thus we have not, however, hitherto understood
Thee (and the Scripture) :—resolve us this mystery !

Vers. 35, 36. He does not resolve it to them, nor can He
until the great sequel brings its great solution; therefore His
answer is not properly speaking an answer, but a reference to
the present duty of faith—Only use My light, and all things
will soon be clear to you!* He does not say expressly, either
that their opinion concerning the eternal abiding of the Messiah
was false, or that it was true: for it is both, according as it is
understood. He only confirms the assurance that He Himself
will soon go away. His words refer to, and blend, the sayings ~
of chap. vil. 33 and chap. vill. 12 ; while they are, to the people,
the complement of what He had said in chap. ix. 4, 5. He
Himself worketh unweariedly as the Light, so long as He is in
the world; but they also, on their part, should do the same :—
Your work is to use the light, by a trusting and obedient walking
in the way which that light marks out. It is as certain that
pe? tuov is a gloss taken from chap. xiii. 33, as it is that év
vuiv must here be translated first of all—among you: comp. év
avrots, chap. xv. 24, with éumpooGev aitév here, chap. xii. 37. It
is, however, no other than a condescending, though deeply sig-
nificant, manner of speaking which attributes to them a certain
having of the light which was only externally offered to them.
In this gracious admission there lies, further, the solemn
truth, that for Israel the prophetic office of Christ must pave
the way for the influence of His priestly office. Whosoever
altogether failed to hear Him, as He taught and testified, to him
no new light of life would break forth from the redeeming death ;
but that which was to the Gentiles a gospel, became to the pre-
viously unbelieving Jews, as the result on the mass bore witness,

*“* He demands from them deeds, disputings served no purpose.”
(Braune.)

100 WALK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT.

no other than—the loss of light, the entire lapse into darkness
(Rom. xi. 15). The same Paul who was sent among the Gentiles
with the word of the Cross, to open their eyes, that they should
turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God, had concerning Jerusalem already received the command,
Make haste and get thee quickly out: for they will not receive
thy testimony concerning Me, as they did not receive Mine con-
cerning Myself. (Acts xxvi. 18, xxii. 18.) A similar result
follows wherever a preparatory word of the Lord shines for a
while, in order to make and make manifest the distinction between
faith and unbelief ; and this gives a general application to this
much-used warning of our Lord. For the darkness into which
the rejected light turns, compare the quite analogous expression
in Jer. xiii. 16; and for the walking in the light which goes
before (at that time, the light of Scripture and the law), the
apocryphal passage, Baruch iv. 1, 2. He who walks in dark-
ness, or would foolishly walk in it, cannot do so, for he seeth not
and therefore knoweth not where he goeth: he runneth blindly
into the ruin which yawns before his sin. Thus did the Jewish
people fall into judgment through their continuous rebellion
against God and man; and so is it generally with every man
who has neglected the day of his light.

With the saying of ver. 36, Luther took his farewell as trans-
lator of Scripture: he placed it at the conclusion of the warning
which he appended to the edition of the New Testament of 1545.
The believing in the light is the preliminary foundation for the
walking ; but that we become children of light is the result of the
faith which walketh and approveth itself in obedience. Sons or
_ children of light is not a mere Hebraism; this would be just
equivalent to the previous having, which indicated only a certain
relation to the light: but a new yeved was to be born of the

light.

JOIN XII. 44-50. 101

THE EVANGELISTS SUMMARY OF THE PUBLIC TESTIMONY OF
JESUS.

(Ch. xii. 44-50.)

An orthodox harmeny of the first three Evangelists, in com-
bination with the fourth, must show, as we said before, that
aTehOav éxpvBn does not imply that our Lord from this time
forth uttered no further words in public, and was no more seen
by the people. The true parallels are Matt. xxi. 17; Lu. xxi.
37. But it appears to us incredible, taking into account the plan
of St John’swhole Gospel, andhis own final reflections previously,
that the Lord should immediately afterwards, and in connection
with His concealment, utter aloud the words which follow from
ver. 44 to ver. 50. For, from ver. 37 onwards, the Evangelist
comes forward with his epilogue and concluding observations,
because the Lord had retired ; and these concluding observations
plainly extend in one connection to the end of the chapter. If
they are supposed to end with ver. 43, it even then must appear
altogether contrary to historical narrative generally, and to St
John’s in particular, to introduce after such a conclusion, and
without any further introductory statement, an actual discourse
of our Lord. But the final reflection upon the self-condemned
unbelief of the Jews, the fruitlessness of the labours of Jesus on
the whole, embraces obviously all that follows : it is divided into
two parts, speaking first of the many and great miracles,' of which
St John (the others chs. ii. 23, vii. 31, x. 32, xx. 30, being pre-
supposed) had only adduced some of the greatest, and then of
the testimony of His words by those miracles confirmed, they
being in themselves the main matter of this spiritual Gospel, as
of the Gospel generally. Or, we may say, first of the whole
manifestation of His person as such, in which the arm of the Lord
was revealed, yea, in which the glory of God was to be seen as
certainly as it had been seen by Isaiah (chs. ii. 11, and x. 40,
being combined) ; then, of the preaching, axoy or MY%2Y which

1 For that in rocwira a tanta must be added to the tot (comp. Matt. viii. 10;
Lu. vii. 9), is denied by Luthardt witnout any reason.

102 THE EVANGELIST’S SUMMARY.

is the distinctive test and spring of faith, and the right disposi-
tion for which is exhibited in the prophetic quotation of ver. 38.
For to believe in oneta without the word is a mere negation,
since it is the word accompanying, or rather by them accom-
panied, which elevates them into signs and witnesses which have
ameaning. The Jews could not believe, because they would not
from the beginning and still would not (Theophylact ; 7d od«
novvavTo avTt Tod ov« HOEXov) ; and that is the predicted judicial
hardening, in the fulfilment of which unbelief itself, far from
leading us astray, becomes only a new argument of faith. We
have already said, upon Matt. xiii. 14, 15, all that is necessary
upon the quotation from Isaiah." Of the unbelieving there are,
however, according to the little understood meaning of St John,
two classes; for he regards the altogether unsusceptible and har-
dened as the great mass, and then adds to them in ver. 42 those
who confess not in spite.of their ér/crevoav. For he knows no
other genuine and perfect faith than that which confesses.? The
6uos before pévtot we do not regard, with almost all, as merely
adversative, but would translate it, semilarly ;—an interchange
with 6ués, o0l@s which philologists*® find elsewhere, and which
occurs certainly 1 Cor. xiv. 7 in the New Testament, and probably
Gal. iii. 15.4 Miinchmeyer regards this as intolerable—they
believed not, stmilarly, many also believed—but he does not un-
derstand my meaning, that St John reckons this believing and
not confessing as being likewise unbelief, a view which alone
suits the whole connection. There may often be much more of
that enforced and commencing 7uorevew than we suppose (ch.
vii. 48) ; but it avails not before God until it reveals itself in con-

1 Richter’s Hausbibel has a good practical remark upon the important
ver. 41, which the wirod refers to Jesus (aire ver. 42): “ver. 40 can be
understood only when we fix our regard upon the majesty of Christ, the
visible image of the invisible God. It is only when we thus see Christ in
the spirit that we see the ground of faith and unbelief. In contrast with
this light the darkness appears exceeding dark, and faith alone can rightly
condemn unbelief—we would interline here, These things saith John also
after Esaias, who seeth His glory and (in this Gospel) speaketh of Him.

2 Nicodemus and Joseph, who both confessed Him during and after His
judgment, and others like them, are not here included.

3 Wahl cites Scheefer ad Greg. Cor. p. 631.

* Winer’s construction of both passages, § 65. 4, does not appear con-
vincing. . ar

JOHN XII. 44-50. 103

fession. In ver. 43 the Evangelist does not simply coincide with
the Lord’s first word, ch. iii. 19, but his remark is an almost
literal citation from ch. v. 44 (according to which, consequently,
we must explain the genitives dv@pémwv and Geod) ; and is thus
a testimony in transition that it is his purpose now to refer back
summarily to all the previous discourses of Jesus.

Thus alone do we understand the following éxpa&e Kat eézrev.
But though we concede this to the later expositors, it should not
therefore be alleged against us that our arguments elsewhere,
against such an introduction of the Evangelist’s own hand, have
no force. This case is very different from that of ch. 11.16. In
that chapter everything testifies for the Lord’s immediate utter-
ance of the words; but here St John gives us indubitable tokens
that he himself is recapitulating. The older expositors, who
down to the time of Michaelis and Morus lost sight of this, show
us by this example how little their laborious exegesis penetrated
tle profound and real connection. Lampe makes the Lord utter
vers. 44-50 in ipso discessu, quasi protestatione solenni facta ;
Bengel thinks the same, and says that the éxpv@7 was anticipated
by St John as appropriate to érs puxpov xpovov, ver. 35. But
this seems to us a forced supposition, after tadra éAddnoev and
aTveOov, and such a resumption of His discourse, after a long
intermediate reflection of the Evangelist’s, is quite untenable.
Hess thinks the discourse was uttered “ soon afterwards, probably
-on the Thursday,” while Ebrard (here at one with Strauss)
seems confident that the Lord had so spoken on an earlier occa-
sion; but the one, as well as the other, is glaringly out of har-
mony with the whole cast of the record as given by St John.
Kling defends the old hypothesis, and so does Luthardt, most
unconditionally. We agree, indeed, with Kling especially,
that ver. 36 does not imply the future perfect silence of Jesus ;
but he is obliged to note it as singular that St John does not
give after his manner the circumstances and occasion of this
xpatew in ver. 44. Singular enough, most assuredly! Besides
this, how strange that this supposed discourse of Jesus should,
to an extent of which there is no previous example, consist of
repetitions alone, and, moreover, of only such words as are
already found in St John’s Gospel. Did the Lord ever recapi-
tulate in this style, uttering connectedly so long a discourse with-

104 THE EVANGELIST’S SUMMARY.

out any new thoughts and distinctive sayings? Much as we
contend against others for repetitions in His discourses on other
occasions, here we most decidedly deny it. But, conversely,
here where for once St John recapitulates, seeming (though only
seeming) to put his words into the Lord’s lips, what an instruc-
tive example he gives us, not venturing to add (single turns of
expression not reckoned) anything of his own. Yea, verily, all
this the Lord had said, each saying in its season; but St John
unites them all retrospectively tegether. And in this we agree
with J. D. Michaelis, Morus, Kuinoel, Olshausen, Tholuck,
Liicke, Meyer, B.-Crusius, Fikenscher, v. Gerlach, and Richter."
Lange, too, thinks rightly that the Evangelist here embraces
the discourses of our Lord im significant sayings, according te
his living remembrance; and Alford agrees with the later ex-
positors. ‘The aorists éxpafe xal eizrev are not, however, mere
pluperfects. That would be very harsh:—Thus had He ever
cried and testified that He demanded only faith in (their) God
in His person; thus had He never ceased His endeavour to con-
vince their minds and even their faith. But their signification is
that of wont, that of a customary and abiding course of repeated
action, parallel with ®poroyour and yydmnoev before, as Liicke
rightly says. B.-Crusius well says, “ He continuqusly thus
uttered His loud declaration”—we may interline again, As the
reader of this Gospel will remember. Briickner further re-
marks, with critical truth, “by the 6é, the loud declarations
of Jesus, the substance of which were now to be given, are

? This last adds: ‘‘ It is not impossible that Christ should have delivered
this compendium of His last (last?) discourses, now at His final (final ?)
departure from the temple—as a concluding protest.” It may not be im-
possible, but it seems in the highest degree improbable, to us, at least,
inconceivable, and of itself unsanctioned by any hint in St John. Luthardt
has advanced nothing new or convincing against our reasons, for the ‘* deep
significance of the unbelief of the Jews” cannot be regarded as the over-
looked new element of this direct discourse of Jesus ;—He had often already
spoken on that point. It is possible, of course, that Jesus might have now
before His disciples given a final declaration as to the consequences of the
people’s unbelief. As to this, we must, with Besser’s Polemik, leave every
man to his own feeling. But we most confidently protest against the idea
of our Lord’s recapitulation, Braune, it may be added, is constrained to
decide for an apostrophe of Jesus in the hearing of His disciples.

JOHN XII. 44-50. 105

placed in opposition to the unconfessing faith of the dpyovtes,
ver. 42, 43’—a remark which of itself appears to us to be
decisive.

But we'cannot admit that these are “only isolated sentences
without any strict internal connection.’ St John has a plain
connection of his own; even as every preacher might now con-
dense for himself extracts into an important whole, and perhaps
should do so sometimes instead of his own incessant preaching
and expounding. ‘The-comprehensive ground-thought is—The
guilt of unbelief rests solely with Israel. Thus it is the same
which the Lord Himself afterwards says in ch. xv. 22, or even
in Matt. xxiii. 37. The ground and cause of this is placed first,
vers. 44-46: He that believeth in Me doth no more than be-
‘ieve in the Father that sent Me, for he that seeth Me seeth
Him—Thus am I come as light! (Correlative to life, ver. 50,
according to the prologue; although this light hath blinded
their eyes!) Then, in vers. 47, 48, the consequence of their self-
condemnation is deduced from this; and in vers. 49, 50, this
is again carried back to the previously stated ground, and it
remains—lI have spoken and speak what the Father hath given
Me for the everlasting life of all who-believe.

After this, there remains but little to be said upon the indivi-
dual sayings, save to refer to the citations; though much is to
be learned from the living and free manner in which previous
sayings are here reproduced and combined in a new concert
of their fundamental thoughts. The greater is the measure of
the Spirit in the disciples of Jesus,—of that Spirit, namely, who
does not teach the Teacher (as an Ishmaelite pseudo-Paraclete
overpowering the Christ), but takes of His fulness,—the greater
will be the freedom from the Jetter in the wcceptation and repro-
duction ef His words. Hence the fourth Evangelist as “ initia-
tissmus mente Christi’’ is somewhat otherwise “ tenacissimus
verborum” than the three preceding; hence in the ancient
church, ‘and in all ages, the unliteral citation which we find in
the writings and words of some saints. But this has its rigor-
ous limitation ; and is to be carefully fenced against perversion
by the strictest literality in other cases, which expressly require
it. Thus St John gives us here, just at the point between the
public and the confidential discourses of Jesus, the explanation

106 THE EVANGELIST’S SUMMARY.

of the manner in which he has apprehended and narrated His
discourses. We find all that he here includes under the éxpaée
kal eizrev, more or less literally in former discourses ; but where
the unliteralness almost passes over into a new construction of
thought and language—no more than this can be said—we
may assume that the Lord had actually so spoken, although His
words had not been previously recorded.

Ver. 44. Compare ch. v. 24-38, mictevew TO Téeprbavts
being here elevated into muotevew els tov Tréuapavta; for the
fundamental thought we may add ch. vu. 16, viii. 42. Not on
Me—this first denies the so-called mere human personality of
Christ, the self separated or distinguished from God in any
sense; and then it intimates, further, that faith assuredly
comes or passes on through Him to God, through the Son to
the Father, as the apostolical doctrine teaches us, e.g., 1 Pet. 1.
21; Heb. vii. 25.

Ver. 45. In the literal expression this comes afterwards, ch.
xiv. 9; but in this report of public words @ewpay is somewhat
more general than the strict éwpaxws of that passage, and in
the sense of ch. vi. 40 is parallel with wuctedwv. In the former
discourses, ch. vii. 19 most closely corresponds with a combina-
tion of ch. x. 30, 838. But the words are not to be rationalist-
ically qualified away, with Hess in his paraphrase: “ he whe
more closely contemplates Me, will learn in Me to acknowledge
the Father.’ Rather should it be understood in the sense of
the previous words of St John, that Isaiah in the revelation of
Jehovah saw the glory of Christ.

Ver. 46. This connects itself immediately with ver. 35 of this
same chapter, and is a new argument—for assuredly the Lord
did not repeat the very same words in the same sense so soon.
But it still more closely corresponds with ch. vii. 12 and ix. 5,
the éjAv@a being taken from ch. iii. 19. The only peculiarity
in the construction is pedyy, which simply gives expression to the
thought which was self-understood in all the former utterances
of the same truth, that before and independently of our faith in
Him we are all naturally in darkness.

Ver. 47. See ch. iii. 17, v. 45, viii. 15. The new construction
of the expression seems here more considerable, but it is only
through the combination of various sayings fur this place. The

JOHN XII. 48, 49. 107

hearing and nevertheless not believing corresponds precisely to
the prophecy of ver. 40; comp. Matt. xiii. 13, Brézovtes ov
Brérrovat Kal akovovTes ovK axovovow. The old misapprehen-
sion, that there is here a promise of od xpiverOas adda owlerat
for all who truly hear, before the condemnation of the aéereiy,
ver. 48, follows, was occasioned by the false omission of the su.
Equally false, even with pw, is the reading @vAd&y, which
Grotius, Griesbach, Schott, and Lachmann approve; although
the Vulgate has custodierit, and the Peshito renders 702 NOI.
For boroaae or rather not eee is the main idea here ; but
the duAdcoew would too obscurely express this, and would wate
rather to the stedfast continuance in faith, whereas the previous
sentences all point to the one idea of the first and great separa-
tion of unbelief.

Ver. 48. See further ch. iii. 18. The construction of an almost
new thought in this summary is here most conspicuous ; and we
might be inclined to assume a literal reference to some unre-
corded word, though without that it would still be an actual
utterance of Fis through His Spirit in St John. The church
may always regard it as such, even as I should in preaching
upon it; for it is Jesus Himself who is speaking in this summary
recapitulation of His discourses by the Evangelist.” The jj
AapBavew suggests ch. iii. 11, and a@ereiv the synoptical expres-
sion Luke x. 16. It is not merely a despising, but a scornful
and utter rejection instead of the AawPavew. That the spoken
word itself (with a strong, as it were personal and living éxetvos)
will be the Judge, is a bold and true expression, since it is not
an empty word, it can never be spoken in vain. On the one
hand, it abides as a judge (Heb. iv. 12) in the memory and con-
-science till the last day (@yev) ; and, on the other, it will on that
day, though only for ban denen! be reproduced in the mouth
of the rejected Saviour, then the Judge. Adyos is, of course,
not an isolated word; but the sum and substance of all the
pywara which they had heard.

Ver. 49. Here again, as the convincing conclusion approaches,

1 But Erasmus, crediderit.

Besser admits this without hesitation ; and his dealing with me is alto-
gether more prudent, and therefore more friendly, than the usual manner
_ of the Luther. Zeitschrift.

108 THE EVANGELIST’S SUMMARY.

the reference to past utterances is most plain. This was said
by the Lord many times; we mention only ch. v. 30, vii. 16, 17,
28, 29, viii. 26, 28, 38, 55, comp. ch. v. 19, and afterwards to
the disciples ch. xiv. 10. The peculiarity of the verse lies partly
in évtoAypy édwxe, on which we have spoken, ch. viii. 55; partly
in the all-embracing and emphatic t/ e’rw kai ti Nadjow. These
synonymous words have been laboriously distinguished in various
ways. Rupert supposes that Aadsjow stands. in opposition as a
future,—and what I at the last day shall speak as Judge. But
this will not apply to this summary of the rejected words of
Jesus which God had put into His mouth (Deut. xviii. 18, 19),
as vers. 48 and 50 show; and the évrody is suitable to a state
of humiliation alone. Lampe, similarly, would make the differ-
ence one of time—what I have hitherto said, and what I should
now say, is the conclusion of all; but this of course falls with
the assumption that Jesus Himself is still speaking. Ambrose
thought of the distinction between private speaking and public
teaching ;' but the public testimony alone is here concerned.
More consistent with the verbal synonymy is that which Theo-
phylact advanced, who would distinguish the substance of what
was said from the form of the expression (comp. 7a@s 7) T¢ Luke
xii. 11): but in that case ré xal wés should be found instead
of the redoubted zi. After the analogy of the Heb. 128 and
727 some have thought of the pracepta, or promissa as Lampe
quotes from Gerhard. B.-Crusius would explain it as the gene-
ral and the particular, but this is altogether without foundation.
Fikenscher’s view is very significant: “ The saying refers to the
hearers who hear the sayings of another; the speaking refers to
the teacher who proclaims the truth. Jesus had fulfilled His
- vocation, as well in reference to men, who should find the way
of truth, as in reference to Himself as divinely commissioned to
declare the final revelation of God.” In fact, if there must be
a distinction, this one would most aptly suit the connection ;—
What I should say to you for salvation and what I should speak
as the truth of God. But the uncertainty and variety of these
distinctions are sufficient to induce us to decline them altogether,
and rather to understand the emphasis of the twofold expression

1 As Nonnus similarly expresses a softer and a louder speaking: dvdpaow

ey pomévors ti DbeyZouas 4 ti Bogow.

JOHN XIII. 7-20. 109

as Brandt does :—“ Jesus declares His words to be without dis-
tinction, thus forbidding us to make distinction, the words of
His Father, words which were all of them given Him of God.”
Thus the té xat r/ is equivalent to éca ay, embracing every one
of them, whether His words be termed eézreiv or Xanelv.

Ver. 50. For the ofSa comp. especially chap. iii. 11, v. 32, viii.
55; and for life everlasting chap. iii. 15, v.24, vi. 40. ”Evrons
does not stand here for the word itself given to Him and then
declared, nor must the éori be flatly solved in the manner of
Glassius—causa vel organon, per quod obtinetur vita zterna.
Still less is é€vtoA7 to be taken in the legal sense; but it is just
as in ver. 49 the commission received from God, to which as the
Son of man He must ever remain faithful, comp. chap. x. 18 —
here, however, it is the commission what He should speak and
testify. ‘This commission is, in its ground and aim, according to
its design and indwelling power, no other than life everlasting
for all who believe. It is the:wi/l of God that all who receive
the Son should receive and preserve life. Chap. vi. 39, 40.
This embraces the true concluding idea of the entire recapitula-
tion :—Jesus had thus faithfully spoken, that all according to
the Father’s will and His own might be saved if they would.

THE WASHING OF THE FEET, AND ITS SIGNIFICATION
(Chap. xiii. 7-20.)

Before we enter upon the subject itself, and consider the words
in which Jesus explains His own action, we must determine the
period of its occurrence: for, the action derives its special sig-
nificance from its time, as the Evangelist gives us plainly to
understand ; and, moreover, a much-contested difficulty upon
this point demands our attention. We would not expose our-
selves to the censure of evading these difficulties; but we will
be all the more brief, because the question has been already
treated with such superabundant prolixity, that the independent
investigator has at command everything that enters into its
solution.

The commencing words mpé 8 ris éoptis Tod macya occasion

110 THE WASHING OF THE FEET.

but very slight obscurity, as Liicke admits :—“ this definition of
the time does not require us to regard John as deviating from
the Synoptical chronology.” The same Evangelist who in chap.
xii. 1 has reckoned the days, would have expressly said “ one day
before,” if that had been his meaning. So that we can hardly
understand the éop7n, after Joseph. Archzol. 3, 10, 5, as referring
to the more restricted éopt? Tév a&ipwv which followed the day
of the paschal sacrifice ; the phraseology of Luke xxii. 7, Matt.
xxvi. 17 is itself decisive against that." Thus po simply sig-
nifies a short time previously, immediately before ; and indicates
the Sefvov to be the paschal meal and the beginning of the
feast itself, the awpoedptiov. (Why ver. 29 should render this
improbable to de Wette we cannot perceive.) The statement
manifestly becomes thus more and more definite, and reaches
its highest point of precision in the deémvou yevopévou, the true
meaning of which we shall afterwards discuss. Lange correctly
remarks that wpo tis éoprijs is closely connected with éyeiperan,
ver. 4: but such a specific action as the rising from a seat is not
reckoned by days but by hours and minutes; and consequently
it is here—a few moments before the beginning of the feast He
rose up. Thus this supper, at which the w saan of the feet took
place, is by no means an ordinary “ supper’ (a the absence of
the article, quite natural in such a phrase, has been urged), quite
distinct from the Synoptic paschal meal, the previous Wednes-
day, or, as has been said, in Bethany.’ For, St John’s narrative
carries everything on in strict connection from this pomt down
to chap. xiv. 31, and xviii. 1, so that this detrvov is followed by
the going forth to Gethsemane. The Hirschberg Bible has
remarked that if the indication of the betrayal, given here vers.
21-30, had taken place already one or two days before, the
amazement of the disciples when the Lord uttered the same at
the paschal feast, as narrated by the Synoptics, would be inex-
plicable.? Further, the parallel Luke xxii. 27 (as observed by

1 The reference of this intimation of time to ¢idas simply (Jesus already
knew before the passover—!) has been defended recently by Baumlein and
Luthardt; but we must reject it still, for St John always, when ee
the day, Aes to the event which follows.

2 The Pers. trans. —two days before the feast.

3 Richter’s Hausbibel (to put an end to all confusion, which will not be
the result, however, of this notion!) adopts this opinion of many, including

JOHN XIII. 7—20. 111

Olshausen) evidently shows that our Lord at the paschal meal
washed the feet as a servant—for those words are His own re-
ference to the act. And this was obviously not only before the
institution of the Lord’s Supper (which we must thus interpose
at its right place in St John), but also before the proper supper.
For we cannot conceive that the contention related by St Luke
took place after the washing of the feet and the Sacrament.’
Nor was (according to Liicke) “the supper interrupted by the
feet-washing, which was so foreign to the prescribed paschal
ritual, that we can find no place for it in the paschal meal.”
For the é« in é« Tod deizvov, ver. 4, is groundlessly urged (since
Gerhard) as signifying the completion of the meal, because
among the Greeks é« deimvov, €£ apiotou so occurs; delzvou
yevopévou, ver. 2 (for which there is a single false reading
yivouévov) is certainly to be translated, according to Meyer’s cor-
rection of Luther—when the supper arrived, was ready, about
to proceed, comp. chap. xxi. 4. This brief expression, unaccom-
panied by any record of any defzrvov, and what kind, appointed,
assures us (without the article which Briickner insisted upon)
that a reference must be presupposed to the well-known last
meal of our Lord po ris éoprijs, that is, €v T@ mpoeoprio, in
the transition between the evenings. The Vulg. (followed, of
course, by Klee and Friedlieb) is altogether wrong in its czena
facté; for it is this striking action of our Lord, which St John
records, that when they were already seated and about to begin,
He rises again é« Tod deizvov, and afterwards, in ver. 12, sat
down again to the proper meal (vers. 23-26).?

Thus it is preliminarily certain, and very generally now ac-
knowledged, that this meal of St John is the paschal meal of
the Synoptics, and that the feet-washing took place before the

Bengel ; but it finds little acceptance now, and the view of the latter is highly
forced that St John hastens over a whole day between vers. 30 and 31.

? On the other hand, we must not assume, with Ebrard, that the contest
arose because no one would undertake the service of washing the feet! The
Qirovesxia either referred to their places, or sprang, generally, as at other
_ times, from their carnal notions of the kingdom, if not specifically from the
words just spoken concerning it. (See afterwards our exposition in vol. vi.)

It may be proved that the passover was not then eaten standing; and
in any case, they had not yet reached that point.

li THE PASCHAL SUPPER.

institution of the Supper. But how is it that, according to the
Synoptics, Jesus then ate the paschal lamb ; while, according to
John xviii. 28 and xx. 14, the Friday of His death was the
day on which the Jews made ready to eat the passover? This
question, which in the most ancient time was regarded by
no one as a real contradiction, and was never mentioned in the
Easter controversy, has assumed a very threatening aspect in
our latest criticism. The ancient assumption, which began
with Chrysostom and Tertullian, that the Lord partook of His
passover one day earlier than the people and the Pharisees (on
grounds differently viewed, and either alone or with a part of
dig Jews), is now iadak ay rejected; and they either solve
the difficulty by some other artificial means, or leave the Sy-
noptics under the imputation of a hopeless difference, or mant-
fest error.

Among the artificial methods of extrication which are un-
tenable I include the attempted explanations which have been
given to the two opposing passages, John xviii. 28 and xix. 14;
although Wieseler and others defend them. The formula dayety
To Taoya must have, in my judgment, the same meaning im’ the
fourth Evangelist which it has in the other three; it is most
harsh to refer it in the former only to the subsequent passover
eating, the afvywa or even the 733n. In this we coneur with
Liicke and Ebrard, that “it must be ever incomprehensible
wherefore St John should have used so altogether uncommon
an expression: (comp. Joseph. Ant. III. x. 5, where the éopr7
Tov atdpev is strictly distinguished from the éopri tod macya,
similarly II. xv. 1; XI. iv. 8, etc.). It is true that in Deut.
xvi. 2, as 1P2)j8¥ shows, “ the remaining legal offerings and
meats of the whole feast” are included under the collective name
nda. But we cannot (like Hofmann, Weiss. u. Erf. ii. 201)
appeal to this passage; for we discover again from another pas-
sage, 2 Chron. xxxy. 7, 8, 9 (cited by Wieseler himself) that,
properly speaking, bul the DY "23; DWI3 are mentioned as
pyNDS or paschal victims; and, moreover, the collective name,
as ineluding this essential NDB, is a very different thing from the
collective name, as given to the feast, exclusive of and after the
essential meal. In the iva daywot, omgiel with 76 mdoya hay-
ing the article, it is incontrovertibly meant that they had eaten

JOHN XIII. 7—20. 113

wie in no sense of the word Passover.’ Finally, 2 Chron.

. 22 has IYIDA"Ns 2P2N so expressly, that we see how im-
© chlo it would have been to substitute there NDBM. With
gayeiv, and this is the main point, to mdoya necessarily retains
the restricted sense; as the passages in the Synoptics declare
the usage in the time of Jesus. Consequently, the tapackeuy
Tov Tacxya cannot signify the Friday in the paschal feast—as
we must grant to the opposite side, after all that Wieseler has
adduced ; but it is no other than the Jewish npan ay? (although
Luthardt opposes this). For we must certainly take both the
passages of St John together, for the special meaning of the 70
maoya. When this Evangelist in ch. xix. 14 calls the same
day tapacxevn Tob doyxa, concerning which he had previously
said, ch. xviii. 28, iva daywou TO Tacya, he certainly uses the
expression in the same meaning, and zapacxevn here is not the
(in this place meaningless) statement of the day of the week,
but corresponds precisely to the iva ddywos. The passages,
Matt. xxvii. 62; Mar. xv. 42; Lu. xxiii. 54, are only an appa-
rent parallel ; for St John thinks first of the approaching Sad-
bath, this time a great Sabbath as coinciding with the first
feast-day, afterwards in ver. 31, and thus intimates that it was
a TapacKev? in a twofold sense.

Rauch has endeavoured to convince us that the proper pass-
over, in contradistinction from the éopt7 Trav afvuov had already
been eaten between the thirteenth and fourteenth of Nisan; but
this marvellous hypothesis (as Winer calls it), which requires
others to uphold it, has never found acceptance, and has been
satisfactorily refuted by Liicke, de Wette, Ebrard, and Wieseler.
Schneckenburg’s attempt, which disturbs all the previous chron-
ology, needs no mention. Are we then led to the conclusion
(with Schleiermacher, Liicke, and many others, that the differ-
ence is irreconcilable, and the error on the side of the Synoptics ?
Most certainly not! According to Liicke the error sprang from

Bengel’s paraphrase was highly arbitrary : ‘‘ to continue uninterrupted
the remaining eating of the passover!” From the feet-washing and the
sacrament onwards is the weakest point in Bengel’s harmony.

? Comp. in addition the passage adduced by Friedlieb (Archiiol. d. Leiden-
gesch. 8. 129) from the Babyl. Gemara, which contains a tradition that
Jesus was hanged on the tree noem a*73.

VOL. VI. HH

114 THE PASCHAL SUPPER.

a:very early misunderstanding of uncertain traditions, so that
the tradition made itself complete by suppositions originating
in itself. ‘ Jndeed”—he says himself, but one would almost
think ironically —“ if the relation of Matthew springs imme-
diately from the Apostle, this method of explanation is untenable.”
But we must not let this one passover-stroke take away Matthew
from us! Hauff admits “the supposition that the Synoptics
adjusted the time of the death of Jesus with the festivals which
had been held from the beginning by the Jewish-Christian com-
munities to commemorate these events’ —but if we substitute
the Apostle Matthew for “ Synoptics,” all such notions must be
rejected at once. Nor can we accept of any original “ tradi-
tion” that “through want of chronological interest in a circum-
stance which involved questions of so much greater moment,
independent of chronology, precision was not at first thought
necessary, and the question of dates remained ever after unde-
termined.” For the chronological question in this case has direct
reference to what was of the highest possible moment to the first
Christians, viz., the connection between the Old Testament and
the New, the coincidence of type and fulfilment—for which
the time of celebrating Easter formed the firm historical kernel
and centre.’ So that we may be sure that the first Gospel for
Israel with its tva wAnpwO7, and the Apostle Matthew its assured
author, would not have erred through indifference upon this
point. Tholuck says, “The nature of the holy sacrament, its
internal analogy with the Passover, makes it probable in itself
that it originated in strict relation with the Passover. We cannot
bring ourselves to assume in the Synoptics a failure in remem-
brance upon so significant an event, the sensible allusions of
which were so peculiar and characteristic.” B.-Crusius, whom
no dogmatic motive influences, thinks any actual difference in
the historical record “ improbable in relation to a matter so im-
portant to the community as was this last meal.” Yes, indeed,
improbable even to impossibility. We should have to assume
(to use the words of a critic against Bleek), “ that the Synoptics
not only were quite ignorant of the day on which Jesus Christ

1 Thus there is no ground for Hase’s remark, that ‘‘ the error of the Gali-

lean tradition rose from. taking it for ohunkel that the Lord’s Supper must
have been instituted in connection with the Paschal meal.”

JOHN XIII. 7-20. 115

was put to death, but that their record of it is in flagrant oppo-
sition to the most sacred Jewish statutes against executions
during the feast !”

For our own part, then, we return, after a thorough examina-
tion of all new theories, to the old explanation which has been
already mentioned. St John and the Synoptics are alike right.
Jesus, with His disciples, ate the Passover on Thursday, when
He instituted the supper; the Jews in general ate it on the
Friday of His death. So far Ebrard is clear, but he has a new
answer to the question how this is to be accounted for: “the
eating of the passover proceeded through two days, because it
was impossible that the slaying for so enormous a number could
be effected in the three evening hours of one single day, and
thus the law was of necessity violated; the day was anticipated,
the previous day being included in the celebration, and this
would be especially the case with the Galilzans and the poorer
class.” However well-meant and plausible this may be, we
altogether reject it, with Wieseler.. What other account can
we give? The criticism which reconciles scientific investigation
with faith in the historical truth of all the Evangelists, including
St Matthew, can only decide that Jesus in fact ate the meal
one day earlier than the mass or the majority of the people,
and that this must have had a specific reason, which can be
supplied by supposition alone. Liicke’s assertion that “it is
impossible to extract from the synoptical text even the sem-
blance of an anticipation of the Passover” —is true, as far as
this anticipation is an arbitrary act of Jesus Himself; but if
any other reason can be assigned, this peremptory verdict must
fall. We must not resort to the old refuge of a mdoya pynpo-
ViKOV, wvnpoveuvTixov in the case of our Lord; that was some-
thing quite different, originating after the destruction of the
temple, and the Synoptics speak of the proper Jewish passover.
Nor did the Lord, scrupulously obedient to all the Divine com-
mandments (if not to all the appended statutes of men), by His
own specific plenitude of authority anticipate the day on account

1 §. 347 in the note, where also the error concerning the priests’ slaying
is exposed. We think that the people would rather have built another
Jerusalem than have allowed such a departure from the legal day on
account of external circumstances. |

116 THE PASCHAL SUPPER.

of the Supper (as Hippolytus assumed), and, besides, St Luke,
ch. xxii. 7 speaks of the 7épa, év 9 der OvecPat Td Tacya.'
What then are we to suppose? That which in itself is not
unimaginable, that in the computation of that time, as in many
other things, an interruption or derangement had crept in
among the Jews. Although dre voy stands in Mar. xiv. 12,
yet we do not see why, in connection with ot walnrai, the
whole people must necessarily be the subject of this é@vov;
but. are disposed to find in St Luke’s es, in spite of the
protest of recent critics, the hint of anticipation which has
been found wanting, a tacit opposition to the prevalent
practice of others. So that Jesus, in common with a portion
of the Jews, properly and legally held sacred the contested
day, which the predominant party had es gi in favour of
the following.

An analogous example of a slighter difference is furnished
by the controversy over the D'D0yn fa, Ex. x. 6. The Kara-
ites and Samaritans understood the time after the going down
of the sun till entire darkness, the Pharisees and Rabbanites
explained it of the decline of the day before sundown (0 1)
as the first evening; the latter in the time of Josephus was the
prevalent theory and practice. The former, notwithstanding,
was the correct view (concurred in by Abenezra), as Winer
almost unnecessarily proves, and Michaelis wwe him, Suppl.
ad lex. s. v. 22, comparing the Arabic usage.’ If this contro-
versy, whether Rifele or after sun-down was the limit of the
day, had been connected also with a diverse date, occasion
might have been in some sense given for moving the day on-
ward, and thus introducing a division in the Kalendar. But
this was not the case, else would the priority of the Pharisaic
passover have resulted, according to, Josephus. We mention
this analogy only for the purpose of asking,— Why might not

1 Which 2d<: we thus more definitely justify than Weitzel does in his
excellent treatise upon the Passover festival. We cannot bring ourselves
to understand, with him, ‘‘an Old Testament meal made earlier by neces-
sity” (analogous with the deferring it in Num. ix. 11).

* Convincing reasons are—The vanal@py of Ex. xxix. 39, the wovin si,
Deut. xvi. 6, the whole history of the exodus Kea sieiir after the.
passover.

JOHN XIII. 7-20. 117

the reckoning of the day, through some possible circumstance
of which we have no record, have become subject to such a
diversity as appears in the Gospels? For as to mdoya was
assuredly not eaten twice, our sources say plainly this and
no more, that some ate it on one day, and others on the
next. And can we not bring our minds to attach at least the
same authority to the plain letter of Scripture as to that of
Josephus or the Talmud? It cannot indeed be proved (scilicet,
from other sources), nor can it be demanded without disparage-
ment to the ypad7, that such a diversity of practice existed in
the time of Jesus; but it is historically imaginable. We have
ground enough for this without resorting to the various reckon-
ing of the new moon at a much later time (according to Capel-
his Iken, etc.). Suffice it that we may ask, Who can prove it
to be impossible that the difference, which is historically as cer-
tain as the authority of at least two Apostles can make tt, should
have some such reason? ‘Then should we escape focal the
hypothesis, which, however slightly regarded, is objectionable,
that Jesus was crucified on the great feast day ;* and with
that, much sophistical perversion of St John’s expressions.
Then Jesus fulfilled (as Scaliger, Casaubon, Marck, etc.
assumed) the law exactly, while its observation among the
people had fallen into disorder. And then our typological view
finds a yet deeper significance in the whole arrangement of these
events according to the profound counsel of God.

It was impossible, that is, that our Lord’s last eating the
paschal lamb, as the end of His obedience under the law, should
be perfectly simultaneous with His own offering of Himself ;
an absolute coincidence of type and reality could not be. Yet
should this coincidence be as close as possible, especially, at
least, where the correspondency was most important, in the
connection between the Supper and the paschal lamb. Hence
it was provided (as Lampe says, whose anticipabat, however, we
do not agree with—occulto Dei consilio) that the occurrences
should take place just as we find them. Now this was deeply
significant in two ways. On the same day on which the
majority representing the people, the Pharisaic part, ate their

? Compare, in addition, Tholuck’s liter. Anzeiger 1847. 8.200 ff

118 THE WASHING OF THE FEET.

passover, the Lord is crucified." But they crucify Him first,
and then go to eat their passover at the illegally deferred time,
and rendered unclean by the blood of the Son of God! That
signifies most clearly, The type is now done away!? But the
Lord on His part glorifies for His new Israel the abiding type
by the institution of the Sacrament in connection with His
legally proper passover; so that our sacramental institution
took place most harmoniously as an anticipation of the great
event, just as the first passover of Moses was an anticipation of
the exodus, of the actual passing over and redemption.

In addition to the note of time St John gives us here a pre-
paratory remark, which announces with dignity a new scene,
predicting in sublime words asublime event. The public life and
teaching of the Lord has reached its close. The hour is come,
which had from the beginning been indicated as nearer and
nearer. The history of the Passion begins. But with demonstra-
tions and new exhibitions of love to His own before He departed
from them. And by this expression the Evangelist tells us that
the esoteric portion of the Gospel, its most essential mystery, is
about to follow: awakening in every feeling heart a deep desire
—after all the previous warfare of unbelief against the truth,
after all the fruitless striving of the Son of God and the Son of
man to win these children of Abraham and sons of Adam to
Himself and eternal life, after all this vain pouring forth of His
precious ointment, of His wooing bridegroom-love (Cant. 1. 3 ;
Jno. iii. 29) —to taste at last and see how gracious He is to those
who have been made His own, how He comforts and solaces His
own heart with them, and imparts in all its fulness to them that
which others have despised. If the history of the Passion is

1 Olshausen: ‘* The typical character of the Passover (1Cor. v. 7), makes
the assumption probable, that the Lord died on the same day on which the
paschal lamb should have been killed.” We would only say instead —was
killed. This coincidence in general our Lord indicates in Matt. xxvi. 2, as
God’s counsel. Comp. Thiersch, die Kirche in apost. Zeitalter i. 295.

* Exspiraverat jam Paschatis-umbratilis terminus, postquam Jesus rite
ultimum comederat. Lampe.

JOHN XIII. 7-20. 119

generally the Holy of Holies in the new covenant—St John, we
would fain say, opens to us the very ark of the covenant in the
heart of the incarnate Saviour. Happy thou, dear reader, if the
voice of the Spirit now crieth to thy spirit— Come and see!
Dignus es intrare—thou also belongest to those who are His
own !

St John saw into the heart of Jesus; and he therefore writes
vers. 1 and 3 as it were out of that heart, as if Jesus had told
him what he reveals to us by a twice-repeated eida@s. The words
stream forth, indeed, down to ver. 5 in one continuous flow, ver.
1 is not complete in itself but announces something more ; neyer-
theless, we do well to construe (according to the old and univer-
sal view, which Liicke so well justifies) the first verse as stand-
ing by itself, so that its emphasis may fall upon the loving. -The
knowing that His hour was come obviously connects this new
continuation of the Gospel with the previous chapter, indeed with
all that had preceded as far back as ch. ii. 4. Out of this world
—is, with allusion to ch. xii. 31, a sorrowful retrospect upon the
past contradiction of sinners in it. He goes away, leaves this
world as all in death; but He alone goeth to the Father by a
wonderful peraBaive. He has idiovs in this world to leave
behind (ch. xvii. 11), whom He Himself has first chosen and
obtained through His own love, as certainly as the Father had
given them unto Him. These He had loved from the beginning,
yea, from eternity, before He came forth from the Father for
their sakes ; He has shown all patience and fidelity towards their
infirmity and sinfulness, He has endured all for them and with
them, He has borne even until now their unbelief for the sake
of the kindled spark of faith and love within them. And what
love had been already shown even in this!) But now He loveth
them eis réXos. This is not, with Grotius, to be resolved into—
duevérer ayaTrov, perrexit diligere ; nor with Euthymius, 70 eds
tédos 7) od8pa SyAot; nor to be taken as a mere N¥3? (accord-
ing to the sae translation of this, and as the Pesh. ‘Lu. xviii.
5 has fy 222) ; but tédos is literally His end and departure,

1 It would be a profitable, and far from exhausted, task, to exhibit the
simple art of the plan of this Gospel, as shown in the circumstance that the
beginning everywhere prepares for the end, and the end returns back in its
fulfilment to the intimations of the beginning.

120 THE WASHING OF THE FEET.

which now from this meal onwards so long and slowly protracts
itself in proofs and tokens of love. Laus in amore mori—a
heathen maxim which finds here its highest illustration.?

Ver. 2 begins again with an intenser eds, which now, in con-
trast with the action which is to commence, becomes equivalent
to xaimep ei6as. But another impressive parenthesis intervenes,
another xaizrep from an external cause. Even among His own,
and at this meal, is the traitor found, into whose heart the devil
has been able to infuse thoughts of hell! The 746y intimates
that the design of this parenthesis is further to say, that the
destiny of our Lord, to be now delivered into the hands of His
enemies, was fully dgctiidd and at hand:—yet this is not its
only meaning. The Berlenb. Bible comments upon it with deep
feeling in its own way: “Something now comes between! The
devil has not kept holiday, and the Evangelists always place
God’s work and Satan’s in conjunction, as they are developed
together. On both sides preparation is made for the contest :
Christ prepares Himself, Satan prepares himself too. Hence
the text appears here abruptly torn asunder—yet there is a
deep harmony and connection in the matter itself. The style
is thus intersected, to show that Christ has such a tangled way
to pierce through, and that His disciples must in like manner
follow Him.” ‘Thus it is not, as Hofmann thinks, a “ verbally
infelicitous connection of clauses.”

Jesus knew—it is not now said, what was in the heart of
Judas—that follows in ver. 11. Instead of that, without inter-
ruption He knew that to Him—not indeed all, but, nevertheless,
even for judgment upon the viovs Tis amrwnelas, all things were
given into His hand; and that He was going to God, even as
He came forth from God, that is, as the Son to the Father. Per-
fect repose, the untroubled consciousness of His might, victory,
and glorification fills His spirit now, after His deep amazement.
For Him, in the place of that faith from which in our case love
springs, we have here knowledge. What would one who first
read the Gospel expect, after such a preface, and after all the
previous testimonies to the dignity and glory of this Jesus?
The 7ryamrncoev has already given a hint; but no man could have
expected what now follows. The first reader must stand amazed,

1 Nitzsch has a beautiful sermon on “ Love to the end.”

JOHN XIII. 7—20. 121

even like these disciples when He began the work of love and
humility. He who does not for ever lose his thoughts in the
contemplation of the inconceivable contrast between vers. 3 and
4, is beyond the reach of all exegesis; the most touching exposi-
tion to him must be vain and dead. He, the Lord over all,
come forth from God and returning to God, concerning whom
the greatest of the prophets cried, 1 am not worthy to begin my
service to Him by unloosing His shoe’s latchet (ch. i. 27)—He
goes beyond this; He washes the feet of His disciples, and
-Judas’ among them. For He also knoweth wherefore He had
come, and to what end He goeth again by death, that is, that He
might wash us. This they knew not yet; but they knew it
afterwards, and in addition to this most general signification of
His act, there is another which has reference to this critical time,
their preparation for the last supper. The second preparation
comes after in the awakening of the question, Lord is i J?
through the indication of the betrayer ; but the first had already
said, Jam He that cleanseth you! It was not so much on ac-
count of their murmuring at the anointing, and their fellowship
in sympathy with the traitor, that they now needed this specific
cleansing: if any is sought, it may be found in the recent con-
tention recorded by St Luke. But all was fore-arranged, that
the Lord, out of the love of His full heart, might speak to them
in act before He spoke to them in words, and thus prepare them
to take the deepest impression from His words.

The washing of the feet was assuredly not simply the lowest
menial service, but, according to common human analogy, was at
the same time no other than a service of honour and of love which
the host might render to his guests. LEbrard, however, presses
this much too far when he declares this to have been the cus-
tomary “duty of the host,” so that “the Lord may be said in .
the deep significance of this act to have already invited His
guests to His supper.” For even Lu. vii. 44 does not say ex-
pressly that the washing was to be expected from the host, but is
rather to be interpreted by Gen. xviii. 4; and in Lu. xxii. 27, the
Lord expressly indicates the main point to be—os 0 dvaxovav."

1 We very much doubt whether (as Lange thinks) this feet-washing arose
from the necessity of the moment, being a necessary service which none of
the disciples volunteered to perform.

123 THE WASHING OF THE FEET.

Unusual, and pointing to a striking significance, is the rising
up from the meal already proceeding. ‘The Evangelist paints
the circumstance with a living remembrance of the amazement
which seized at the time both him and the rest of the disciples: —-
hence the interchange of the present tense, and hence that most
emphatic 7#p&aTo, for which nothing that preceded had prepared
them. Everything pertaining to the act He did Himself; down
to the wiping He finishes all in the case of each of the disciples,
in whom He beholds all His own down to the end of time. In
solemn stillness and with the deepest reverence they first allow
Him to proceed—until it comes to Peter. For that Peter was
not the first,’ is plain from the previous fifth verse, especially
from the wiping—else we must resort to such an anticipation as
is quite out of harmony with the living presentation of the whole
narrative.” If supposition were allowable where the Holy Ghost
records nothing—for all gradation of rank here passes away—
it would be more probable that Judas was the first (as Chrys.
and Theoph., with many following them, thought); though if
Peter were the last, his refusal would be scarcely conceivable.’

That which probably others thought before him, he speaks
out plainly, and without any restraint. His meaning is not
wrong, but here once more it befalls him to savour not the things
of God but the things of man. Through false and self-willed
reverence and voluntary humility he sinks into opposition and
refusal ; for most assuredly his thought does not now apprehend
the true Divine humility. The customary xdpse comes first as
we see, but it has here a distinctive emphasis; but the intensest
emphasis lies in the contrast which is pressed to the uttermost

1 Although Nonnus takes this for granted; and since Augustin many
have so thought. Bellarmin founds a strong argument upon it, and Klee
maintains that every other disciple would have similarly declined. Baum.-
Crusius: ¢ dhcdet probably at the commencement! So Grotius, without any
reason: ovy hic est specialius rem enarrantis.

2 Which Luthardt, however, agrees with, arguing that it was a prepa-
ratory description of the whole act which would render Peter’s conduct
intelligible! But what simple writer would relate in this style?

8 Driseke thinks, first John, then immediately Peter. Richter, though
without any reason, Hither first or last was the washing of Peter. Schleier-
macher says with great discrimination, The ordinary pre-eminence of Peter
was the reason why the Lord this time took occasion not to begin with him.

JOHN XIII. 7. . 123

ov—uov! Not till these words have uttered his deep feeling
does he finish the sentence, which, however, still strongly pro-
tests: by the present vimveis he rises up against the commencing
action of the Lord Himself; tods zrodas comes in last to heighten
the whole; and the interrogation is not simply such but a most
absolute refusal, although a slight but true feeling of genuine
awe prevents him in his first words from doing more than ques-
tion, until ver. 8 comes in with a different tone. Thus his
present word is fundamentally the same with that affrighted
utterance which responded to the approaching love of the
Saviour in Lu. v. 8. This colloquy between him and his Lord
is by no means, as B.-Crusius unfeelingly and foolishly says,
“a trifling matter,” nor is it a subordinate circumstance which
St John might well have omitted; but Peter is here, if we
would see the great meaning of the whole, a type of man gene-
rally, as he revolts against the eternal love which offers itself
in the redeeming death of Christ. “For thy sake, O sinner, I
have laid by the garment of My glory, have girded Myself with
the napkin of the flesh, to pour out My blood as a cleansing bath
for thee—as thy God and thy Servant!’ But, alas, in man’s
refusal, This is unworthy of God, this cannot be—there too
often lies the still worse undertone (from which Peter, however,
according to ver. 9, was utterly free)—Nor is this at all need-
ful!

Ver. 7. And now, but not until it is constrained from Him,
comes the first word of our Lord after His silent act; but it
contains the assurance that He had designed afterwards to speak
and explain all. And He gives prominence to the contrasted
éy@ and od, but in their right meaning, and with the true infer-
ence:—I am the Master, Thou the disciplk—How shouldst
thou then at once know, penetrate, and understand what I do,
that is, what I thereby purpose and mean? Obedience without
argument would be the profounder modesty. And the trusting
disciple of such a Master, teaching as Jesus did both by act and
word, might and ought to have expected that He would explain
all in condescension to His disciple’s weakness. The meek and
gentle Lord, however, does not by the slightest word rebuke the
impatience of Peter, who would not thus wait; the single ov«
oidas apt was sufficient rebuke, and at the same time utters a

124 IF I WASH THEE NOT.

promse to supply that deficiency of knowledge which is thereby
rather excused. The antithesis between a@pti and peta TavTa
shows that the most obvious meaning must be referred to the
repelled washing :—As soon as I have done it unto all, thou
shalt know with the rest what My act signifies. And truly,
without the words which now accompany, and afterwards follow,
the act, we should none of us understand the meaning of what
He did; we might discern in it the example of humility, but
scarcely the manifold mystery of the profound symbol. For
wide and deep is this mystery ; and therefore the Saviour begins
the preliminary solution of it by a word which, as the commence-
ment of that solution, has a universal import. What J do—first,
this washing of your feet; then (as follows in ver. 8) the wash-
ing generally thereby denoted; finally, all His work in us, in as
far as it centres in and belongs to this, that He washes us from
sin. Who understood the work of His atoning passion when
and while it was accomplished? And how wide does this wera
tavra reach for His church and the world, in which the coun-
sels of God in the humiliation of Christ are from age to age
ever becoming more profoundly and fully disclosed! So also
the last application of this word, that by which the Holy Ghost
so often uses it for humbling our resistance and consoling our
apprehensions, is perfectly well-grounded. It is in its widest
extent an utterance concerning all the acts of God, which will
never be fully understood till hereafter; the eternal Majesty
speaks in this lowest abasement of the Son, and speaks with
reference to all the future acts of His government from this-
present action onwards. It is enough for us that He shows us
and gives us to feel no more than this—I do it ; we may confi-
dently resign ourselves to His hand. We shall hereafter know,
that and in what way all was done for our purification ; we shall
in eternity look back upon the whole process of His guiding and
cleansing our souls, and merge all in that cry —Thou hast
washed us from our sins, and therefore didst Thou obediently
abase Thyself to our feet!

Ver. 8. The first word was thus distinct and gentle, thus
serenely victorious over the impetuosity of Peter; yet it is with
this disciple as often with us all, his outbursting zeal renders:
him incapable of hearing, much more of understanding and

JOHN XIII. 8. 125

receiving the first words with which the Lord opposes him. They
urge, rather, his opposition to a further extreme; he will main-
tain his right, accept no ovx oidas, and be referred to no yoon
peta Tavta. ‘Though the other washed disciples had improperly
allowed the Lord thus to act, he will show himself wiser and
more humble than they, as if he knew even better than his
Master what was befitting and right! The present viareus and
the tone of question betrayed before something tending to sub-
mission ; but now he begins with an imperative od ux vibgs,
and confirms it with the deepest feeling by eis tov ai@va. (Ben-
gel: formula vehemens, cf. 1 Cor. vii. 13.) What other can
the gracious Lord do now, than oppose vehemence to vehemence,
and utter a second, decisive and heart-piercing word which
should afright the contradicter, who nevertheless in the ground
of his heart hangs upon Him and would be His? If I shall
wash thee not, thou hast no part with (or, in) Me! Alas, such
words of threatening and fear are too often necessary for us all,
to induce us to permit ourselves to be loved. It is wrong to say,
as many do with good intention but a narrow interpretation,
that the threatening here is not to be sought in the word wash-
ing, or in the transaction connected with it; for this vizrre is
the kernel and object of the whole. ‘Thus it is not, “ Unless
thou bend to My ordinance, and give up thy disobedient inde-
pendence of My will’’—this would be too naked a generality !
Nor, as Liicke says, “ He who will not tolerate, or does not
- understand, the humility of love, as now exemplified in Me.”
Nor, as another says, approaching somewhat nearer, “ Unless
thou, by acceptance of this service, showest thyself to be willing
to perform such!” Neither of these hits the point of signi-
ficance ; the latter passes beyond it into the final interpretation
of ver. 14. He who does not comprehend the humble love with
which Jesus washes him, understands it not simply because he
does not know and consider what this washing essentially is. De
Wette and Liicke quite falsely urge that the real gist of the
matter is not the cleansing but the humility of love: this saying
in ver. 8, and the general declaration of ver. 10, sufficiently
refute them. The washing is not specifically a “purification
from all petty loftiness of spirit”—-as Driseke says. Let us
look at its deep fulness of meaning, as the Lord Himself exhi-

126 IF I WASH THEE NOT.

bits it under three aspects: the feet-washing signifies, first, that
it is the Lord who cleanses us, He alone can and will wash us;
it then points further to the continual necessity that those who
have been cleansed in the bath should ever wash their feet, and
that this likewise must come from His patience and love; while,
thirdly, and resting upon these (though it is too often regarded
as the sole point, the previous foundation being forgotten), that
we also can and should be helpful to one another in all humble
services which might contribute to that end.*

That the Lord on this occasion does not mean this external
washing, but that which it signifies, is clear from the threaten-
ing itself, and from the fact that He washed Judas also, who
nevertheless had no part in Him.” That, further, He did not
now as yet speak particularly of a spiritual washing of the feet,
the continuous cleansing from remaining or again adhering sins,
is equally clear from this that He now—and let it be carefully
noted !—does not speak of the feet, as Peter does twice, but
extends the matter to its utmost generality, and penetrates its
deepest ground—I must wash thee! This His utterance here
is essentially similar, though with other words, to that of ch. vi.
53. And it is for emphasis and awakening that He does not
say at first from what the washing is; for His single word would
ask— Dost thou not then at all perceive and understand what is
now concerned between Me and thee, Me the sole Helper and
Purifier from sin, and thee the “sinful man!” Dost thou not
remember the time when thou didst bid Me depart from thee? -
Hast thou not since learned in My school to what all things
point which Ido? If the former part of the sentence, with its
simple and impressive “ wash thee,” was not penetrating enough,

1 Hence, that view is most superficial, and forgets the ground here laid
for the whole, which regards the Lord’s design as being simply to deepen
their humility and take away all their previous ideas of a worldly kingdom.
Driiseke: ‘‘He will make a last essay. He would burn out of the hearts of
His messengers the dross of earth stillinthem.” Bahrdt, in the same direc-
tion: ‘* Nothing cleaves to you but the prejudice of a temporal Messiah; it
is merely a washing of feet that ye need. Your Lord now shows Himself
a servant, that you may remember that ye are called to be servants of huma-
nity, not Princes of the East!”

? Luthardt: “If thou dost not bethink thyself what My washing sig-
nifies.”

JOHN XTII. 8. 127

the fearful sequel makes all plain—Then are we severed for
ever! Yes, verily, this was a terrifying and awakening word,
for it meant, Then dost thou remain unwashed, as thou art,
impure, without forgiveness and without grace, without salvation
and without a Saviour, unfit for and unworthy of My fellow-
ship here, and hereafter of My kingdom and My glory. For
to intimate this last the wer’ €uod is used, although the év éuoé is
obviously included in it. Or wilt thou wash thyself ?— At the
same time the Lord gives it here to be understood—I wash no
man against his will. And let this be deeply pondered !

The passionate desire to have a part in and with Jesus, would
now break down all the,self-will of this disciple, even without
his definitely understanding the connection between this wash-
ing and that blessedness ; but we may safely assume more than
that, and regard Peter as now beginning to understand. We
cannot imagine him to be slow to apprehend the Lord’s plain
words, or to be utterly unable to perceive the Lord’s wonted and
sudden transition to a figurative meaning in all this. We
cannot, therefore, agree with Braune’s remark upon Peter’s sub-
mission, “ Right characteristic is this perfect change, with the
same externality !” For how can it be proved that Peter tarried
in the external meaning? ‘To us, this would be less charac-
teristic than unpsychological. We agree with Bengel, Petro
sensus impuritatis propriz obortus hc verba dictavit: with
Tholuck, “ His consciousness of sin was awakened by these
words :” with Baum.-Crusius, “ The words of Peter enter into
the impersonal and universal meaning of the Lord’s words.”
Thus alone can we understand, in a sense worthy of the Apostle,
the instant retractation of his od pi) eis Tov aidva, the impetuous
going beyond of the offer of his hands and his head. ‘This last
is very generally taken as a running to the other extreme, instead
of adhering to the simple will of Christ—that the feet should
be washed. Although there may be some slight trace of this
spirit perceptible, and although our Lord does actually in ver.
10 limit him once more to the washing of the feet, yet it must
be remembered that in ver. 8 He had spoken only of washing
generally, and that the unusual expression head (instead of face)
will not suit the idea of a merely external sense. We under-
stand the blessed Peter :—Yea, if Thou meanest it thus, if this

128 NOT MY FEET ONLY.

washing is thus connected with that washing of Thine which we
all need and none so much as I; then take me, the whole Simon,
I am indeed unclean from my head to my feet!* Thus we find
the expression most natural, entering into the Lord’s spiritual
meaning and yet rightly adhering to His figurative present
action ; and we have no more to do than add the edifying con-
sideration for the preacher—that head and hands are not
enough, the heart must be washed!

Ver. 10. Peter showed by the quickly understanding word
which he spoke even ii the midst of his false zeal, that he was
already in his essential heart a AeXovupévos; and therefore the
Lord can proceed further to expound the more specific meaning
of the washing of the feet. The distinction and contrast which
He makes between a bath which perfectly washes the whole
body, and the washing of the feet which is only subsidiarily
needful, is founded upon custom, propriety, and ordinary lan-
guage; but it is here made the symbol of a most important
truth in relation to fellowship with Christ. As we have seen,
the Lord’s word in ver. 8 passed over into the more general
signification, while yet, not to break off the connection alto-
gether, the expression vizrrew used for partial washings. remained;
hence, Peter also, with all his earnestness of desire to yield him-
self up to a total washing, can mention only individual mem-
bers. The Lord now corrects the incongruity of the well-meant
expression, and attributes to the disciples collectively, with the
exception of one, an already existing purity in the main; while
He thus most graciously restrains within bounds the excess in the
desire of their representative Peter. Hence, and for that reason
the evidently antithetic XeAovpévos, which does not refer to the
hands and the face (for of these also viac@as and virrew are
used), but, as the 6Xo¢ distinctly shows, to a proper bath. Our —
common version, therefore, needs correction here—Wer gebadet
ist.? It was, generally speaking, customary before meals, espe-

1 As Nonnus paraphrases, vel rari, yy ebérns, nal CAov Ozuas.

* Lange protests against this, because the theocracy knew nothing of
baths, only of washings and baptisms. We would not quarrel about the
expression, but is it not here actually twofold, and as such to be repro-
duced? Is not the washing of the whole body (Heb. x. 22: comp. 2 Peter

li. 22), to be called a bath? Is not that our very word for the Aourpdy of
haptism 2

JOHN XIII. 10. 129

cially for guests at a feast, to enter the bath; and this is enough
for the mere truthfulness of the figure. Meanwhile, we doubt
very much whether the disciples had done so on this occasion ;
for this was a species of luxury for the more distinguished, cer-
tainly was no rule in the simple life of Jesus with His Galileans,
at least we find no instance of such a preparation for a feast or
a visit.' Assuredly, it might have been so at this time, just
before the passover ; but to our mind the word of Jesus is more
emphatic and more clear, if we suppose this not to have been
the case. For then, the transition from the figure to the thing
signified, which the Lord, as every one must admit, now plainly
makes, becomes more impressive and forcible.

Our Aodc Gaz (of which this of the disciples was only a typical
beginning), is the laver of regeneration and renewing, in which
we are perfectly washed at the commencement from all our for-
mer sins and defilements (1 Cor. vi. 11); and this principle of
all further holiness, concurrent with our forgiveness, is an actual
purification of the heart, of the whole inner man, through the
Holy Ghost received by faith. (Acts xv. 8, 9.) He who re-
mains faithful to this privilege, and does not again return to
wallow in the mire (2 Pet. ii. 22), from which he had been
delivered, needs not a second time this same universal washing ;
but he does need an incessantly repeated washing of the feet;
with which he must walk upon or in the mire.” This is that con-
tinuous daily repentance in which we diligently aim to purify
ourselves, that is, at the same time, to suffer ourselves to be puri-
fied, from all still adhering or new contracted filthiness of the.
flesh and spirit (2 Cor. vii. 1)—7aca purrapia nai mepicoeia
xakias, Jas. i. 21. This relation may in some sense be referred
to baptism and the Lord’s supper, inasmuch as the latter perpe-
tually requires, as the confirmation and seal of our éyew pépos
peTa TOU Kupiov, a perpetual repentance and believing acknow-
ledgment of our sins. The feet signify, generally, the flesh,
which still connects us with the earth, and through which we
are ever susceptible of sin, even while the head may look towards

1 Hence Driseke is somewhat too confident: ‘‘ they prepared themselves
for every festival feast, at least, by a bath.” So Lange makes this neces-
sary preparation by a bath an argument that this was a passover meal.

? Nonnus: ¢i uy mova rédeoor xabapoia virrpa Topeing civodins.

VOL. VI. I

130 Yh ARE CLEAN, BUT NOT ALL.

heaven, the heart be heavenly-minded, and the hands by which
we perform our Christian duty be to the utmost of our knowledge
and will undefiled. We may, therefore, regard the spiritual
feet-washing (with Meyer elsewhere), as “ the lower nature in
its subjection to the constant necessity of a renewal unto holi-
ness.” Yet, inasmuch as with the feet we must walk in duty,
and walking and working are in their real meaning one and the
same, and the feet must stand and walk uprightly in order to
the integrity of the work of our hands, what is said of them
must hold good also of the hands: hence, David Ps. xxiv. 6,
and Asaph Ps. Ixxiii. 13, wash their hands in the perpetual ser-
vice of God, comp. Jas. iv. 8, 1 Tim. ii. 8; hence, also, in the
typical ordinances of the priests, Ex. xxx. 18, 19, both hands
and feet are so referred to. The feet are named particularly
here, because they would most appropriately suit the application
to that condescending performance of such purifying service to
others, which the Lord purposed to dwell upon afterwards. “It
is a muddy world through which we all have to pass,” as one
says; and the rule, Touch not the unclean thing! has many
exceptions in the case of the pure through the claims of their
duty. It is not always without hurt to ourselves that we dis-
charge these duties, such is the infirmity of our flesh, and such
the never-resting desire of the tempter to injure us. “ The
devil lets no saint reach heaven with clean feet.” (Luther.)
And it is of the utmost importance that we never learn lightly
to esteem this ever necessary cleansing. On the one hand, the
consciousness that we have been once washed throughout and
made clean should not be extinguished into despondency; and,
on the other, we should ever remember, for our security against
false confidence, that our feet need washing. He who neglects
this, and is not ready, when the Lord comes, to accept His
cleansing, is in great danger of falling again into a state in
which he will have no part in Him :—and so the éav py vio ~
ce has its appropriate place of warning in the middle. And
even this feet-washing is an actual washing, which can be effected,
as in the first Aovtpoy maduyyevecias, only by the spirit and
grace of God; the slightest particle of dust that adheres to us
cannot be washed away by ourselves. Zinzendorf’s meaning is
quite good when he says, “ As soon as the heart prays for the

JOHN XIII 12-15. ~ 131
feet, they are washed’’—but this expression betrays some slight
tendency to antinomian security, and to the placing of justi-
fication in the stead of holiness, whereas it should ever be unto
holiness. More proper would it be to say, As soon as the heart
prays to the Lord to wash the feet, they are washed by Him.

If any one of the disciples was dull enough of apprehension,
though this is scarce supposable, to have hitherto misunderstood
the Lord, His last saying is distinct and decisive as to the
spiritual meaning of His words :—Ye are clean (as ch. xv. 3, to
which we must refer for the exposition of this word)—but not
all!’ There is one among you (ch. vi. 70) whom I have exter-
nally washed (hardly—whom I will now wash)—but that avails
him nothing. Let it be carefully observed, that, on the one
hand, the Lord does not in His gentleness point out the traitor for
general opprobrium ; and, on the other, how earnestly He makes
him the basis of an indefinite general warning. This warning
should resound in the midst of the narrowest circle of disciples.

Vers. 12-15. Their feet, that is, the disciples’, ver. 5, there-
fore the feet of all. The 6re ofv &vupev here intermediate tells
us plainly that Peter was not the last of all, and that the Lord
after the colloquy with him (in which the completed act was
presupposed), continued with the remainder who also needed it.
The work is now done, and now follows the promised informa-
tion, so far as the anticipation of it which Peter had occasioned
rendered it necessary. The jirst point in the explanation is this:
—TI alone can and I will wash you, as in that universal washing
so also in the future incessant washing of your feet. Let not
this be overlooked! But it has been already said, and the Lord
hastens to its second meaning :—Ye also must act in like manner
one towards another, at least in washing one another's feet, so
far as by My help ye may be mutually serviceable to that end.
The question coming first points back to the jirst meaning; but
includes the other now first to be opened up. Do ye know, do
ye now well understand, according to My words to Peter and
you all (ye are clean), what I designed to intimate and promise,
that I have washed and would wash you? ‘The question as it

1 Thus much is true; but it is altogether incorrect to say, with Driseke,
‘* So far, until now, the Lord’s words had reference to the body.”

132 KNOW YE WHAT I HAVE DONE?

regards this first meaning the Lord tacitly answers for them with
Yes; but he goes further at once, without waiting to hear it,
with a new answer:—Ye do not, nevertheless, know its full
meaning, and I will now tell you all.!' Not the less, however, is
His general question a great and comprehensive word for all
who should ever call Him Master and Lord, and themselves His
disciples ; for in these last discourses, especially, the most specific
meaning, as connected with the local event, is blended and com-
bined with the most universal. The great question may be
applied to the thing which was here signified, as well as to the
symbolical action itself which set it forth. From the cross of
propitiation He puts to all professing Christians, and to all who
are truly His own, the piercing question, Know ye what I have
done unto you? (Forasmuch as ye know! 1 Pet.i. 18.) Alas,
too many of them know it not; and therefore they know not,
like those who crucified, what they do by their continuance in
sin. Moreover, to baptism and the supper of the Lord, and
every other ordinance of the church which symbolizes the grace
of Christ, we may apply the question,—Will ye not come by
experience to know the reality of this mystery, that I may do to
you internally, what I have already done by way of promise
and pledge in external ordinances ?

Peveiv might signify invocation or address, and then o dvdac-
KaXos Kal 0 KUpvos would be in the vocative, as indeed they
might; but we prefer with Winer, and many in past times, to
take @awvetv for nominare, call. This seems to us more natural,
and more conformable to the cadds Aéyere. When ye speak of
Me, ye say—The Master, the Lord. We may compare not
only Matt. xxii. 8 for the one, as Matt. vii. 21 for the other ,
but also Matt. xxvi. 18, John xi. 28 with Matt. xxi. 3, as the
transition to Luke xxiv. 84; John xx. 25, xxi. 7. The Master
is believed, the Lord is obeyed. He meekly assumes the simple
“ Master,” adding to it the “ Lord,” which latter then again, we
observe, significantly comes first in ver. 14. Jesus to us is both,

1 Thus we interpret the Lord’s meaning differently from many, Driiseke
to wit, who passes over the first most plainly expressed meaning—TI must
wash you! but takes for granted the second—So must ye also one another!
as obvious to all. ‘‘ The Lord’s meaning was clear as day, even before He
explained it. But He gave words to the general feeling of all.” ;

JOHN XIII. 12-15. 133

as He cannot but testify even here, in this work of His profound
humility, in order that that work may be understood ; indeed,
He cannot yet disclose all to these disciples, because the pre-
typified work of redemption was not yet accomplished—but
we, as they did afterwards, know more; we call Him Saviour
and Redeemer, including this in our xvpios. And now, though
most unexpectedly to the disciples, the commandment is urged,
as in imitation of His work—xai bets odeirete. If I, your Lord
and Master, did not in My humility and love count it too vile
a thing to wash your feet—how can ye refrain from doing the
same, when and as far as ye may do like Me as My disciples ?
It has been said that the Lord in His condescension does not
intimate the great disparity, but places Himself on a level with
His disciples : this, however, is not true, for the contrast comes
out with double force in ode?AeTe and ddAjA@Y. Grotius: multo
magis vos, qui conservi estis, debetis. Ver. 15, finally, turns into
the general statement, that all Christ’s acts are for an example
to His followers, comp. 1 Pet. ii. 21. It is also true, as we shall
see, that the mutual feet-washing embraces in reality the whole
collective duties of Christian charity among Christ’s disciples ;
bTroderypa, too, must retain its most specific reference, inasmuch
as it here indicates (as elsewhere something typical, figurative)
a symbolical action.

Are we then literally and externally to wash one another’s
feet? Assuredly, in case that ever becomes a needful service of
love—and other still more menial and repulsive services are we
to perform. But the proper meaning of our Lord’s command-
ment, taken in the light of all His explanation, is not this exter-
nal one: hence, He does not say, what I have done, but, as
Ihave done. Béhmer’s strange attempt to vindicate for the
washing of the feet a “ sacramental dignity” (Stud. u. Krit.
1850, 4)—needs no refutation. But Herder’s zeal goes impro-
perly to the other extreme :—“ To repeat this symbolical act of
feet-washing, in spite of all objections of climate and usage, would
be a mere presumptuous aping of holy actions.” This is to look
with unjustifiable contempt upon those sincere and childlike men
who have felt it right to confirm and strengthen themselves in
the performance of the thing signified by performing also the
symbolical act itself ; and of these we cannot say, that they have

134 THE EXAMPLE.

“‘ petrified into a dry ceremonial what was intended to teach the
spirit which should animate our whole life.” (Driseke.) The
traces of such a custom in the early church, though as late as
the fourth century, are to be found collected in Bingham, iv.
394; Luther did not disapprove of it, if performed in simplicity
and from a good nature; the Moravian Brethren have their
Pedilavium at the present time, though they discreetly leave it
without any compulsory enactment. It is, however, an import-
ant circumstance, as warning against the desecration of a holy
thing by lack of simplicity and purity in ourselves, that we find
nothing in the New Testament account of the apostolical age of
any symbolical feet-washing. In 1 Tim. y. 10, the whole matter
is placed in its right position: in cases of necessity, the thing
itself is to be done, but it is the type of lower services of charity
in general.’ As it regards the caricatures of this sacred duty
which appears in the vain ceremonial of some churches, they
condemn themselves to every open eye; and Bengel’s sarcasm,
so often quoted, may be ever applied to them :—“ It would be
more to be admired if, for instance, the Pope were in serious
humility to wash the feat of one king, instead of the feet of
twelve paupers.’””

In its deepest and most general sense our Lord’s command-
ment to wash one another’s feet, as He himself had done, is the
same new one commandment—to love one another as He had
loved us, vers. 34,35. Love is humility, love delights to serve
the necessities as well of body as of soul: here we have the two-
fold signification of the feet-washing, the former, however, being
itself only a figure of the second, which essentially is the sole
meaning. First, and in general, we should, in the most internal
humility, after the pattern of our Lord’s humility, never be too
lofty or too prudent to perform acts of service to our neighbour.
And then, secondly, we should as brothers in Christ be affec-
tionately and mutually helpful in cleansing one another from the
sins which still adhere to us, and to that end be ever humbly dis-
posed to stoop down to our brother’s soiled feet. External ser-
vices of love may admit of comparison with this washing of the

For this second meaning is, to our mind, the undertone of the text.
2 Richter’s Hausbibel, again .—Many are rather disposed to wash one
another’s heads than one another’s feet.

JOHN XIII. 12-15, 135

feet; they may, indeed, be more menial and difficult than that,
although, after all, they cannot reach the depth of condescension
in our Lord and Master’s washing His disciples’ feet. In Lu. x.
34, 37, we have such a work of mercy, as a drodevyya for all
doing likewise." Every disciple should be rejoiced to take the
place of a servant to the servants of his Lord ; in the spirit of those
words of Abigail in the presence of David, 1 Sam. xxv. 41.
Where there is necessity, love does the work in person, and is
not satisfied always with laying out its twopence for the sick
and the poor. It fulfils with readiness difficult, unwonted, de-
spised, yea, even loathsome offices—as Driseke expresses himself,
preaching against effeminacy and backwardness to the hard
duties of religion. But the proper spiritual work of washing the
feet in our Saviour’s meaning, is expressed in Gal. vi. 1, 2. - It
is already taken for granted that we have forgiven our brother if
his fault was a trespass against ourselves; but we are also bound,
as brethren in common, to apply ourselves to his defilement, if
by any means we may help him to regain his purity through the
grace of Christ. And here comes into specific application our
Lord’s fundamental principle, Mark ix. 35. Here must we lay
aside our titles of “ Lord and Master,” even as He did His, and
by doing so approved Himself to be, and became, their Lord and
Master; the more we are able to serve and help, the higher will
be our position and character in Christ. We must go beyond
the quiet and secret enjoyment of our own grace, gird ourselves
with the towel of Christ, and take from Him constantly the true
water of the purifying Spirit, first for our own hands and feet,
that we may be able spiritually to approach our brother, and
come to him as the true messengers and ministers of Him who
alone doeth all things by us. Nor must we ever forget the
consolatory wiping, which completes the act! To such conduct
towards others are we called and sent as purified ourselves, in
such mutual dealing do we ourselves become perfectly clean.
Another doeth this for me in return, if I need it—this I should
ever bear in mind, and to this the a\)7Av significantly points.
Here becomes that Aoyos an adnOuwo0s (ch. iv. 37)—one hand

% Luthardt should have read all that I have here said, expressly denying
the limitation of the feet-washing to such “‘ external offices of love,” before
he attributed to me such narrow views.

136 THE EXAMPLE.

washes the other. Therefore thou shouldst suffer thyself also to
be washed of the Lord through His disciples. Whoso refuses
this is thus condemned by Rieger: “ Christ was in this case too
high for Peter, and His servants are too low for you!” Are we
in the highest sense ministers of the Lord, dméaroXoe pre-emi-
nently,—then let us especially wash each other’s feet, as every
man his own before the Lord! Luther says rightly, “Thus
this example of washing the feet has a special reference to such
as hold office in the church ;” but we must not, with Lampe,
restrict the whole precept, as well as ver. 10 itself, to the
Apostles, whose feet in the bringing good tidings in an evil world
need washing."

Vers. 16, 17. What the Lord had already said, Matt. x. 24;
Lu. vi. 40, and repeats with another anplicasiqan Jno. xv. 20,
has here ohvionely (see, however, ver. 18) the simple, pro-
verbially striking, meaning that the servant and messenger
should not deem himself too high to perform any service which
his Lord who sent him had previously performed. Thus is
struck down every lofty feeling which would say, Should I
abase myself so low as to wash the feet of such an one? That
would not be becoming in me! And for this the Lord sub-
stitutes, Should I be lofty enough to dare to refuse such a
service? Would that be becoming in me? The special title—
amoatonos (Lu..vi. 13)—which here alone occurs in St John,
is designedly carried back to its general meaning, and made
parallel with dodA0s;—-and what other title of honour can
assume anything beyond this first and most distinctive title in
the kingdom of God? The tadra and aira combines this last
enforcement of the humble mind with the previous requirement
of the work of humility; and thus the clear and most impres-
sive precept points to a universal internal and external “ doing”’
thereafter. For a mere external doing the Lord never admits.
There is too often a great gulf fixed—not only between the

' For this he quotes Apollinarius and Heracleota from the Catena:
Pedum hee lotio quid arcanum hic insinuat, quale v. gr. vide baturesse
preparatio pedum Apostolicorum ad opus Apostolicum. Mundatis siqui-
dem illos pedibus mittit, concessa iis puritate conspicuos, ut sic orbem ter-
rarum peragrare possent, salutis nuntia promulgantes, luxta quae legitur :
Quam speciosi pedes evangelizantium pacem. ‘

JOHN XIII. 18. 137

knowing what we should do and the actual performance of it
—but also between the knowing that we are not greater than
our Lord and the actual conduct of our heart in humility.
Alas, for an unblessed mere solitary knowledge! Woe unto
them who knew their Master’s will and neither prepared them-
selves inwardly, nor did according to His will outwardly! Lu.
xi. 48. Who, indeed, is capable of doing this, even with the
word and the symbol before him? The symbol must first
itself be experienced, the Lord must first wash us and con-
tinually wash us:—then only do we know what He hath done
to us; and then does the pardoned and purified spirit feel the
full force of the obligation to do likewise unto all as Christ has
done to him. On the other hand, nevertheless, the mere know-
ledge of what He said serves, inasmuch as the grace to experi-
ence it was therein offered, to condemn us in a twofold sense if
we do not by experience and practice press forward to a living
knowledge in that higher sense of which St Bernard speaks;
Tantum scimus, quantum operamur. Similarly Driiseke, who
admirably refers to the future practical knowledge of the
Apostles, in which they learned more and more profoundly to
understand the words— Thou shalt know hereafter!

Ver. 18. The three yet remaining verses stand, as B.-Crusius
thinks, “‘affectingly detached, in broken sentences ;” yet have
they a very close connection, even including the last. The
Lord returns back in sorrow, having been viewing His Apostles
as a whole, to that saying—But not all! To the unhappy
Judas, although he calls Him Master and is numbered among
His Apostles, He cannot say paxdpws ei, because not even the
first knowledge is his, which is here ascribed to all the rest ;
and He must now in connection with this Aéyew except him
once more. But He now adds most plainly that there is only
one who must thus be excluded, referring plainly by the
efereEaunv to ch. vi. 70. On account of the similarity in the
expression, many insist, with Euthym., Maldonatus, Grot.,
B.-Crusius, and Alford, that the Lord here also still includes
Judas—“T know who ye all are whom I have chosen.” But
we think, with others, that the election here, as in ch. xv. 16,
has reference merely to the faithful, and find in it the distinc-
tion referred to in ch. vi. between a first and a second election

138 THE TRAITOR.

Judas has already (ver. 2) failed to make his calling and election
sure: he has undone it. Amid the grief with which this pierces
His soul (see presently ver. 21), the Lord consoles Himself
with the foreseeing and permissive counsel of God which the
Scripture foreannounces. °A)X’ iva must be complemented by
a simple todro yéyove (as Matt. xxvi. 56); and by no means, as
B.-Crusius explains it,—éfereEdunv tuas, it was necessary that
ye should thus have been chosen, not every one honest and
pure! For this thought would border on the error that Judas
was appointed to his specific sin, and not that his sin was an
event of his own free determination which was foreseen.
Concerning the interpretation of Ps. xli. as a prophecy of
Christ, we must refer to the details in our commentary, where
we have shown that this entire psalm, which rests upon David's
own typical experiences, treats actually from ver. 5 downwards
of Christ, the 27 or "2 car’ é€oynv, whom all should consider
attentively (ver. 1); but in such a manner that the experiences
of His members and followers are combined with those of their
Head and Forerunner. This harmonises with the connection
between vers. 16 and 20; and shows that ver. 16 already points
forward to the same meaning as afterwards in ch. xv. 20. And
that deep meaning is,—It is for you to act in love and humility
as I have done, although you may have to do with many a
Judas, whose feet ye wash in vain; for ye are not above your
Master. For this let your hearts be prepared! Hence, it is
not as many say, who would vindicate the meaning of this
application—Christ makes all the sufferings of all His saints ;
but conversely—All the followers as well as all the types of
Christ make His experience. This is the key to the psalm,
which opens it to us as a typical psalm in the true meaning of
the word, so that in the mind of the prophetic Spirit Christ
Himself (with His people) is actually signified in it. Hence it
is as necessary as it is remarkable, that in the quotation the
12 ‘ANDA W—which could not be true of Jesus Himself —is
omitted: for those other words must be substituted —I know
whom I have chosen! On the other hand, the eating bread (in
the original His bread) derives a fearful meaning from the
participation in the sacramental supper; a meaning which must
be applied for ever to all unworthy communicants, as well as to

JOHN XIII. 19. 139

all betrayers of Christ who eat the bread of His Church.’
Moreover, the whole passage, because it is not a literal and
exclusive Messianic prophecy, but a typically comprehensive
one, is reproduced in a free manner by Christ or the Evan-
gelist. The Hebrew ‘on? Dai, Sept. éc@iwv dprovs pov, is here
stronger, Tpwywv pet ewod Tov aprov, with allusion to the
superabounding consummation of this in ver. 26. The Hebrew
apy oy 1, Sept. very obscure eweydduvey éx’ éud repyicpor,
is here quite simple and plain—émjpev ém éué tHv mrépvav
avrov. This last exhibits, in a figure of daring impudence, not
merely the refractory revolt against the affectionate rule of the
teacher, but by the émjpev also the Satanic pride which trod
under foot the humble Lord.?, Comp. Heb. x. 29. From this
mention of the uplifted foot in connection with the washing of
the feet, there arise many thoughts which might be regarded
as fanciful: we may refer to some of them in the words of
others. Bengel in the Gnomon says, Tantum abest, ut fratrum
pedes lavet! Hiller, in his life of Jesus in rhyme, thus
speaks:—-O humility unmatched: He washes the feet which
trod upon Him!

Ver. 19. “Ore éyo eiue has not hert, according to our feel-
ing, the same absolute sense as in ch. viii. 24, though Luthardt
regards it as just a repetition of that saying; but -since the
disciples’ belief that Jesus was the Messiah is already taken for
granted (see ver. 13), Wa mictevonte means, rather, That ye
may not cease to believe, or be led to mistake in this, comp. ch.
xvi. 1. Augustin’s solution is too narrow,—that I am He of
whom this scripture speaks* more earnestly,—of whom this
scripture also, as all scripture generally, speaks. For 7) ypady
in connection with the citation is, as everywhere, said generally.
Thus, that everything which befalls Me, even that which seems
so repulsive to faith, is but the strict fulfilment of what was
long ago foreseen and recorded; that I am the great typified

1 Roos is too narrow when he says that although Jesus received attend-
ance from others, yet now the disciples actually ate His bread. The pro-
found and much more comprehensive expression needs no such justification.

2 Which we may supplement here by way of improvement on our re-
marks in the Commentary.

8 Nonnus: dr: ciel éxsivos, row wéps Parrijoos Calin mavrevoato Oovn.

140 THE TRAITOR.

One throughout the Scriptures, and tell you before it has come
to pass, in order that ye may see that I have not trusted him,
he has not deceived Me, as Ahithophel did David, and many
will you.

Ver. 20. It is constantly denied that this saying has any con
nection here with the preceding; and even Liicke joins with
Gabler and Kuinoel in assuming it to be a gloss which has crept
in from Matt. x. 40, or still better from Lu. ix. 48, and fallen to
the end instead of following ver. 16, to which it should belong.
But we see the connection most clearly, and find no link want-
ing; remembering, as said above, that the Lord is speaking in
deep emotion, and that His contemplation passes from object to
object abruptly, rather hinting His meaning than fully expressing
it. There are many artificial methods of tracing the link which
we must dismiss : the obvious one is the best, viz., that the honour
of the Apostle’ s vocation would by no means be affected by either
the present sin of this Judas, or the similar experience in the
case of others which awaited them, ver.18.' Is not this connec-
tion enough, is it not as it were the most befitting close of this
entire discourse? The whole circle of the Apostles seemed to be
disgraced and broken up by the treachery of Judas; and there-
fore the Lord confirms the faithful in their election, and that very
fitly by a repetition of that earlier promise on which all depended.
He does not design to say (B.-Crusius), “so much greater should
be the dignity and honour of His faithful ones, they should be
loved of God because they had kept themselves from the un-
faithful.” Such a comparative imports too much, but the positive

1 Hezel finds here another exhortation to humility : Remember that the
honour which may be conferred on you, does not rest upon your persons
but is Mine, even as I Myself give My honour back unto God!! Others
again :—He who receiveth you shares your honour (but where is that said ?),
therefore overvalue not yourselves! Schleiermacher’s, however, is a view
somewhat more tolerable :—In humility and love we should come to others
as sent of Him, thatso we may be received ; everywhere making it our care
as servants to bring our Lord with us. But the point is brought out alto-
gether too artificially. The penetrating Driseke goes astray when he attri-
butes to the Saviour the tacita oppositio:—Those, however, who receive him
whom I send not, receive neither the Father nor Me! Meyer most strangely
interprets it that the Lord promises to send another in the place of Judas,

and exhorts the Apostles, by anticipation, to receive him affectionately into
their circle.

JOHN XIII. 26, 27. 141

sense remains: Be ye faithful ones of good courage, ye retain
your honour as the messengers whom I shall soon send forth, the
devil shall have no other among you!’ This is one thought
which is obvious ; but a deeper allusion must be added :—As I,
though resisted by Judas, have been received by you and many
others, so also shall ye not in vain be sent forth; your humble
and laborious love shall not be contemned by all.

THE SECOND AND MORE DIRECT INDICATION OF THE TRAITOR,
AFTER THE SUPPER.

(Chap. xiii. 26, 27.)

This is, according to our view of the whole procedure and
connection, a second more direct indication of the traitor, which
did not take place until after the supper. Thus there is no room
for any contradiction between the Synoptics and St John. The
jirst indication appears in vers. 21, 22, and coincides literally
with what the Synoptics report ; we, therefore, defer our exposi-
tion of ver. 21 to the last part of the work, and the context to
which it belongs. The objection which Baur and many others
urge so vehemently, that St John leaves no room anywhere for
the insertion of the Supper, has been well answered by Hauff :
no historical writer must be required designedly to show the place
where circumstances which he omits should occur. We might
satisfy ourselves with a confident non liquet ; but every man must
be allowed here his own unprejudiced opinion. Bengel’s notion
that ch. xiv. 31 first points to the going into the city to the pass-
over, is assuredly the most violent and improbable supposition
of any. We cannot interpolate the institution of the sacrament
(with Paulus, Meyer, B.-Crusius, Kahnis) between vers. 30 and

* Rieger : ‘‘ He revives their confidence again with regard to their future
work, for the devil would take away from them all life and hope. Having
accomplished his business with Judas, he would have all the rest think them-
selves no better than he—We are all disgraced, there is no faith among us,
our whole order stinks. But no! The verily, verily, I say unto you, of Jesus,
stands between them and despair. He can justify them to themselves, that
they are sent of Him.”

142 THE TRAITOR A SECOND TIME POINTED OUT.

31, or (with Neander and Ebrard) between vers. 32 and 33 ;'
nor can we insert it still later (with Liicke and Lange), nor
(with Olshausen) at the end of the chapter, after ver. 38. The
reasons for and against this decision must be referred at last to
our own subjective feeling, although a profound examination
of the question would afford much room for argument. We
assume, for our own part, that the right place for its insertion
is between vers. 22 and 23, notwithstanding the apparent con-
tinuity of the connection. For from ver. 23 down to ch. xiv. 31
everything seems to go on in an absolutely unbroken thread.

A correct harmony of the four Evangelists, and especially the
letter of St Mark and St Luke, forbids us to doubt that Judas
received the sacrament with the rest, being included, as the lost
one, for a testimony in the “for you:” this has been generally
assumed from the earliest times, and has never been contested
save on internal grounds. The Av idov of Lu. xxii. 21 is not
to be easily dismissed by a reference to the freedom of St Luke’s
connection generally (Ebrard) ; this would be an altogether too
free transposition, The words are placed in our Lord’s lips, as
part of His continuous discourse; and this is a very different
thing from the allusion to the strife in éyéveto dé Kai, ver. 24,
which we admit to be retrospective. Still less can we accept
Wieseler’s artificial application, who finds in the émt tis Tpamé-
&ns a proof that the reference to the traitor had already preceded
during the eating of the meal. To us the stern word of Mark
xiv. 23 is unconditionally decisive— And they all drank of it
(comp. Matt. xxvi. 27); for the twelve are mentioned in the
context, without a single syllable about the removal of one of
their number.?

We see in this wAjv of St Luke that the Saviour in the
oppression of His spirit cannot, even after the institution of the

1 Ebrard speaks very inappropriately of an open disclosure of the traitor
while they were eating and before the sacrament ; and then regards Jno.
xii. 31, 32 as a strictly suitable introduction to the supper.

2 Everything in St John tends to this, wherever the Supper is inserted,
but the Synoptics are most decisive. The rigorous consecution of events
does not ‘‘ tolerate” the idea of the absence of Judas (as Siiskind Stud. u.
Krit. 1852. 4. says too gently, after Wieseler). Kahnis in vain tries to per-
suade us that the words of institution are against the presence of Judas,
since Jesus could not have said with regard to him— For you!

JOHN XIII. 26, 27. . 143

Supper, put away, as it were, the thought of the traitor. The
serpent’s sting is still keenly felt. The impious man departs
not, remains quietly among them, and even joins in the question,
Is it 1?—he eats and drinks with them, and waits till the en-
forced command bids him go his way, that the Son of man may
speak of His glorification and of His love. Once more there is
a sharp conflict, between the man of sin and the pre-eminent
Man of grace, the first-born of Satan and the Son of God—a
final contest of love and gentleness for that wretched soul,
though in the consciousness that the frightful issue will be that
in the case of this soul at least the Devil will be the victor.
The rest of the beloved disciples, too, cannot shake from their
thoughts the fearful word, that a traitor was among them; the
Lord’s reiterated word, Lu. xxii. 21, 22, gives them the occasion
of repeating their questioning as recorded in ver. 23, and this _
according to our harmony is the immediate parallel of Jno. xii.
23. |
“Who is the first among them, who can dismiss from his
mind the personal question (Lord, is i¢ [?), and turn his obser-
vation upon the others? Strange, that it is he who should have
been the last, he who should have been most anxiously busy in
testing himself—Simon Peter!” Thus says Driiseke, and with
some measure of propriety. But we may also say with confi-
dence, that now, after the supper, each one of the eleven must
have known, in his own honest heart, that he was not the traitor.
Peter and John come prominently forward, as the representatives
of this consciousness—they sitting or lying, in all probability, on
either side of Jesus. St John at least indicates his own position
—éy T@ KoAT@ (comp. Lu. xvi. 22, and Jno. i. 18); that is,
Jesus, according to custom, reclined on His left side, His head
towards the table, His feet turned backwards in such a manner
that the beloved John lay confidentially near His bosom. And
as Peter is able thus secretly to hint his meaning to John, it is
most natural to suppose that he was on the opposite side of
Jesus, and either intimated what he had to say behind the
Saviour’s back, or, as the vevew may include, whispered it to
John.’ Peter’s well-intended, but overcurious spirit of question-

1 Nonnus, excellently, rzaw 0 epéesve ciae7. We cannot approve, with
Tuthardt, of Lachmann’s reading —xai atyerairg’ Eixé ris tov. Schulz’

144 THE TRAITOR A SECOND TIME POINTED OUT.

ing, which goes on down to ch. xxi. 21, is very familiar to us ;
his curiosity led him afterwards, however, to his denial. We
may regard a good intention as prompting the present question
(Grotius: tum ut Imnoxii extra suspicionem sint, tum ut sibi
caveant ab impuro); yet it is scarcely to be questioned that
rather a kind of curiosity than any such reflection induced him
to put it. Affecting and characteristic is the pure simplicity
with which the beloved disciple fulfils the request of the curious
one, even as afterwards, ch. xviii. 16, he introduced him into the
palace of the high priest." Similarly noteworthy and significant
is the priority which Peter is constrained to concede to him who
was nearer than himself.? But most affecting and most significant
is it to observe, that Jesus can no more decline the request of the
beloved John, than he could that of Peter. Peter himself might
have received a similar answer to that which he afterwards
received,— What is that to thee? Look into thyself!

Ver. 26. Nevertheless He mentions not the name; this was,
on the one hand, impossible to His deep emotion, and, on the
other, would have been audible to the rest :—He veils the reply
in an accompanying sign. We are firmly convinced that this
word, softly spoken to John, is quite different from that of Matt.
xxvil. 23. For there Judas himself dips his hand in the dish, here
the Lord dips and gives it ; that word was not, properly speaking,
an answer, but merely the reiterated general intimation— One of
My familiar companions, now at the table with Me, one among
you: for if He had had reference to an actual dipping of Judas
at that moment, the continued ignorance of the disciples would
have been inconceivable. Least of all can we tolerate the hypo-
thetical question by which Braune (and Lange) would reconcile

argument that John never uses the optative has no force. That Peter attri-
butes to the beloved John a knowledge of the traitor we do not regard as
‘* characteristic” of him, but, rather, inconceivable ; for Peter, though he
might speak precipitately, never spoke thoughtlessly. The foundation of
this reading may have been a correct gloss—a agyesy may have been origi-
nally in the text.

1 Hiller’s remark seems quite unsuitable to J ota s character —‘‘ John
takes the hint, being himself equally curious in this matter.”

? Lampe: Videant Poniificii, quomodo Primatum Petro vindicent, cum
Johannes primum et in mensa et in corde Christi locum obtineat, et Petrus
ipse ejus patrocinio indigeat.

JOHN XIII. 26. 145

the two—“ Did not Judas himself out of a certain presumption
once more dip into the dish, because custom required it?” All
is better harmonised, if we regard this as the second indication
occurring after the principal meal. Then the Wopdov would
not be a portion of the paschal lamb, but intinctus panis as the
Vulg. has it, and the Sapa not the sauce of bitter herbs, but
something else similar. More important than these trivialities
is the significance of the word and sign, by which the Lord once
more and conclusively confirms the prophecy of the Psalm, and
makes His appeal to His most unworthy éraizpos (Matt. xxvi. 50).
The offered morsel is—to speak with Driiseke—“ the affecting
sign of a heretofore relation.” And still more, it is an especial
and confidential token of love, on account of which some of the
rest might think the wretched man highly favoured! This is
His love unto the end even to the lost among His own; this is
its final appeal to the hard heart.

But this very point marks the final decision and separation.
In chap. vi. 70 it was said of Judas—éuaBonrds éatw, but that
was only the beginning. He had at this time already—after
Satan’s suggestion (here at ver. 2; what Luke xxii. 3, with less
strict distinction, terms eio7AGe 6€ catavds)—trafticked with the
high priests, and pledged himself to the betrayal. But all this
was not yet final, Satan now went further in the process of his
destruction and put forth a more active influence upon him:
but still there was some slight thread of connection with the
grace and truth of God in Jesus, which might yet avail for sal-
vation. Now, now first, after this sop (Bengel urges us to note
well—not with it!) Satan, according to St John’s most profound
observation, entered into him—“ took full possession of him”™
—or whatever else our language will allow for the rendering
of the equally literal and figurative expression. Satan down to
the very last develops his plans through external occasions and
circumstances. But the external occasion is only the veil which
conceals the unsuccessful contact and conflict of the love of Jesus
with the wickedness of the traitor. It was not, as has been said,
wrath at being now detected, which decided his course, for Judas

1 Kahnis: ‘‘ The propkecy becomes, at the moment of its disclosure, ful-
filment. Remarkable, that the sign of it is a gift of love—it is love which
challenges the eyil to its utmost iniquity.”

VOL, VI. K

146 SATAN ENTERED INTO HIM.

knew that with increasing certainty since Matt. xxvi. 25: and
that the gift of this sop was intended to be a revelation of him
before the disciples, could not and would not be needed by Judas,
at this moment. Suffice, that in the awful tore of the Evangelist
there is reference to a hidden and most internal procedure, which
only one profound glance discerned."

Ver. 27. And the eye of Jesus is upon him. What a tran-
sition at this crisis, celebrated in hell and mourned in heaven!
The last request of love—and then the giving up to a reprobate
mind, to do the deed of reprobation. (Rom. i. 28.) On the
one hand, it is, indeed, clear, from the position of the decisive
0 trovets (not, what thou wilt do), that zroéjcov is not equivalent
to an absolute imperative for the deed, but can involve no other
than the permission of devoting wrath, into which grace now
suddenly changes.? Scriptural parallels of such an imperative
are to be found, e.g., in the word to Ahimaaz, 2 Sam. xvii. 23,
still more definitely in God’s tempting saying to Balaam, Num.
xxii. 20,’ most definitely in our Lord’s own Aveate, John ii. 19,
and wAnpwcate Matt. xxiii. 32. Zech. xi. 12 also closely cor-
responds in prophecy. Nevertheless, on the other hand, the dig-
nity of our Lord, who could not be absolutely betrayed by Judas
but gave Himself freely up, requires that something actually
imperative should be discerned in the words. Notas if (accord-
ing to the strange notion of Cyril) the invocation was addressed
to Satan, whose act alone that of the possessed Judas was; he
into whom Satan enters thus is not possessed but doeth himself
what he doeth, as the words here therefore expressly run. But
it is, first, a commandment of the obedience of Jesus, surrender-
ing Himself up to the Father’s will, for it means—TJ am ready,
and will not withstand thee! By no means is it (as Lange says)

1 Not, as Hezel coarsely imagined, that his form, mien, and language
were all such as if Satan had directly taken possession of him! Or, as Hess
somewhat more cautiously, ‘‘ Whosoever looked at him carefully might read
it in his demeanour.”

2 Grotius addresses a similar mode of speaking from profane writers.
Seneca: fac, si quid facis. Plautus: age, si quid agis. Euripides: ded y <7
vt Opcoeic.

8 Less strictly parallel is the commission to the evil spirit, 1 Kings xxii. 22,
because in this figurative presentation the "poo" may yet have been a good
spirit in the service of the Lord. :

JOHN XIII. 27. 147

a request which has reference to the period of the sufferings of
the victim under the sacrificial knife—“ Let not my martyrdom
be long!” Jesus, even here, when He obeys and yields Himself
up, rules over time and hour; consequently the word is also, as
Ambrose rightly saw, a command—Gret thee hence !' and Judas,
as Satan within him, must obey this behest. This is slightly
perceptible in the tdyvov, which assuredly might be translated —
citius quam prius voluisti. Thus this second word, finally, to the
betrayer contains something majestic beyond that first, simply
assenting 30 eizras of Matt. xxvi. 25. That signified, for the
first, —I see through thee! Thou knowest it—I also! But still
the deed lay in the future, as a design which Satan had put in
his heart. Now, rather, when the doing (internally) begins in
Judas :—What thou doest do; I not merely suffer it, I command
thee to do it soon, now! Thou willest it—I also will it—thou
hast Me in thy hands!

Nothing external betrayed the betrayer, the finished hypocrite,
down to the last; so that the other disciples even in these words
—“which their deeply-moved Master could not speak without
an extraordinary emotion” (as Driiseke says) —discerned nothing
extraordinary. Ebrard’s view (S. 641 note) appears to us quite
erroneous, that the disciples might have well known that Judas
was the traitor, but that they did not believe the final accom-
plishment of his wicked purpose to be the matter in question
just then. If Judas was indeed marked out to them as such,
they could not have understood the mysterious 6 zrovezs otherwise
than of its real meaning ; certainly, they could not have referred
it to his ordinary business and duty. But it must be assumed
that no man knew or observed anything, save John, who as the
reporter of this ignorance excepts himself as having known, and
probably Matthew also, see Matt. xxvi. 25. As it respects John,
at least, the matter is clear from vers. 25, 26—which Luthardt’s
protest has forgotten. There had not been time enough to com-
municate the answer received even to Peter, between the closely
connected giving of the sop, entering in of Satan, and command
of Jesus—Do quickly! It is quite clear that their supposition
as to the buying for the feast does not suit the day before

1 Quite incorrect is Hess’ conversion of this—‘‘ Jesus, when He saw him
arise to depart, adds nothing but these words.”

148 DO QUICKLY.

Thursday (for which, however, the critics make this a proof !),
even as the hasty sending away from the table so late in the
evening would then appear needless. Rather, as Guericke,
Tholuck, and Luthardt rightly infer, they could have thought
of this only if it was already the beginning of the festal evening,
and thus the last moment in which anything neglected before
might be procured for the feast. That, moreover, as Tholuck
well remarks, “ their suppositions were confused and distracted,”
appears by the second of them, which is still more improbable
than the first. For the giving of alms was not so hasty a matter,
and was much too late as a contribution towards the procure-
ment of the paschal lamb. St John thus designs to describe to
us the deep mystery of these occurrences, known only to him-
self, the beloved and trusted,—with the most artless embarrass-
ment of all the rest. ;

One more most pregnant remark he gives at the conclusion of
the whole, in the absolute and emphatic jv dé w£&.1 This does
not simply intimate that it was late evening, but signifies some-
thing which corresponds with the previous mention of Satan. It
was the breaking in of the hour of the power of darkness, Lu.
xxii. 53. It was not needful, as Liicke requires, that St John
should use cxotia; the vv& here intimates the coincidence of
external and internal darkness. It was night in the soul of Judas
—this also is included in it, by this fearful word the Evangelist
dismisses him into the darkness without, with the yet deeper
and more real night in his own spirit. It was night, further, in
a broad circle around Judas, the leader and forerunner of the
enemies of Jesus—night in the hearts of many, condensed and
mighty darkness, to obscure the Light of the world in the fear-
fully hidden mystery of the Passion. Nevertheless— and this is
its final emphasis in contrast with what follows—Jesus goes on
to speak of His glorification, of His love, His departure to the
Father, the coming of the Comforter, His own return with

1 For ore 2226s must be connected (according to Lachmann’s text) with
the following verse, as the o¥y makes evident ; and not with the previous (as
Knapp hasit). Adre 22a: following the sufficiently emphatic eddéme e€qa dev
seems to us as bald, as the mere Aégye: 6 "Iysovs would be weak and uncon-
nected. Bengel’s critical feeling is here sacrificed to his marvellous harmony,
according to which what follows was spoken by Jesus on the next morning.

JOHN XIII. 31-35. 149

peace, the victory over the world, eternal joy and glory—all
words of light and life, which have approved their full meaning
in the hearts of all who are not what Judas was,—in the over-
coming and extinction of all darkness.

THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN; THE ENTRANCE
INTO THE INACCESSIBLE * THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

(Ch. xiii. 31-35.)

Those who, with Bengel, interpose an entire night at this

point, give up the force of this most significant and sublime N bp:
. it is scarcely imaginable that the Lord could have thus begun a
new and abrupt discourse. The hypothesis which inserts here
the institution of the Supper, gives a meaning, indeed, to the
Nodv, but does violence to the arrangement of the Evangelist.
| If we are told that vers. 31, 82 are an appropriate introduction
to the Sacrament, we must avow that—apart from the unna-
tural disruption in the discourse, which runs on continuously
from ver. 81 to ver. 38—our feeling cannot tolerate after the
vov éofdcOn any further cdpa Siddopevor, aiwa éxyvvopevov.—
But St John’s narrative and the entire scene becomes most clear
and luminous, when we simply read it as it stands :—evGéws
ep AOev— Ore ovv €ENOe, Aéyer o ’Incods.

What says He, and of what does He speak? Nothing further
of Judas now; not until ch. xvii. 12 does His thought revert in
deepest sorrow to the betrayer.

No, the Lord now pours forth His last discourses, which de-
layed His setting forth, and the beginning of which’ is this viv
edofdabn (“a cry of exultation in the night in which He was
betrayed” )—the end of which is the High-priestly prayer—the
middle of which is the yu tapaccécOw ipov 7 Kapdia, the incen-
tive to faith eis Tov Oedv Kal eis €ué—the goal set before the dis-
ciples, their muctevopev, His dpte mictevere, ch. xvi. 30, 31.

The relation of the Nov,—which even now at this first out-
pouring anticipates the final petition (dd0£acdv cov tov vior,
Sofacov pe ov warep) as fulfilled, —to the departure of Judas does

1 Which Luthardt also I. 267 admits and defends.

150. THE GLORIFICATION.

not consist in this, that Judas was a hindrance to the glorifica-
tion, since his deed of darkness was to be instrumental in acce-
lerating it. But there is a twofold thought to be traced here :-—
First, by the act of the traitor, now decisively commencing, the
death of Jesus, that is, His glorification, now appears to be as a
fact accomplished ; and then, secondly, Jesus, after the removal
of this opposing instrument of hell, this vainly loved one, over
whose spirit He in the spirit had won the great victory," can now
first speak év wappnotia concerning His glory. Jam quasi obice
rupto torrentes gratiz a labiis Jesu effunduntur—says Lampe.’
And His words presently uttered, vers. 31-35, determine, if we
will hear them, the old controversy between faith and love, as to
which of them is the first, whether the aydarn peta tiotews,
Eph. vi. 23, or the wiotis 5: ayamrns évepyoupévn, Gal. v. 6.
Neither of the two, if both are genuine and inseparable in one !
Faith, truly, is the source, ground, and energy of the new crea-
ture; but a faith to which love is promised, of which love is
predicated, and to which love is commanded in the working of
the life-giving law of Christ. We have here in our Lord’s
words two parallel and perfectly corresponsive sayings :—a word
for knowledge in order to faith ; and a word for the heart (or
the living truth of this knowledge) concerning love. The one
dogma is the glorification of God in the Son of man, as of the
Son of man in God; the one commandment the mutual love of
His disciples, because and even as He loved them.

Ver. 31. Does the Lord’s éd0fac6y speak by anticipation of
His heavenly exaltation? No more than in chap. xii. 23, 28, 33,
to which this word looks back. The viv of itself is positive
against this; and in ver. 32 the ed@vs introduces first the anti-
thetical, though closely connected, future dofdce. Consequently,
while we must regard both glorifications as forming but one and
the same, the one following immediately from the other, the
distinction must be maintained that this present glorification is

1 See Lange S. 1328 ff. upon this, and my exposition of Matt. xxvi. 24.

2 Only that the glorification itself, of which He speaks, is something very
different from what the tasteful Herder most tastelessly expresses : —‘t Now
is the Son of man satisfied among His own—for their fellowship is puri-
fied ! !” —Luthardt will find that which he adduces to supplement my mean-
ing (ii. 290) laid down by myself as the fundamental thought.

JOHN XIII. 31. 151

the beginning and ground of that which follows as its consum-
mation. In no other than the death of the cross, now regarded
by Jesus as coming and come, present and accomplished, is the
Son of man first of all glorified :—in this humiliation He is
exalted, in this darkness of shame does His glory beam forth,
from Golgotha go forth those attracting energies which are to
wrest from Satan the world of mankind. At His proleptic
glorification on the mount He spoke of His passion; but now
from the beginning of His passion He speaks of His glorifica-
tion. As for Israel the superscription upon the cross points out
the King (and thereby repels every false and carnal notion of
His kingdom) —so for humanity at large this word is the inter-
pretation of the passion : Here is the Son of man thus glorified,
so that God in Him is glorified !

But the glorification of God in the suffering and dying za
of man is a broad and deep comprehensive truth which we can
perfectly apprehend only in three aspects. It embraces, first,
when we look into it, the self-offering of God in the person of
this Son of man as a great and solitary fact ; secondly, when we
look back, the shining forth of God in human nature generally,
as the longed for goal of all aspiration and effort ; thirdly, when
we look forward, the representation and offering of God to huma-
nity as the object of faith and love.

God is glorified é év abtS—assuredly not 8” abrod, therefore,
as we find it in Nonnus; as Erasmus’ false correction of the
Vulg. by per eum translates it; and as Liicke also insists, on the
erroneous assumption that it is one with chap. xvi. 1, notwith-
standing the decisive parallel of év éav7@ in the next verse to
our text.! Thus the Lord means, first of all, in Me, as Man, in
this Son of man! This 06 @eds édofacOn év adr could be said
of no DIN3 before, of none after until he is one with Christ:
—in this consists the pre-eminent personal d0£a of the One. As
the second man He is at the same time the Lord from Heaven
(1 Cor. xv. 47)—drravryacpa ths 80&ns Tod Geod (Heb. i. 3).—
His d0£a is the d0£a tod povoyevods tapa tatpds. Thus in a
certain sense God had been revealed and glorified in His entire
human life; as we sing concerning the infant Jesus—“ The
Father's light and love beam forth from His new-born face; He
_ + Which, however, de Wette arbitrarily translates—durch sich selbst !

152 THE GLORIFICATION.

is the Sun of the new heaven, which sheds light upon the world
otherwise sunk in darkness” (Freilinghausen). But who beheld
this radiance of the Father’s light and love? Who could utter
St. John’s éfeacdpefa, among the children of men? The wor
shipping wise men were not wise enough to discern God in the
child new born—no Apostle fell before Him with Thomas’ cry
—Mary herself had but a faint presentiment of the hidden
mystery. Yea, after thirty years during which the still light of
His love had beamed forth from His graciousness at Nazareth,
He began to manifest His glory :—the power of God in all
His works down to the grave of Lazarus, the love of God in
all His tenderness and humility towards the wretched. Yea,
verily, throughout all His life, He stood before a God-dishonour-
in& world—TI honour My Father! The Father honoureth Me!
Of that spake the voice—I have glorified My name! Jno. xii.
28. But still there followed then—xal wadw do€dow. And
this had its wondrous accomplishment first in His sufferings
and death. The great question then was, whether the Righteous
One would approve Himself such, and be confirmed of the
Father as sent to save and not to judge the world. He had
finished the work of His life—but the greatest work, the work
which gave all the rest its consummation, was still reserved for
' His passion. How then in this deepest ignominy is the highest
honour, the glory of God, manifested? Precisely when all the

~ sin of the world is exhibited around Him, closes in upon Him,

and lies upon His spirit so that He is made sm—He is most
gloriously manifested as without sin, as contending against sin,
\.as supremely elevated above sin, even while He dears it. The
love which shone brighter and brighter in the feet-washing and
the supper, in its majesty of meekness and. patience with Judas,
is now glorified into an absolute and final victory over the hatred
of hell. - Not as elsewhere, that the Divine is darkened in the
most devout Endurer—here there is the purest separation be-
tween light and darkness. It is night in Judas and in all His
enemies, night comes into His own human soul, even to His
Eloi, Eloi but this Eloi! Eloi! remains uninvaded, light in
the midst of darkness. As in the night on which He was born,
heavenly glory shone around, so now after the night of His be-
trayal there is darkness even in the midst of day. Nevertheless,

JOHN XIII. 31. 153

out of Golgotha’s deep obscurity there shines forth victoriously,
—the righteousness of God, a first glorification already of the
righteous Father—the love of God, which reveals itself and
gives itself to us in this conquering Son of His love—thus,
grace in justice, justice in grace, that is, the mystery of the
holiness of God becomes manifest. Thus the purest henour of
God shines forth in the deepest dishonour of this Son of man.
All is human and all is Divine, the Father in Him performeth
the work of this world-redeeming passion. The Ecce Homo
is changed to the eye of faith into—Lehold Thy God! In this
man become thine, O humanity !

Thus we find in it, secondly, and looking backwards, the
penetration of human nature by God as the longed-for geal of
all human aspiration and seeking. But how was this aspired to
before Christ ? In the old covenant the grace which stooped to
man wrestles from the beginning with sin, but cannot at once
_ victoriously break through, because man’s freedom must oppose
his God, because the human nature must in its ground and
universality be prepared for the revelation of God init. Hence
all was simple preparation, an aspiration and seeking awakened
from above :—that is the deep-implanted mystical germ of Christ
the Son of man, in whom finally dwelleth God. In spite of
all Israel's hardness of heart, which therein represents humanity,
God’s honour and glory remained, for the sake of their germ of
faith, among and upon them; but its design is to come into them.
How sore was the conflict and wrestling of the Angel of the
covenant with Jacob before His becoming man in the true Israel;
of the Spirit of Christ in the people of flesh! Yea, at best it
became an Israel which, like Simeon and Nathanael, waits ; types
of, and preparations for atoning sufferings are found from David
down to the servant of God, Isa. liii.—but all is no more than
aspiration and waiting. That Lev. xxvi. 11 should become a
reality (comp. 2 Cor. vi. 16) remains ever the goal of their future.
Daniel prophesies how, after the destruction of the animal might
of all the kingdoms of the world, the true and holy Son of man
comes before God and receives the kingdom of a God-pervaded
pure humanity as the kingdom of God. ‘That is the goal of
Israel attained in Christ; for He is this Son of man, as the true
David, the righteous servant Israel. He is the new man in |

154 THE GLORIFICATION.

God, the blossom and fruit of humanity which had at length
burst forth on the stem of Israel, through the faith of Mary
uniting at length Abraham and Sarah in one. Not, as the old
theology supposed, the suddenly descending Deus ex machina—
for One who thus became man would not be properly and truly
at the same time the Son of man. But still less, as the new
unbelief supposes, altogether and solely springing up here below;
the impregnation from above was consummated in the over-
shadowing of the Holy Ghost, and only the eternal Son of the
Father in the Son of Mary overcame sin and the world even to
the glorification on the cross. But here is all that obscurer long-
ing, aspiration, and search of entire humanity realised ; for here
the old discord is abolished, here God is in man and man in God.
Humanity had not, indeed, utterly and for ever fallen away
from God, else would it have been with Satan irredeemably lost;
but that men, even the Gentiles, are still the offspring of God,
is plainly proved by the seeking and feeling after Him who is
not far from them, and yet so utterly unknown (Acts xvii.).
Consciously and unconsciously all mankind seeks Him—and
that rightly in itself, for not merely from without and above can
God manifest Himself to His personal and free creatures. God
meets this seeking after Him by preparatory grace ; and this is
a mystical Christ before Christ. Wherever the heathens came
near to the true God, they became therein one with Israel; and
so now they find with Israel in Christ the goal of all realisation.
Never in other way—never independently of the person of this
Son of man!

In this Jesus, and in Him alone, at first, because He is the
incarnate Son of God, is human nature glorified into a Divine-

humanity. This is the new dogma, the one and sole essential

' proposition for faith, which involves in itself, however, the whole

fulness of theology—the simple apostolical saying, God was in
Christ. Indeed, as the new commandment of love was no other
than the old one, so also this dogma is no more than the truth,
fulfilment and re-establishment of that old and first truth—Man
the image and glory of God, God in man. But the person of
Christ in its individuality makes here the difference between the
truth and its fearful perversion in that revived doctrine of the
abyss—Hegelianism, which recognises no God who became man

JOHN XIII. 31. 155

in time, but one who is eternally becoming man, which declares
the whole of fallen humanity with its (denied) sin to be the Son
of God, and calls that the glorification of God in man—but it is
no other than the seditious Barabbas put in place of the Saviour.

Believe first in God (with Israel), and then, therefore, therein,
in Me! ‘Thus speaks the Lord afterwards, ch. xiv. 1. The so-
called faith in humanity is reduced to confusion and put to
scorn by sin. Where then, and in what son of man and child
of Adam apart from Christ, does God receive the full tribute of
His glory? No other man comes in his own prerogative to God,
to the father, than He who uttered Jno. xiv. 6. There is no
other God and Father than He whom we behold in Christ,
according to Jno. xiv. 9.

Finally, how and where do we attain to this seeing? We see
not God in Christ as He sits in majesty at the right hand of the
Father—our looking up into heaven after the manner of the men
of Galilee (Acts i. 11) would remain without power and without
result. It is said here, Jno. xiii. 33—Ye cannot at once come
after and unto Me there! It is on the cross that we are to find
Him first of all, there He is exalted for us, and thus the glori-,
fication of God in the Son of man is, thirdly, the exhibition or
offering of God to entire humanity as the object of faith and |
love. Here love is manifested and offers itself to our faith, that /
we may be sanctified in love. The world is redeemed, srs now
goeth forth the word of reconciliation, and in it the Spine The
heavenly glorification of the Son of man, in whom God was now
already glorified, in God Himself, was to be self-understood, even
as the Lord made it follow in ver. 32. And if the faith of the
disciples had been perfect, they would have drawn the same
conclusion themselves. We can now draw it with them, and say
of the Crucified and Risen—It is the Lord, the Lord of glory!
Nevertheless, this faith rests solely wpon, and grows solely out of
the fundamental truth,—God was in the propitiating suffering
Christ. Here is not merely the kernel and centre, but actually
allin One. Whatever in the opinions or even in the confessions
of our faith does not essentially, livingly, inwardly hang toge-
ther with this, is not fundamental to holiness and salvation ; but
at the cross the distinction is made between Christianity and

pseudo-Christianity. Worshipping before the Crucified, and as

156 THE GLORIFICATION.

crucified to call Him our Lord and God—to this we are led by
that fearing and seeking faith in God which must precede it ;
and all sincere seekers out of an old covenant cry here, each one
at his hour, the final, blessed etpjxapyev, before which the pre-
judices of every Nathanael give way. And the Crucified Him

self meets them, in His word and Spirit, with the cry—I am
He! Philip then no longer desires to see the Father in any
other way ; for here is God before us, God with us, God for us—
and become God in us. Dost thou feel the serpent’s bite, poor
child of Adam? Here is the Lord thy Physician exalted in the
form of the serpent! Behold Him; so hear the word from the
cross that it may become to thee a seeing—in spite of all
the sophistry which would bewitch thee not to obey the truth,—
let this figure be painted before thine eyes! And who is the
exhibitor of it? Who is the Glorifier of the glorified Christ
both for our hearts and our minds? The Holy Ghost, who
exhibits Him in the words of the Evangelists and in the apos-
tolical preaching which to this day has never ceased. And what
is the fruit of this glorification? A faith in Him who first
loved, who becomes Jove in us; as the Lord will proceed to show
further on in this chapter.

Ver. 32. After this extended exposition of the first verse, for
the preaching tone of which we do not so much ask forgiveness
as acceptance, there yet remain a few observations upon the fol-
lowing. The Lord speaks of a twofold glorification. *He is, first
of all, made perfect in obedience through suffering as the apynyos
Ths cwTnpias for the entire race of mankind ; His dying becomes
the axpn of His divinely-loving and self-sacrificing life, and thus
the image of Gcd in man is once more restored, and exhibited
tous. This honour of God in Him is His first and true honour,
without which there would have been nothing to be said of any
future honour, or indeed of any other. Yet there follows imme-
diately from this, according, as it were, to the advancing revela-
tion of His career—The Dying One rising again, and pager
to heaven—the glorification of the Son of man in God. ' This
logical deduction, as it is drawn by our Lord’s anticipatory trust,
lies in the repetition of the former clause with el, which wit
be regarded as “ strange and gloss-like,” or “ feebly repeating”
(Luthardt) only by such as miss its profound meaning in this

JOHN XIII. 32. 157

place. Its absence in many important authorities is to be ex-
plained either by that general lack of discernment as to the true
meaning of the passage, or by resorting to owoworédeutov. The
apparent tautology is quite in harmony with the character of the
discourses which now begin, and which are full of such resuming
deductions. B.-Crusius is perfectly right in saying (after Gro-
tius), that this ei is not used hypothetically, but introduces the
argument of an inference, being equivalent to guandoquidem.
The kernel of that inference lies in the necessarily corresponding
recompense which the Son sanctified for His own asks and receives
from the Father, as it comes prominently forward in ch. xvii.—
I have glorified Thee; and now glorify Thou Me! The funda-
mental principle of 1 Sam. ii. 30 (Sept. tovs dofafovtds pe
d0&dcw), which Grotius adduces, finds here in fact its highest
application, as Origen expressed it: avtidwpetras aiTé 0 TraTip
TO peilov, ov 0 vids TOD avOperrou TeTroinxev. This perfor lies as
a peyrorov in the év €av7@, for which indeed in ch. xvii. 5 wapa
ceavT@ stands; yet that must be interpreted by this, and not
conversely. “ As by Him and in Him as the Son of man God
was glorified, the glory of the Divine life stamped upon His life
in the flesh, so now the Son of man, as the exhibitor of the new
life-type, is by God, in His well-pleased recognition of His ac-
complished work of glorification, taken up into His own Divine
life and glory.” (Beck S. 610.) And there is a fine truth in
the observation that Jesus first spoke “ under the strong impulse
of prophetical prolepsis, as if all was overcome already’—and
then “as the high emotion sinks down again” He returns to
the distinction xal evOus So€dce. Yet Liicke, who makes this
observation, guards against the misapprehension that on that
account the concluding glorification is the same as the preced-
ing. For it is not an “ old misconception,” but a scriptural
truth, that here (as in ch. xii. 28) the discourse is of a twofold
(though really the same) do€afew. The ev@us, finally, does not
mean to say that His death itself was to be this second glorifica-
tion'—though this “ Johannean view” is generally appealed
to with approbation; but immediately thereupon, suddenly, to
the astonishment of the world and even of the disciples, His

1 For which Liicke cites Euthymius, éy atre +o oraup@.

158 WHITHER I GO YE CANNOT NOW FOLLOW.

resurrection and glorification was to follow. Luthardt’s protest
against this exposition of mine finds but a poor justification
in interpreting ev@vs—with the presently beginning suffer-
ings! The essential unity of the dofafew, which I have by
no means desired, does most manifestly resolve itself into a two-
fold glorification through the quick succession of the “ death
and resurrection,” of the deepest abasement and the highest
exaltation."

Ver. 33. The Master, after these lofty words, which are too
high for the weakness of the disciples, stoops not simply with
a brotherly but with a fatherly love to His children. This is
something quite different from the ¢iroz of ch. xv. 15, yea, in a
certain sense, is its opposite. ‘The meaning of this expression,
occurring only here in our Lord’s lips,’ is by no means exhausted
by saying that “the tone of the departing Master becomes more
tender and confidential.” In its tenderness of affection the
solemn truth must be discerned, that these weak disciples whom
the Lord by anticipation calls friends, and draws upwards to
Himself in love, and for their future understanding greets with
the utterance of such high mysteries, are yet for the time no
more than new-born babes, and far from the goal marked out in
Eph. iv. 13. (Peter, ver. 37, would be a man before the time!)
Therefore says He now, and for the present, to these His dear
children, the same thing which He had twice before said (ch.
vii. 34, viii. 21) to the unbelieving and opposing Jews,’ though
obviously in a different sense.* Whence we may take note, as

1 Consequently, it harmonises well with a twofold glorification that ‘‘ the
receding emotion returned into the zai eddvs dofeee:, which establishes the
distinction,” as Liicke’s words obviously say—though Luthardt has not
read them.

2 For réxva, Mar. x. 24, is not altogether the same.

3 Kai tuiv Agyw dors is incorrectly referred by Luther to the following
verse, the d/6ws of which needed no preparatory Avo.

4 The gprs appears to us not to look backwards, as Luthardt thinks,
quoting Meyer with approval:—‘‘ He could not longer spare them this
declaration,” and Bengel: noluit discipulis citius hoc dicere, infidelibus
dixit citius. But it is a limiting ‘‘ for the present,” which looks forward
to His glory—as the Lord presently explains it Himself, ver. 36, by viv
(Luth. fiir diesmal), which Peter substitutes for dprs: see, moreover, ch.
xiv. 3, xvi. 22, xvii. 24. |

‘JOHN XIII. 33. 159

Olshausen observes, “ that the Redeemer Himself takes pleasure
in using the same sayings with diverse references.” The two
statements there uttered to the Jews—Ye shall not find Me, ye
shall die in your sins, are necessarily wanting here. There was,
assuredly, in these words of departure and severance— Whither
I go ye cannot come, “ something inexpressibly troubling,” and
“we must lose sight of the emphasis which Jesus places upon
the cannot.” (Driiseke.) He thereby, not merely returning back
again down to His own in the world, but actually looking for-
ward in prophecy, intimates that His glorifying assumption
to God would partake the character, as for the world so also for
His believers, of a concealment until the time of a final revela-
tion. (Col. iii. 3, 4.) That the Son of man is glorified in God
Himself, abides the hidden and high object and goal of fazth.
As we cannot with our bodies at once go up to heaven, so can-
not we in our spiritual life become at once heavenly like Him;
therefore, also, we cannot at once ascend in our knowledge and
spiritual apprehension to Jesus. Even this does not yet behold
His glory. All our dogmatic persuasion of faith concerning
His sitting at the right hand of God would hence be without
effect in drawing and purifying us to Himself, if He had not
been first glorified for us in humiliation, upon the cross. There-
fore the Lord speaks of a seeking, but in the case of His own of
a seeking to which the promise of finding is given. The heart
with its love seeks the Crucified, even where the faith of know-
ledge wavers or is yet unestablished ; in that love is the genuine
‘germ of faith, and thus seeking it findeth ever more and more
the Risen and the Glorified. (St Mark xvi.6.) Yea, the heart
believes, perceives, and lives on into experience, through the in-
fluence of the love-awakening glorification of Him who suffered
and died in love. This is the deep connection and transition in
' the discourse between ver. 33 and ver. 34, between the one
dogma of the glorification of the Son of man and the one évtoAy
which points to love. We reach, indeed, love through faith ;
but through love alone we live ourselves (dying to the old life)
into the fulness of faith. None of the learned expositors, as
far as we know, has perceived this; it has entered the minds
only of those practical expositors, who have read with their
hearts and for their hearts. Driiseke: “ Your desire after Me

160 THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

is the main condition of our further fellowship. I am so long
and so certainly yours, as ye seek Me with hearts full of love.”
Again, “ With no other design did He place in the connection
of our text this new commandment, than because He would say
— Love, little children, that ye may understand Me. Love, that
I may be able to glorify you in My glory.” Braune, too: “ I
am upon the Father’s throne, but because visible tokens thereof
fail, all is mystery to you and sometimes doubtful: I triumph,
and sorrow oppresses you, the mighty tremble and their em-
pire is passing away, but ye hide yourselves and are in dismay.
Yet is there a way to Myself open to you: Love one another!”
That is, In My love, from love to Me, because and as I have
loved you. 7

Ver. 34. If the cauv7 dsaOnxn, of which the sacramental
institution speaks, refers to Ex. xxiv. 8, comp. Jer. xxxi. 31, so
without doubt (and let this be a note of the bond of unity
between St John and the Synoptics) the évtod7 xavvy stands
in the strictest connection with this. For to a covenant belongs
a law-giving.? Even here, where the beginning and the foun-
dation of the covenant is the perfect self-sacrifice of the Lord for
and in the sinner which must first take place, there must not be
wanting some condition or obligation on the part of the sinners
thus reconciled and sanctified. The old covenant was founded
upon free prevenient grace in the call of Abraham, in the pro-
mised and fulfilled redemption of his seed (Ex. xix. 5), yet its
proper consummation did not take place but in the sprinkling
of the sacrificial blood after the commandments of Sinai (see
Heb. ix. 19); so that it was a covenant of commandments.
Here we cannot think otherwise than that the propitiating self-
offering love has previously borne witness to itself in the Last
Supper, before the évtoA xawy follows: and this gives us a
forcible reason for not inserting its institution later. In any
case, the close relation between the covenant and the new com-

1 Predigten iiber die letzten Schicksale unsres Herrn, i. 214, and ii. 86.

2 Yet both are not one and the same, not (according to Lange) that the
appointment of the Sacrament is itself to be understood in the évrory xasw7;
for this opposes all our previous exposition of this pregnant word. Not
‘a new institution,” but every old precept of love is condensed into one
new precept in Him, as St John’s epistle has authentically expounded it.

JOHN XIII. 34. 161

mandment remains undeniable ;' from this and from nothing
else must we set out in solving the question (dealt with by most
expositors with such unbelieving want of insight)—In what
consists the newness of this precept.

We cannot here agree with the venerable vy. Meyer, who
elsewhere so often hits most acutely the meaning of Scripture.
He begins rightly, “the true commandment of the New Testa-
ment,” but then immediately goes astray, “in opposition to the
ritual law and the pharisaic teaching, and even to the notions
of the Apostles; newer than that of following Him (the most
pre-eminent as long as He was upon earth) ; the newest among
many, yea, the sole and distinctive law.” The opposition to the
precepts of the Pharisees, and to the notions of the Apostles
still entangled more or less in them, has no application here, for
it is the lawgiving on Sinai which is here the question ; nor
must we refer exclusively to the ritual law, since it is to the old
covenant of the ten words to which the new covenant with its
one word is opposed. And as to its opposition to the earlier
precept (preliminary?) of following Christ, that is not simply
superficial but altogether unfounded. This notion takes its
origin from Bengel, who has been entirely misled here by his
false harmony, so that his note sets out with this error: “This
precept is called new, not so much with respect to the O. T., as
- In respect to the school of Christ !” He then says: “ Previously
the following of Jesus in His several steps had guided the dis-
ciples, and this implicitly included love ; but they cannot follow
Him now that He is departing from them, and therefore the
sum of their duty is prescribed to them thus.” For, is not the
loving, because and as He has loved, yea the giving up of life
for the brethren for His sake, itself the following of Christ, its
essential development? Ver. 36. Did the Lord ever intend
His previous commandment to follow Him, in any other sense?

We must, in order to understand the new commandment as
new, ask solely and inquire what is the distinctive character of
the New Testament, in as far as it also has a lawgiving. Now that
is not to be found in love itself and of itself, nor in its intenser

Bengel’s Harmony, which transposes chaps. xiii. and xiy. to the Wednes-
day, dissolves this connection; and by that circumstance of itself is suf-
ficiently refuted.

VOL. Vi. L

162 THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

power, nor in its restricting concentration :—and thus we reject,
at once the most current interpretations. In his first Epistle, ch.

m/75/6, the Evangelist undeniably refers to this present utter-
ance a our Lord as given in his own gospel, and furnishes the
right commentary upon it. But we cannot, with most expositors,
refer the am’ apyijs in ver. 7 of that chapter simply to the begin-
ning of Christianity ; but we understand it unhesitatingly, with
the ancients, that the commandment was the old commandment
from the time of the old covenant and law. The dAéyos, which
they had heard from the beginning, is not merely the word and
precept of Jesus as in vers. 3-5, but the meaning goes onwards
by a7’ apyijs to say that this word of Jesus is identical with every
word and commandment of God from the beginning. Mark,
moreover, the explanation of az’ apyijs in ch. iti. 11, 12, which
goes back to the beginning of Scripture immediately after
Adam’s fall; and, again, that in ch. v. 2, 3. this love is referred
to the évtoAds Tod Oeod generally. Again, let the decisive
antithesis in ch. ii. 8 be well noted, according to which the old
commandment is made a new one coincidently with the outburst
of the light after the darkness, that is, in connection with the New
Testament grace in Christ. Thus, that we should love God first,
and then for God’s sake our neighbour, our brother, in God, is
not a new thing in Israel :—this is attested by the tenor of the
instruction and exhortation of the Deuteronomy, which spiri-
tualises the decalogue, and so far points forward to its great
fulfilment, though at the same time it gives thereby no other
than its true meaning. Nor is it anything new in the world
generally, so far as it knows duce: and even performs Ta Tod
vowov ; for the world of heathenism speaks much about love.’
Further, the newness and distinctiveness of the New-Testament
precept of love cannot consist in the intenser degree of its self-
sacrificing devotion—as Knapp supposes himself to have proved,
Tholuck and Liicke following him; and as many of the ancients
likewise held. It is specious but incorrect to say that in the

1 Thus we do not agree with Sander’s comment on the Epistles of St
John, which treats most incorrectly the dx’ épxas of this passage. Refuta-
tation of his errors would take us too far; but we may refer to the one
point, that while in the second Epistle vers. 5, 6 apply the pies = differ-
ently, this decides nothing for the first Epistle.

JOHN XIII. 34. 163

Old Testament the main element even of love is the principle
of justice and equivalent, the jus talionis,—as I love myself
and would be loved by my neighbour, so must I love himn—
while, in the New Testament the spirit and meaning of Christ
goes far beyond this; man, as Cyril says, being required and
enabled to love others ody ws éavtdov GXN tép EavTov in
which Euthymius concurs, as may be seen in Liicke. For,
first, there is nothing in the word of Jesus about this especial
intensification, but it rather adheres to the righteousness of the
mutual ddAjXovs; and, then, the whole notion of this distinc-
tion is oblique and unreal, as Olshausen properly though not
fundamentally enough shows. “The true love, which is the
nature of God Himself, is everywhere one and the same; it is
not now more and then less.” Yea, verily, God’s precept even
in the Old Testament knows and inculcates no other love than
that which consists in unselfish devotion; and beyond this jus-
tice and holiness in the sight of God, beyond this perfect com-
mandment, there is no other and no greater, as our Saviour’s
quotation of the old law, Mark xi. 31, expressly testifies.
Would we place Christ in St Mark and Christ in St John in
contradiction? The imperfection of the Old-Testament law
does not lie in this, that it prescribes a lower degree of love and
holiness (for there can be nothing higher than—Be ye holy as
Iam holy!), but in its confronting, imposing, legal character,
without power for its fulfilment.

Least of all may we seek the newness of the commandment
of Christ in the especial restriction or even concentration of
Jove upon the narrow circle of the brethren united in the bonds
of common devotion to Him. Grotius: Novum dicit, quia non
agit de dilectione communii omnium—sed de speciali Chris-
tianorum inter se qua tales sunt. Against which Tholuck pro-
tests, “ How can that be called a new precept, when this peculiar
love was not only admitted by the Jews, but by them carried to
excess?” It is most strange to introduce here in the New
Covenant, in which the Lord gives Himself for many, yea, for
all, the partiality of love, even though based upon the spiritual
brotherhood of His people. We shall see hereafter abundant
evidence that, despite all appearances, He does not give so ex-
clusive a meaning to His @ivadeAdia. Kolbing has lately, with

:

164 THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

his Moravian honesty of intention, laboured strenuously for this
superficial and current interpretation of our passage.’ In all
the discourse of this sacred evening, the Lord is “ occupied
especially with His disciples, and with their peculiar relations
to Him and to one another.’ Quite true, but is He not also
concerned with their testimony to the world, in order to the
future progressive extension of this first circle of disciples?
This alone would infer something very different from an ex-
clusive limitation of love to the circle of believers at any time
extant. Kolbing again protests vehemently against the evil
that “‘ now-a-days the love of our neighbour and brotherly love
are regarded as one and the same, and as having precisely the
same significance” —and declares that “in all ages, and espe-
cially in our own, it is highly important that the consciousness
of the distinction between general love and brotherly love should
be kept alive in the church.” Quite right, in its degree and in
its place; provided that a restricted brotherly love is not there-
by made the essential and distinguishing characteristic of the
New Testament, and asserted to be the proper meaning of our
Lord’s utterance on this occasion. In S. 689 we find a very
suspicious misinterpretation of the New Testament name of
brother, which the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount uses for
every fellow-man (not merely for every fellow-Israelite !), just
as St James’ ch. iv. 11 uses adeAgos for the wAnciov of the Old
Testament law, in ch. ii. 8, referring it also in this chapter to
the Gentiles who might enter into the assembly. By what
token are we to know with certainty, in the midst of a Christian
people all under the obligations and blessed with the grace of
baptism, to whom we are altogether to refuse our especial
brotherly love? And are our Missionary speakers wrong in
speaking of love towards our poor brethren without, equally
redeemed with ourselves? Then this restriction is in appear-
ance only, and will not stand the test. Although assuredly the
love which Christ less commands than brings, creates, and
bestows, will have a hearth in which it may be properly said
to be kindled; and from which it diffuses its warmth, in the
especial fellowship of those who are to that end born again

1 In which 8. 686 we find also a great error as to the Old Testament and
the relation to it of the Sermon on the Mount.

JOHN XIII. 34. 165

through Him, yet according to His spirit and His design this
fellowship is not anything exclusive and shut in, but embraces
with all the strength of united love the entire world, which is
by this love to be won and redeemed from its sin. Thus we
exhibit and extend, not independently of and in connection with,
but in and with this brotherly love, that universal love which is
therefore itself called generally and absolutely aydirn. (2 Pet.
i. 7.) If we are mutually to love one another, and that with
an anticipating spontaneous self-offering love, which alone is
true love, its extension to all follows of necessity—to those
whom we yet know not, but who are our future brethren
redeemed like ourselves by the Lord. Only then do we love,
as He hath loved us! Or, did He actually give up His life
only for His friends, as from Jno. xv. 13 has been most inap-
propriately urged? Could that which the Apostle testifies con-
cerning the love of enemies, Rom. vy. 6-10, from the death of
Christ, yea of overcoming evil with good, ch. xii. 20, 21, even
out of the Old Testament, surpass in any sense the meaning of
Christ Himself? Let Matt. v. 47, 48, be pondered as His
solemn word even for the narrowest, truest brotherhood of His
kingdom! We gladly concur with Liicke: “ Since the fellow-
ship of the Divine kingdom embraces all that bears in it the seed
and germ of the Divine life (better—that should receive), so
the New Testament circle of love is the widest imaginable, in
which the Jewish bigot-question has no place—Who. is my:
neighbour (or even brother)? The restriction is only apparent,
in reality it means the widest extension.” Yes,-verily, the fire
of love must be concentrated upon the hearth of confirmed
fellowship in Him, only that it may beam forth the more
mightily upon all the world.

All this, then, not sufficing to approve itself the true interpre-
tation of the xawj—what is its meaning? We regard it, press-
ing still from the external into the internal, as consisting, first,
in the simplicity and plainness of the expression, as it respects
the form—then, and pre-eminently, in the perfection of the
new, now first existing type, in the power of fulfilment which
flows from this life-giving type, which is more than a mere type—
and, consequently, in the abiding living newness of this évtod.

As all the dogmatics of the new teaching for faith was found

166 THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

to coincide in that single expression, God in man, that is, in
Christ—-so is all the lawgiving of the New Covenant embraced
simply and singly in that one word concerning love.’ Thus did
the veteran John represent it in his well-known word to the
church of Ephesus; and in this there is assuredly an element
of newness, in contradistinction to the many and yet vain com-
mandments of the old covenant. The word of Christ and His
Spirit does, indeed, resolve the obligation of love into its inex-
haustible variety of duties; but this manifoldness could never
before be at the same time so clearly and plainly reduced back
into one—not in the intimation of Lev. xix. 18 (itself between
individual precepts)—as it is in Matt. xxu., and Rom. xin. 8-10.

Whence comes this? Vow first is the knowledge and spiritual
contemplation of what love is, possible through the glorification
of the love of God in the Son of man, through that type which
shines so brightly before us— As I have loved you! As no other
son of man could say—God is glorified in me; so no man could
say, before and apart from Christ,—Love as I have loved! in
its full and perfect meaning. But this type and exemplar is not
merely living, but makes alive ; and that is the kernel and centre
of the newness of the new covenant and commandment. In this
—As I! we have the first table of the New Testament deca-
logue, out of which alone the second is deduced and fulfilled —
the open and full realisation of that which in the Old Testa-
ment is only very dimly intimated in the added motive which
cee the isolated precepts—iim "28 *D, with at furthest
imparts to us, the love of gratitude in return, which thon, as
He needs us not Himself, turns to our brethren as He would
have it. The first perfect fulfilment of the law in Christ, man
like ourselves, stands before us as a living decalogue; but to our
faith power comes from it into ourselves to love in like manner.
(Eph. v. 1, 2.) That is, as Kolbing says, “the new foundation
of the commandments, the union of His disciples with the Lord
through His blood.” The precept to bear our brothers’ burdens
in love (to wash their feet), is called in Gal. vi. 2, the law of
Christ, first, because Christ did Himself bear all our burdens,

1 To this pointed v. Meyer’s note, given previously —Yea, the sole com-
mandment.

JOHN XIII. 24. 167

then, because He requires the same of His disciples, and requires
it because they can fulfil it. Here we must protest against the
almost universal assumption of the expositors that the iva in the
second clause is to be transposed and to be construed properly
before xafas. We know that elsewhere iva stands thus for 671,
especially after a obTos, attn, Toro (comp. ch. xvil. 2, 3); and
the words might literally ruan—évtoAnv tavtTny, btt ayaTare,
once more, 67 xabws éym Kat tpyels x.7-r.. But the matter
which is here spoken of teaches us that actually in this unjusti-
fiably overlooked and invalidated iva we have the kernel and
key of the whole, the inmost and most essential casvorns mvev-
patos Kal ov TradaoTns ypdupatos. Luther's translation “auf
dass” is perfectly right, the restitution of which I unhappily
failed to plead for. Christ hath loved us—so that and in order
that we may have power to love likewise. (See the same iva,
Rom. vi. 4, where the amended translation has markedly put
mégen instead of sollen). Let it not be said, as Alford affirms
in opposition to me, that the second iva is parallel with the first
and to be explained by it; rather must the first be explained
by the second; and the dédwpu, in the New Testament spirit,
should have this full meaning,—Here it is an évtod» of what
should be simply that is spoken of, but the Lord gives His living
and life-giving commandment to His own, as He gives His peace
and His Spirit—as the Father gave to Him the évtody of His
doctrine, life, and death.

The precept of the old covenant, although it signifies the same
love, stands nevertheless and continues to stand on tables of
stone, in the Torah; to fulfil it, at least as perfeetly as through
the Spirit of Christ. remains an impossibility. Certainly it is so
in the natural heart of the old man—there stands the love-
commandment miserably reversed in selfishness, Every man must
love me!? And the Old Testament, the expression of which the
Lord repeated in the Sermon on the Mount can at first only
point condemningly to this pattern ; it can only demand the re-
versal of natural self-love into the now supernatural se//-denial
—but not produce it. For, apart from grace, that is a fearful
truth which even Hezel remarks upon our text—“ To nothing

1 As modern translations simply give it, So love—so should ye also love.
2 Compare our observations at the Sermon on the Mount, vol. i.

168 THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

is man more inclined than to hatred of man!” It is true that
there was genuine love in the Old Testament, but not created
by its law. There were before Christ, there are now appa-
rently out of Christ, Samaritans, who practise mercy, but only
through prevenient hidden grace in Christ. And where Christ
is preached, there first is all love made perfect by His Spirit,
while all so-called love, which will not accept but declines Him,
must be reduced to a lie. As Nitzsch preaches, “ At this point
we must cry to the Spirit of truth that He convince the world
and the spirit of the age of its glorification of love in connec-
tion with a contempt of faith. What, is love to be exalted alone,
and faith to become a thing of nought? Just because so very
much, yea, everything depends at last upon love, on that very
account we should lay great stress upon the genuine and pure
teaching of evangelical faith, and make very much, yea every-
thing, depend upon the amihlayee truth of réderipiin and
of grace in Christ in all its unimpaired and perfect revelation
of the grace and love of God in Christ.” Even as he lays out
the plan of his excellent sermon :—“ In communion the great
essential is brotherly love; in brotherly love, if it is to flourish
perfectly, the great essential is the Lord’s discipleship.”* When
the darkness is past and the true light now shineth, then is the
évTon)) a Katvi), that is, an dNynOés ev adT@ Kal év duiy. (1 Jno.
ii. 8.) There have we the authentic interpretation of the Evan-
gelist himself! Then have we passed from death unto life

1 Schonaich, das neue Gebot des Evangeliums, Magdeb. 1846, has set in
an excellent light this passage as it has been perverted by the German
Catholics. He gently reminds these erring ones that “ they are building
without laying a foundation; that they seek fruit without planting the
tree.” And its conclusion testifies, ‘‘ We will never agree with the melan-
choly fancy that nothing depends upon faith, but will evermore assert that
this is the root and living fountain of love.” In the denial of faith as the
foundation the error lies, and not in the interchanging and confounding
brotherly love and universal love! To this applies what Kahnis has well
said (vom. h. Geiste i. 5): ‘‘ Though the Lord makes love the distinguish-
ing note of His disciples, it does not follow that Christianity consists only
in love. The measure of subjective appropriation is not the measure of
the thing itself. A man very eminent in the learning of this world wrote
to a pious Christian lady the commonplace remark that—to him Chris-
_ tianity was love; she replied, Yes, but according to St John’s word in his
Epistle, 1 Jno. iv. 10.

JOHN XIII. 35. , 169

(ch. iii. 14). Therefore is it God’s commandment that we believe
on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as
He gave it to us in His commandment (ch. iii. 23). There
have we the unity of faith and love, the growing of love out of
faith! “No man is in a condition truly in the Spirit of Christ
to love his neighbour as himself (we would add—and in the
truth of the old commandment, from the beginning) unless he
loves like Christ.” (Liicke.) And no man, again, can attain to
this unless as a disciple of Christ he hath received His Spirit.

Thus the new type and exemplar with its new power is the
fundamental point in the newness. But as we at first, when
referring to that subject, admitted something of newness in the
simplicity of the word which enjoins it, so we may now supple-
ment all by adding—This word becomes to us abidingly new as a
superaboundingly exciting principle, convincing us of an obli-
gation never discharged but ever in force (Rom. xiii. 8), a uni-
versal évroAy prompting to eternally new duty, reigning over
that boundless domain—e tes érépa évtodH. But this last view
of it, which’can be understood only when the others are under-.
stood, must not be made, with Olshausen, the only meaning of
the évtodv Katvjv: to do so is strange folly, to be accounted
for only by the expositor’s confusion of ideas in the interpreta-
tion of the whole passage.

Ver. 35. In this following verse our whole exposition finds its
full justification and completion. So much of obligation and of
absolute condition remains in this evangelical precept, that who-
soever does not fulfil it is thereby necessarily excluded from the
covenant of grace. In test, consequently, and warning, the
Lord now marks out the boundaries of discipleship, just as the
Sermon on the Mount pointed its close, though here more
graciously in the positive form of expression. But while He
speaks in the positive form, the rigid negation must be heard as
the undertone,—If ye should not have this love, it would be
thereby evident that ye are not My disciples. This is involved
in the critical éév. In this one thing and in no other is disciple-
ship approved. It is not knowledge which avails, not a so-called
faith, even though like that of Judas, before the devil entered
him, it could cast out devils and remove mountains; rather is
this knowledge and this genuine faith known by this love. As

ie . THE NEW COMMANDMENT.

little avails the confession of My name, or of all the truth con-
cerning My person and My kingdom. Where this walking in
the truth is not found, the confession becomes an all the more
frightful lie. Where Christians are disputing over the holy
places, in the presence of Turks and Heathens, to the reproach
of their Lord, contending whether Latins or Greeks are His —
true disciples—when the Formula Concordiz is made an apple
of discord among brethren—the world may well ask what their
Master has taught or done for them. As the disciples of the
Pkarisees were known by their phylacteries, and as the disciples
of John were known by their fasting, and every school by its
shibboleth—the mark of the disciples of Christ is to be love.
And that a genuine love, as Christ loveth; not that merely
which (as Schonaich represents) says to a neighbour—Thy joy
is my joy, thy pain is my pain—which, indeed, is a great thing,
and not to be found in reality in the world—but that which
recognises and aims at the salvation of a neighbour, his true
good; which makes the joy of the sinner its grief, and his
divinely mourning sorrow its joy, and says, Thy safvation 1s my
joy, thy destruction is my grief! It is still possible for the world
to recognise at least this love, through the Spirit of Christ who
accompanies and bears witness to His grace. Love itself is not
to be seen with the eyes, but the light of its good works is (Matt.
v. 16); and it is a well-grounded presupposition that all men in
the world know enough about love to discern and distinguish
generally that which approves itself as genuine by active endea-
vours for the good and salvation of others.

Let it be observed, further, that the Lord here says generally
pabyrat, for primarily and essentially the Apostles, like all others,
are simple disciples. Thus does He significantly enlarge the
circle for which He speaks, beholding in these eleven His whole
people hereafter to be called, whom the covenant and the com-
mandment concern :—the dddAnXous and év addAndors is said to
all future paOnrais, including with all who at any time exist
those who are to follow them. And now comes in the yvecorrat
mdvTes in its widest extensiveness! What are all these, whose
knowledge the Lord here foresees and promises, to discern in
us? That we love one another warmly and intensely within
our own narrow circle, but care nothing for them as they are

JOHN XIII. 35. val

without and not brethren, or even love them less? How can
they be certainly and convincingly assured of our love, other-
wise than by finding it going out also towards themselves? Thus
we have manifestly once more the presupposed and included
universal love within the brotherly love! For why and to what
end are those without, so far as they can and will perceive it,
to note and learn from us what true discipleship is? “ Why is
the Lerd so solicitous that His disciples should be discerned and
known of everyman? For their own reputation in the eyes of
man? But not merely, on the other hand, that they may be
persecuted and hated, while they are acknowledged. No, they
are to be recognisable and make themselves known, in order
that others may be taught to believe in the Father of glory and
the Redeemer, and glorify Him who has given unto men such
power to love. Thus i follows of itself, that in loving one
another, they only exercise and prepare themselves for the exercise
of a love which is to go beyond into all the world” (Nitzsch). The
others should thereby learn to believe and love, to become
disciples, because they have been themselves loved as future
and possible disciples. Let ch. xvii. 20, 21, 26 be compared
and searchingly examined, for it essentially belongs to our pre-
sent subject. In order that Christ’s disciples may be able to
love the world with a united love, we say once more with Nitzsch,
“ their love must have a household hearth on which its fire may
be nourished, in which it may first condense its vigour.’! This
is our Lord’s teaching—“ but no exclusiveness as it regards those
who are to be disciples, though now unrecognised as such.”
Finally, the waves, closely investigated, does not refer merely
and solely to those without; but the general expression, con-
nected with what precedes and follows, intimates likewise that
in every respect év TovT@ alone is the yropicpua of the wabnrai
to be found. Among themselves, also, are they to be known
and approved by this; every man must know solely from this
that he himself is in Christ (1-Jno. ii. 5) ;—yea, lastly, as
Matt. vii. 16-23 indicates by what marks the Lord will in the
last day know His own, so we are to interpret this passage too.

? Compare also his Prakt. Theologie i. S. 248, where the distinctive obli-
gations of brotherly love have also justice done to them.

172 THE FIRST INTIMATION OF PETER’S DENIAL.

And it is to this that the unusual éuol waOntai (as mei or miht)
seems to point:—In My sight and judgment, or to My honour
(as ch. xv. 8), so that I may be able to acknowledge you.

THE FIRST INTIMATION OF PETER’S DENIAL.
Ch. xiii. 36, 38 [Luke xxii. 34].)

This pre-intimation of Peter’s denial is manifestly not the
same with that second which Matt. xxvi. 34 and Mark xiv. 30
record as given after the setting out, on the way to Gethsemane ;
but St John’s narrative may be harmonised with that of St
Luke. It may be regarded as strange that Peter should the
second time be so presumptuous as to enforce from the Lorda .
second prediction of his denial—but we have a parallel in the
twofold indication of the traitor, and the evangelical records
cannot otherwise be understood. For our part, we think it
better to accept such repetitions, which are not the less perfectly
reconcilable because they are such, than with the cdentfying
Harmony to deal loosely with the most definite statements of
time and connection.

Here in St John Peter has almost overlooked the great word
concerning love, into which John himself profoundly sunk, be-
cause his rash curiosity is still busy with the dwdyew of ver. 33.
He thinks of that alone, and reverts to it in his question. This
is a point of connection which has its historical value; and it is
not necessarily a different one from that of Lu. xxii., since the
Lord’s words there introduced, ver. 31, 32, without any imme-
diate connecting clause, may well be mE as interjected
between. St John is generally, as we know, more exact in his
systematic treatment than St Luke; and he shows us here how
that the Lord was induced, after the dogmatic word for the
apprehension of faith, vers. 31-33, and the ethical word for the
love of the heart, vers. 34, 35, to add yet a third word—in
opposition to the presumptuous curiosity of the head and the
heart, for the casting down of all the precipitancy of nature
The open and hasty Peter, who shows himself always as he is—
i that being also a Nathanael—is the representative, in this

JOHN XIII. 36. 173

chapter of general significance, of that impetuous curiosity
which springs from a lack of self-knowledge and self-com-
munion :—that twofold evil which first takes the form of a mis-
directed questioning as to the Whither, and then of the bold
_ self-confidence which merely follows it. The true inquiry and

investigation, as the Lord teaches it, goes into one’s own heart
—Lord, isit I? What am I? He who pretermits or passes
lightly over this, comes easily to pass over and forget, as if it
were the old long-known word, Jesus’ new commandment of
love. Instead of perceiving in this the true way of following
Christ for himself,—a way simple and plain, though to his
high-minded and self-seeking nature so difficult and steep, —his
desire is fixed solely upon this, to ask, out of what might appear
to be a feeling of love, more about the Lord’s vod and wo? than
He sees good to reveal.

Ver. 36. The answer gives at first, referring it especially to
Peter, only a repetition of the declaration in ver. 33, which must
stand. But for its closer explanation the previous overlooked
aptt is placed more prominently in its true position :—I have
said to you all, and especially to thee, for the present, that ye
cannot yet, viv, at this time, follow Me. The fault and the de-
ficiency thus lies with the disciples, who are not yet mature and
capable of dying with their Lord the self-renouncing death of
love unto heavenly glorification. Indeed, they were all called
to follow Him in their time, essentially by a very gradual increase
of His life in themselves, but also in their own peculiar vocation
to a similar self-sacrifice in martyrdom. Therefore, the viv is at
once explained and complemented by an antithetical iotepop,
parallel with the pera tadra of ver. 7, though manifestly with a
more distant and wider meaning now. Peter is once more
pointed to a future experience, to a following under the Cross.
This following is for Peter especially the death of martyrdom
ordained for him, as chap. xxi. 18, 19 proves; but it is at the
same time for him as for all the whole internal experience of
spiritual life, the death of self-renuncration which embraces the
whole external process of life. The former has ever in the latter
its root and its reality. Therewith perfectly coincides the gene-
ral reference to his future experience, to his future apostolical
power after the éwicrpédew, Lu. xxii. 32. As long as Peter

174 PETER’S DENIAL PREDICTED.

still tarries in rash curiosity he does not receive all this instruc-
tion; but afterwards, deeply humbled by his fall, he finds in
that promise of his faithful Lord—dxonrovOjoers pot, a word of
consolation which establishes him again, as v. Gerlach well
observes.

Peter, however, for the time overlooks all this, because his
proud heart cannot yet understand it; he still occupies himself
with the altogether too repugnant od Stvacat. He will not re-
ceive this saying, even from his Master and Lord, who knows
assuredly much better than himself. He thinks that he knows
himself ; the forwardness of the heart, which properly lies at the
foundation of that of the head, breaks out now in his not merely
asking again why, but adding his strong protestations likewise.
The second clause thus gives the first a deeper meaning: I can-
not understand this, I know otherwise—wherefore should I not
be able? Thus he utters his Atvayas like the sons of Zebedee
their Avvdpeba, Matt. xx. 22. We see that he is still the same,
after the Supper, as he was at the feet-washing. __

Ver. 38. Mournfully, convictingly, and yet graciously does
the Lord now address to him the testing question, uttered this
time in vain, in which his 0cq is literally thrown back to him.
With such a Ojo@, such a érowpos eis (Lu. xxii. 33), all is far
from being done! Augustine cries out, Quid festinas, Petre ?
Nondum te suo spiritu solidavit Petra. First must the Lord for
thee lay down His life, then comes the time of following Him.
Driiseke well expresses the universal meaning which underlies
this, and to which we have referred before,—“I will lay down
my life for Thee—in this he hit the very point, expressing it
sharply, definitely, and with a compass and force never before
reached. Well, is the Lord’s reply (at least this is in the great
question by which He responds to the question of the disciple),
that is everything. Nothing less than the being able to lay down
life for My sake will avail if you would follow Me through this
world. He who does not take up his cross and so follow Me, is
not worthy of Me. But— Hast thou reached this point ?” —If
we may unite the records, it might be here that our Lord con-
tinued, after this question :—Simon, Simon, bethink thyself
who thou art, and how it stands with you all—Satan hath
desired to have you; and Peter more vigorously replied— With

JOHN XIV. 1-31. 175

thee, both into prison and to death— Lu. xxii. 34 here coincid-
ing with Jno. xiii. 38." As it regards the definite “deny Me
thrice,’ and the significance of the cock crowing, we must defer
what we have to say to the last part of our work, where, after
having extracted what is peculiar to St John, we shall return to
a comprehensive exposition. Let it be remarked only, that here
ov pn adéxTwp dwvjce is to be strictly referred to this night
(introduced at ver. 30); and, therefore, that this must be the
night between Thursday and Friday, since otherwise many
crowings would have intervened. ‘The twice crowing of Mark
xiv. 80 will find its explanation in the sequel

FAREWELL DISCOURSES OF JESUS TO HIS DISCIPLES UNTIL
HIS SETTING OUT.

(Ch. xiv. 1-31.)

Before we enter upon the detailed exposition of that insepar-
able whole which flows forth so richly and so profoundly between
pa tapaccécbw % Kapdia, ch. xiv. 1, and éyo vevixnka Tov Kocpor,
ch. xvi. 33, it is necessary, or we may be allowed, to say some
preparatory words about the sections, and turning-points, and
fundamental thoughts which mark the progress of this marvel-
lous current of discourse.- For exegesis can scarcely begin its
task before such adjustment of the main ideas is made. We
find, indeed, in this section, which on that account admits of no
comparison with any other in Scripture, a peculiar difficulty of
analysis; Vinet, commencing in his last days a series of lectures
upon it, found—“ a Divine confusion.” For, what the departing
Saviour here poured forth for future remembrance and glorifi-
cation by the Spirit, remains still inexhaustible for our poor
understandings, and far transcends the common laws of our so-
called logical order of thought. Where the consolations, dis-
closures, predictions, and promises of the God-man for those

1 It has been incorrectly said that Peter’s denial was predicted by the
Lord three times—here, in Luke, and in Matthew and Mark. But it ap-
pears more proper and more significant to say that Peter thrice protests
against it, .

¥

176 THE FAREWELL DISCOURSES.

whom He calls His friends, pulsate in the vibrations of His
feeling (deeply-moved, but in the most serene self-conscious-
ness), there the life is from moment to moment—one thing
recurs ever in all, and yet every utterance is fresh, distinctive,
and new. ‘Thus the best advised course for the expositor is to
enter and go through the whole discourse, as it proceeds sen-
tence after sentence. But when he has done this, he may be
allowed to gird and qualify himself for the proper business of
an expositor, by unbiassed contemplation and observations upon
the whole. In this spirit let the reader now mark what we have
diffidently ventured to set forth.

It will appear undeniable that in ch. xiii. 31-35 we have,
so to speak, the great theme of the following discourses marked
out beforehand. We find here the three fundamental elements
which pervade the whole :—the word concerning God’s glorifi-
cation in the Son for faith, the new commandment of love, the
mysterious fore-announcement of His departure, who already
taking His farewell requires faith and love, the Spirit for the
full creation of which He goes to procure. Therefore we find
interpenetrating these three fundamental thoughts, the per-
petual promise of the Comforter, reference to His coming again
with the light of truth, the. life of love, the peace of victory.’
It will appear, however, on a close investigation, that chs. xiv.,
XV., XVi., notwithstanding the constant recurrence of the same
living thoughts which pulsate through them, do resolve them-
selves into three corresponding masses, which (though with some
indistinctness between chs. xv. and xvi.) the present arrange-
ment of the chapters represents. The jirst manifestly sets out
from faith in God pre-eminently ; the second relates especially
to the love of those who are united with Him and through Him ;
the third comes in conclusively (we might say, for hope) with
the most definite fore-announcement of all that which should
result from, and follow upon, the departure of Jesus.” And now
we may be permitted to point this out more closely.

1 The accompaniment of warning is to be found only in one place, ch.
xv. 2, 5, 6.

? With this almost entirely accords Baum.-Crusius’ arrangement, un-
usually good for him :—‘‘ Ch. xiv. is spoken with more direct reference to
the consolation of the disciples immediately after His departure ; ch. xv. is

JOHN XIV. 1-31. 177

Thus, in ch. xiv., the Lord speaks pre-eminently concerning
faith towards God and towards Himself, in the acknowledgment
that the Father is in Him and He in the Father. (See vers. 1,
9, 10, 13, 20, 24.) Yet here we find that the Lord ‘proceeds
already from His own departure, that is, preparatorily for them
to the Father; even as He anticipates the Jove in internal fel-
lowship with Him, which exists in them as a germ through the
weak beginning of their faith, but which was to be brought to
its consummation through the influence of the Comforter to be
obtained by His departure. Accordingly we find the same
trichotomy underlying the whole :—

I. Faith in Him, who goes before through death into the
Father’s house,—that is, through death viewed in connection
with its results, His heavenly exaltation and glorification.

1. Ye well know whither I go! (Vers. 1-4.) (although ye now

cannot follow Me, as said before.)

2. Against the protesting interruption (ver. 5), the expression

is changed : Not so much My death is the way, as rather, J.
Myself am the way, because the Father is in Me, and I am
in the Father, because I thus dying only go to the Father,
and again I alone (for you) can go to Him! (Vers. 6-10.)
(Exposition of ch. xiii. 31, 32.)

II. Love in and out of faith, or the internal fellowship with
the departing Lord, which begins with the faith now existing in
them, but can be perfectly wrought only by the Comforter,
whom He will send in His own place, in whom He Himself
(with the Father) will come back to them.

1. First comes an excitement of faith through the sublime

promise of greater works (vers. 11, 12), and perfect answer
of prayer (vers. 13, 14).
2. Then the keeping of all His commandments in the one
commandment of love. Here again,
a. First, the preparatory word embracing them all in one.
b. Then, the reference to the Comforter (prayed for by Him-
self) who will bring the new life, uniting them with Him

more hortatory, with respect to their continuous brotherly fellowship ;
ch. xvi. is more warning in its character, for distant futurity.” But we
would say, instead of warning for the last (not its main character !), more
comprehensive and conclusive.

VOL. Vi. M

178

THE FAREWELL DISCOURSES.

and the Father—and that, because faith and love are
already in them (differently from the world), and also to
the end that both may be made perfect in them. (Vers.
16-21.) Conclusion: I will manifest Myself!

c. The interjected question (ver. 22) concerning this differ-
ence between them and the world leads to a more direct
explanation, which conditions the receiving of the Spirit
(who will guide the knowledge of faith into all the truth)
upon the loving obedience to His words. (Vers. 22-24.)
(Exposition of what we found in ch. xi. 34, 35.)

III. Returning back to the beginning, and now more plainly:
—-The Lord’s departure, 1 in which He

ie

2.

Promises in His prediction peace, or leaves it for His fare-
well. (Vers. 25-27.)

But, properly (speaking by anticipation for their future
joy and their future faith), He obtains it by overcoming
the prince of this world. (Vers. 28-31.) Here there is
a first conclusion and setting forth in the Let us go hence
—hbut this is again delayed, for the stream of discourse
begins again to flow more deeply, and with still more ful-
ness from His heart. He cannot yet leave His own, He
has yet so much to say unto them.

Ch. xv. 1 down to ch. xvi. 4 treats, therefore, specifically of
the bond of love between Him and them, as also, in consequence,
among themselves: see vers. 9, 10, 12, 13,17. But this also
(just as in ch. xiv. the world already appears, in which He
leaves His disciples) is led back again, through the contrast
with the hatred of the world, into the promise of the Comforter
after His departure.

I. His disciples’ bond of love in Him (not without reference
to the ordained Sacrament) :

A;

2.

In the similitude of the Vine and its branches, pointing to
the fruit of holy life as to be borne only through union
with Him. (Vers. 1-6.) (Hence there is an accompany-
ing warning to those who simply abide not in Him !)
Exposition of this in unfigurative terms. (Vers. 7-17.)
(Confirming our interpretation in ch. xui., that our love
comes only from His.)

Il. The dyardre adj Xovs directs His thought anew to the

JOHN XIV. 1-31. 179

hatred of the still wnbelieving world, in which they must follow
Him who loved, but was hated; so that this becomes a second
note of His disciples.

1. The warning announcement—lIt will not, it cannot go
better with you than with Me! (Vers. 18-20.)

2. The explanation arising out of this :—the inexcusable sin
of unbelief! (Vers. 21-25.) (So that here too, ig this
intermediate section, faith is per oppositum spoken of still.)

II. But, for their encouragement and peace, the Lord re-
turns to the promise of the Comforter after His own departure.

1. Ye shall (in My love despite all the enmity of the world)
testify of Me, as having been Mine from the beginning,
when the Comforter is come! (Vers. 26, 27.)

2. All this [say unto you beforehand (as guard against offence
and apostasy) because I go from you. (Ch. xvi. 1-4.)

To this is now joined the final and distinctive farewell dis-
course, which ch. xvi. 5-33 embraces. Here is most plainly
and decisively announced, although in repetition of what had
been previously said,—all that was to follow after and from His
departure, and in such a manner that all is seen to rest upon
the fundamental distinction between the unbelief of the world
and their faith through the operation of the Comforter. First
comes the definite Niv imdyw, ver. 5, with the consolatory
assurance that only in consequence of that the Comforter can
come. (Vers. 6,7.) The process of the discourse which follows
is mainly directed to the future, but returns at the close to the
present.

I. The work and office of the Comforter, when He shall come.

1. To the unbelieving world, vers. 8-11 (in which a direction
to righteousness in Jesus follows necessarily upon the cor-
rection of its unbelief ; and then also the escaping of judg-
ment, through faith).

2. To His disciples, that they in faith may know al] the truth,
may understand the words of Jesus, that He in them (as
the Father in Him) may be glorified! vers. 12-15. (In-
tenser expression for ch. xii. 31, yet only the full explana-
tion of what is involved there.)

I. The great change from sorrow to joy following immediately

upon His departure,—as it awaits His first disciples, but only

180 THE FAREWELL DISCOURSES.

as the type of all future es during the entire period be-
tween His departure and return."

1. The wholesome sorrow (upon their being reduced to their
own weakness and feeling their own sinfulness), which is
turned into joy, and has for its fruit the true birth of the
new man. (Vers. 16-21.)

2. .Then and thenceforward increasing, ad at the last goal of
His return (of which the first return is once more only a
type)—in that day full and perfect joy! (Vers. 22-24.)

III. Concluding reference to the future, final promise and com-

ment upon all these farewell discourses :— My present discourse,
even the plainest, remains uncomprehended by you for a while,
as in proverbs, because your faith is not yet discerning and
confirmed, and your love (with all its sincerity) is not yet strong
and sha fack.

1. In the future ye shall plainly know (and, indeed, jonmlelle
ately the Father’s love !)—because ye do yet bie Me and
believe in Me to some extent. (Vers. 25-28.)

2. At present I can acknowledge and confirm your faith (which
ye avow, as ye think, with full understanding, together with
the love which it testifies); yet only in connection with a
lamenting glance at your weakness, which will be seen
when the hour comes which is already come. (Vers. 31, 32.)
(Here we have preparatorily the true meaning of the apts
miotevete, which coincides with ch. xiv. 1.)

3. Here, finally, the Lord abruptly breaks off with a last word
of consolation concerning peace and His overcoming the
world, ver. 33, a word which rises gloriously above all the
weakness of His present and future disciples. And this
Oapoeire, vevixn«a, anticipated through His confidence
and in His love, can be followed by nothing else than the
prayer of victory offered up in their hearing and before
their eyes.

1 Yet the sorrow of the first disciples (to anticipate our special exegesis)
is based upon their still existing unbelief, which must become manifest ; and
is thus parallel with that Divine mourning by means of which the previously
disciplining Comforter wins other disciples from the world.

JOHN XIV. 1. 181

FAITH IN GOD AND IN JESUS. HIS GOING BEFORE INTO THE
FATHERS HOUSE : HIMSELF THE WAY: THE FATHER IN HIM
AS HE IN THE FATHER.

(Ch. xiv. 1-10.)

The clause which was probably interpolated for ecclesiastical
reading—xai eize toils walntais avrod, did not belong to St
John’s original text, which makes the discourse of our Lord to
the collective disciples flow on continuously after the pre-inti-
mation of the denial. The pressure of time and of His emotion
would not allow the intervening pause to be of long duration.—
“ The humbled Peter is speechless” —but the Lord, whose pur-
pose is to re-establish and console, begins now first to utter what
was in His meaning and upon His heart when that forwardness
had again interrupted Him. It was His design to speak of the
Ovrov uray, and, in connection with that, of the faith which
should behold the glory of God in Him, of the love which should
be begotten by His love. Thus He now gives a further answer
to the vod imdyexs—yea, a superabounding answer to all the
questions which then or thenceforward the heart and mind of
His disciples might put forth, far beyond what either they or
ourselves may ever understand. “ He has here richly poured
out all that high heartfelt consolation which Christianity has in
it, or which man, in all his needs and troubles, can desire.
Further, we have here the great articles of Christian doctrine
in most impressive exhibition, fundamentally established as in
hardly another place of Scripture :—the three undivided persons
of the Trinity; the person of the Lord Christ in His human
and His Divine nature, one and eternally inseparable; also
the righteousness of faith, and the true comfort of man’s con-
science.”!

Ver. 1. We read earlier concerning the Lord Himself, éve-
Bptunoato TS Tvevpati—erapayOn TH Tvevpati— Wuyy
wou tetdpaxtar. The tapdccecOas of the capdia here is not

* Luther’s Vorrede zu seiner Auslegung von ch. xiv.—xvii. which “ testi-
mony to the glory of Jesus Christ” has been very seasonably re-edited by
Hermes, Magdeburgh, 1846.

182 FAITH IN GOD AND IN CHRIST.

so deep as the first, but more than the second; this last word
is found in prophetical reference to the sufferings of Christ, but
could not be used in the more exact phraseology of the New
Testament concerning Him. (Matt. xi. 29 is the only passage
in the Evangelists which speaks of the xapdla of Jesus.) The
Redeemer, now standing after the departure of the traitor
in a prolepsis of His glorification, and thereby armed for His
conflict, knows now nat merely the distress which is in His dis-
ciples’ hearts, but the anguish and perplexity which would
shortly seize them:—His gracious pi) tapaccéoOe, spoken
for the future, embraces both. They are now confounded and
amazed by His words céncerning His going away (ch. xvi.
6), and concerning the betrayal of one and the denial of an-
other of His disciples; yea, the institution of the Supper,
which should hereafter be their chiefest consolation, but the
“ for you” of which did not as yet find pure believing hearts,
adds to their grief. And how often both to them and all future
disciples would fear return to the heart, induced by all kinds
of causes—the feeling of sin excited by the law, of weakness
by the gospel, the conflicts and ways of trial in which they find
‘themselves alone, down to the terror of death at the last hour!
But agaist all this, faith is the armour and the consolation, no-
thing but faith, and therefore the Lord speaks alone of that.
Luther says, “ This is certain and can never fail; if a man is
in trouble and his heart is weak and terrified, that comes not of
Christ: for He is not the Man who would terrify His people’s
hearts, or make them mourn.” He adds what saves this from
being misunderstood, “ For if Christ troubles any one for his
repentance and conversion from a sinful life—that is not for
long. He does not mean that thou shouldet, continue in sorrow,
but soon leads thee into His comfort again.”

Have we then here in the redoubled auorevere which was
spoken for their consolation, an indicative or an imperative, or
both? From the very beginning different views have been held
upon this question. Luther not only translates two indicatives,
following the Vulg. (and probably Chrys.), but bound the
second with the first as its consequence:—Ye believe in God
(ye already believe certainly in God, now), ye therefore also be-
lieve in Me! This is assuredly incorrect, for such faith in Jesus

JOHN XIV. 1. 183

as He meant was wanting to the disciples; and, moreover, the
deduction of this faith from a general faith in God, as some-
thing already existing in consequence, is here at least out of place.
Assuredly, it must essentially so follow, and if the faith in God
(Mark xi. 22) is perfect, it is enough, and includes necessarily
faith in the final and full revelation of God in Christ. For,
all faith in God derived from an old covenant, finds Him only
in Christ as own God—even as the same God directly reveals
Himself to the heathens through Christ, according to that al-
ready-quoted conclusion of the great heathen in Christendom,
John Paul, who on the threshold of truth says, “were there no
God and no Providence, Christ were He.” Inas far as any man
(like the same John Paul) denies his faith to the Christ come and
preached, he is wanting also in true faith in God. He who can
reject Christ is fallen from God; but he who believes in Christ
believes now first rightly in Him who sent Christ ; consequently
it would b. right to say—Believe in Me, and then ye believe in
God! But on that very account the Saviour could not attri-
bute’ to His disciples now a perfect mictevew eis tov Oedv; or
prove to them from that that they sufficiently believed already
in Himself. “ The Saviour foresaw that men would be disposed
to stand upon this, that faith in God was sufficient unto salva-
tion: He therefore added—Believe in Me!” (Gossner.)

This not only refutes the view of Luther’s translation, which
torn from its connection is liable to sad perversion, but also that
intermediate view, which Luther strangely substituted in his
exposition, —that the first believe is indicative, the second imper-
ative. So Erasmus and Beza; so Glassius and Grotius: sicut
in Deum creditis, sic in Me quoque credite! (For which sicut
subaudiendum the latter very inappropriately compares ver. 19
and ch. v. 17, while the former thinks that in the second mc-
Tevery a verbum de continuatione rei significate intelligendum :
Creditis in Deum, et in me credite, h. e. pergite credere.)

1“ Many men imagine they can believe in God without being obliged
to believe in Jesus. I have never met with a man who did. (That is, in
Christendom, and rightly understood.) There are liars enough who say —
I believe in God and have no need of Jesus.”” Hamburgher Friedensboten,
Jahrg. 1821. §. 355. Yea, verily, for how can he who believeth not in
Him whom he hath seen, believe on Him whom he hath not seen?

tee

184 FAITH IN GOD AND IN CHRIST.

So also, unhappily, it stands in the London Hebrew IN Ey
woxT—DyoND, For this Olshausen also decides, “ ye believe
in God, therefore believe also in Me!” The possibility of such
a meaning lies in the truth that the disciples did indeed believe
already in God, and that the Saviour demanded of them that
they should Soshier up all their Israelite faith towards God into
a faith also in Himself. But did they not already in an imper-
fect sense believe also in Jesus? As He cannot recognise this
latter as insufficient by a second indicative," so He cannot use
the first aruorevew in a less emphatic meaning than the second.
Not merely were they to gather up their already existing faith
in God, but they were to consummate it first by faith in Christ.
Suffice it, that even for the meaning which would make Him
appeal to all that they-yet had of faith in God and Jesus, a
redoubled positive imperative is alone suitable,—being opposed
to the previous negative, “ only an affirmative application of
the Imp. p) tapaccécOw” (as Briickner says), just as in the
analogous, Be not afraid, only believe! So the Peschito, the
body of the Greeks, cece Hilary, Lampe, Liicke, and,
generally, most expositors, even when they do not fully apler
stand the deep significance of this expression. or the Lord is
in truth not speaking here merely of the faith of these first dis-
ciples in the hour of trial, but He lays down the word for all
the future of His entire discipleship, as a testimony that only
through faith in Him can a full faith in God be attained and
consummated, in the sense of the apostolical teaching, 1 Pet. 1.
21. Klee: “ Trust in God is the flower of faith in Him,” with
which agrees the truth, on the other hand, that a certain trust
in God must previously be the bud of faith in Him. The jux-
taposition of the designedty redoubled mucrevew, and the pro-
minence of the xa) eis éué coming first, has much meaning. On
the one hand, to wit, the already existing faith in God must be
the ground 7 faith in Christ; but again, on’ the other hand,
the perfect Ens in God is to be the result of faith in Christ :—

1 Bengel, agreeing with our previous summary, makes the apts wiorevere
of ch. xvi. 31 the finally attained goal, as an indicative answering to the
imperative of the outset. He proposes to point, rsorevere’ sis cov decv
xal cig tus xiorevere—but himself withdraws this as needless and over-
strained.

JOHN XIV. 1. 185

therefore can the first be only imperative. The co-ordinate
expression alone was suitable to embrace both sides of the
matter; its xa/ must first be taken as inferential of the latter,
and then more profoundly as giving the reason and ground of
the former. ‘This invalidates Olshausen’s objection: “ besides
which, faith in Christ is never added to and put by the side of
faith in God, but the object of faith is God in Christ.” Is not
ch. xvii. 3 a quite similar in addition to? Taken as mere And
and With (as a veil of the deeper connection, which the twofold
and yet single faith, however, recognises), the «aé rather in both
cases must have the great meaning which has been acknowledged
by all true exegesis—that Christ by muctevew eis is made one
with God. Luther: “ Here thou seest plainly that Christ
Himself testifies that He is equal with God Almighty; because
we must believe in Him even as we believe in God. If He
were not true God with the Father, this faith would be false
and idolatrous.” In fact, that Christians and theologians can
contest and deny the Divinity of the Son of man, asserting it
to be a dogma which goes beyond the Scripture, while they
read the Gospel of St John—is to be accoynted for only by
the blindness of unbelief, which, with all its talk about Scrip-
ture and scriptural doctrine, is no other than a deep-rooted
unbelief in the immediate truth of the Scripture about which
it speaks.”

Finally, that our contemplation may include all, let it be
observed that He who makes Himself in these words equal
with God, speaks at the same time as the Son of man, with faith
in Himself, as the one champion and predecessor in the faith
which He consummated in His death. “ If a heroic spirit cries
to us—Fear not! that is more than if one of ourselves, himself
terrified, should cry to you—let not your heart be afraid! Know
then that Jesus himself, the great Hero and Conqueror, cries

1 Olshausen’s proposal to take the imperative first and then the indica-
tive—‘ Believe in God, and then will ye also believe in Me,” is partial.
This is true and involved in the meaning; but where then would be the
appeal to an already ezisting faith? Does this word of encouragement tell
the disciples that they have not believed in God ai all ?

2 “ Jesus excites them to a future fearless faith in Him as absent, just

as they believe in God. They had much better than the Divine manifesta-
tions to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Oectinger.

186 MANY MANSIONS.

to His disciples and to us this word of encouragement: He
forbids to you all dismay ; He declares it to be quite needless.
Ye should do something better than fear.” (Zeller.) This px)
rapaccécbw of the mpodpomos in the presence of His own dying
agony was to resound in the ears of His disciples in all their
future troubles; for “ He speaks thus beforehand, both that
He may tell them beforehand of their coming fear, and comfort
them while He does so; that they may remember and console
themselves with His words.’ (Luther.) This fundamental
character of the whole farewell discourse, spoken beforehand
for coming sorrow, is in connection with these first words too
often forgotten, because they are attached too closely to the dis-
ciples’ present case.

Vers. 2, 8. The Synoptics record the leaving desolate of the
house of God (now—your house) upon earth; and St John now
supplements them by an undimmed glance into the upper and
heavenly house. For what other than heaven, whence He came
from the Father and whither He returneth to the Father, can
here be called His house? In John ii. 16 the earthly house was
spoken of, which was to be destroyed; now opens to us the
heavenly, in which the Son abideth ever, even while He is pass-
ing through the valley of death. Compare what we said upon
chap. viii. 35, a slight reference. to which may here be ob-
served. House is home, where one abides, to which he belongs,
in which he has a right: still more—it is a firm, secure build-
ing, provided for all kinds of need. It is a “ heaven” in the
sense of the phraseology of the blessed, as certainly as Christ
speaks of it and goes to it—“ the archetypal Zion and the
archetypal temple” of the most essential presence of God with
His people. Whether or not we may call the whole creation,
consequently also the earth, the house of God in another sense,
that is not here intended—as the analogy with Ps. xxiil., the
entire usage of Scripture, and the further discourse here, show.
Thus, it is a very incorrect exposition of the povalt woddai
(and only found among expositors minorum gentium), to say,
“The whole world is the house of God. In this great house is
not merely the little dwelling of earth, but there are many other,
better, and higher dwellings.’* Oh no, that which the Son,

1 Brandt: “ He would comfort His disciples upon His going away, by

JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 187

who as the only begotten knowssall about His Father’s house
above, speaks concerning the many mansions, is quite otherwise
to be understood,—though to the hard of understanding it has
always been very difficult.

Before all it must be held fast—though often overlooked—
that the expression povat is not altogether the same with the
Toros, afterwards, in the povats, but rather still closely belongs
to the oixia. Lampe: Non tam designat locum, quam statum
ipsum modumque habitationis. (This is somewhat inexact, but
it is a presentiment of the truth: non solum locum, sed im-
primis habitationis, mansionis modum statumque.) In ver. 23
also it has the emphasis of an abiding residence. Where abide
we then, if Thou departing leavest us in this unfriendly world?
It is to this anxious question of His disciples’ hearts that the
Lord now replies. Movai, mansions, or Bleibstitten (as the
Berlenb. Bible translates) indicates assuredly the household cha-
racter of the abodes, a state of rest in the Father’s house. But
why have we zoA\ai—? ‘To interpret—There is room enough
there for more than Myself! is to omit the full emphasis of the
plural, besides instituting an unseemly parity between the Lord
and His disciples. So also with Fikenscher—“I and the
Father would not dwell there alone!” though Euthymius grazes
the edge of this sense—ixaval dé£acOa Kai tuas cvveropévous
npiv ae. ‘This may, indeed, be elevated to the dignity of the
great evangelical promise, that there shall never be any separa-
tion between our Lord and ourselves, that He will make us
partakers of all;—but His “ sitting at the right hand” is and’
must ever be something very different from a pov) in company
with many others. This thought, that the Father's house is a
house for many, lies indeed as a transition in the words, but
rather in the previous o/xia, certainly not in the voAAai. = Fur-
ther, the general view that there is much room there, Luke xiv.

representing the world as a house, one chamber of which He now left
to go into another, while He would be with them in the same house!”
This misinterpretation, which unnerves the whole passage, has often pre-
sented itself to us in the pages of superficial expositors.

1 Tt does not affect the question, that, as Lampe shows in his learned

note, “ov in the later Greek is interchangeable with ora6ucs, as mansio
for statio. ,

188 MANY MANSIONS.

22,1 does not satisfy the sense, on account of the strongly em-
phatic plural. Hence it means not merely that many, already
saved, are there—for that would give rise to the important
question whether before the death of Christ any had really
gone into the Father’s house. Nor, “ where many blessed have
and shall find their eternal abiding place.” (Herschb. Bibel.)
For although this expression does justice to the word pov
(compare 1 Mace. vii. 38, 4) Ss adrots wovnv—“ suffer them
not to continue any longer”), that is, in contrast with the earth
(for the earth is not, as the Correspondenzblatt said, one pov
of the oixia), yet the oval moAdai intends to say more than the
ovr) TONA@Y: there is assuredly involved a manifoldness in this
portioning out of the dwelling. This appears in the fact itself,
that in the great house his tdzros becomes to every one his par-
ticular oixia (comp. 2 Cor. v. 1)—but when we consider the
analogy of the variety of life upon earth, something correspond-
ing to which must be found above, and the hints which Scrip-
ture gives us of degrees and distinctions in blessedness, we
cannot avoid the conviction that the Lord, speaking from living
knowledge, is constrained to intimate this truth here. Tholuck
decided concisely that this enters not into the connection ; but
yet he himself preaches, indeed almost beyond the truth, of the
variety of conditions which awaits us on our first leaving this
life, of the intermediate state wherein not yet all tears are wiped
away, of a period of growth and increase in mansions of the
Father—not all of which certainly can belong to this passage.
Tertullian: Quomodo multz mansiones apud Patrem, si non
pro varietate meritorum? Quomodo et stella distabit in gloria,
nisi pro diversitate radiorum? So Theodoret in Cant. i. there
are afiwpatov Svahopai—not otherwise Chrysos., ‘Theophyl.,
Clem. Alex., Basil., Gregor. Naz., Hilary, and others. This
superabundant mysterious declaration would make the impres-
sion upon the disciples, that everything in Jesus’ well-known
Father-house was well arranged and cared for. We have no-

1 Luther was content with this: ‘‘ If the devil, with his earthly tyrants,
drive you out of the world, ye shall find room enough to abide above.” So
concerning the manifold gain of houses, etc., Matt. xix. 29, ‘‘ If ye have
nothing here, ye shall have abundance there. For God has such endless
store that He can give to every one of you a hundred mansions for one.”

- JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 189

thing to do with the modern extra-biblical, or Swedenborgian
notions of the distribution of souls in various planets and fixed
stars; the Oberlin tables and plans of these mansions we dis-
miss—whatever of truth may lie at the bottom of them all.
But now let us proceed to the difficult and much-contested
following clause! The construction and punctuation, common
from antiquity, which made the sentence with zropedoyas depen-
dent upon eizrov, seems to be authenticated by the intervening
é7t. This, indeed, might even then be differently understood ;
but we regard the zu recitativum, explaining that the matter of
eitrov follows, as being a gloss. If the ed 5é€ juz is referred, as is
undoubtedly the sole course, to the immediately preceding clause
—If it were not so (oTws jv or povai mroddal Hjoav), there
arises the sense approved by Luther after Euthym. and Erasmus,
and which satisfies many:—Jf the mansions were not there
already, I would or I should tedd you, I go to prepare places for
you!” This Luther flatteringly presents in his exposition, “that
I would prepare and appoint them, although they exist already,
so that ye need not care or doubt about your abiding place. In
fine, abiding places ye shall assuredly have; if there were not
already enough, I would see to it that there be plenty provided;
so that, if your hundred for one were too little, I would give
you a hundred thousand.” And this is regarded as “His speak-
ing in child-like simplicity, accommodating Himself to their
thoughts.” But if we were not satisfied with that interpreta-
tion of the poval modal, containing, as these words do, so dis-
tinctive and profound a thought, so we cannot reconcile our-
selves to this further view of the whole—and we have many on
our side. The strongest reason against it is, that the going
away and preparing places would then be made hypothetical _
and an accommodation’—while the same éroupdcoas is immedi-
ately afterwards resumed in the éroywdow with all the reality of
the actual édv, and, as we shall presently see, has its own actual
truth. Therefore the construction holds its place which puts
the stop at eizrov dv tyiv: this, after Laur. Valla, was defended
by Calvin, Beza, Grotius, and approved by Knapp, Tholuck,
1 Bengel, after the analogy of ch. xvi. 26, understands it as if it was—

I did not say unto you that I was about to prepare a place for you, since
there are already mansions, and many of them !

190 I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE. ’

Olshausen, and Liicke. Then we have a confirmation or as-
surance, almost like a verily I say unto you, but following in-
stead of preceding: “If it were not so, I would have told you,
or would now tell you.” Calvin: nollem vos frustrari. This
is actually His simple, Trust only in My word! I say unto
you what is true and real. If it were not’so, I would say, It is
not so! Vain consolation and empty forms of speech ye have
never received from Me!

This very acceptable meaning De Wette (though he concurs
with it) calls “a rather artless assertion of the truth,” while
Lampe rejected it at once as a sensus elumbis ! La Roche de-
clares that so far from child-like simplicity being its characteristic,
this meaning is so tame that no similar. example can be found
in the whole course of the Gospels; in fact, that it would give
us an idle phrase. He would therefore, what critical feeling
never allowed before, supply muorevere after ef dé yu, and then
with the ancients connect I go with et7ov—but in such a man-
ner as to take away the hypothetical element. If your faith has
been unequal hitherto to appropriate the fact that there are many
mansions, and ye cannot now receive it simply, then I now tell
you, and take My more special assurance—I go even now, to
prepare places for you. This exposition was soon afterwards (S. u.
K. 1831. 1) refuted by Beck. The carrying on of the muotevere
over a whole intervening clause is very harsh, the matter being
different in the adduced ver. 11; similarly, the adv connected
with eézrov will not allow it to be a definite announcement, as La
Roche felt when he called this “a difficulty.” Thus far we
agree with Beck. But we must maintain, in opposition to him,
the simple propriety of the assurance of Jesus—If it were
otherwise with the question than He had just said—He would
have told them. This turn is not more strange fundamentally
than His frequent verily, verily ; and even in this discourse we
find in ver. 11 the same ed 5é px mucrevere, which La Roche
forgot to bring into comparison on this side of the question.
Just because “He had even now required the all-embracing
faith to be exercised in Himself equally as in God” —that is,
desiderates it still among His disciples, follows now quite
naturally the humbling though condescending reference to His
own word, against all their mistrust— Believe Me only in what I

JOHN XIV. 3. 191

say! Beck and Lange (like Mosheim and Ernesti) prefer mak-
ing it a question: —If it were otherwise, would I have told you
(Lange, however,—tell you) that I go away to prepare places
for you?—but this seems to us to involve the doubting of His
words which is thought so repulsive, even more than the other.
(So may we delude ourselves, in bringing forward novel inter-
pretations!) Beck’s assumption, lastly, that Jesus might have
earlier said something about preparing a place, probably in a
first answer to Peter’s question, ch. xiii. 36, is a very bold one,
but is altogether irreconcilable with the plain record of St John,
ch. x. 36. Every unbiassed reader must feel constrained to
believe that Jesus speaks this great word for the first time here,
and in the right place. So that we may regard the former
clause as settled, and turn to the next.

The going before and preparing is, as we have said, an earnest
and necessary reality, by no means rendered needless by the
eivat of the many mansions. The preparing is assuredly not
merely—“to adorn them more gloriously, and thus prepare
them” —for the tdzros is expressly declared to be the object of
the preparing. First of all, the house above is His Father’s
house’—and consequently He alone has free entrance there, not
so ourselves. If, moreover, these dwelling-places are regarded
as having been in existence, empty and expectant povai, in the
eternal purpose of God or since the Creation, yet He alone
could introduce the elect, and make for them a rozos therein,
that is, give them right of entrance and possession. The rozros
in itself, too, already exists, as in ver. 2 it stands before tpiv,
but the reversed position in ver. 3 buiv toro lays (accord-
ing to Bengel) the emphasis upon this, that it must be now pre-
pared, opened up tous. In this we may rest, without more
deeply investigating what else may have been effected in this
regard by the entrance of Jesus into heaven. Suffice it that
the preparing a place for us was necessary, according to the
whole analogy of scriptural teaching. The shrinking of our
heart from the whither of the going away has its good ground;

* On which Bengel remarks that the Lord in the beginning of these dis-
courses speaks most of His Father, and later (postquam sue pre credentibus
eminentia cavit et discipulos ad fidem excitavit) He speaks of the Father
both His and theirs.

192 T WILL COME AGALN.

but our Forerunner would take away our fear by the assurance
that He, the Son, goes into His Father’s house for us. The
gracious figure attaches itself (as the gentler aropevoyar now
intimates) to the custom of providing an abiding place before-
hand in travelling; but it has here a most profound and real
meaning which goes far beyond this.

In the resumption of ver. 3 the éav is not a mere érav, but
indicates a convincing inference— Only for that purpose have I
gone before, that I might return and take you to Myself. Mark
well—to Myself, where I am, for My Father’s house is also My
house! But when does this return take place, which the Lord
here as so often elsewhere indicates with his imminent épyowas ?
“The resurrection return it cannot be, for at this resurrection
visit He had not yet gone. The pentecostal return it cannot be,
for to the preparation of our places our fitness to enter upon and
dwell in the prepared place necessarily belongs—nor did He then
take His disciples to Himself, to be where He was. Nor is it
the coming to judgment, for then the Lord cometh with thousands
of His saints, and assuredly His Apostles among them. It is
His coming to fetch them home, since the Lord, at the death of
His disciples, and of all who believe in Him through their word,
actually, though invisibly, returns again for them.” (Zeller.) Of
this apparently clear statement and distribution, all that we can
appropriate is the correct fundamental idea, that we also must
jirst be prepared for the place; for the rest, we think that in
these sharp distinctions there is an undue forgetfulness of the
profound fulness of meaning in this sacred saying, which em-
braces many things in one, especially of the fulness of meaning
in this promised coming again, as it pervades the whole of chs.
xiv._xvi. Now at the beginning the Lord does not speak other-
wise than He speaks afterwards, concerning His wddw épyeo@ar ;
but there it takes in perspectively the whole series of the resurrec-
tion, pentecostal, home-fetching, and judicial coming again, as
it was to develop itself by degrees into full consummation. He
who does not seize and admit this, will be in our judgment alto-
gether at a loss in the interpretation of this chapter, to which
the general canon of the perspective in prophecy admits of full
application. The predominant meaning resolves itself, indeed,
into its various meanings by degrees ; in ver. 18 we have mani-

JOHN XIV. 3. 193

festly the Easter return, as ver. 19 shows; and then in ver. 23
this coincides with the Pentecostal ; in ch. xvi. 22, 23, it extends
forward, as will be seen, actually to the last day for the collective
discipleship; when the risen Lord came, that was already a
certain quickening, a breathing-upon with the Holy Ghost ; if
the Spirit is received, then are we already spiritually translated
into the heavenly nature, and are there where He is; on the
return of Christ at the death of believers that is brought to
perfection which to that end was prepared for by the operation
of the Spirit in the case of the individual ;* finally, the judicial
return is, as being at the same time a redemption, such a con-
summation for the church at large, and consequently therein the
first full perfection also for the individual. It is not quite true
that (as Olshausen says) in John “the Redeemer embraces His
subsequent relation to His disciples under two aspects, as an ea-
ternal departure, and as an internal spiritual return” —since this
would necessarily require us to apply a perfectly different stan-
dard of doctrine to the exposition of St John and to that of the
Synoptics. But as the view which regards the death of Christ
as itself a going to the Father and a glorification, does not really
exclude the resurrection and ascension, so also in the more
. spiritual apprehension of the coming again lie all the external
unfoldings of the same down to the final manifestation. Why
should we not understand the pregnant words of our Lord, as
all His other discourses and revelations unfold them in their
fulness of meaning? He promises here, as Nitzsch rightly
preaches, “that He in the power of His love, drawing all to
Himself, will in all time come near to every one of us, and re-
turn for the redemption of each disciple on his death-bed or in
every time of severe pressure, even as He will return to His
whole Church for its redemption at the end.’

His coming again and receiving embraces the whole of His

1 He comes Himself to fetch us, as Lazarus was carried by angels only.

2 Comp. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis i. 167 ff. Only that here the emphasis
is too strongly laid upon the eschatological meaning, the reference to the
individual being included only asa preliminary beginning. For our own
part, we should not be inclined to press too much the distant and future
element in this whole farewell discourse, but to take a middle course. The
disciples were troubled, they were bereaved as individuals, and this gives its
force to the tiv, duds, dusic here.

VOL. VI. N

194 THE WAY YE KNOW.

influence, drawing, setting free (ch. xi. 32, viii. 35, 36), begin-
ning with the resurrection and ending in His final manifestation ;
His entire work of bringing home, preparing us for our place
after the place is first prepared. Only that it would be very
incorrect to regard this preparation of us as itself the proper and
only meaning of the manifestly distinctive érouuacas Térrov, as
Augustin does, and (following him?) the Bible of Brandt—
“ Jesus prepared there where He went a place for the Apostles,
in that He made them in this world by His Spirit, etc., meet for
glory.’ For this undue preponderance of the spiritual and in-
ternal element in the interpretation would confound the going
away with the return, the result of Christ’s departure as obtain-
ing for us the right and power of entrance with the fruit and
harvest springing from it in ourselves.

Ver. 4. This, meanwhile, holds good not only of the first dis-
ciples, but in its comprehensive prophetic meaning of all future
followers of the Forerunner, and of ourselves. This gives us,
when we rightly understand the fundamental thought of what
preceded, the explanation of what the Lord must mean by the
way. It is not by any means spoken in precisely the same
sense as in ver. 6;' the word is here closely connected with the
foregoing, and we have afterwards (as often in our Lord’s dis-
courses) the more profound and concentrated re-interpretation
of the same expression. First of all, it is in connection with
érov Um@dyo the way which Himself goes ; but then, in addition,
the way in which He fetches home His disciples. We must,
indeed, regard the latter as predominating, or rather as taking
the lead, since to the é7rov éy there corresponds, as it were,
kat bpets echoing from the former verse. After the Lord had
promised to the disciples the preparation of their place, the ob-
taining of their citizen-rights in heaven, He remands them as
pilgrims who know the way’ —that is, their own way through His

1 Not, as B.-Crusius,—‘‘ the way must, according to ver. 6, be Him-
self.”

2 As Nitzsch with a sound exposition preaches. The abbreviated reading
—xal Grov [iva] dreyw, ofdare r4v cody, may indeed be genuine, though
we would not with Luthardt unconditionally maintain it :—such concise-
ness scarcely corresponds with the gracious consolation of the whole dis-

course. It sprung probably from the redoubled o/éare, but is not this to be
accounted for by the similarly redoubled expression of Thomas ?

JOHN XIV. 4. 195

forerunning. Not merely the goal but the way, not merely the
whither but the how. They have now the knowledge of the
sure and certain way to their home, to His Father and their
Father; they do not, they should not, contemplate merely as
from fu the high se mysterious a which the brightness of
His words revealed, but it is brought home to them directly
through His promised coming again. Ought not the Lord to
be able after three years to say—If I go away, ye know
whither ! whither but to the Father (ch. xvi. 5, 28), to the great
house above? Herder beautifully says, “the clearness and con-
fidence with which Christ speaks here, makes, as it were, heaven
and earth one.” But, indeed, He condescendingly attributes to
His disciples the same clearness and confidence, though they
are far from possessing it. And the way for Me and for you,
that we, after our separation, may be eternally together? This
they should know, that for Him it is no other than death, glori-
fying and leading Him to the Father—and for them? No other
than the following Him unto death,’ in faith and in love waiting
for Him, and depending upon Him. To embrace all this in its
plain meaning was beyond their capacity ; but yet the redoubled
and emphatic oldare has its truth. First, as Lampe remarks,
interdum quis laudatur, ut officii sui moneatur; thus, ye might
and ye ought to know this. Then, for the future—I have now
told you, and ye shall soon understand it. Thus the Lord aims,
as it were, to lift the disciples above themselves and their present
understanding ; irradiating them with His own light. “ To sug-
gest doubts to one another, and awaken anxieties, is easier, and
has often the appearance of a greater earnestness and precaution
against self-deception. To be able to encourage one another—
Thou knowest the way, thou art in it! is a greater service, when
it is performed in the Spirit.” (Rieger.)

We might expect an objection here, especially from Peter.
He had not been sent away, as many strangely suppose, to

1 Luthardt opposes that He is not speaking here of their following Him,
but of His fetching them home. But this springs from his dread of the
spiritual fulness of interpretation: for in truth the following Him is jor
us the first and most essential way in which the Lord, coming back first of all
in His Spirit, begins to fetch us home, and prepares us for the final recep-
tion to Himself.

A

196 HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY ?

account for his silence; but ch. xiii. 38 gives us the sufficient
reason of his stillness.’ Thomas, doubtful and morbid, slow of
faith but internally full of love, takes up the word: what he
says declares his love, which holds fast sorrow for the Lord’s
departure, but is very far from being secure enough in faith
to apprehend the way of following Him and reunion with Him.
Lord, I could not say that we, properly speaking, know that
which Thou supposest us to know—tell it to us once more, ex-
pressly and more plainly! By the first clause he encouraged
himself to go forward more boldly in a second; so that out of
the becoming question (see afterwards ch. xvi. 15) an almost un-
becoming objection springs. The dvvdueba cidévar corresponds
precisely with this characteristic of his word ; and we would not
sacrifice it, with Lachmann and Liicke, to the reading otéapev.
A literally repeated o/dapev in reply to Jesus’ redoubled ofdare ’
would be a somewhat too bold retort; but a certain reason for
his contradiction is not at all inconsistent in the mouth of
Thomas. He who does not know the goal, how can he know
the way thither? Rieger deals sharply with poor Thomas:
“ Many mistakes come together here, which Jesus might have
made to recoil uponhim. He interrupts Christ ; he contradicts
Him, and, as it were, denies His truth; he says that they not
only do not know, but cannot know ; he does not speak of him-
self, but he judges and involves others, saying We ;—all which
was immodest and presumptuous enough.” He applies this,
however, appropriately afterwards: “ But the words of con-
founded, perplexed, sorrowful men must not be retorted upon
them as arrows. His meaning was not so bad as his words.
Christ bears with him, and yet vindicates the right. He knows
that they did know, although they did not altogether know that they
knew. Yes, in truth, because an amazed and self-dishonouring
heart spoke it, the Lord gives a gracious answer— Lovest thou Me
not, then, Thomas? Dost thou not hold to Me, to go with Me and
die? Behold, there thou hast already the way—for I can say to
thee more expressly and plainly, [am Myself the way!” Let us

? E. g. Richter’s Hausbibel: Peter and John had been sent away to pro-
vide the passover. We cannot believe that Peter and John through any
case would have failed to hear all these words. Is not John an ear-witness
here?

JOHN XIV. 6. 197

observe (after Meyer’s note on ver. 22) the indiscreet questions
and interruptions of the disciples throughout these chapters, and
mark how the Lord’s answers, while they are indirect, are suffi-
cient, and uninterruptedly carry on meanwhile His discourse.

Luthardt (i. 135, 136) rightly observes that all this ignorance
and misunderstanding of the disciples rested upon the fact, that
the character of Christ’s life, and His departure especially, did
not appear to them to harmonise with the Old Testament. But
when the question of Judas in particular (ver. 22) is asserted not
to have sprung from misunderstanding, but from a right appre-
hension of the Old Testament, we must maintain in opposition
the very reverse.

When any one in our own time, after the word and the Spirit
of Christ have long spoken to him, and the seal of His meaning
has been long broken for all sincere souls, opposes his similar ov«
oidawev and mas duvdpela eidévac—then becomes he the unbe-
lieving Thomas in the worse sense, who will not know and be-
lieve; and to him a different answer would be appropriate, that
of ver. 6 having been given in vain. But a genuine Thomas
asks for the way in deep earnestness; and such trouble about
not knowing will not long be without the consolation of a per-
fect understanding.

Ver. 6. We have seen already how emphatically and gra-~
ciously the Lord by His éy# brings Himself near to them ax
Himself their all. It is plain enough to us that the funda-
* mental idea of the whole is the way; but the juxtaposition of
the two other words is strangely misunderstood: preachers
especially are too apt to take the three clauses distinctly, —
Christ is the way, and also the truth, and also the life. This
is not exegesis. It is rightly perceived that the two following
words serve mainly for the explication of the first; but it is
carrying this view beyond bounds to depress the truth and the
life (to both of which the J am with equal emphasis belongs)
into mere adjectives qualifying the way—as in Augustin’s vera
via vite. This is true, but touches only the superficies of the
meaning. Beck’s words do not full justice to Christ’s saying,
“He is, as the truth and the life, so also the way to both” —
for the truth rather corresponds to the way, the life only to the
goal, but the proper goal of the way must ever be the Father's

198 IAM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.

house—to the Father! Better would it be to say, The way,
because He is the truth and the life; but this needs a more
exact development. And at the outset we must not pass over
what the superficial expositors obstinately omit to notice, that
the Lord not merely shows or leads in the way, speaks the
truth, and gives the life, but decisively says with regard to all
three—I am! We might say preparatorily, though somewhat
mystically,—He is as man the way which offers itself to all men
—as God absolute, independent truth, actuality, essential being
—as Godman the life, that is, the fountain of life, springing
from Him and by us received, for His own. This life is ours
in Him, that is the truth, but before and in order to all He
assuredly is ever our way, into which we must come and walk
through Him.’

As far as we yet understand this much-pondered saying, it
unfolds itself in the following manner, and thus alone the
organic development of the triune expression is preserved.
First of all, in Christ is the way, that is, the way of which
Thomas speaks (Lampe: via illa) and for which all sincerely
anxious men inquire—the way to the Father and to the Father's
house. This is the only right way concerning which it should
be asked, the way simply, for it alone leads to the goal.” This
is the holy way, so plainly now revealed that they who walk
therein, though fools, shall not err. (Isa. xxxv. 8.) In con-
nection with this explicit and fundamental truth the Lord
thinks at once (and we also if we are sincere) of the many con- —
flicting ways of error, which are devised of falsehood, and lead
to destruction: therefore it follows, I am the truth. And that,
as the personal am shows, and the following word confirms, the

1 We must maintain that the Lord here utters the expression of ver. 6 in
the most comprehensive meaning, bringing home to them the whole salva-
tion which was in Him. The predominant eschatological point of view
which we condemned in Hofmann, is to be observed also in Luthardt, who
makes this word ‘‘in its direct exposition” hold only an eschatological
meaning! ‘The transpositions, applications, and deductions which men
have based upon this passage,” are rather the work of the true expositor in
the Church, the Holy Ghost. It is not the thought of the final future
which reigns in this chapter, but that of the immediate return in the Spirit.

* Thus only one way, not ‘‘many posterns to the many mansions in
heaven ”—as the strange book of Julius, wber die Hebung, ete., assures us.

JOHN XIV. 6. 199

truth in the highest sense, living and absolute, the truth and
actuality of the way, as at the same time of the end. We might
therefore say instead of this—He is the entire, first and last
reality of all the ways of man’s return to God and reunion with
Him, because He is no other than the eternal Adyos who has
come down to us from above. (Thus there is included—the
fulfilment of the Old Testament in the sense of ch. 1. 17.)
But the living truth is for us life-giving. As the way is and
becomes to us truth, so this truth is and becomes to us the life:
— on is assuredly with its especial emphasis to be taken in this
communicative sense. Our life is a death-life, which leads to
death; yea it is itself spiritual death, without the life of God
in us. (Chap. vi. 53.) But because He is the life in us and
to us, He is not only still such in death (of which all here
treats), but just through His death for us, through His going
away and coming again, He becomes life to us. Thus, I am
the way, that is now most internally—I as the Dying and yet
Living. The whole saying speaks of the mystery of the cross of
the Reconciliation, it cannot even approximately be understood
out of this centre, taken out of this it rather becomes a perver-
sion and itself a lie; for merely as a pattern or a teacher Christ
is actually neither the way nor the truth for us, in His life He
cannot thus become our life. As long as the first sanctuary
stood, the way into the Holiest was not yet opened (Heb. ix. 8)
—but now hath Jesus obtained entrance for us, consecrated for
us a new and living way. (Heb. x. 20.) And this word of the
Holy Ghost is actually no other than the supplemental and full
interpretation of our Lord’s word. The Lord, as the Fore-
runner and opener of the way, is Himself the way which opens
itself unto us; which we have no longer to seek, but only to
walk in it, as He says—é’ éuod. As “we are wont to say of a
way, that it goes, that it leads”—this figurative mode of
popular expression has here its essential, literal truth. Rieger
speaks artlessly but with profound propriety: “ Who among us
makes himself a path for others? What lowest menial in the
land would be willing to consent if the prince commanded him
to lay his body down as a bridge for him to pass over a ditch
which he could not otherwise pass over? But what man finds
it hard to do for his fellow, Jesus does for us all. He lays

200 1AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.

Himself down as a way, etc., etc.” In a better, and more
scriptural figure—By His cross He becomes our ladder to
heaven. That is His way for our sakes, our way through Him.
“ Apart from Him is the bye-way, error, and death.”— No man
cometh but by Him to the Father. Beginning, middle, end,
allis He! But neither the life’ nor the truth is the beginning;
as Luther expounds, “ He is called the way with regard to the
beginning, the truth as respects the means and continuance,
and also the life for the sake of the end. He is the first, the
middle, and the last round of the ladder to heaven.” With
this it must be understood that all is in one; for could the
way be without truth, the truth without (first following) life?
Nevertheless, it remains firm that thou must before all things
begin with Christ as the way—which this word designs to inti-
mate, promising therewith continuance to the goal.? Thomas
& Kempis (de Imit. Ch. iii. 56), after he has previously fol-
lowed the customary juxtaposition of one after the other,
returns back to the right: Si manseris in vid mea, cognosces
veritatem, et veritas liberabit te, et apprehendes vitam aternam.
Only beginning rightly, by joining thyself to Christ, and hang-
ing upon Him as far as thou knowest Him, especially as He is
exhibited to thee in His atoning sacrifice upon the cross, and in
this truth and in this life thou shalt not fail to press forward
into the full truth of life in all its depth of meaning. ‘Thus it
is not as B.-Crusius, with characteristic error, says—“ Truth is
the beginning, life (salvation) is the end of this way.” Oh no,
the Pilate-question, What is truth? even though not asked
sceptically, but with a philosophical desire to know, has never
yet led mortal man to the living truth, unless the fundamental
question of the heart and conscience has underlain it— Where
is my way, as a prodigal son, back to my Father’s house ?—
Thou needest not to know beforehand and at once even the mod

1 As Klee strangely expounds.

2 “ Christ, in His reply to Thomas, reverses the relation of the thoughts
—If they knew the way they would know the whither.” (Neander.)
‘‘ Thomas thought that he who knew not the goal could not know the way.
But Jesus shows him that in spiritual things the converse law holds good.” .
(Lange.) Nonnus’ paraphrase originated in some such notion—Zwy, éAy-
bein re, xl dp bios sini aopein. Just before the ‘‘ way ” had the more proper
emphasis.

4

JOHN XIV. 6. 201

and the ws, about which Thomas or Nicodemus may ask :—
only waik in the way, it will lead thee, and as the one way
multitudes like thee, happily to the many mansions. ‘Theremin
responds to the Lord’s saying spiritually and profoundly:
“Yea, Thou art the goal, and Thou art also the way. Soisa
stream goal and way at once. I will bend my energies to go
thither, where the stream pours itself into the sea, thither
where the Son sits at the right hand of the Father. And to
reach it I will commit myself to the stream which is my way;
and not only a way which guides me, but a way also which
bears me. Thus come I to Thee through Thyself, Thou
guidest and bearest me at once.”

Should we then be terrified before this gracious—J am the
way? Affrighted at the cross and death of Christ, because it is
essential that we also go through Him to the Father, in this way,
that is in fellowship with His death? When even the superficial
sense of the words encourages our weak faith—I am the truth
and deceive you not! Iam the life, and will bring you with
Myself safe through your death! If that is not enough He
warns and urges us by the last word—no man cometh unto
the Father but by Me! ‘Thus warningly and exclusively and
peremptorily does His word close; but only that it may turn our
thoughts to the blessed kernel of promise within—But through
Me every man shall most assuredly come to the Father.

Finally : Does the Lord limit the coming through Him to
the Father to those who know His name and have His word
upon earth? Far from it! He does, indeed, exhibit Himself
at the door of His Father’s house as the only @vpa tod matpos :
yet as even for us Christians the very first spark of life out of
His fulness is already the beginning of eternal life; every
livingly acknowledged truth of His word and nature already
the beginning of a guidance unto all truth; the preparatory,
sincere walking in His light already a leading to the cross ;—so
there is similarly, and going still further back, a demonstration
of Christ among the heathens, and in natural man. The same
saying, inasmuch as independently of a conscious knowledge of
the personal Christ all is noc mere bye-path, error, and death,
conceals the assurance that---Wherever any one is in the way
to the Father, I am that way! Wherever any one finds truth.

202 SHOW US THE FATHER.

that truth is something of Mine and testifies of Me! For I am
ever from age to age the life and the light of men. Every not
absolutely false way leads to the truth, every real truth has life
in itself, but all in Christ.

Ver. 7. Well for us, dear reader, that we belong to those who
already see the Son, whose privilege it has long been to be able
to see Him and know Him aright. The gracious proffer of the
previous verse—“ Jam here! How can ye then still ask for the
way ?” does not simply now go on, but it is overpassed by the
new thought—“ And the Father in Me! How should I not be
among you the way to the Father?” The same which was said
in ch. viii. 19 to the Jews, recurs now for the disciples (comp.
such another repetition in ver. 12, and so often, as already in
ch. xiii. 833)—but instead of the ov« oidare there, an oidare has
already preceded here, while there even follows a yuvéoxere and
éwpaxate. As indeed the ef éyvexeste is more than the ef #devTe
to the Jews. This doubting if ye had known, again,.essentially
modifies the attributed knowing and seeing which thereupon
follows; as it becomes manifest in the directly contradicting
words of Philip, that these words had not yet their full reality
in the disciples. It has been much and needlessly disputed, how
the Lord could attribute this to them—the azdptt, from hence-
forth, being entirely overlooked. This does not mean—Since
ye have seen Me, since I have been with you; although this
might and ought to have been the case, as is there, ver. 9, said to
their shame. Here the dvapz7u,:parallel with the now of ch. xii.
31, and ch. xii. 31, refers certainly to the glorification of Jesus
before them which was from this time beginning, though for the
most part still future. Tertullian well translated—Sed abhine
nostis ; and Lampe: idem est ac si dixisset : nunc incipitis cog-
noscere. Similarly, Liicke: “Christ speaks here prophetically
in reference to the fact that the hour of glorification was already
come. Even now, from this time ye know Him, yea, ye see Him.
‘Ewpdxate may be referred to the Present” (that is, as begun
in His last discourses) ‘“ without any harshness, as in ch. ix. 37.”

So much greater was the difficulty then to the disciples, in
whose name Philip comes forward as the second interpellator, to
behold with their beclouded eyes the present glorification of the
Father in the Son. Agar in perfect perversion they seek a

JOHN XIV. 7. 203

God, and even a Father, apart from Him! But in the sincere
and desiring simplicity of the ignorance yet blended with their
knowledge; not like those liars whom the world, their sin,
sufficeth, who therefore need neither Christ nor the Father, who
only dispute about the way—who have already “their God.”
Far as the heavens from that mocking question— Where is thy
father? (ch. viii. 19), the disciples here ask in longing, trusting
earnestness— Show us the Father! Although it is here to be
seen that the general aspect of error appears very similar in the
malignant and in the simply weak; yea, certain fundamental
root-errors must be found maintaining and repeating themselves
even in the best, in all their knowledge, until the full enlighten-
ment burst upon them —the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. iv. 6.)* And that makes it neces-
. sary to discern rightly the physiognomy of error, to take forth the
precious from the vile. (Jer. xv. 19 in the Heb.) “The pre-
sumptuous; overwise, childish, luxurious, blear-eyed understand-
ing may cry, Show us! Show us! Prove! Prove! and call out
the truth as to a field of war,”’?—but this is very different from
the cry of Philip, Show us! which, though it comes from igno-
rance, yet is the sincere cry of the affrighted and eager spirit.
A comparison has been properly instituted with the bold desire
of Moses to behold the unseen glory of God, Ex. xxxiii.18. The
error here is, the desiring to have “at a bound” as it were, a
highest and last revelation (in all things impossible) ; but it is
outweighed by the boldness of faith in the midst of this unbelief
in the already given revelation, which indeed does not suffice
because it is not yet sufficiently acknowledged and received.
Yea, it is true that there is much wanting here as it respects the
true connection between the muoteveuv eis Tov Geov Kat eis Xpio-
tov; Philip “lets Christ sit there and speak, but cannot cleave
simply to the Christ who is speaking to him ; disregarding Him

1 Roos has well shown how natural and not altogether erroneous was the
sentiment of the disciples at that time: ‘‘ They prayed, Our Father which
art in heaven! But they saw Jesus walking upon earth, and lifting His
eyes to His heavenly Father in prayer. By that they became habituated to
think of the Father as dwelling in heaven, and of the Lord Jesus as moving
on earth. Their apprehension herein was not erroneous, but imperfect.”

2 Kleuker, menschlicher Versuch u.s.w. S. 31.

204 SHOW US THE FATHER.

he wanders away in his own imagination to the clouds—ah, that
we could but see the Father as He sits there among His angels!
(Luther.) Nevertheless, previous to the true “ My Lord and
my God” there was no greater honour given to Christ, or
higher power ascribed to Him, than in this “ Lord show us—the
Father!” Besides which there is the inexpressible artlessness
and fundamental truth (with all its error) of the confident “ And
it sufficeth us,” which in itself furnishes an apt illustration of the
difference between a superficial and a profound exposition. The
superficial understands with Grotius: non ultra interrogando
molesti tibi erimus! and even Gossner translates with perfect
insipidity——So are we content! The profound finds in it the
true presentiment of that highest goal for the aspirations of
man’s heart, created for God and satisfied only in the living
knowledge of Him; the real though half unconscious expres-
sion of that great truth— To see God is blessedness !

Ver 9. We have said before that the Lord in this éwpaxas
and éwpaxe does not intend actually to attribute to the disciples
that they had already seen and known the Father in Him, and
thus demonstrate to them, against their palpable protest, that
they had known what they nevertheless knew not, and had
acquired that which they then nevertheless had not. He charges
them, however, with this, and it is with lamentation, that it ought
to have been so, and might have been so with them. ‘The con-
fidential vocative Philip is better referred to the first ov« éyvwxas,
which personally touches the speaker; and then the following
great truth comes forward as a general statement and answer to
all. It is not only permissible, but of the highest use in the in-
terpretation of this sublime and simple word, to translate with
Luther—He that seeth ; as Erasmus substituted videt for the
vidit of the Vulgate. For the sense is no other than— When ye
shall have (now soon) “ seen” Me aright. It is not a physical
seeing which is referred to, for the people generally had that.
Comp. the Oewpav after the wuztetwy in ch. xii. 44, 45, from
which the Lord here once again repeats His word. ‘The same
' saying, however, in that passage referred still more to the spiri-
tual seeing of knowledge (as in ch. vi. 40)—here the proper
seemg is also included, as manifestly appears in pe? buev ecu.
Christ is not merely the revelation to man’s knowledge of that

JOHN XIV. 9. 205

which may be known of God, in such a sense that he who knows
Him in faith must still retain a desire to see Him for his full
satisfaction (1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2 Cor. v. 7; 1 Pet. i. 8)—but as
' He is, being the Only-begotten, the image of the invisible God,
the brightness of His glory and express image of His person, so
also as God become man, He is the visibility of the Invisible, as
far as and in such way as that may be seen. Even in the heavenly
beholding in eternity there will be no showing of the Father out
of and apart from Him. (1 Tim. vi. 16.) This is capable of
deep “ metaphysical” application ; but it is enough that exegesis,
in its stricter meaning, hands over this word in all its unimpaired
integrity to speculative dogmatics.

How sayest thou then, Show us the Father?! “ This was
not a contention which the Saviour had with the Father,” says
Gossner (probably, as often, after Zinzendorf). Oh that our
unintelligent Rationalism would bring all its hallucinations about
the contests in theology between the Father and the Son, to
the solution of this word of our Lord, rightly understood! The
lamentation and the charge is now addressed more earnestly
than ever to Christians— Have I been with you so long and do ye
not know Me; have ye not yet seen Me aright, not yet seen the
Father in Me! Alas, Christ and God are still divided and dis-
tinguished, and that not by open unbelievers alone: “ just as
Philip here does, who passes by Christ and seeks God in heaven.”
Yet must we ever bring back to our minds the great truth that,
even because no man hath seen God, or can see Him, therefore
the Only-begotten became man for us! Let us ask and seek for
nothing more, beyond and independently of His manifestation,
His word, and His Spirit! Let us accustom ourselves more and
more profoundly to sink into the blessed mystery of our most holy
faith ; so that we may correct all transcendental vague thoughts
about God by setting Christ at once before our eyes!

And here let it be once more noted at the outset, how all these

1 Not as the painters of the Trinity childishly represented on the one side
the Father as an old man, and apart from Him, on the other side, God the
Son! “The Son is ever the visible face of the Father—rather could we see
a man independently of or apart from his face, than we can see God inde-
pendently of or apart from His Son, who is His face” (Zeller). Thus, dear

official brethren, accustom yourselves not to the fatal ‘‘ God and Christ”- -
but to the God apostolical in Christ /

206 THE FATHER IN ME.

farewell utterances, as heard by the then disciples, are poured
out in one great abounding prolepsis ; for He would, as it were,
shed the glory of His revelation beforehand into those darkened
hearts which must wait for the full enlightenment of the Holy
Spirit. There is no other such contrast and conflict as that
which here, at this final juncture, love resolves. He speaks ever
as if He was already glorified before them, as if their seeing and
knowing were self-understood; but they reach not the height of
His words, and thus constrain Him more and more definitely to
refer their consolation to the coming Spirit of truth. There is a
blessed propriety in both. Another Philip may and should now
with perfect propriety, with ever deepening urgency, cry —Show
me the Son, O Thou Spirit who glorifiedst Him! And it is done
even as we pray. In as far as we have the Spirit we not merely
see the Son in whom the Father is, but we have Him, He is
glorified in us and we in Him. (2 Cor. i. 18.) Before this the
flesh still recoils, but not the heart which has joyful experience ;
the impulse to know still asks, but only so as to receive the ever
more fully sufficing answer from the seeing of faith.

Ver. 10. Believest thou then not, not yet, that I am in the
Father and the Father in Me? See that this faith sujjiceth thee !*
See, behold, here is the true showing! That is ever the great
counter-question in answer to the continuing Philip-word of
Christendom. elievest thou? ‘That is still the humbling ques-
tion of the Lord, which rebukes the presumption of every aspir-
ing Philip in life, as it is the consoling question which alleviates
the sorrow of every downcast Martha at the grave. But the evi-
dence for their conviction follows here, as so often before, from
the words and works—and that in their unity. That they are
to be taken absolutely in their unity is shown in the decisive
sentence coming first in ver. 10; ver. 11 then condescends to
their weakness by the preliminary separation which Jeads again
to their union—J/ ye believe not My word, yet believe Me for
the works’ sake! In ver. 10 (with which chap. x. 30, 37, 38,
may be compared) there is a parallage elliptica or “ ellipsis re-

1 Not as if Jesus now exchanged the indistinct and paradoxical épgv for
the plain z:orevesv —an idea of de Wette’s which Luthardt rightly condemns
—but the faith in His words should lead to, and become, a beholding of
His person in His works. j

JOHN XIV. 11—24: 207

petitionis ex preecedenti et consequenti membro complex,” SO
that the Lord means both at once—The words and works are
not of Myself, the Father in Me speaketh and doeth them. They
are in inseparable mutual influence one; His words are no other
than works, and His works are speaking and testifying words.
Nevertheless, the words stand with propriety first and last, first .
as demanding faith even without the works, and last as the proper
object of faith, to which the works have only led back. But
the greatest of all, in which all others merge, the work of works,
is the act of the redeeming passion and death, by which the
Spirit was procured for the right understanding of the words.
Even that the Father doeth in Him, although He as the Father
doth not actually suffer and die for us.

THE GREATER WORKS; THE PRAYING AND LOVING ; FELLOW-
SHIP WITH THE DEPARTED LORD THROUGH THE COMFORTER,
IN WHOM HE AND THE FATHER HIMSELF COME; SEPARATION
IN THIS FROM THE WORLD.

(Ch. xiv. 11-24.)

In the second section of this chapter, vers. 11-24, the transi-
tion is made, as frequently in these last discourses, from believing
to loving ; from believing primarily as the reliance and subjec-
tion of knowledge, to loving as not merely fruit and result of this
faith, but rather as already the living germ of the true and living
trust of the person on a person, as the affiance of the heart, and
therefore the paying regard and observance to His words as |
commandments—the “keeping” them. He who does not per-
ceive here this most internal unity of faith and love, as it is ob-
viously to be found also in the Epistles of St John, he who does
not, that is, discern here that love which the Lord from the begin-

1 Schleiermacher: ‘‘ For what kind of word would that be, which was
not also a work? and that were a poor work which was not also a word.”
Zeller: ‘‘ The works of Jesus are the rudiments by which we attain to faith
in His wonderful and supreme Personality. If we were more like children,
and took more time for the contemplation of His person and works, we
should more easily attain to that faith.”

208 FAITH AND LOVE.

ning requires and recognises, as the true faith of the heart, even in

connection with much unbelief of the understanding, will never
enter thoroughly into the true connection of these sayings.

Vers. 11-14 is therefore by no means a conclusion belonging
to what precedes, but, although immediately deduced from that,
forms actually the foundation and transition to what follows :—
faith is in preparatory promise awakened, when the greater works
than He had Himself done are connected with prayer in the
name of Jesus. |But this faith and prayer has its root—and
that is the progress of thought—only in an already existing
\ love, which preserves and maintains what is already given; this
abiding bond of love, again, with the departed Lord will be first
developed and perfected through the promised Paraclete, in
whom the Lord returns, reveals Himself perfectly to His own,
gives them full life, and separates them from the world.

Ver. 11. The strange reading, followed by the Vulg., which
has ov muctevere as a question, may be at once rejected. The
ov micTevers Which was spoken in reply to Philip especially, is
followed by a wuotevere addressed to the disciples generally, as
in ver. 1, and resuming the general tenor of the discourse. But
the Lord graciously condescends, induced by the unbelief in
His unity with the Father which had been disclosed, from the
eis €ué down to the preparatory uot. This preliminary trust
includes, indeed, the true and proper ground of all faith, into
which the works alone should guide them; for faith in Christ is
a trust in His person, which can be fully revealed only in His
words, and is in His works revealed only in as far as these speak.
It is a reception of testimony (ch. ii. 11); an acceptance and
recognition of His "Api ’Apjv. Thus it goes back again to the
pnuara, ver. 10—“ The discourse hangs so upon the person, that
he who believes for the sake of the words believes in the person
which utters them’ (Kling). That which in ch. x. 37, 38, and
earlier ch. v. 86, was spoken to the unbelieving Jews, must here
again be declared to the weak faith of the disciples, just as we
all frequently need to hear it still. The e¢ d€ 7 pierces us still
with never-ceasing conviction: who has not needed often to be
referred to the works in order to his full acceptation of this or
that word of our Lord’s mouth? But it is not that the works
could testify for themselves, and secure conviction apart from

Py
a

JOHN XIV. 12. 209

their connection with every witness of the Person who performed
them.’ For if they were not the works of Christ, they would
avail nothing ;—so that de Wette is not right, “ the works them-
selves apart from the Person.” If it stood ta adta épya, then
we might understand simply—for the sake of these works them-
selves, that is, the works of which ver. 10 had last spoken. But
because the aira stands second, it forms a kind of contrast of
the works with the words (the works for themselves, without the
word), that is, a hypothetical antithesis; although after ver. 10
there could be no proper opposition between them.

Ver. 12. The reference to the works previously wrought by
Himself is now wonderfully strengthened and extended: into a
promise of a more abundant continuance of the same through
His disciples after His departure. The “works of Christ” as a
testimony before the world for faith cease not with His manifes-
tation in the flesh ; they rather become generalised and spiritu-
alised in His disciples through whose agency He continues to
work. This high prospect is opened up to the weak faith of the
disciples, just as we are wont beforehand among ourselves to
awaken and stimulate confidence by confident promises and
assurances with respect to the future. So Moses (Ex. iii. 12)
had a sign in the same sense; and that is the true and most
direct connection between ver. 11 and 12 in our passage. The
strong assurance is made more abundantly strong by the promise
of even greater works to those who believe! It is important
rightly to understand this, and, without impairing it, to hit the
precise meaning of this relative word of our Lord. Frivolous
explanations, such as that of Gerhard and Lampe, who make
greater stand tor more, that of Theophyl., who makes it a mere
hyperbole, or that of others who separate the greater from the
works (He will do greater things than such wonders), confute
themselves. This last is opposed by the previous ra épya & éyw
mow ; and, in fact, épya are not exclusively miracles.

We cannot but think of miracles, first of all; and we know
that the promise, Mark xvi. 17, 18, was not fulfilled solely to the
Apostles and first Christians, but is being fulfilled to this day.
Many of the ancient expositors referred it to the more visibly

1 So that it is an incorrect emphasis in Nonnus: soQois rirsvoure wov-
YOLS Epyots Huerépoioiwv.

VOL. VI. oO

910 THE GREATER WORKS.

striking, and so far greater, miracles of the Apostles (speaking in
strange tongues, Peter’s shadow, Paul’s handkerchiefs, removing
of mountains and trees); but this is a petty interpretation, in-
asmuch as it is in any case insufficient as a meaning worthy of
Christ and appropriate to His discourse. We would not, indeed,
express ourselves so strongly as Tholuck, who says that only an
Apollonius of Tyana could have spoken of externally greater
works; for the Lord Himself evidently mentions peifova épya
in Jno. v. 20 with the same reference :—and there is a real
difference, e.g., between the ordinary casting out of devils, which
the disciples of the Pharisees also performed, and the “ Lazarus,
come forth !” spoken into a four days’ grave in a manner which
no Prophet or Apostle ever equalled. Hence we cannot prema-
turely with B.-Crusius say (and this is another artificial way of
dealing with peifova rovrwy) that the works here are not miracles,
but spiritual results of a comprehensive kind, and that thus it
is proved “ how subordinate in St John’s style of thinking ex-
ternal miracles were!”* But a truth lies, nevertheless, in this,
that our Lord cannot mean these alone in so expressing Himself.’
That believers should perform the same miracles, not excluding
raising the dead, was directly said in the jirst clause; the peiCova
which now follows is a paradowz which presses upon us an exten-
sion or deepening of the idea in the épya. Were the miracles
actually the sole works, in themselves decisive, which Christ
performed? Assuredly not, and therefore they are not so with us.
And when we think of the resurrection in His own power, the
Jonah-sign which first seals all the rest, who can perform greater,
or so great? And is not every miracle of the Apostles, however
relatively greater in appearance, yet in reality less, in as far as it
was performed in the name of Jesus alone, and not by their own
power or holiness?. Thus, although the todtwy embraces the
miracles as still continuing, it means not merely these; and
peifova added must indicate something different and distinctive
for the works of every kind.

1 Ts this true of St John’s style of thinking, which begins his gospel
with miracles, ch. ii. 23, and ends it with them, ch. xx. 30? which records
and makes prominent as testimony or fact, the greatest miracles, at Cana,
in the case of the blind man, and at the grave of Lazarus?

? As Nonnus puts simply éavware for toya

JOHN XIV. 12. 211

Is it that “visibly great or greater works” are not intended,
but the secret influence of good, and spiritual victory—internal
works which, however despised of men, are great in the sight of
God, who seeth the heart, and looks not so much at the outward
act? This does not meet the case, since our Lord does actually
speak of works by reason of which others believe, and since in
this interpretation the “ greater” becomes impossible, and alto-
gether vanishes. It remains impossible that according to any
meaning a believer in Christ should perform of himself any
greater works than Christ; for Christ has simply finished the
work, and all His deeds are alone and supreme by reason of His
Person and His essential independent power. We are conse-
quently driven, with many in all ages, to refer the greater to the
result ; and this is perfectly suitable, for—works will and must
have effect ; a wider, more energetic, and more successfully active
working may in human language on that account be termed a
greater. Luther: “Here I take the common understanding of
this declaration, that for this reason greater works are said to be
done by His Christians, because His Apostles and Christians go
further with their influence than He did, and bring more to Him
than He Himself did while bodily upon earth.” Although a éyo
mou stands opposed first to the Future zroujoes, the Present is
significant as intimating that Christ does not Himself cease to
work, but the disciples carry on and extend what He did, because
He continues to work in them (as Aug., Euthym., and others

_remark on 7roi@).

The following é7z gives the great explanation of the whole:
jor I go to the Father, to give to your prayer henceforth power
from on high ; what ye henceforth do I will do through you and in
you (vers. 13, 14); thus in My seed the pleasure of the Lord will
prosper (Isa. lii. 10). For this it is very important not to put —
a full stop between ver. 12 and ver. 13 (with Chrys., Theophyl.,
Eras., Beza, Storr, etc.), but to read on uno tenore (with Fries-

bach, Knapp, Schulz, Schott, Lachmann, and Tischendorf).'
The clause, Because I go to the Father, would, if so closed with
a period, and rigidly pressed, lead to the perverted idea that the
disciples must now continue to work in the place of the Lord

' Grotius: hee ita uno spiritu legenda sunt—opedouas val rosjow ;
profectus efficiam. Comp. also Cyril in Tholuck.

212 THE GREATER WORKS.

the still greater works, because He Himself was no longer there !
Oh no, He goes, indeed, but He also remains, He comes again
and dwells in them—thus comes the harvest of His own invisible
seed bringing the greater results to light. Mark well, that only
to him who believes on Himself such greater works are promised !
There is, indeed, a certain truth in the expression of the Theo-
sophist: “ All capacities and capabilities which Christ exhibited,
lie in every individual man” —and in Meyer’s note: “ By His
departure they were even to be heightened for His believers,
that is, their outward results and achievements.” This really
refers also to the power of working miracles, which even Christ,
as the Son of man, had through faith. But these capabilities
especially for the peifova Tovrwy, are awakened and put in exer-
cise only in those who believe in Christ, and attained only by
prayer in His name.

He sowed, we reap—and the harvest is indeed greater than
the seed. He bore the first conflict and triumphed unto victory,
we manifest and extend that victory, which we ourselves partake
of, in the rich blessing shed upon our activity. Therefore the
Pentecost sermon of Peter converted more in one day than the
Lord in three years; therefore the death of Stephen in peace
and joy after the anguish of the Lord’s death upon the cross,
whom he sees in the opened heaven as at the Father’s side; so
that faith in the Lord’s victory becomes also our victory to the
overcoming of the world. Hence also in a thousand ways our
jithvidual works ats greater as to appearance and result, because
“ the Lord humbly.in His contest with the unbelief with called
Him forth limited Himself in His wondrous energy, leaving the
greater things to be done by His disciples in His name, when
the time of ripeness for faith had come as the result of His own

work.” (Beck. ) What a graciously attractive and lowly manner
_ of speaking is this, on the part of the blessed Sower and La-
bourer, who Himself alone performs all: Ye, My reapers, will —
do greater things than I!’ Thus come the greater works, when,

1 Not as Apollinaris, who pressed and perverted the Church’s doctrine
upon the unity of the Person of Christ, losing the proper humanity (Dorner
S. 1025), and denies this: Od yap riots: rn sis warepa Ta Oxvmcoim Xpioros
Epyaler a.

* Lampe: Mixta sunt cum radiis majestatis humilitatis eb evyxara-

JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 213

as Braune says, “ the streams of Divine power from above are
unrestrainedly poured into humanity in order to spiritual eff-
ciency in a greater and more enlarged degree, so that His
miracles in the flesh appear small.” But not only so—In order
to their performance of physical miracles more productive of
spiritual results, in comparison of which His own spiritual
energy, while He was laying in secret the foundation for
theirs, will appear less efficient. That “o muctevwv eis éué”
appropriates this promise to every believer down to the end of
time is self-understood ; and where the bodily wonders fail, the
greater are not wanting. The burning witness speaks indeed
with new tongues; the contender with sin casts out serpents ; he
who is spiritually unhurt by Satan’s power drinks deadly poison
without harm ; the converter of souls gives healing to the sick
in a higher sense, and as a greater work.' Again, as Luther
says : “If he performs such great wonders and works spiritually,
it follows that he also performs them as bodily, as being at least
a beginner and co-operator thereunto. For, whence comes it
that Christians at the last day will rise from the dead? that all
the deaf, blind, lame will lay aside their plagues, and their
bodies, beautiful and sound, shine as the sun? Comes it not
from this, that they were here upon earth by the words and
ministers of God converted, made believers, baptized, and made
one with Christ ?”

Vers. 13, 14. I go—to death, indeed, but thereby to the
Father; away from you, indeed, but thereby the more spiritually
and effectually to unite Myself with you. I in heaven, ye upon
earth—but ye already, in faith towards God, know the heaven-
ladder of prayer. I have now told you—Believe also in Me!
Do ye not then suppose, that I can be prayed unto also when I
am exalted to the Divine power and glory? This would have
been the most obvious and natural process of the thought, a right
understanding of all that precedes would lead us to expect it, and
it is actually involved in the word. But the Lord spares the
weakness of the disciples the new and unheard of thought of

Beécews ejus specimina, quod opus per Spiritum sanctum absolvendum quam-
vis certo respectu majus ei relinquat, et peccatorum vilissimorum operam
In eo non respuat.

1 See Gregory’s beautiful passage in Lampe S. 130. .

214 PRAYER IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

praying unto a glorified man, or to God in and through Him
(ch. xvi. 24, hitherto as yet nothing!) ; thus He at first attaches
His words to their hitherto notion and custom simply, as it re-
spects aiteiy, that is, Tov Oeov. Has not the Father always heard
Me? Have I not thus done My oreat works? Know ye thus
in faith, and hold ye it fast even when I am no longer visibly
before you—and now let your faith in My person become prayer
in My name! The two are one; not merely does the second
follow from the first, but it is rather itself the internal truth and
assurance of this faith. He who does not pray to God believes
not in God. Prayer is already the internal evidence of faith
for ourselves, then the works are the external for others. <As
it respects the universal promise of being heard, and receiving
whatever we may ask in faith, we refer to such passages as Mark
xi. 24, and others like it: here we have only to do with the
meaning of —Jn the name of Jesus. But the understanding of
this great word develops itself progressively in deeper fulness.
First, and according to human analogies, to ask anything in or
upon the name of any one is equivalent to mentioning him in
connection with it, appealing to him. But even in this the
Divine dignity and authority of the Lord Jesus is involved ; for
whoso can like Him (in the Our Father, Matt. vii. 7) give to
men, as it were, a directory and warrant to God, to be presented
with certainty of being unconditionally and always honoured —
must stand in inmost and most immediate fellowship with God.
Quite different was the Old-Testament calling upon the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; it would have been blasphemous
to think of calling upon God in the name of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob; since it was not a promise given by Abraham, and
which was valid with God, that lay at the foundation of this, but
merely a promise given by God to Abraham. But when we call
upon God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we find through
the Son and in the Son access to the Father, in which we come
to God directly through Him. As a second sense, which can be
no other than one with the former, it consequently comes out
that we pray in the name, that is, actually in the person of Christ,
that is, as standing in His place, through His preparatory and
intercessory supplication: as if He came in and with us, and
Himself prayed what we ask. And this is no mere as #/, rather

JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 215

it is the essential truth of the matter. Thus we have liberty to
enter into the holiest év Td aiwats ’Inood (Heb. x. 19)— “ we
come no more alone, as we are in ourselves, but we enter with
the blood of Jesus, with the same by which He Himself first
entered for us.” He Himself, His Spirit, itis which prays. We
agree with Luthardt that this is the critical point of the whole
thought ; and he agrees with us in understanding, thirdly, that
we pray no other than what is according to His mind, thus in His
interest, for His kingdom, what, and as He bids us pray, authorises
and impels us to supplicate. But, fourthly and lastly, although
the Lord condescendingly adds merely év 76 évopuati pov to the
airetv scil. rov Gedv; although it might not become His humility in
the flesh, evermore seeking the Father’s honour, to speak other-
wise (to say, Call upon Me, and I will answer you) ;—yet will
every man, who acts in faith according to His word, naturally
come to call immediately upon the name of Him, who is with
himself by the Spirit at the same time that He is above with the
Father—yea, the former only because the latter. Thus the call-
ing upon God in the person of Jesus is an infolded consequence.
Indeed, the reading airjonré pe, ver. 14, and pe aitnonte, ver.
13, are false ; and the version of Nonnus, “ otvowa «ixAjoKovtes
éuov” is premature ; but it cannot by any means be established
that the prayer of the disciples was to be directed exclusively to
the Father. The first prayer after the ascension (Acts i. 24,
comp. ch. vii. 58) is addressed to the Son, and the disciples were
known as those who called upon His name. For this is decisive
enough the clause which immediately follows, todro trounce,
not moijoer 6 Oeds or 0 TaTHp; while in ver. 14 this is repeated
with the strengthening éy#.? That deceu stands in ch. xvi. 23
of the Father, says nothing against this; for, in the unity of the
Father and the Son, now one form is used and now the other;
comp. also ch. xiv. 16, 26 with ch. xv. 26. He who seeth Me
seeth the Father— He who prayeth to Me prayeth to the Father.

1 As we have expounded it in our Hebrierbrief.

2 Who is the I? I thought He would say, Whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in My name, He will do it. But He speaks of Himself for a testi-
mony ; and those are strange words for a man, to speak so loftily. For by
these words He gives us plainly to understand that He Himself is the true
Almighty God, equally with the Father. (Luther.)

216 PRAYER IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

The immediate prayer to the Son is the consummation of the
way to the most firmly-believing, most internal prayer ; but,
because the truth on which this depends cannot be presupposed
in every member of a general assembly, the church in her
liturgical common prayer adheres (after the Lord’s prayer) pre-
dominantly to the supplication addressed to the Father ; although
the Son is also addressed, in compliance with the honour of His
prerogative, especially at festivals and eucharists. Let the next
clause also be deeply pondered, as it modifies the statement and
reconciles these truths, connecting supreme majesty with deep
humility, and arguing the unity of the Father and the Son :—
that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Assuredly not,
with Erasmus, per filium, but after the meaning of ch. v. 23,
Phil. ii. 10, 11, to be understood. “It is He who will do it, and
He is therefore also to be prayed to; and to ask in the name of
Jesus means to call upon God under this name—in brief, to pray
to Jesus Himself. For, He says, that thereby the Father Him-
self will be honoured in the Son; that is, honoured of us by our
prayer, and glorified through our being heard.—No prayer in
the world can go immediately to the Father, even though it be
addressed to God direct ; all things go to Him and come from
Him through the Son. But if we as Christians are fully con-
scious of this, we pray intelligently to the Father through Jesus
Christ, and know at the same time that it is altogether the same
whether in our address we mention the name of the Father or of
the Son. To call upon the latter indicates a species of humility.”*
Instead of this last we would rather say that in its humility it
evidences the most inward and confident urgency of prayer.
Prayers to the Father are often vague and general, so that a
Jew might join in them; the more of Christian urgency in
prayer in the Holy Ghost there is, the more immediately does it
go to the Son; and then first this prayer to the Son returns
back into such address to the Father, through Him and in Him,
as finds its fullest truth.

1 See the important essay in Meyer’s Blitter fiir hohere Wahrheit (iv. 166)
on Prayer to the Redeemer—against the ‘‘ unintelligible and irrational
blasphemy of the words Jesulatry and Christolatry.” As if it were an
efowaov to pray to Him, whois Himself the true God and eternal life! 1 Jno.
v. 20, 21.

ha
se

JOHN XIV. 16. 217

Ver. 15. This sentence has been in all times torn from its
connection, and, in consequence, much misunderstood and per-
verted. But the connection in which it stands is twofold in its
aspect: inasmuch as the loving of which the Lord here speaks
is, according to the principles of all these discourses, twofold ;
consequently, also, the keeping His commandments. This first
love to Him, now presupposed as present in His disciples, is the
responding dependence of the heart which, as a faith in His
love, and a thereby awakened germ of love in return, is already
the principle of life in their faith, even in the case of an un-
believing Thomas. But the perfect life of love in order to
obedience comes first through the promised Spirit. For both
the present and the future this clause stands here in the midst
as mediating and transitional. It pronounces clearly both the
goal of true prayer, and the ground of true faith. After the
6, tt Gy and the édy tc the question arises—For what then may
we and should we ask in His name? Without excluding any
individual object, even the slightest, any external and earthly
thing needful to us, it is plain at the same time that, if we ask
for it in His name, it must be included in the one great interest
of His kingdom for us or for others, it must coincide with the
one sole desire and impulse of all prayer—that the Father may
be glorified in us, as in the Son, so also through the Son. Con-
sequently, for the honour of our own name we cannot pray, nor
for gold and earthly good, nor for help in need merely as such.
For the power to work miracles and remove mountains, only
where the honour of His name requires them, or may be fur-
thered by them. But the sincere disciple who has begun to
love Christ, and would perfectly do His will, will before all and
in all ask for an increase of love in order to its evidence in deed
and truth—zpocOes jyiv ayarnv. (Lu. xvii. 5.) Thus the
Lord shows us, in connection with what precedes, first of all the
object and aim of true prayer, promises us in the way of prayer
the very works which He requires of His own, and that, as we
now see, first of all, as the works of obedience, the fulfilment of
the law. The law is through Jesus made to us itself a Gospel.
Though not according to the true reading Tnpnzare, yet accord-
ing to the sense of this encouraging imperative, standing as it
does amid promises, Lampe’s remark is quite correct—Non ait

=

218 LOVE IN OBEDIENCE.

servate, sed servabitis. (Compare ver. 23.) Vers. 11, 12 were
themselves spoken graciously for the elevation of their faith still
weak; vers. 13, 14, followed with a still more gracious dis-
closure of all the fulness of God im His roijoo for the airetv—
and He will not now suddenly between the two affright His
disciples by imposing commands in the legal sense. Misunder-
standing may rationalistically expound and preach,—But all
these promises avail only on the condition that ye (already before,
of themselves?) keep My commandments! Far be it! The
Lord does indeed exhibit Himself here as in ver. 1, and every-
where in His Divine majesty; speaks like Jehovah on Sinai
with His tas évtoAas tas é€uds, and grounds and sums up the
keeping of them ‘all in dove, just as Ex. xx. 6." But His
love has now not only so won the love of the disciples that in
this loving Him, as the true principle of their faith, a nearer
relation to God has been established, and a mightier energy set
loose in them than the Old Testament knew—but He will
further have His commandments kept from love to love, while
their love asks and receives in faith all that is yet wanting to
their completeness of obedience. His commandments are at
the same time promises: he who keepeth them, that is, first of
all, who carries them into the prayer of faith, and faithfully
holds them fast (vers. 21 and 23 afterwards)—he shall more
and more fulfil them.” That assuredly “ knowledge, ver. 17, is
given only to love” —as Luthardt seeks to correct my previous
remarks—yea, that a loving devotion of faith generally is alone
the great decisive condition, vers. 22-24, and the ground of
separation between His own and the world, will appear when
we come to that passage. But this love already existing im us,
which the Lord recognises graciously in His édy, is not so the
object of a “ categorical imperative” that the Lord convicts us
by it and impels us through it, but that we under its influence
are to knock at the gate of heaven and receive grace for grace.
Augustin’s Da quod jubes et jube quod vis—is also expressed by
Apollinaris: 7a yey ddetnetar TO xupio Tap Hpav, TEpl Ov Kat
TapayyéAne* Ta O€ adTOs Tapéxel, Tepl OV ETarryéNeTAL.
1 We have remarked on this in Vol. ii

2 Berlen. Bibel: ‘‘So that we need not think: Alas! Keep My com-
mandments!” ~ . ;

JOHN XIV. 16. es .

Ver. 16. The connection appears thus: This now so in-
credible future of the greater works which I will do through
you when ye shall ask in My name; this future, at the same
time, of perfect love to Me (comp. ver. 28)—will come, when
that Other cometh after My departure, the Helper whom I will
procure for you by My going away. New and glorious de-
claration! Excepting the prophetical hint, Matt. x. 20 (Mar.
xiii. 11), Lu. xii. 12,' this is now the first direct solemn and
plain word concerning their receiving the Holy Ghost. We
read these familiar words lightly on, but with what astonish-
ment were they first heard! Calmly pondering them, and
without terror at heart, they must of themselves have been
reminded of the original promise given by the baptizer with
water of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. (Acts i.5.) Simi-
larly, the Lord Himself in Lu. xi. 13 had once pointed to the
Holy Spirit as the true and best gift of the Father, which they
might pray for with the fullest assurance of being heard.
Nevertheless He does not go on to say—And pray the Father
that He may give you; nor, in way of promise, Ye shall ask,
etc.; although this was included for all future disciples after
the Apostles, and even they remained in prayer and supplica-
tion before the day of Pentecost. (Acts i. 14.) For this alone
would not have been sufficiently encouraging and consoling.
But as He has promised their work as springing from His own,
so now does His prayer precede theirs—opening Himself their
way to the Father. This is the emphasis of the éye—and it is
not aitjow which is added, but épwrjcw, on which Bengel
rightly remarks—familiaris petendi modus. And the Future
is not to be overlooked:—In another and altogether direct
manner will # pray when I have gone to the Father; and for
that purpose do I go. (Chap. xvi. 7.) Thus we have here
already intimated the intercessory mediation of the Exalted
Redeemer, when and before its fruit for us is spoken of. All
‘is on the ground of pure promise out of His grace and gift ;
assuredly also, as we have seen, then first will come the perfect
loving and full obedience in act. By no means merely that

1 Tn the latter passage the strength and clearness of the expression may
have been added ex eventu.

220 THE PARACLETE.

“the sending of the Holy Ghost is regarded as the rewarding
consequence of keeping His commandments.”

The doctrine of the Divinity and personality of the Holy
Ghost, which in the first period of the history of Christian
dogma was developed with little precision,’ has its foundation
here in the manifestly personal name 7rapd«Anros, who is fur-
ther by é\Xos placed on a level with the Lord Himself; comp.
ver. 26 and chap. xv. 26, xvi. 8, 13, 14, éxeivos. The Biasaic-
tive meaning of this dos asd éxeivos must hold its ground
against all the wonder of Frommann and others that so much
should be made of them; and they will prove that here at least
St John’s doctrine has no such “ wavering and shifting charac-
ter” as has been ascribed to it.2 For, on the other hand, as
has been urged in Polemics, the name Paraclete is not referred
to as another, but when this Comforter comes, comes at the
same time the Son and the Father: vers. 18-23. B.-Crusius
speaks most pervertedly: “The Paraclete is no more described
by John as personal in any other respect, but this is also with-
out any proper personification—the semblance of a personal
description (only the semblance?) is retained, masmuch as He
was to be exhibited as the representative of Christ!” Such
Rationalism we may now cast behind us, with much other fool-
ish babbling of a former time, such as that of Eichhorn:
“crapakytos signifies the doctrine” of Christ Himself and the
enlarged understanding of this doctrine—against which Storr
condescends to observe that then it would be strangely discordant
that in chap. xvi. 18-15 such a diffuse proof is given that the
doctrine should not be different from the doctrine! Even
Hezel in his time let fall the confession that, “if we would
rather abide by the letter and understand by the @pirit of truth
the third person of the Trinity, etc.’ Yes, verily, the letter
does so speak, and we must hold it fast; only that we would
better understand the “third Person,” than some of our un-
speculative dogmatics. Christ is Himself in His person the:
one Paraclete; in part already with the disciples, in part after-
wards more properly with the Father; and by His side with
like personality stands the other. We have already in ver. 16

1 See the description of his own age in Greg. Naz. Orat. 37.
2 Compare in Lange Leben Jesu, iii. 712, 713.

JOHN XIV. 16. 221%

more plainly the three acts of the three Persons: asking, giving,
abiding. So it goes on, and if we had only these three chap-
ters of St John, the trinitarian dogma would be incontrovertibly
evinced from them alone.

But now let us more closely look at the meaning of the im-
portant and not in itself difficult word 7apdax«XnTos, which the
Syr. and Vulg. as also the Pers. translation leave unaltered.
We do not find the word, indeed, in the Sept. ;’ and in St John,
apart from these discourses, only in John 1. 1. Its signifi-
cation should be plain enough, being substantiated by the
grammatical form of the word itself, by the invariable and
sole demonstrable usage of the Greeks, by the perfectly corre-
sponding Latin advocatus, and even by the transition of the
word to the Jews: nevertheless, it has been misinterpreted (as,
in the last note, Aqu. and Theodot. fall into the common con-
fusion of the expression), as if it might be and must be equiva-
lent to the active wapaxkdjtwp, Tapyyopos. Origen and most
of the Greeks oppose the spirit of the language, and make it
TapapvOntns; Euthymius, rapaiveryjs ; Jerome, Erasmus, etc.,
Consolator.” It is not to be denied that comforting and en-
couragement is involved in the office of the Holy Spirit, even as
teaching is (see. presently ver. 26); but the comprehensive
and profound official name wapdxAyTos, which includes that
meaning, coincides with that mapaxadety only in appearance,
and cannot possibly be taken for vrapaxd7jrwp. Least of all
can it be merely Teacher, or Reminder, as Theodor. Mops.
thought, as Lésner (obs. ex. Philone on John xvi. 16), Voll-
borth, Ernesti (Opus. phil. crit.) have endeavoured to esta-
blish philologically. We would ask, Is tpogos with its active
meaning really a similar form to mapdx«dyTos, and, Does the
Lord here speak merely as a departing dvddoxnados? If
“ encourager”—speaker to—suffices (in the New Testament
use of wapaxanelv), where is the advocate—speaker for—of
1 John ii.1? The passages of Philo do not prove what they are
adduced for; and the ovéevi mapaxdxjrw (de Mundi Opif. Tom.

1 In Job xvi. 2 for D522 it has rightly rapexeaqrwp ; but Aquila and
Theodotion rapéxarrnros, and Symmachus rapnyopav.

For rapaxdrnrinés, comforting (Schol. ad Aischin. Prom. 379) does not
by any means fall back upon the form rapanAnros.

222 THE PARACLETE.

i. pag. 5 ed. Mangey) i is not just nemine monente. The NDYPTD
of the Chald. in Job xvi. 20 and xxxiii. 23 is used plainly in the
sense of “intercessor, mediator, manager ;” for, “ interpreter or
expounder”’ certainly has nothing to do with the jormer passage.

We must, with Knapp, who first established it, though with-
out sufficiently developing its exegetical consequences, hold fast
the usage of the Greeks and especially of the orators, which
makes mapdkAntos, corresponding to the Latin advocatus, a
counsel called in, a pleader, an attorney, and more generally an
intercessor, as, e.g. in Diog. Laert. 4, 50. This approves
itself here out of the context, as well as by the parallel expres-
sion in 1 Jno. ii. 1, which must have looked back to this passage;
for wherever this companion Epistle refers to the gospel we have
an authentic exposition of the Evangelist. If Christ is first the
one 7apdxAntos, in whose place the other is promised, then
must for both the same fundamental idea hold good ; but Christ
is (even upon earth, in the case of the fearful disciples as op-
posed to an opposing world, and still more in heaven with the
Father) our Representative and Counsel, who speaks and acts
for us, thus and thus alone being the Helper of all who call
upon Him and receive Him. This (in the accompanying @\Xov)
is the point of connection, and the reason why the same expres-
sion is used likewise with regard to the Holy Ghost, being then
for Him expanded into teaching and bringing to remembrance.
For the Rabbinical usage see in Buxt. Lex. the passage Pirke
Aboth c. 4, where D°??72 as intercessor stands in immediate
antithesis aie “iPYP (Katrryopos, Rev. xii. 10)!—and the gloss
upon it: eto? DINA by sip yen pS>1D est interpres bonus pro
homine apud regem | (magistratum) — comp. 1 Sam. xix.4. Thus
TapakdyTOos is advocatus, as Tertull. and August. say; but that
not merely, as Grotius thinks, “ Who vindicates their cause
with the world” —-but performing, in a deep and comprehensive
sense, all that which a Counsel or Representative, bemg at the
same time an Adviser, can perform for us. It is not plainly
established that Luther followed merely the Consolator, for

1 As this latter elsewhere with ‘x0 cuvqjyopos, see Buxt. and add R.
Juda in libr. Musar 126. 2, and Schemoth Rabbah xviii. fol. 117, where
Michael and Sammael are similarly opposed.

| =

JOHN XIV. 16. 225

Scherz and Oberlin show that in the documents of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries, “ Trdéster” meant Intercessor,
Surety, Representative of an absent person. If he had trans-
lated “ Beistand”* it would have been better, though that would
again have needed explanation for the people; it is not need-
ful to alter our translation here, since we can place the whole
true meaning on the word Trdster, Comforter. And we, with
most others, would hold fast the sanctified expression.

The fundamental point of view for this great word of promise
is the presupposition—Ye need a Helper and Representative,
such have I been while yet present with you. To this is then
attached—although the J will ask the Father intimates that the
Lord will continue His office, and indeed first really begin it,
above—the promise of that Other who should carry on the same
office in another relation. ‘This, too, is intimated, if not in the
other, yet in the with you; for we may say with the fullest truth
that Christ carries on our cause with God, while the Holy Ghost,
on the other hand, carries on God’s cause with us, and for us
against the world. He appropriates to us the supreme interces-
sion of Christ as if it were inherent in ourselves (Rom. viii. 26),
speaks in us and from us, as most essentially the intercessor
whom our infirmity needs. Ask thyself, poor mortal, whether
thou dost not need such! ‘That the same Person also further
comforts, encourages, reminds, teaches, is understood and in-
volved in the same general fundamental idea.

That He may abide with you for ever! we cannot with Liicke
accept Lachmann’s reading (iva pe? tpov eis Tov aidva 4) in-
stead of the penetrating and affectionately consoling clause as it
now stands; or admit that the pévy was transferred from ver.
17. The abiding of this other Comforter intimates the necessary
contrast, that He does not go away like the first. The disciples
would understand—I, as your sensibly present Helper and

1 Which right expression he for the most part adds in his exposition and
sermons ; we read in Kdfler’s third Lutheran Catechism (Kiel, 1849) as the
very words of Luther: ‘‘ The word Comforter, from the Gr. paracletus,
signifies one who stands as the counsel of an accused party, who takes of
his to defend him, who pleads his cause and serves him by advice and help,
admonition and encouragement, as his case needs.” Similarly, Wicliff,
from whom the English ‘‘ Comforter” comes, derived it from the Latin
confortarz (see in Alford).

224 THE SPIRIT OF THE TRUTH.

Counseller, go away, but through death to the Father, in order
to pray the Father that He may give you another abiding Helper
and Counseller. He will abide, without departing again, with
you e/s Tov ai@va—which last literally and essentially involves
eternal communion with God in Christ through the Holy Ghost.
But we must not, with Lampe, deduce from this a doua dpera-
HéAnTov, the impossibility of losing again the once received
Spirit—the entire Scripture, and specifically Heb. vi. 4-6, pro-
tests against such a perversion.

Ver. 17. This other Agent, Representative, and Counsellor,
now receives in immediate connection another name, derived
from that influence upon us which is primarily necessary,—as
further in the Old and New Testaments we find many names
of the Holy Spirit designating Him according to His energies
and gifts in us. It is the Spirit: this at once diverts from any
such expectation of a visible Person as the @\Xos might have
excited, while it also points back to all which from the Old
Testament had been recognised as the DiiON mm or Mpa An,
But now it is added, The Spirit of the truth, which repeated
article expresses more than our common translation, Spirit of
truth, or merely, The true Spirit. Beck says well: “ They
receive from Him not merely a dead word, such as all scholars
have from their teachers; but they have a living word, the
Spirit of the truth—for the life of the word is the Spirit.” He
has sufficiently shown already that he does not mean this in the
sense which we must sometimes oppose in others, as if the Spirit
was not coming in the future, but left behind; we would, how
ever, prefer to say, in more scriptural language, that they have
now from their Lord and Master not merely the word, the doc-
trine left behind Him, the most precious legacy of humanity,
the words of the Word—but in addition to the word comes to
them the. Spirit, and that the Same who thought and spoke in
Jesus, in order to re-awaken and vivify that word in them, for
the quickening of the word is the Spirit. This alone is the true
relation between the coming Paraclete and the words of Jesus
left behind, as is shown in ver. 26, and ch. xvi. 14. The Spirit
connects Himself with the word, works onwards, not indepen-
dently of it, but through its medium: nevertheless He is, as
Spirit, as coming in addition, the self-sufficient and sole Teacher,

JOUN XIV. 17. 225

who teaches over again the doctrine left behind in the letter,
and Himself first gives it life.

Christ Himself had hitherto discharged His office of Paraclete
to the disciples by His word, by the word from God to them, and
to God for them; but this ee been to them, on account of their
weakness, only a shadow and type of the great reality. To say
concerning their departed Lord with St John, rapdaxdntov éyopev
mpos Tov Tatépa Incoty Xprorov—became their privilege only
when that Other came, who being at the same time the Represen-
tative of Christ, makes that their own, placing them in clear and
full and secure possession of that truth. We may thus unfold the
subject: Every representative and counsel, every advocatus, is pre-
eminently a patronus and friend of his client, but the first care of
the benevolence of a true friend is to speak the truth, to reveal
the true position of the case, favourable or unfavourable; that
the client may thoroughly well know how it is with him. Hence
this is also the indispensably first and fundamental business of
our heavenly Advocate, although by no means the only or the
last. He who makes the office and work of the promised Para-
clete rest solely upon this “ Spirit of truth,” as so many do with-
out a deeper understanding of it (ch. xvii. 17 will make this
plain) —understands the meaning neither of the one name nor of
the other. The Lord Himself can now speak no further of the
subsequent, and essentially intercessory, work of the Spirit; He
has only intimated it silently in the first name: that will be
known hereafter when He comes, and the Spirit of truth ap-
proves Himself also the Spirit of grace and of prayer, of faith,
of adoption, of power, of love and discipline, of holiness, and of
glory—when they will be able to say by experience, with St
Paul, adro To mvedpa bTrEepevTUyYavel UTEP Hudv.

Thus, for the first: The Spirit utters, teaches, brings to us
as Spirit in real and living apprehension the Truth—that is, the
truth concerning ourselves, the will of God as regards His justice
and grace towards us, our position and calling, the way of return
to God through the person of Christ ; He shows, glorifies, opens
to us this way as truth and life, so that we know what follows
in ver. 20. He gives us as a first truth the knowledge of our sins,
as a second the knowledge of the Saviour whom we possess, and
these together are the real and verfect truth forus. He flatters

VOL, VI. =

226 WHOM THE WORLD CANNOT RECEIVE.

us not, as the false interloper Absalom at the way of the gate,
See, thy matters are good and right—but He adds, nevertheless,
with regard to our evil matters the word of full authority, Thou
hast a man deputed, a mediator with the king! (2 Sam. xv. 3).
This truth concerning our relation and way to God by no means
dwells in our own spirit ; all the mediators and friends who enter
in by means of the natural understanding are deceivers and miser-
able comforters, oy ‘2ni12—not only when they still charge poor
Job foolishly, but also when they falsely justify him. But all
such individual truth as had been already taken out of the whole
truth, and testified and taught in ‘the Old Testament, is com-
pleted and closed as the full consummate truth, the truth simply,
by the Spirit whom ‘now the Father sendeth in Christ’s name,
and Christ sendeth from the Father. “ What no eye had seen,
what Christ Himself could not say (at least, plainly and expressly),
what no Christian can speak to the world and to the weak, the
Spirit now teaches.” (Hiafeli.) Weeven continue, What gene-
rally may never be spoken and taught in human words! From
the Spirit come to us not only the groanings unutterable of prayer,
but also the words unspeakable of knowledge and revelation. Thus
to Christians Pilate’s question in every, even the best sense, is
utterly abolished, because Christ no longer stands without before
them alone, but the Spirit bears His witness that the Spirit is
the truth. (1 John v. 6.)
But now after this abounding promise of the first name comes
immediately the mournful, decisive restriction, Whom the world
cannot receive! ‘ And ils Is not the old liar and murderer,
the prince of this world, to be cast out, so that the world may be
saved, and attain to life in the truth? Was not the Spirit to be
poured out on all flesh? Do not all these promises, given to the
first disciples as representatives of all future disciples, avail actu-
ally for all in the world who should afterwards hearken to and
believe in the Spirit? Assuredly, but the Lord does not now
refer to these, these He had already in anticipation fulfilled to the
disciples ; on the other hand, this same world, in the strictest and
most rigorous sense of the word, remains and jirst declares ttself
truly such when the Spirit comes,—the world which receiveth
not the Spirit because it will remain the world. It does not say,
It is not to receive Him; but it cannot, for to receive Him re

JOHN XIV. 17. 227

quires a susceptibility. It cannot—“ such a word has the Lord |
Jesus spoken with profound sympathy, and when we utter it, it
should be in the same feeling; but such a word, nevertheless,
He did not see fit to withhold.” (Rieger.) As long as it remains
world as such it cannot, and with those who are here intended
it must ever be so. And it may be said, alas, “baptism and
anointing are wasted on the world” *—yea, also, the testimony
and influence of the Spirit !

And wherefore not receive? “ Seeing and knowing is the only
way to receive and enjoy, in the kingdom of heaven even as in
universal nature.” (Hiafeli.) It may at first appear strange that
as for the Son so also for the invisible, inwardly working Spirit
too, a seeing should be required; but this very @ewpetv teaches
us the true sense in which alone it must be understood, for in-
stance in ch. vi. 40 and elsewhere. The beginning and ground
of all knowing, in which the object is appropriated by the subject,
is an internal true beholding of the object; this is its necessary
condition. To this beholding, especially of the truth itself in
Christ, in the Spirit, belongs not merely unprejudicedness, but
most essentially a desire and sense of need going out after it,
and the want of this confounds and blinds the soul. Hezel was
right when he unconsciously corrected himself thus (although
this does not properly, certainly not solely, lie'in the word
Gewpetv), “ Because the world looks not about for the Spirit of
truth, troubles itself not about Him, and attaches no importance
to Him.” Or the Berlenb. Bible, “It turns not its eyes to Him,
but looks away from Him!” It needs no Helper, it is con-
tented even without the Father. It desires, and therefore “sees
and knows only what is useful to it, receives only (to abuse and
pervert) what the goodness of the Creator has inlaid into ex
ternal nature and the nature of man; but it sees not and knows
not what the saving grace of God proffers to it.’ (Beck.) But
we must investigate the word more profoundly, for this is only
its first meaning. As in the days of His flesh those who would
not and could not behold the Son in Himself were yet constrained
to see Him, and those who received not His word heard it at
least, that the stony ground might be sown for a testimony-—not

1 Luther’s Tischreden, latest edition by Forstemann, i. 15.-

228 THE WORLD KNOWETH HIM NOT.

otherwise does the Spirit manifest Himself and offer Himself in
His influence to the world. But now comes in the final em-
phasis of the following 006é ysve@oxec— And 7f in a certain sense
it is constrained by the power of God to see Him, it knoweth
Him not, because and even as it does not acknowledge Him as
the Spirit of the truth, and thus will not know Him. There is
yet a truth in men, an assenting response, a criterion for the
acceptance of the self-revealing truth of God; but it is held in
unrighteousness, and this is strengthened by the spirit of lies,
the opponent of the Paraclete. When devils are manifestly cast
out by the Spirit of God, the daring Beelzebub will himself ery
from the lips of his own, when he can do no more, to Christ —
Thou castest them out by Beelzebub! What befell the Son at
the hands of unbelief, is repeated with intenser energy and
deeper decisiveness with regard to the Spirit. Let it be observed,
that notwithstanding the name 7vedya He is spoken of as a
person in the ov Gewpei, as if it had been said, The world deals
with Him as it deals with Me. And, finally, let it be noted that
this exclusion of the world with the statement of the reason ov
dvvatat, was not intended as a warning to the beloved disciples
(who were already no longer of the world, ch. xv. 19), but was
graciously spoken beforehand for their consolation. This is
excellently unfolded by Luther in an often-cited passage of his
exposition, the ground-thoughts of which are: When they look
around them and see so many people, not mean or insignificant,
scorning their doctrine—this would terrify and stagger weak-be-
lieving hearts. Are they then all and altogether wrong, we alone
being right? But this stumbling-block the Lord obviates for
His little flock, and teaches them to question nothing about the
world, so that they themselves have assuredly the Holy Spirit of
truth.— Therefore follows, in order to indicate the great separa-
tion and. decision which the Spirit will effect, the comforting
But ye know Him! How then already in the Present? We
must not misunderstand this as meaning, Since ye already know
Me; or, then go on to make é7z (with Lampe) equivalent to
610, Therefore He abideth also with you. The Lord here once
more evidently speaks in prolepsis ; the present tenses as a whole
intimate the future state of things, as Liicke rightly says, “ Jesus
places in juxtaposition and opposition the characteristics of the

JOHN XIV. 18. 229

xoajos and of the disciples.” Hence we are inclined to prefer,
with him and with Luthardt, the reading éoriv instead of écras,
particularly on account of the corresponding ideas—The Coun-
sellor abideth with them, the Spirit is in them. It must of
course be assumed that the Apostles had been already made
susceptible by Christ for receiving the Holy Ghost. “ The
coming of the Holy Ghost would so entirely coincide with all
that they had understood of the Lord’s words and intercourse
with them, and with all that now followed, for the excitement of
their desire and of their faith, that they will at once know Him
by the Lord’s former teaching.” (Rieger.) Only, as in the case
of the world the reasons for the future od @ewpeiv are intimated
without being expressly uttered, even so :t is in the case of the
disciples; the yuveocxere avo cannot possibly mean at once
that they already knew and possessed the Spirit in Christ, for
the wéver plainly refers forward to the previously promised iva
pévy. And, in conclusion, the general contrast with the un-
believing world, not with other believers and disciples, makes it
plain that the entire promise of the Comforter, and the ipets dé
here, by no means applies to the Apostles alone.

Ver. 18. Now indeed these are more particularly the repre-
sentatives of all discipleship. ‘They are His little children (ch.
xi. 33)—He the Father of the house, for whose sake they have
forsaken father and mother, house and goods ; yea, still more, had
so utterly renounced the world that between them and it all was
for ever at an end. And now He goes away from them, leaves
them behind Him in this evil world—as with Mary weeping,
They have taken away our Lord! ‘Then would they be indeed
sheep without a shepherd, orphans without father, protection, or
help, without advocate or helper. It is well known that dépdaves
is used generally de omni destitutione; but we hold fast the
common signification, which partly adheres to the rexvia of ch.
xl. 33, and partly refers to the Father in heaven, of whom they
should not be deprived—see presently ver. 23. A new element |
is introduced into this gracious consolation for their amazed
hearts, as we find it constantly recurring in these discourses—I
will not leave you as orphans! I go away, but I come back —
again to you at once! We must not interpose here, with
Semler, a foolish interea—I will not leave you altogether alone,

230 I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU ORPHANS.

even so long as till He, the Spirit cometh. But the Present
-€pxouat, which brings it so near and overpasses the érv puxpov
of ver. 19, means much more than the resurrection return; it
includes (according to the above canon of a perspective connec-
tion of comings) actually His coming to continue with them in
the Spirit. The coming of the Comforter and the coming of
the Lord Jesus are essentially one: He cannot humanly speak
of them otherwise than by making them interchangeable, dis-
tinguishing and yet uniting them. Augustin: Post promis-
sionem Spiritus sancti, ne quisquam putaret, quod ita eum
Dominus daturus fuerat, velut pro se ipso, ut non et ipse cum
eis esset futurus, adjecit atque ait: Veniam ad vos. The
Representative of His visible presence is Another, and yet in
the unity of the Trinity it is no other than Christ Himself in
His invisible real presence." The resurrection was the pledge
and further preparation for this coming, and of this ver. 19
expressly speaks, though not only of this. It is altogether in-
admissible to refer it, with some of the ancients, to a coming
to judge the world; for there is no érz puxpov reaching so far,
nor would it be true that the world will not then see Him. Both
these are decisive against Luthardt’s exaggerated reference to
the Parousia at the last day, although he thinks he has estab-
lished it here! This érv pxpov is, in fact, not the same as that
of Heb. x. 87, or equivalent to the tayd of Rev. xxii. 7, 12. /
And it would be contrary to the entire context in these dis-
courses to think of the whole church as being a or com-
fortless till the last day!

Ver. 19. In érv puxpov thus connected with €jcecGe the Lord
probably thinks of that prophecy of His resurrection on the third
day” which is to be discerned in Hos. vi. 2: cal Gyoopeba éve-
mov avtod; and the cal yywoopeda following here in ver. 20
strengthens this view. It is indubitable that the resurrection,
to which the first words properly refer, is first of all intended

* Not merely, ‘‘ The Jesus of their child-faith is glorified into the Spirit
of truth for the faith of the man” (as Braune improperly says) —but even
the Spirit of the truth makes Himself ever more perfectly known as the
Christ living in us. Kahnis: “ It cannot be doubted that the Lord views
the sending of the Holy Ghost as a coming back in His own person. s

? See upon this prophecy, our remarks in vol. i. on Matt. ix. 9, ete.

JOHN XIV. 19. 231

(as ch. xvi. 16 in a wider connection), and that their seeing Him
again in the body must be included, although Liicke contradicts
this; not only is the resurrection included, but it is in ére puxpor,
in ovxért Oewpet (Acts x. 40, 41, a type of the exclusion of the
world from seeing the Holy Ghost), and finally in éy &6, posi-
tively and strongly expressed. Even Kuinoel and de Wette
agree with Lampe and Bengel in assuming a “ double sense”
here; though the meaning is not properly double, but is one in
the centre of the scriptural truth. The discourse advances with
a deepening development of the expressions— Ye shall see Me
first externally, then and thereafter in the Spirit, ye shall live as
I live, when ye shall have Me abidingly in the Spirit. First,
there will intervene a renewal of the bodily seeing, which is the
transition to their living. Then, too, diving must be taken here
in the full and deep sense of the word, especially after the pro-
mise of the Spirit who should be in them.’ This Spirit gives
counsel and performs His work, He is in the Spirit of truth also
the Spirit of life. For what would be counsel without help,
what would be all truth without new power, without new life in
order to the obedience of the truth? The mere so-called know-
ledge avails not for this. Therefore Spirit of the truth, and the
Spirit who giveth life by the truth. Christ designedly omits to
say Sjoouas concerning Himself,—although His meaning in-
cludes a reference to the resurrection as demonstrating His inex-
tinguishable Divine life, —for He liveth in God eternally. Yet
He does actually utter this €@ “ with death in view’——makes it
a pledge to His disciples that they shall have a life, beginning
with their spiritual resurrection and extending onwards to eter-
nity —implicitly promises, consequently, also the subsequent
bodily resurrection of all His own, but all as resting upon the
sole life-principle imparted by the quickening Spirit. He who
possesses the Spirit and in Him Christ, may speak joyfully and

1 “Tt would have been very strange if Jesus had not at this moment re-
ferred to His resurrection, just at the time when His disciples most needed
such a consolation ; and it is doing unnatural violence to the éya fa to regard
it as having no such reference.” So de Wette, who then, though not clearly
or profoundly enough, connects with this the spiritual reference.

? Hezel’s dull spirit thus expounded: When I show Myself alive again,

ye also shall be still alive! For they might have feared that they would all
be destroyed.

232 BECAUSE I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO.

confidently in the presence of death to the king of terrors, in
the language of Luther: “ Knowest thou not that thou didst
devour the Lord Christ, but wert obliged to give Him back, and
wert devoured of Him? so thou must leave me undevoured be-
cause I abide in Him, and live and suffer for His name’s sake.
Man may hunt me out of the world and put me underground,
and that I care not for; but I shall not on that account abide
in death, I shall live with my Lord Christ, as I know and believe
that He liveth!’ There is no other guarantee for our personal
continuance in the integrity of our being, and consequently, also,
as that is inseparable, for the resurrection of our bodies, than
the personality of Christ, in whose éy@ €@, declared in His resur-
rection and assured to us by the reception of His Spirit in our-
selves, we have the firm and sufficient foundation for—xat bets
GicecGe.: All other arguments and hopes of immortality are
like shadows and vapour before the light and power of this
living word. (Rev. i. 17, 18.)

Vers. 20, 21. By the general formula of the Prophets for an
indefinitely left Future opened up in perspective—Ni7 OF2,
_ the repeated use of which (ch. xvi. 23, 26) places these dis-
courses under the canons for the exposition of all prophecy,—
is denoted here specifically, as sometimes in the Prophets, the
near and certain dawn of the day of a more glorious future, of
clearer light.? This now promised yv@ceoGe serves as a con-
firming interpretation of the ywwoxere, ver. 17, and even
ver. 7. Then, when the day of Pentecost has become the
Easter day of your hearts, will ye no longer say unto Me, Lord
show us the Father! nor will ye say any more, Lord, show us

1 As Goschel’s Ostergabe (1835) bears this great word as its motto.
R. Rothe would conversely base upon the certain continuance of our own
being as spirit, the faith in a continuance of Christ’s life (now without
flesh).

2 “ Such things in truth understands no man, for whom the day has not
dawned which Abraham beheld of old with joy ” (rather—desired to see,
and saw when Christ came), ‘‘ and concerning which Jesus spoke to His
disciples, Jno. xiv. 20, At that day ye shall know, etc.” Ocetinger. This
is more in the spirit of St John than Luthardt’s over-rigorous eschato-
logical exposition, who thinks that the only alternative is the day of Pente-
cost or the day of the Parousia. Does he not in any sense acknowledge the
prophetical perspective ?

JOHN XIV. 20, 21. : 233
Thyself! at least without receiving the fulilment of your
desire. The three stages of mutual indwelling are to be under-
stood according to chap. x. 14,15. The knowledge that Christ
is in the Father (as the Father in Him, ver. 11) may be with-
out living influence, or may be still held by those in whom it
has become unfruitful; but the knowledge that we are in Him
is really possible only through the Spirit of truth and of life,
and leads at once to the last and highest conclusion, that He
also isin us. After the Lord has thus, vers. 15-20, risen from
the first preparatory commencement of fellowship with Himself
up to its full consummation, He now comprehends in one sum-
mary both sides of the truth,—the first love to Himself in the
germ of faith is the condition of a perfect future revelation.
My commandments—to be understood just as in ver. 15 of His
pyyata or évToAai given over to them, and waiting for the
quickening influence of the Spirit; Matt. xxvii. 20. ‘O éyav
Kai Tnpa@v is not one and the same by any means, so that éyav
standing first should be equivalent to catéywv; but the éyew
relates to the first essential condition that a person must have
been already an external disciple of Jesus, and hearer and
receiver of His words. The rnpety, then, is not to be regarded
as referring to perfect practical obedience; for how could that
be made the preliminary condition for the receiving of the
Holy Ghost?* But it is that believing-loving, loving-believing
attention and regard to His words which springs from depend-
ence of the heart upon Him; that which is again spoken of
chap. xv. 20, the first wévew év TO Koyo, chap. viii. 31. This
first willing desire to keep avails in the sight of grace as if it
were keeping in the fullest sense; such a man as would fain
love although the words of ver. 28 must be spoken to him for
his humbling, is dealt with as already an ayavav. It will be
more fully disclosed in ver. 23 what this loving and therefore
being loved means; we must now single out with Judas the
last great word by which the Lord offers all the fulness of God

as contained in His own person—lI will manifest Myself unto

1 Thus the words of Augustine which Tholuck quotes, are incorrect in
this connection, however otherwise true: Qui habet in memoria et servat
in vita, qui habet in sermonibus et servat in moribus, qui habet audiendo
et servat faciendo, qui habet faciendo et servat perseverando.

234 I WILL MANIFEST MYSELF TO HIM.
him!' Beyond this, promise has nothing greater or higher
for man; for this éwavitewy is indeed no mere making known
or showing, but the indwelling of the Father and the Son, as
follows in ver. 23, the goal already with which chap. xvii. 21-26
closes all. Nevertheless, this high promise is given without
distinction to every one who hath and who regardeth the com-
mandments of the Lord.

Instead of contentedly resting upon that love ailat here
promised the fulness of its revelation to all everywhere in
whom the response of dawning love was found; instead of
sinking with heart and mind into the depths of this profound
word; one of the disciples again interposes an objection.
Whether Thomas, Philip, and lastly Judas, made these inter-
ruptions, simply because “the-more thoughtful, profound, and
greater Apostles, Peter, James, and John, kept silence,” that
is, felt less in them to object to (as Braune thinks)—appears
to us exceedingly doubtful. For Peter’s silence, at least, we
have already, found another reason; and the speaker appears
to us to speak in the name of all, John possibly excepted. We
have here the sole recorded word of Judas Lebbzeus or Thad-
dus, Niemeyer’s Charakteristik notes here a very subtile
trait in the Evangelist John, who at the mere mention of
another with the same name is so affected by the remembrance
of the fearful sin of Judas Iscariot, by himself most impres-
sively recorded, that he cannot omit to warn against confound-
ing the two. We leave this over-critical observation to its
merits; more safe and more significant is another of Driiseke,
that we never read concerning Iscariot that he entered in any
way into his Master’s words, that he ever put even a question
of rash curiosity. It would be best of all, however, to say, that
St John designs by this addition to intimate how even a sincere
disciple did not yet apprehend the meaning of the Lord’s word.

The world not—but ye! Jesus had never before made any
such distinction, never before renounced, as it were, so plainly
the acknowledgment of the world and His own revelation to it.
This outrages the Jewish ideas of the Messiah and His expected
kingdom, as held not only by Judas but by all the Apostles.

1 Which Nonnus most unjustifiably limits to the Resurrection—xai 0!
Okoxerov sidos Euov xo0ds wvtine deiSu.

JOHN XIV. 20, 21. 239

They are far from understanding as yet how much would fol-
low from the principle that the truth of God must sever between
those who receive it and those who reject it; that the love will
be far from being found in all men, while only in connection
with the response of love the entrance and abiding of God can
take place, and the setting up of the kingdom become possible ;
they know not yet in what a great and sad reality a contradic-
tory and excluded world must remain. Is not the Messiah a
King of even the whole world? This is their dubious thought,
as Luther still more strongly expresses it : “ What kind of king
will he be who will let no man see him, and spread his kingdom
so silently and secretly that no man can see or know it, save
the very few who love it?” Thus is it that only a handful in
secret are to enjoy his hidden manifestation? Hence they are
entangled in that foolish notion of a great, all-uniting kingdom
of Christ which bewitches so many even in our own day, so
that the pretensions of the little company make them go astray
in the mass, and they devise every kind of Spirit and Christ
besides to meet their views. Thus the disciples themselves are
here somewhat like the unbelieving brethren, whose pa was,
ch. vii. 4— Show Thyself to the world! The xai tu, if genuine,
indicates (as ch. ix. 36) the zeal of the honest question—
Ecquidnam factum est? JT éyovey does not stand, as it has
been superficially supposed, for yiveras, or the whole formula
for 7° 2—How comes it then, how can this be? (In the
Lond. Heb. N. T. net man FS.) But Judas would say, as

v. Gerlach keenly seizes ity What has occurred? We nh
translate it most simply, What then has taken place, that is,
come between, that the world is now to be excluded from Thy
manifestation? Although the Lord, ver. 17, had plainly said
and given the reason—The world cannot receive the Spirit (as
it comes not tothe light of the word which prepares to that
end, ch. iii. 19)—yet Judas had overlooked this, or forgotten
it; and hence he proposes his question with an improper péA-
Nets, which cannot otherwise be translated than as @éXets.
We have in his the type of all similar questions, which are
constantly obtruded whenever the word is seen to be visibly
fulfilled—The world seeth not and knoweth not the Spirit of
the truth! The folly or despondency of men, alas, which

‘

936 NOT UNTO THE WORLD.

would have a greater and prematurely visibly great kingdom of
the Lord Jesus, utters the question of Judas, which in him
might be excused; and will not rest in the answer and decision.
Whoso loveth Me—whoso loveth Me not—that is the test, and
all comes to that! But humility also, which knows not its own
poor love enough to ground its own election out of the world
upon it, utters in a most blessed meaning, and with perfect
propriety, the same question."

Ver. 23. The Lord scarcely does more than repeat that which
had appeared to the disciple so unintelligible or ungrounded that
he was obliged to presuppose some not yet declared yéyovev ; yet
the repetition is actually explanatory, since the decisive loving
now in the answer takes the lead. And, further, the declaration
is strengthened—And the Father will come with Me, we will
make our abode with Him! Jf anz. :nan love Me—that is the
great yéyovev in every soul which is decisive for its deliverance
Rien the present evil world (Gal. 1.4; Acts 1.40). If Judas
had known what the world is, and ihe every human heart by
nature, he would rather have wondered how Jesus could reveal
Himself to any man, in order to his perfect love and fidelity in
the knowledge of the whole truth :—therefore the reply places
this first; and that with an édv res (comp. ch. vi. 37) which
seems to intimate the rareness of this love, while o pa) dyarav
afterwards seems to intimate what is the general rule. In
Prov. viii. 17 the eternal wisdom of God, whose delight is to
dwell with the children of men, lays down the same decisive
condition—I love them that love Me; while the following
clause—And those that seek Me early shall find Me, explains
and unites these two—the first love of desire and the rewarding
love of attainment. On this principle the Lord’s words in vers.
15 and:21 should always have been explained, thus resolving
the anomaly of the promise itself being made a condition. Is
not this often apparent? No man can call Jesus a Lord but
by the Holy Ghost; and again no man can receive the Holy
Ghost but by calling upon the Lord for Him. It is self-under-
stood, however, that our first calling, coming, and loving, can

1 But this must not be so attributed to Judas as to make him: mean: Ti

viyovev, What has been done by us, whereby have we deserved such especial
prerogative ?

JOHN XIV. 33. 237

by no means take place in our own strength and to our own
praise; for He has previously offered Himself, invited and
drawn our souls, exhibited and impressed His love upon us.
How else could He say, If any man love Me? He is with us
already, offers Himself beforehand for all, waits with seeking
and desire on His part to find who will love Him in return.
Once more: This first loving, which is the point of decision on
our part, is the essential germ of life in living faith. If else-
where and ordinarily the great test is believing or not believing,
this is indeed only the same; but this last manner of speaking
on the part of our Lord is more testing and convincing with
respect to all who are already around Him as His disciples.
“ Love itself often includes (in John) the idea of faith, and is
nothing but an acting faith, the breath or the life of faith.”
(Hamann.) Just so speaks Sartorius (Lehre v. d. heil. Leibe
ii. 152), though his critic Schdberlein would complete his mean-
ing, showing that he might have carried his argument further,
and proved the nature of love to exist in faith itself. A theo-
logical or homiletic terminology which speaks of love in the
place of faith may very easily degenerate into a false illu-
minist doctrine; but if the application be made im the right
place it may be shown to have much truth. Nor is it right to
say that this is the peculiarity of St John, for the Evangelist,
and the Lord in his gospel, ever speaks most about believing,
to the disciples and to the world; it should rather be ascribed
to the closer and more internal character of these last discourses,
and may be termed, as it were, esoterical, and in connection with
this—for here is the test of all teaching concerning love—there
could not be lacking the reference back to faith, as we find in
ch. xiv. 1, 11, 12; xvi. 9, 27, 31. The Lord might have said,
according to the analogy of ch. xiv. 21, He who loveth Me, he
it is who believeth on Me. For valid faith is not a mere assent
of the understanding, or obedient acceptance of the word; in
the word the person of the Lord ever witnesses and offers
itself : consequently, what is wanting is a personal response
and devotion of the heart, and that is the love in faith." The

1 Faith lays hold of the love of God, and receives that love into the
Spirit. It was such even in the Old Testament as it entered into the
Divine revelations of love as far as they had been made.” (Schoberlein.)

238 THE MANIFESTATION TO LOVE.

fulness of the love of God is manifested to us, attracts and
moves us, in the personality of the Son of man, worthy of supreme
love; how can it be but that our posture towards this person of
Christ should declare and decide whether we are or are not
susceptible and disposed to give admission to redeeming love.
He who hateth Christ, hateth also His Father! (Ch. xv. 23.)
There may be many who already in this sense love Him, who
cannot yet call Him Lord by the Holy Ghost: despise not
that, but wait till the Lord shall manifest Himself to such!
“ Honour every man, even the least, who has love to Christ in
his heart!” This excellent rule out of Richter’s Hausbibel
tells very forcibly against much of our dogmatic rigour of re-
quirement, against much of our bigoted ecclesiastical restriction.
Learn better what love is, ye zealots, and make the banner of
love to the Lord the sole banner of His Church! Zeller
thus applies this saying to the subject of Christian instruction :
“Thus even a child which has love to the Saviour is capable of
the manifestation and indwelling of the Lord.” Yes, assuredly,
every childlike susceptible offering up of a loving heart receives
perpetually and more and more living knowledge and experience
as its reward. And the same holds good of the most advanced.

If a man love Me he will keep My words: thus the further
condition laid down in vers. 15-21 becomes itself a first pro-
mise. Love only, and it will of itself thus follow! “The
order seems reversed, but it is essentially one and the same
either way” —preaches Schleiermacher. But let the difference
of the expression in the two sentences be noted, and further
that the latter fully explains the former. Adyov instead of
évtodds teaches us, as we have said, that the full keeping of
the law is not yet meant; although the ancient expositors
mostly so understand it." The word of Jesus speaks of repen-
tance, coming, praying, believing: these are pre-eminently and
first of all His commandments. He who willingly hears these,
though it may be once and in one word, and retains and re-
volves Christ’s word in His heart, being seized by its power;
and then penitently comes, prays, believes so far as his early
The final unbelief in Christ which is ripe for condemnation, is “a heart

closing itself against the highest love.” (Jul. Miller, on Sin.)
1 Gregory the Great, in particular, in a Pentecost sermon on this section.

JOHN XIV. 23. 239

weakness will allow him—is already a partaker of the first
promise, and the second greater one will not fail him. Luther:
“ He will keep My words; that does not mean the word of
Moses and the preaching of the law, but the preaching of love
and grace such as He manifests to us.” Such typeiy may well
consist with great lack of understanding, and much infirmity in
action; if only that can be truly said which was said of the
disciples, ch. xvii. 6-8, as preparatory to the coming Easter-day
and day of Pentecost." The testing question, Believest thou
on the word of Jesus? still closer, on Jesus Himself? is, alas,
answered by many prematurely in the affirmative. Then
presses more closely and testingly the record, Lovest thou
Him? Answer to this a confident Yes, only when thou dost
experience the beginning and continuance of that which here
follows—the keeping of His word!

Now comes the rewarding love for such as thus love, in its
full communion or manifestation. The Father’s will is that
His Sen, and Himself in the Son, should be loved; and where
He finds the beginning of this, oh how He returns that love,
for He will and He can now shed abroad the fulness of His
Divine complacency! That Jesus loves them that love Him,
has been already seen in ver. 21; now it is further shown that
assuredly the Father also, yea properly the Father through Him,
will love them. Will love? Has He not already first loved,
and that, according to ch. ili. 16, even the whole world? This
universal love of compassion, previous to all our willing, run-
ning, loving, keeping, is to be strictly distinguished from the
especial love of His approval. The Father loves all sinners,
therefore sends He and gives to them the Son—all heathens,
therefore must the Gospel be preached to them—all so-called
Christians, therefore He bears with them and allures them with
so much long-suffering patience; but He specially loves only
those who love His Son in faith, and it is to them that His
love gives the Spirit, and to them He comes. (Ch. xvi. 27.)

Less and Semler gave forth formerly an insipid interpreta-

1 For which we should wait with sincere patience, if need be, as Oetinger
(Evang.-Predigt. S. 888) exhorts beginners to hold fast the word, and not,
before the Spirit of God comes into the soul, to strike sparks for themselves
with flint and steel,—Isa. 1. 10, 11.

‘

240 THE FATHER’S LOVE.

tion, which would remove the mystery of the wovy and the unio
mystica: Kal pos avTov édevoopeba, and We, that is, I and you
My beloved disciples, will one day (according to vers. 2, 3)
come to the Father and take up our abode with Him!! Oh no,
this dwelling of God with men, that is in their hearts, where
love is and to which the Spirit comes, is the New Testament
fulfilment of all the promises which have referred to this, from
Lev. xxvi. 11 down to Ezek. xxxvii. 27, xxxvi. 27. “ Heaven
and earth, the palaces of all kings and Ceesars, cannot give a
dwelling to God; but with men, who keep His word, will He
make His abode. Although Isaiah calls heaven His throne and
earth His footstool, he calls them not His dwelling. 72 This
the mystery of the 72"2¥ of which the wise in Israel know how
to speak and the foolish to babble. This is no figure, but the
most essential truth.’ Further, the Lord distinguishes the coming
from this abiding. With the sincere this latter is the certain con-
sequence; but in the case of the insincere, who keep not the
words which they know, there may be many visitations, which
end not in permanent indwelling. As, according to Acts xvii.
28, the power of God naturally dwells and works in and around
us, so also His Spirit, His love, His holy life. As sin dwells in
our hearts as a home; so does the new love which casts it out,
which is shed abroad by the Holy Ghost, and conquers ‘all.
(Rom. v. 5, viii. 37-39.) It is clear in itself that the Lord
speaks of the coming and indwelling of the Spirit; He was
previously included, aha when the Bint unites Himself with
the Father in this rsceaatibeets We, an internal fellowship with
the Triune God is promised. For that purpose we have here,
but once only, the bold expression—a coming even of the

Father?

1 Klee says, unhappily : this mzght be so understood. He does not con-
sider, apart from the connection (according to which m“ovyy rosiv must cor-
respond to the é«Q@aviZev), how inconsistent such a uniting We would be,
and the +o1:yc0m¢v as applied to believers equally with Christ.

? Luther’s Tischreden 1. 54.

3 Hezel: ‘‘ Figure does not explain anything clearly ; and we ought. not
to speculate much about the indwelling of God in man, as our dogmatists
and preachers used to do. Children only play with figures.”

4 This last, again, is significant against Luthardt’s narrow eschatological
reference even of this coming to the ‘‘ goal of all history,” Rev. xxi. 3—

JOHN XIV. 24. 241

Ver. 24. He that loveth Me not—a horrendum dictu for every
man who knoweth Him! In sorrowful gentleness expressed —
Not to love the Loveliest, the most worthy of all love, yea Love
itself! But it is essentially to hate, for there is no neutrality in
the plain truth of God, which everywhere makes the decisive
separation : hence even in Ex. xx. 5, 6, there is but this alterna-
tive. Assuredly, thou must either love or hate Christ; for to
decline or ignore His word altogether, when it comes to thee,
and especially His cross, is utterly impossible. All semblance of
indifference is merely semblance. So also the ov tnpeiv of the
words of our Lord is essentially an a@ereiv (Lu. x. 16), a fear-
ful contempt and casting behind of what is nevertheless heard.
“ Knowledge and conscience of all men must admit that nothing
can be more beautiful, nothing more consistent and harmonious,
nothing more reasonable, than the doctrine of Jesus understood
and proclaimed in honest words and without human artifice.”
(Oetinger.) Yea, heart and conscience must submit to the in-
fluence of the drawing, supplicating love of God—yet there
is no loving, no holding fast and keeping of the word of
eternal love! Before, it was Tov Aoyov, now significantly rods
Aoyous, because unbelief does not embrace in their unity the
individual sayings, but dismisses them as they are isolated.
The disciples hear in all words One Word, and that, as He
frequently testified, not as His own words only, but as the
Father's who sent Him. But it is this which the person p7
ayarrév in the world will not believe, although the Father hath
actually sent to him the Son who speaks directly to him.— Thus
the answer of Jesus for Judas and all disciples (which enlarge-
ment of the address lies already in the axovere) would put the
counter-question— Does the world then love Me? Will the
world suffer itself to be loved, or even instructed? Can I mani-
fest Myself to it, to it which cannot receive the Spirit? The
knowledge of the truth first cannot be enforced, simply because

-

which on all groundsis utterly untenable. Is not the individual here spoken
of, as opposed to the world ; and does not the whole chapter speak of that
coming which coincides with the coming of the Spirit? If this young
teacher had been a preacher he would not have taken away from the pulpit
this Pentecost subject, and opposed the ecclesiastical selection of the Gospel,
here if anywhere appropriate !

VOL. VI. Q

249 THE HOLY GHOST.

a corresponding love of the heart is requisite. But to love is
evidently something altogether free, and God’s kingdom in
Christ will have no other subjects than such as thus voluntarily
love ; it therefore renounces beforehand the world as such.

“ And thus has the Lord (says Lange) set aside the three
main stumbling-blocks which, having their origin in worldly con-
fusion, darken the disciples’ apprehension of the coming time.”
He means—without giving sufficiently precise definitions of
them—the offence of the morbid doubter Thomas, ver. 5, who
will know all with the understanding ; that of the doubter Philip,
eager for manifestations, to whom only a visible Theophany of
the Father, a sign, sufficeth; finally, that of the doubter Judas
(not Iscariot) holding friendship with the world, who would too
readily receive the whole world into the kingdom of God.

THE HOLY GHOST, ONCE MORE, AS TEACHER AND REMEM-
BRANCER; THE PEACE LEFT BEHIND, AND GIVEN ANEW
THROUGH HIS DEPARTURE TO THE GREATER FATHER; THE
POWERLESSNESS OF THE PRINCE OF THE WORLD IN HIS
AGGRESSION UPON HIM.

(Chap. xiv. 25-31.)

In this preliminary conclusion the Lord, still deferring to
close His words, and ever beginning anew, returns back to the
commencement of His whole discourse. As if He had already
spoken all, He nevertheless continues to speak. He now refers
again in plain words to His departure to the Father, after which
the Comforter will come and make all things plain to their un-
derstanding. Then as a farewell He speaks of the peace, which
in a certain sense He bequeathes and leaves to them, but which
He will be able to give in its fulness when He goes to His
greater Father, and becomes Himself greater than now in His
humiliation, in which in the obedience of suffering He over-
comes the world’s prince.

Vers. 25, 26. Luther: “ These are simply last words, which
our Lord gives to His disciples as the close and seal of His
preaching and consolation, because He is about to separate from

JOHN XIV. 25, 26. 243

them; as if He would say, I have been hitherto with you, and
have given you My word, and comforted you with My own lips,
that ye may keep yourselves when I am removed from you.
And it is true that the comfort of the words which I have
spoken is excellent, great, and high; but because I am still with
you they do not so go to your hearts that ye can enjoy the sweet-
ness and power of them ; ye think only that itis I who am speak-
ing such words.” —Assuredly, as Tholuck says, “It appears as if
Christ was disposed here to arise from the table and end His
sayings” —but it only appears so, and He Himself probably
knew that and how much He would speak.' We must attri-
. bute to the soul of Jesus an altogether human affection of heart
here ; His words begin anew and are prolonged on and on, as
takes place at allimportant farewells; and the “I go now” may
have been more than once uttered. Only in the Spirit He is
sublimely elevated above all this,—and as often as He begins
afresh to speak of the departure which filled His soul, new words
ever offer themselves to His conscious will, and these He must
speak. B.-Crusius, therefore, quite incorrectly terms what fol-
lows, vers. 25-31, “ detached consolatory sayings, in the lan-
guage of feeling, not new and not connected!” Rather shall
we find in every verse a distinctively new thought, not simply
poured out from feeling to feeling :—as we have endeavoured
to show in our preparatory analysis.

AeéXddnxa neither here nor at chap. xv. 11, xvi. 1, 4, 6, 25,
33, stands simply instead of AaA@ : it springs from that pervad-
ing farewell feeling, and is parallel with the e’pyxa of ver. 29.
It first of all refers in each instance of its occurrence to what
had just been said ; and consequently here to the sayings which
had been unintelligible to the disciples since ver. 2; especially
to the exclusion of the world from His manifestation. But this
does not hinder us from supposing the Lord in these final utter-
ances to contemplate the conclusion of all His discourses with

' We could not say, at least, with Schleiermacher: ‘‘ As He closes (after-
ward ver. 31) with, Arise let us go hence! it appears that humanly He
knew not whether afterwards on the way, and as long as His disciples were
with Him, He would be strong enough to speak further with them, or
whether He would not in silence wait for the final issues of His earthly
destiny.”

244 SEND IN MY NAME.

the disciples, comprehending the whole course of them from the
beginning. We, must not however, with B.-Crusius regard this
as othe ani meaning, and make tadta His Aoyou, évrodai (vers.
24, 21)—but rather, Herewith, with these last-spoken words,
My speaking, teaching, discoursing have an end. That we
ought not to exclude the general glance back upon the past, is
shown by the wap’ buiv wevov which embraces the whole period
of His visible presence, in connection with the immediately
following contrast, in which it more plainly follows, rwdvra &
ELTroV Upiv.

When He now once again points to that Other in His place,
the abiding One, He introduces Him by a third, and that His .
most plain wae intelligible name—the Holy Chutes He connects
now, for its fullest ee ation, this well-known term with the
mysteriously sounding Paraclete which had been first used, after
having formed a transition for it inthe middle by “ Spirit of the —
truth.” The Father will send Hin, just as (ver. 24) He has sent
the Son (comp. Gal. iv. 4, 6)—this is an expression appropriate
only to personality, and one which, to speak now simply and un-
speculatively, places the “ Holy Ghost” as the Third in order
with the Father andthe Son, just as it is finally in Matt. xxvii.
19. The éxetvos, corresponding with the dAXos, has been de-
frauded of its force in the argument, by the remark that it refers
only to the name vrapdxAyros ; but that of itself is not true, since
TO Tvevdua 6 Tréuaes has intervened, and in ch. xvi. 13, 14, the
same éxetvos stands quite removed from mapaxdnrTos, while it is
strikingly linked to the ro wvedwa. And is not the personal
official name, in equality with the person of Jesus, of itself deci-
sive? He who can regard all the therewith connected personal
expressions (of teaching, reminding, testifying, coming, convinc-
ing, guiding, speaking, hearing, prophesying, taking) in these
three chapters as being no other than a long drawn out figure,
deserves not to be recognised even as an interpreter of intelligible
words, much less as an expositor of Holy Scripture. There is a
certain propriety in referring to the after-coming of the Spirit
when Jesus had gone, the analogy of lower thingsin which “ the
teacher is honoured when he is gone from us; his word remains
behind as influential spirit, and stands detached from the earthly
accidents of its author, as a legacy which is so to speak glori-

4

JOHN XIV. 25, 26. 245

fied.”* Thus in the case of Christ Himself His sensible presence
stood in the way of the disclosure of His Spirit, and the full
understanding of His.words; because He was with them and
stood before them, they could not apprehend Him. But the
relations of His person and doctrine pass beyond the region of
all analogy here; for it is not simply the word left behind which
becomes spirit, but, as we remarked before, at this point He
distinguishes most decisively the new and superadded teacher
from the words which Himself had spoken.

The Father will send Him in My name : this is not exhausted
when we expound, “ upon the supplication, through the media-
tion, of the Son, when we pray for the Spirit in His name.”
But as the Son, according to ch. v. 43, is come in the Father's
name (we must ever take the phraseology of the Lord Jesus in
consistency with itself), that is, as sent from the Father, pro-
ceeding from Him, and in such a sense that the Father wholly
worketh, liveth, and is in the Son—so similarly the Spirit sent
from the Father comes at the same time as not only prayed for
by the Son, but sent by Him (hence ch. xy. 26), and in such a
manner that the Son Himself is and comes in Him. Thus
Meyer says, correctly—As My Representative ; which, more-
over, lies plainly in the immediate connection, for instead of the
Teacher who did not remain, who has now spoken His words,
this Teacher will fulfil the work. The Spirit of God is at the
same time the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Son. (Rom.
viii. 9; Gal. iv. 6.) The didd&e cal iroprvjcer will thus be
rightly understood in its depth of meaning! That the former
word does not immediately refer to & eizrov, but that the first
mdvra involves an independent and wider meaning—A l/l things
which yet can and must be taught, which ye still need to know,
concerning which ye would desire when I am gone to question
and hear Me—is perfectly true, and is confirmed by the wavra
(1 Jno. ii. 20, 27), as also by the leading into all truth, ch. xvi.
13. But this still-remaining teaching is not anything altogether
new; the Son had already told them all things, which ch. xvi.
14, 15 prevents us from overlooking. Tholuck takes a very
superficial view of the combined expressions ; he is almost cor-

? As v. Meyer says, without any Rationalist spirit in this comparison
with Christ, in his beautiful ‘‘ Trost fiir Lehrer und Vorsteher.”

246 THE BRINGING TO REMEMBRANCE.

rect in his first limitation of the wdvra to the “hard things and
those of His words which the disciples had not apprehended.”
But he then goes on to say of the drouspynocKkev,—That which
is not understood is all the more easily forgotten, but the Spirit
could not inwardly unfold in instruction what was not at least
in the remembrance; consequently, He would “also revive
that which had faded out of their memory.” It opposes this
too external view of the bringing to remembrance that the
TavrTa & eirov is connected also with that; but the disciples
could not possibly forget all His discourses, and the Lord could
never have made this a supposable case. Here Liicke is right
(with Augustin, Beda, Rupert): “the teaching and bringing
to remembrance are not distinct methods of the Spirit’s instruc-
tion,—only completing or only continuing their instruction—
but both are inseparably one in spirit.” Not, therefore, with
Theopltylact : “He taught what Christ did not teach, because
they could not receive it; He brought to remembrance what
He had spoken, but what the disciples could not retain in
memory because they understood it not.” (Similarly, Theod.
Mops., and Euthymius.) But the second clause in our Lord’s
words explains and restricts the first by a vau exegeticum ; the
ground of which lies in the unuttered middle-term—that He
Himself had actually said all things in their essential principle,
just as in chap. xvi. 13,14. Think not that I promise you alto-
gether new teaching and manifestations of the Paraclete.? His
. teaching will be no more than a bringing to remembrance.
“The Holy Spirit should say over again to them what of His
words they had forgotten and had not understood. So diligently
had the Lord provided against the possibility of man’s law being
established in His church, that He had seen fit to say all things
before, even though not at once observed and understood.”
(Luther, Antwort auf das Buch Emser’s.) Fikenscher’s opinion

1 But we would go a little deeper :—the inmost kernel of His doctrine,
with all things not in them xara ré syrdv, but to be deduced and developed
from it.

* The perversion of this, after the Mohammedan or fanatical style, would
make Heb. i. 1, 2, run differently: ‘‘ and after He had spoken not yet per-
fectly by His Son, He continues now to speak by His Spirit, though not
yet His /ast words.”

JOHN XIV. 25, 26. 247

is philologically unfounded, that trropupvncKew, in distinction
from dvapipyyjckew, refers to the entering into the depth and
essence of the words, to the estimating and weighing of what
they had heard; on the other hand, it is quite certain that the
two expressions indicate not merely the recalling of something
properly forgotten, but in many cases also the hortatory im-
pressing of what was well known in word, thus first bringing it
to their understanding. What I altogether apprehend I may
be said to know. Thus trropipyjcKew is here equivalent to our
Erinnern,' in the pregnant and deep sense, “ not merely to call
back the words to their remembrance, but to open to them the
words which they had heard, but which had remained obscure,
to disclose with undeceiving clearness the meaning of the say-
ings of Jesus.” (v. Gerlach.) It must be understood, at the
same time, that all this does not exclude that actual reviving in
the memory which is the foundation of the word and of the
idea, and of which this gospel itself is an example.

Further, this bringing to remembrance includes exhortation
to faith and the keeping of Christ’s word, to the obedience of
His precepts. On account of our weakness or our sinfulness,
we forget, alas, the most familiar words just where they should
be remembered, and there is always need that one should stand
behind us ready to pronounce our duty in our ears. And this
office, according to Isa. xxx. 20, 21, is assumed by the Teacher,
who is always internally present and will no more depart,—and
the suggeret of the Vulg. (though not enough) well suits this
meaning. All this is here included; but the comprehensive
ground-idea is the unity of teaching and reminding in order to
perfect understanding, faith, and obedience. Whenever the
disciples had to say in after time, Alas we cannot now think of
this or that, what He then said and how He said it—then
might they call upon the Reminder on the ground of the pro-
mise which they had received. If they had to cry,—Alas, we
know it well, but we do not fully understand it—then came in
the Teacher, and what they then understood, they now first
held and obeyed aright. If they might think, On this subject

‘ Braune popularly applies the German word thus—‘ that it would work

internally, livingly, clearly, and mightily in them—that is erinnern, Erin-
nerung.”

248 MY PEACE.

the Lord never spoke any direct word—the Spirit would show
them in the ground of some saying, as in the spirit of the col-
lective doctrine of Jesus, the germ and the test for all further
necessary and possible truth. (1 Cor. vii. 25, 40.) For assur-
edly in the school of the Holy Ghost there is no ceasing to
learn ; nor was there even for Apostles. Bengel: “ Nor, how
ever, even subsequently, were the whole of the dogmas of
Christian truth infused in one mass into the Apostles’ minds ;
but as they needed them, and as occasion suggested, the Para-
clete gave them instruction.” The Fut. diddfeu nat tropyjcer
_applies progressively to all futurity.

Therefore will we, dear readers, not scorn, in relation to babes
and beginners in the school of Christ, the receiving and the
keeping of even the word not understood, the tnpeiv Tov Adyov
spoken of before, which for us all stands first as the condition.
For “he who has not been the subject of an earnest desire to
hear and keep the word, has nothing in him which the Spirit
shall bring to remembrance, has nothing in him for the Spirit to
set in clearer light.” (Rieger.) But that all may not end with
TavTa NeLaANKA vuiv—it is for us to permit the Spirit to teach
us again all which Jesus has taught, that the seed may attain its
full growth, that we may be properly mindful of both the known
and the neglected sayings, letting them bear the right fruit in
the right place, in living intelligence and obedience, and bearing
our living testimony to their power.— The blessed disciples ap-
pear so far to have understood the great promise of ver. 26, that
they are preparatorily encouraged with regard to the obscurity
of these as well as all the sayings of the Lord, and thus they ask
no more questions ; when in ch. xvi. 16 they are tempted to do
so once more, they bethink themselves and suppress the desire.

Ver. 27. Probably after a short pause which allowed them
time to reflect upon the consoling promises referring to the Holy
Ghost, the Lord proceeds further with the farewell which had
already begun in the AeAaANKa Trap tpiv pévov. As at the final
conclusion, ch. xvi. 33, He speaks of peace ; this parallel shows
us that He connects a very full meaning with this word, even
as we are assured, independently of that, that our Lord never
uttered a word as a mere formula or phrase, or used expressions
half emptied of their meaning. But we know also by many ex-

JOHN XIV. 27. 249

amples that He by no means scorns to adopt the usual furms of
conversation in life: He elevates them to His own level, illus-
trates their original truth, or sets them in a new light. This
makes it probable to us that we shall find in His departing dis-
courses some such glorification of a popular farewell greeting, an
adieu spoken to the disciples. Now the “farewell” in Israel, as the
greeting of love in coming and in going generally, was the
1 Diny or na ni-v’—and we have already seen upon Matt. x. 13,
Lu. x. 5, how the Lord reinstates this greeting in its true mean-
ing. When we find, and in St John too, that the risen Lord
entered the circle of the disciples with Eipyjyy tpiv (comp.
xaipere, Matt. xxvill. 9, but Lu. xxiv. 36, efpyvn also)—it is
very obvious that we must connect this, as the Lord Himself
designed, with the D2? pioy which He had spoken as His depart-
ing farewell. Gesenius, indeed, to whom Liicke appeals, is quite
right in saying that this formula is not yet found in the Old
Testament as a mere greeting, as it was afterwards among the
Arabians and Syrians, and in the Talmud, but always has an
emphatic meaning in it, as the actual invocation of good upon a
person, exhortation not to fear, etc.; but the reason of this is partly
that nothing of the conventional language of conversation is there
communicated, and partly that such phraseology was formed and
fixed in later days, established, however, in the time of Christ.
If it be said that the expression never occurs, at least, as a fare-
well, it may be replied that any greeting may be so used, espe-
cially such as circumstances make peculiarly suitable. More-
over, we may compare (with Liicke) as certainly the germ of such
farewell-formula the O. T. Dinvie 7? as early as Gen. xlii. 23;
Ex. iv. 18, and again 1 Sam. i. 17, xx. 42; 2 Kings v. 19;
Dirvia, 1 Sam. xxix. 7; 2 Sam. xv. 9, with which such passages
in the New Testament as Mar. v. 34; Lu. vii. 50, viii. 48 ; Acts
xvi. 36; Jas. 1. 16 well agree, and even in the Epistles, 1 Pet.
v.14; 3Jno.15. Thus we have on the whole ground enough
for taking the expression Elpyynv apinwe byiv in our Lord’s lips
as first of all a Valete or Farewell. Luther: “These are the
last words, as of one who is going away and gives his good-night
or his blessing.”

But how is this touching expression, reduced in the world to
an empty word and become a lie, glorijied into its highest truth !

250 MY PEACE.

The New Testament eipyvn has been seldom profoundly enough
traced to its Old Testament derivation in Div, whose place it
takes; it is too generally limited to the ordinary meaning of peace.
Herder reduced our precious saying, My peace I give unto you
—into the assurance that “with His mind (His Spirit !) they
should also have that imperturbable tranquillity of spirit which
they had ever seen in Him, and row discerned even in this time
of distress”*—but our readers will hardly approve of this or
think itenough. Kling, too (S. u. K. 1836. 3. 685), falls, though
with a good intention, somewhat into this tone: “ After He had
consoled them as it regards their hitherto defective knowledge, He
proceeds to tell them that their temper and feelings also should lack
no stay when He had gone.” He takes eipzjvn more definitely
than Liicke, as “the good estate of a mind united with God.”
We think, on the other hand, that this is by no means enough,
but merely its internal aspect, the essential ground, indeed, and
beginning of the Messiah’s salvation, which we with Liicke under-
stand to be signified. Not merely here trouble and fear, but in ch.
xvi. 33, OXAfcs too forms the antithesis. Luther hits the point
with perfect correctness: ‘No man has peace unless things are
with him as they should be. Therefore in the Hebrew tongue
this little word peace means nothing else but thriving and pros-
pering.” In fact this is the root and ground-meaning of Dire},
as appears plain in many passages, especially in that normal one,
Isa. liii. 5. We repeat what has been said in another place.*
Di-Y is originally the adjective form ra of the root obvi, in-
tegrum esse ; whence Dov, thus, unhurt, whole, entire, when a
thing is what it should be according to its origin and capacity,
without any deduction, need, sickness, hurt, unhappiness, or dis-
turbance. Hence D>¥ to complete, restore, replace that which
is wanting to a thing. This fundamental meaning of pibyi
(Cocceii Lex. incolumitas, res salvee, pax, in qua est odoxAnpia,
comp. Gen. xliv. 17, Ex. iv. 18, LX X.) is here—Isa. lii.—dis-
tinctively intended, as is proved by the parallel with 8573 and
xia wen, Compare DIY as healing, Jer. vi. 14, viii. 11, xiv.
17-19, xxxiii. 6-9 ; Ps. xxxviii. 4-8, as completeness (building),
Ezek. xiii. 10-16. But let us not be misunderstood! We

1 Bahrdt also uses the unhappy word tranquillity of mind.
2 Andeutungen fiir gl. Schriftv. ii. 113.

JOHN XIV. 27. 251

would not deny by ail this that the peace, or the rest of the heart,
and conscience through the peace or the atonement, restored
fellowship with God, as it afterwards appears in apostolical teach-
ing, is an essential element, yea, as-before said, the first ground
and beginning of all eépjvn; but we must maintain that this
word, which has come from the sacred idiom of the old covenant,
sedirwcss more than this, even the whole salvation of man, his
re-establishment into final perfect external and internal well-
being. Hence we are really referred to eternity for the enjoy-
ment of the consummate peace. If here the Lord in His farewell
attaches His word to the common greeting (which certainly
itself speaks, with the same generality, of well-being), He also
proceeds to refer to the Messianic promise, according to which
pipe in all the depth and fulness of the word is the good and
salvation which the Prince of peace gives in His kingdom of
peace. It was, indeed, long before the Apostles and His disciples,
before the whole church of His believers should enjoy this full
and perfect peace ; but the pledge meanwhile, yea, in a certain
sense, the compensation for it is assuredly the inward peace of a
heart no:longer disturbed or fearful, because united with God.
Therefore He speaks of that immediately, and that is the truth in
the first-named exposition, which does not however exhaust the
further-pointed promissory meaning of the word. At the final
return of the Lord to His own, of which the return of the risen
Saviour was a type, when they altogether live as and where He
liveth, will the peace be unto you be fulfilled in all its amplitude.

My peace—this also means very much: The peace which I
Myself have, which I already possess in My suffering way as
pledge and equivalent, because I am going to the Father into the
peace and blessedness of glory; which hence I alone can give ;
which in its truth and fulness is actually something altogether
new, and first brought unto men by Me; which, finally, I can
give and impart only through fellowship with Myself, to all in
whom I dwell and abide. (Comp. My joy in you, ch. xv. 11.)
Yet let us take notice that the Lord adds this tay éunp first to the
second clause with d/éwyut; and learn therefrom that the first peace
without the article with its ddijus cannot possibly be the same.

1 Luthardt, correctly : Efpjyn is not a matter of feeling, pre-eminently,
but a condition.

952 MY PEACE I LEAVE AND GIVE.

He who takes the two clauses as only parallel formule does not
interpret aright, for what the Lord already leaves behind Him
cannot be at the same time given—that is, if we take as we must
the d/Swus as a docw belonging to the promise of the Spirit.
Lange would make it a mere repetition of the farewell salutation
as at the same time an assurance of permanent fellowship and
speedy meeting again; but that issues in the end in such a two-
fold meaning as must here, by the nature of the case, have a
special significance. So with Lampe: He not only speaks
twice about peace, but with a difference. For concerning the
former peace He only speaks generally, the latter He precisely
names His own; He leaves the former, the latter He gives. But
not with the distinction of Augustin and Gregory: The former
the peace of grace upon earth, the latter the peace of glory in
heaven. Nor merely, as Lampe rejecting this, prefers—first,
the lesser peace of the Old Testament, then the full New Tes-
tament peace. There is indeed something of truth in this, if
we place ourselves in the position of the disciples as coming
from the Old Testament, and the antithetical My almost losis
that way; nevertheless, the disciples had also already received
through Jesus a certain elevation of the Old Testament spiritual
experience or peace of heart ; and what they now had He leaves
to them undisturbed and unchanged by His departure. It is at
least not His fault, He would say, if they let this peace be dis-
turbed, it ought and it might remain with them. Fikenscher :
“ Jesus took not away the repose of His disciples with Him”—
but less correctly again: “ He gave them rather (better, He
promised to give) of His peace.” He then excellently expounds,
“ He of you who feels himself blessed in Me, shall not lose his
peace; no, I will still give to you through My Spirit, who will
come to you, of that peace which is to be the peculiar possession
of the righteous and of those called by God unto glory.” Let
us reflect, finally, that this gradation for the disciples is still
repeated among believers, when their hearts are troubled first,
and then the Lord comes to them again in His Spirit; and that
interpretation of the difference between the leaving and the
giving is right and important, which Fresenius gives: The
first and lesser degree is the peace which is left, when the prin-
ciple of the Divine peace which we had previously received from

JOHN XIV. 27. 253

Him is not given up in the time of pressure and trial, but held
firm in the heart. The higher degree is when the peace of
Jesus with a sensible joy of the Holy Ghost is truly and pro-
perly given anew.

Not as the world giveth! This is an affectionate ratification
of the word. Sling is right in maintaining (after Lampe) that
this xaos (as) must be referred not to the substance of the
peace, but to the manner of giving it; for this suits the letter of
the expression. That the world has its peace and even gives it,
is given to be understood only in mournful irony. It heals the
hurt lightly (mark again the fundamental idea of Dire’) and
says peace, peace, when there is no peace. (Jer. vi. 14, vii. 11,
xiv. 13, xxiii. 17; Ezek. xiii. 10.) J¢s greetings and good wishes
are empty forms of speech without any actual giving. Its peace

secured by policy and arms is not really such, as the old proverb

runs— Public peace is not to be trusted. Still less the world’s
peace of heart. Their deluded tranquillity is followed again
by the outbreak of anguish; with all their giving of peace
there is no security against amazement and fear of heart. But
the Lord alone adds to His Dine in full truth the 8A Os or
NTA Ss which so often accompanies the word in the Old Tes-
tament.' Bengel refers the uz) tapaccécOw to any terror from
without, devAvaro to fears from within (comp. 2 Cor. vii. 5)—
but this will not very well agree with ver. 1, where certainly
internal disquiet was intended. Thus it is better to understand
a progression, the former being the less, the latter the greater
trouble ; since devdéa, still more than $oos, always stands with a
bad meaning. Ye need not even be disquieted, if ye have My
peace; much less need ye be amazed. Or, further, the devwdv
is the ground of the tapaccécOa, and as such is removed.

By this, His eipyvn, the Lord, who had already spoken of the
difference between the world and His disciples, now gives the
last most sure and perfectly decisive note of this distinction : His
own have peace in Him (although because of their infirmity and
before the consummation they have tribulation in the world)—

1 Luthardt corrects Kling and myself: ‘‘ It is not that the reality and
the empty word are here opposed, but the truth and the deceitful appear-
ance of peace.” As if both were not the same, as we have said above!
This is hairsplitting for the sake of correction.

254 THE FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.

and this may finally be made by every man a most internal test.
Indeed, it is one thing to have this inmost peace, and it is
another to have a jeyful sense or knowledge of it; as we see in
the case of these disciples to whom the Lord ascribes a peace
almost in spite of themselves. N evertheless, there was a peace
which the world did not and could not give in the hearts of
Mary and John under the cross, or they could not have been
there. The peace of God in Christ is higher than all under-
standing, imrepéyouca mavta vodv, higher than all words about
it, and deeper than all consciousness of it. As the power of the
peace-giving of Jesus among the disciples followed and over-
came all at a later time, so it is often with ourselves; that is,
if we, like the sincere disciples, are among those to whom the
thrice-uttered word was given. Tb you I leave and give peace.
The leaving is always followed by the giving, as Lange says,
“ Out of the farewell salutation soon springs a new resurrection
greeting.”

Ver. 28. With that marvellous elevation of His peace above
the amazement of these perplexed and weak-believing disciples
which pervades these farewell discourses, and is here especially
prominent, He demands from them that they even rejoice at His
going away. More strictly speaking, He does not require it of
them, because He knows what is in their hearts, but He tells
them, in order that such a transcendent word may in some de-
gree at least assuage their sorrow, that they would rejoice if
they loved Him aright! Oh, how must this have penetrated
their hearts! "That they love Him He knows, He already
assumed it in vers. 15, 21, 23, confirms it again down to chap.
xvi. 27—and yet now He says e¢ jyazraze instead of the pre-
vious éav ayarate. This is not hard of solution: Their love is
not yet the true and perfect love, it is not yet disinterested
enough:in its faith and dependence upon His person; they still
think too much of their own bereaved condition, instead of
elevating themselves to His joy, which all His words however
testify, and thinking upon His departure to the Father. So far
we agree with Kling, that in our Lord’s meaning they should
rejoice at this pre-eminently on His own account :—what Liicke
objects has not much force. The connection with ver. 27 is
regarded as not permitting this sense, and éydapnte dv is repre-

JOHN XIV. 28. — 255
sented as being only the positive expression of wx tapaccéc bw
pode Seikudtw. But the connection with the previous verse is
really that of a progression, by which He would elevate them
above themselves and their own fate to the consideration of His
own glorification ; and, again, neither was the trouble of the
disciples merely on their own account, nor finally does the Lord
require it of them that they rejoice exclusively on His.

Ye have indeed heard that I said unto you—a stronger ex-
pression than the simple J say unto you; for He would thereby
intimate that they had not yet heard it aright. In the consola-
tory cal Epyopas mpos buds immediately joined to the mourn-
ful imdyo, He sums up, as it were, the several promises of
vers. 3, 18, 21, 23. All this consequently would be cause of
joy on their own account. But this has not availed them as
yet; the solitary i7dyq has prevented the entrance of these
assurances, exciting only gloomy thoughts of death; therefore
the Lord now suddenly turns to the application of the other
side of the question—I have further told you that I go to the
Father!’ and that must be, as for you, so especially for Me,
something simply good and to be rejoiced in, and if ye loved
Me with an absolute love ye would in the thought of My
elevation at first forget yourselves. This order of thought, -
which to us at least is clear and certain, gives at once the true
meaning of the celebrated pei{wv as spoken of the Father—
a word upon which the ancient and modern heretics (to use
the words of Dorner after Irenzus), like base wrestlers, seize
spasmodically, as if it were an individual limb of the truth.

Luther put it rightly: “ Now mark that the question here
treated is not as to whether and how Christ is God or man, or
what His nature and essence is, whether in this He is greater or
less than the Father; but He is telling them that they should
not be terrified—and adds these words as a reason, that He is
going to the Father. The question is not now about His bemg
born of the Father, but of His receiving His Father's kingdom,

1 We firmly believe that the omission of <izov before rapevouas sprang
from a false scruple about the repetition of the word. To us, the repetition
is in the highest degree appropriate in connection with the humbling qxovcare.
I have not merely said ixrdéyw, but also IJ go to the Father—that, too, ye
have heard Me say.

256 THE FATHER IS GREATER THAN I

in which He will be equal with the Father, and be known and
honoured in like majesty. Therefore do I go, He saith, thither
where I shall be greater than I now am, that is to the Father—
and it is better that I should pass out of this obscurity and weak-
ness (in which He moves, since He must suffer and die) into the
power and glory in which the Father is.” Similarly Calvin :
“ Christ does not here compare the Divinity of the Father with
His own, nor His own human nature with the Divine essence of
the Father; but rather His present condition with the celestial
glory to which He would presently be received, as if He would
say: Ye desire to retain Me in the world, though it is better
for Me to ascend into heaven.” So, further, Cocceius: “ An
inferiority as to His human nature is not here intended, be-
cause an inferiority is referred to which is to be removed by
His departure to the Father.”

Quite inappropriate also is all that the fathers have said,
whether in opposition to heretics or without this occasion, for
the closer understanding of this greater—referring it to a per-
manent relation between the Divine persons. We cannot at all
see how such a thought could have arisen here.’ Greater than J,
who nevertheless am greater than all, One with the Father, so
that He is seen in Me—this very paradox, which exalts Him
who speaks so high, necessarily requires the explanation, the
restriction “ for the present, in a certain sense.” That the saying
would otherwise “ say nothing” at such time, Briickner may well
assert with Hilgenfeld whom he quotes. It is evident that the
Son speaks in His undivided person generally; and here espe-
cially inasmuch as He now placed Himself in antithesis to the
Father. To speak in such manner of a pre-eminence in Divine
dignity, which would be self-understood, would not evidence hu-
mility, but be in the highest degree inappropriate. Roos: “What
subject would say to His friends—Ye should rejoice because
I am going to the Prince, for the Prince is greater than 1?”?
We make it stronger: What man as man would say—God is.

1 In Petavius de Trin. lib. 2, cap. 2, we have them collected: similarly
in Suiceri Thesaur. Eccles. ii. 1368. Either, according to Alexander against
Arius, the Father as déyévyyros or as Father is greater; or, the Son is less
only according to His human nature, which latter Gerhard labours hard to

prove.
* Glaubenslehre, § 237, comp. Lehre Jesu Christi, 8. 176.

JOHN XIV. 28. | 257

greater than I!!* Thus also that is ever impossible — According
to My humanity I am indeed less! . Moreover, He speaks of an
inferiority to be laid aside, to be removed; else would there be
no ground for the éydpynre av in the whole discourse. If (as
Schmieder on the High-priestly Prayer teaches) the Father is
mentioned here as greater than the Son quite independently of
His incarnation, and simply by reason of the character of sub-
ordination in the eternal Sonship, there can be found no con-
nection or order of thought in this discourse on such a view.
The Father sent Him into the world, and now in the obedience
of this mission, in the doing as the Father gave Him command-
ment, ver. 31, He points to the Father in heaven as greater and
above Himself. It is the status preesens of the Son compared
with the Divine government of the Father—as Luthardt after
Calvin maintains. This is so obvious that many fathers (Origen,
Athanasius, Cyril, Epiphanius) cite the words, though they
scarcely so read them, thus: 0 watyp 0 Téuxpas pe or amroc-
Teihas pe TaTHp—without rightly noting what this involved.
Not so much “as opposed to the suffering and dying Son of
man” —although this touches the kernel of the matter—but the
Father is already greater when compared with the Son, as He is
now the emptied and humiliated Son of man, and that means
certainly, first of all, as Kling very properly says— Higher, more
glorious, mightier ; ch. x. 29, is decisive for this meaning. That
u beatior is also included, as Bengel, Storr, and others assert, is
true, but only as a deduction suited to the connection ; for péyas,
peifov in itself has no such meaning—although 27, Gen.
xxvi. 13, has been strangely quoted to prove it. The departure
of the Son to the Father, into the full fellowship of His might
and glory, is an exaltation ; and at that they should rejoice. The
Son so speaks, as Bengel expresses it— Ut filius Dei in carne
ad Patrem tendens. But this was intended as it et captui illi,
quem discipuli tum habebant, et temporis reique preesenti, quum
de perfectione ad Patrem agebatur, erat accommodatissimum,—

so that any deeper reference to the relations of essence between
Father and Son are not to be sought for here.”

1 “* A mere man could least of all have said this concerning himself.”
Brandt.

2 Liebner’s speculations (Christologie i. 150 ff.) about an eternal xévwois

VOL. cE BR

258 THE FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.

We have recognised from the outset that the Lord would have
His disciples rejoice pre-eminently on His own account, because
He was going to the Greater, to become Himself once more
great and high; we gladly admit, with Olshausen, “ the exceed- -
ing delicacy of thought by which the Lord appeals to the love
which they bear Him for their own consolation: ye love Me, then
rejoice that I go to the Father, for it is good for Myself’’ But,
nevertheless, in order not to be one-sided, we must admit what
indeed preceded in Kat épyouar mrpos tuas, that the Lord does
not speak as if He would exclude them—It is expedient for
you that I go away, ch. xvi. 7. Both meanings lie, finally, in
the word, that the Father is greater. The first obvious deduc-
' tion is, I Myself shall be exalted—the next, And will send from
the Father the Comforter, work mightily in you, and give effect
to your prayers, yea, come again Myself in life and glory.
Lampe also decides for gaudium discipulorum tum Christi, tum
sui causd. Here, again, not as Stolz says: “God can better
protect you than My visible presence ;” and, Liicke, alas, “ The
Father is a more mighty protection!” For this postponement
of the Son, who goeth to the Father (as if He were to continue
less!), is rationalistic, and opposes the substance generally of
these farewell discourses. Assuredly the disciples were to ex-
pect, not from the greater Father according to this distinction,
but actually from the Son gone to Him, and then alike great,
consolation, salvation, and power, yea, all that He had promised
to them; and that is very much more than mere protection !

of the Son even in the Trinity, have no exegetical point of connection with
our present text, and belong to the wvorypiov évdicederov of an “ eternal
God-man” which the Scripture nowhere directly affirms—and with which
we would now have nothing to do. Just so, Olshausen sinks too deep,
falling back almost upon the déyévynros and yévyyros again, in the thought,
inappropriate here, that the Father being the ground of the Son, therefore
the return to the Father was the satisfaction of the longing of the Son, who
yearned for His original. This might previously lie in the undertone of
the xpds rév warépx, but it is wrong to say—'‘ this is the relation of the
Son to the Father which is indicated by the words weiGav wov gori.” Simi-
larly, but more prudently, v. Gerlach: ‘‘as long as the Son of God by
reason of His voluntary humiliation was less than the Father, He pressed
upwards struggling and suffering to His original.” Why not, rather, what
he himself continues with—to His glorification, re-exaltation ?

JOHN XIV. 29, 30. 259

More correctly Luther: “I go to My glory for your sakes too,
and enter My kingdom where I can protect and help you, against
all that can hurt.’’?

Ver. 29. Just as in ch. xiii. 19. Hence we may, generally,
supplement ye might believe by ore éy@ eius—or understand the
micteve eis adrov required from them at the beginning. This
must be taken as August. Tract. 79 remarks: non fide nova, sed
aucta, aut certe, cum mortuus esset, defecta, cum resurrexisset,
refecté. Yet in speaking after this manner the Lord scarcely
admits their present faith to be faith, just as in the case of their
love. What was it that He told them before it came to pass?
This we have not to seek, with Liicke, in the previous promises,
ver. 26 to wit; but it refers immediately to the going to the Father
and the coming again; of course, however, including all that is
bound up with these truths.

Ver. 30. He will no longer speak much to them, thus yet a
little more—evidence of what was previously asserted that He
well knew that He would not yet altogether cease and break off.
The way to the Father leads, for the Son of man and for the
redemption of mankind, through death, through the suffering
of death; but in this Satan is the ruling proximate agent, with
whom therefore He first has to do. Mark once more the per-
petual variation of the highest opposites in the clear and tranquil
consciousness of Jesus: from the glory of the Almighty Father
in heaven He turns to the devil’s power of darkness upon earth,
among men. He perfectly well knows His way and His task.
The prince of the world” comes in hostile attack upon Him,—
by no means merely through men in whom he lives and works, as
Tholuck says, “the spirit of darkness working in My enemies.” °
This is included, but is certainly not all; for Lu. xxii. 53 does
not give us two parallel sayings, but distinguishes the still more
strongly marked power of darkness (in which He had already
struggled with death and the prince of death, ver. 44), from

? His Pentecost sermon in Niethammer.
2 Tovrov is not genuine, but derived from the parallels, chs. xu. 31,
| vee

8 Many even refer it to Judas, who was just returning — See, there cometh
Satan !! Schleiermacher is much too bold— All those who stand up against
Me will fail to fasten a spot of guilt upon Me!

260 THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD HATH NOTHING IN ME.

their hour. The soul-sufferings of Christ, as they were from
without, came upon Him from the influence and assault of
Satan: this is a truth which has always been certain in orthodox
faith. Here He encounters the second greater temptation, now
through fear and horror as the first time through pleasure and
desire." But the Lord is beforehand assured of His victory in
the final, decisive conflict with the enemy; He knows that the
mighty one must become impotent against Himself, because he
hath nothing in Him. “Thus He comforts and encourages
Himself against the injurious devil.”—(Luther.)

Is év éuod to be taken as standing simply for eds €ué? Is ove
éyeu ovdév to be explained merely of might? Thus scil. qoveiv,
he can do nothing against Me, hath nothing over Me? For this,
év avT@, Matt. xvii. 12, and éyew trovjoa, Lu. xii. 4, are com-
pared. We confidently think otherwise, for this mere assur-
ance that the devil could do nothing further against Him is
here in the mouth of our Lord too little; and the in Me, taken
with the mere hath, is plainly enough to be understood in its
most simple and obvious meaning. Lange: no point of seizure.
We could not at once adopt Lampe’s nihil neque juris neque
virium. For this last—no power—is not plainly spoken, but
left to be deduced, for the év éuot gives the reason for the eis
éuwé which is not at first added. Let the sublime antithesis be
observed, in which the Lord opposes Himself alone to the whole
xoojos. Wherefore is Satan, as having the power of death, the
lord of all humanity ? Wherefore but because of sm? Where
he finds guilt he has a claim, consequently a power. Just that
is the point of seizure. Aceording to this correct and scriptural
thought, which applies here if anywhere, the ancients supple-
mented the plain words év éuol od« Eyer ovdév by the correct ti
tav idiev. Nonnus, concisely and well, wépos. August. Tract.
79: nullum omnino scilicet peccatum; which coincides at bot-
tom with Euthymius’ aitvov @avarov. The same was signified
by the varr. readings and glosses, edpyjce, evpioxet, and so forth.
The xai between the two clauses is certainly adversative, and
we might waver between this view,— ut he has nothing, will |
find nothing in Me, which is of his own, and which could

1 We may refer to our notes in Hebriierbrief i. 49. These renounced truths
we cannot be ever anew investigating and establishing.

JOHN XIV. 31. 261

give him right and power over Me—and the other, He cometh
upon Me, although He has no authority to do so. We prefer
the latter, because that makes the following dAXa plain.

Ver. 31. The construction is here again dubious. Grotius,
whom Paulus and Kuinoel follow, would understand the xai as
propterea, making it introduce the minor in the argument ; but
this is too artificial and inappropriate to need any refutation.
But should we not, however, with Bengel, set the period after
mow? Then should we supplement it— But he cometh, never-
theless, on Me, the Father permitteth that, and I bear it, yea, it
is the Father’s will and I obey it—that thereby the world through
the knowledge of My love and My obedience may be saved, or
its salvation rendered possible. This is in any case the meaning
of the But, which solves the mystery of his coming who neverthe-
less hath nothing in Him; inasmuch as no construction changes
this sense—I give Myself up voluntarily and obedient for the
good of the world. Meanwhile, the ellipsis after d\Xa, much
more between ada and iva, is very harsh; and besides that the
sudden setting out as a clause of itself is too abrupt. Therefore
we hold with the ancients who make the éye/pec@e depend on the
preceding clause, and thus refer the add itself to the breaking
off summons. Nevertheless, not, with Liicke— Be it so then (for
he has not rightly understood the previous év éuot)—but, giving
it still the adversative meaning, But he cometh nevertheless, I
suffer him to come against Me, I go Myself to meet him; and
instead of that spoken in common (we shall soon see why)— Let
us go to meet him!

The world is to know the love of the Son to the Father by
His obedience ; wherefore not rather the love of the Father and
the Son to it, the world? This would be more obvious, but the
striking application instead of it is strictly in harmony with the
profound view which makes everything here rest upon the rela-
tion of the Father and the Son. Yea, the voluntary obedience
of Christ, which in the bitter sufferings of death so strongly
attested itself, not enforced but springing solely from love, is the
first thing which the world is to know, before knowing all which
springs from it. The love to the Father is the perfect consent of
His will to His gracious counsel to redeem thereby the world;
this is the ground and substance of the évere(kato. The évrory

262 RENEWED FAREWELL DISCOURSE.

of the Father was before spoken of in ch. x. 18 and xii. 4».
Always to the end does the Son repose in this supreme 4e?—it
is ever “a mystery: the Father wills it! Wherefore? This
he tells us not.” (Joh. v. Miiller.) Enough, that if the world
knoweth the self-surrender of Christ in order to the accomplish-
ment of this counsel, it may yet experience its fruit in its own
salvation. Here also to this same world, whose prince Satan is,
freedom and salvation are again offered with the same iva as in
ch. ii. 17. Bengel: that the world may cease to be the world,
and savingly acknowledge the Father’s good pleasure in Me.

It is, finally, equally striking with the former transition, that
the Lord should include and take with Him the disciples in His
let us go to sufferings and death. He who can reconcile himself to
regard this as referring merely to their external accompanying
to Gethsemane, may do so; but we find further something
typical in the background. The Lord utters it for the future of
their following in the same way of suffering and obedience, in the
fellowship of His cross ; and thus has the Spirit expounded this
conclusion to the church, in many a Pentecost sermon. Such an
application has its justifiable ground in the undertone of the
Spirit’s meaning. Hence it is not unexegetical when the Ber-
lenb. Bibel comments: “ Up! up! let us go forth to suffering
and the fulfilment of the Divine will! Thus does the Lord
arouse them, and carry them with Him into His contest, that
they may be His followers in the way of suffering.” We would
add, once more, In order that (further in the future) the world
may see also your love to Me in your obedience to My com-
mands, and thereby be convinced that ye are in Me asI am in
you, and recognise your commission to save by your self-sacri-
ficing testimony all who will be saved.

RENEWED FAREWELL DISCOURSES DURING THE DELAY OF
SETTING FORTH—CHS. XV. XVI. SIMILITUDE OF THE VINE
AND THE BRANCHES—CH. xv. 1-6.

The text rigidly requires that we interpose here— Then they
arose, but went not yet forth from the place, and the Lord pro-
ceeded to speak further Every other distribution and account

JOHN XV. 263

of these discourses, as they are immediately linked one to another,
disturbs, according to our simple and decided feeling, the irre-
moveable sense of the letter. St John does not “ forget,” in his
especial attention to the discourses themselves, their scenery (as
Liicke, with whom we agree in the main, rather unhappily ex-
presses it); but the Lord’s words are so entirely the great con-
cernment that He deliberately hastens over everything external,
teaching us what is the only worthy and profitatJe course for
ourselves. Meanwhile, if we, not elevated to so lofty a point as
he, require a “ scenery” in the midst of which we may better
hear our Lord’s words, there are sufficient intimations here for
its construction. We may suppose that the disciples obeyed the
Arise as soon as it was spoken, and (as the Let us go renders
highly probable) that the Lord Himself arose ; had they, how-
ever, actually gone forth, the Evangelist would certainly have
said soina simple word. ‘Thus, not to mention the harmonising
which would interpose here the going into the town, the passover
and the supper, we cannot admit even the old and customary
supposition that all which now follows was uttered after the
setting forth, and in the way.’ For in ch. xviii. 1 we have the
é€&4XGe express, which as related to ch. xiv. 31, cannot pos-
sibly intimate the departure only “outside the town-boundaries”
(as Lange maintains against myself,—what significance would
these limits have here?) ; besides which, we cannot imagine how
the Lord could have uttered these most confidential final say-
ings in the open air, amid the crowds which we must assume at
the feast time—the last prayer especially requiring a secluded
and undisturbed place. The Lord begins anew to speak, while
still in the room of the paschal meal, on the point of departure,
and surrounded by His disciples. His words are still more pene-
trating and affecting: first, concerning the permanent bond of
love between Him and them, then, in more specific reference to

1 Instead of which Chrysos. (see in Klee) supposed that the Lord led
away His disciples, troubled about the place where they had been, to another
place; that so regarding themselves more safe they might better hear the
remainder! Very much might be urged in objection to this. It requires
a poetical expounder like Lange to devise a going forth under the starry
heavens at ch. xiv. 2—(after an ‘‘ exit from the room” between chs. xiii.
and xiy., of which there is no hint)—and then for ch. xy. to discover not
only vines around but burning fires also in the garden.

264 THE VINE.

His farewell, concerning all that would follow after and result
from His departure.’ See our distribution of the whole at the
outset. Well, then, My way is unto death and separation
from you—but we are and we shall remain united for ever.
As ye surround Me now, in faith and in love hanging already on
Me, so shall it be and much more, our unity shall be truly in-
ternal—I the Vine, ye the branches. What a majestic Eyo
once more at this head of the new discourse!

And now as to the occasion for this selected similitude? We
must at once set aside Tholuck, who maintains without any
ground that Christ everywhere derived the similitudes which He
employed from something which met His eyes ; and Hezel, who
says that He always took occasion from the matters of common
life which were before Him at the time. It is not difficult to
contradict this “ everywhere” and “ always” by sure examples ;
and, furthermore, it seems to us petty and unworthy to suppose
that the Lord would restrict Himself always to things sensibly
present, while He had before His eyes and at His command
the whole treasure of the types and symbols of the kingdom of -
heaven which had been impressed upon all nature at the creation,
and which had been already abundantly illustrated in the ancient
Scriptures. Nor was the weakness or the dulness of the disciples
so great as to render this necessary on their account. ‘There was
no need that vines should be clustermg round the window, or
that vineyards should have been passed through on the road, or
that the room should be decorated with vine foliage (all which
have been assumed), to account for the Lord’s choice of the
figure. It is perfectly out of keeping to introduce the artificial
sine on the door of the temple (Joseph. Bell. Jud. 5, 5, 4, Arch.
15, 11, 3), which Lampe refers to with forte quoque, and Rosen-
miiller insisted on. Although this vine, intended (as Olshausen
remarks) to be a type of Israel, might seem to be an anticipatory
prophecy of that which our Lord’s words here teach, yet now
and in this place a designed allusion to such shadows in the
forsaken temple is quite inappropriate. When the Lord now

1 Thus correctly, ¢.g., the Hirschb. Bibel, v. Gerlach, Pfenninger, Knapp,
Tholuck, Olshausen, Liicke, Klee. The Berlenb. Bibel: ‘*‘ Here Christ
paused a while and contemplated His disciples, to see how they breathed
after His words. Then follow other discourses.”

JOHN XV. 265

begins to speak of a vine, His language is in harmony with the
whole system of the sacred language of figures (for as to this the
“everywhere” and “always” holds good in every figure) —but
its connection with that system has at least a twofold, probably a
threefold, foundation. The two certain and related grounds are
nature in itself, and the prophetic ‘phraseology which interprets
nature ; the third is introduced by the recently instituted supper.
The vine is one of the most significant emblems in nature,
immediately illustrating that interpretation of its mystery, which
here reaches its culmination: its stock and stem unsightly, but
vigorous, beautiful, richly spreading in its foliage, and moreover
bearing the noblest, the most generous of all fruits (Judg. ix. 13;
Ps. civ. 15)—the top and crown of herbs of the field, the grape
the end of the year as the violet its beginning—requiring much
toil and care, its wood useless independently of the fruit—and
whatever else may be observed in this hieroglyphic of nature.
Therefore also in the Old Testament the vine spreading widely
from its root and stem, vigorously putting forth its new branches,
is a type of fruitful growth generally (Ezek. xvii. 6, xix. 10)—
and then specially a figure of Israel,—and finally and propheti-
cally, even of the Messiah and His people, as shadowed in then
existing Israel. We know how the Lord Jesus unfolded His
vineyard-parable taken from Jer. v. in Matt. xxi. But we must
also remember the individual vine by the fig-tree, Joel i. 7 (Hos.
ix. 10), Jer. ii. 21." Finally, Israel is in Ps. Ixxx. 15-18, a type
of the Son of man, whom the Lord as His Son planted and
made strong for Himself, thus of the Messiah and of all who
belong to Him. All this was fore-prepared in the prophetical
phraseology, intimating a new planting after the destruction of
the old; so that Luthardt may rightly say, “ Since God was
constrained to give His vineyard up to ruin, Hé separated for
Himself this vine, and designed it to be a new beginning from
which a great increase should take its rise.” Moreover, vines

1 Where, however, the éa74:v¢¢ of the Sept. has quite another sense than
here in St John, and has been very confusedly brought into comparison.

? This is more scriptural, and more in harmony with the Old Testament
view than that of Schleiermacher: ‘‘ Human nature, before the Redeemer’s
manifestation, was the wild vine; and if He had not come, the noble and

beautiful fruit which human nature was to bear in the garden of the Lord
would never have been produced.” ,

266 _ THE VINE.

were so familiar a sight to the Israelites generally, even round
about Jerusalem and upon the sides of their houses (Ps. exxviii.
3), that our Lord needed no specific object to point His allusion
here. Putting all this together, then, how natural was this
similitude, especially just after the institution of the supper had
given the highest consecration to the symbol of the vine! This
jes point aie connection is made prominent by Grotius, and after
him Nésselt, Knapp, etc. ; and we do not deny the full force of
the idea; but we must contend against the exclusive reference to
the sacrament as too individualised, and maintain that the Lord
was constrained, as it were, to “ make choice” of the wine in the
institution—to use their unhappy word—on account of the
entire symbolism of Scripture and nature, which should here
find its great solution. We may indeed say with Ebrard that
the vine-similitude which now follows declares the “true mean-
ing of the sacrament” —and reassert, what has been more than
once intimated, that St John’s Gospel gives us this discourse
concerning the inmost essence of the sacrament instead of the
historical narration of its institution. Bread and wine are co-
related (even in nature, Ps. civ. 14, 15), as the flesh and blood
in man’s personality ; hence Christ isthe bread of life, the corn
of wheat in the general, inasmuch as from His body and life the
church is nourished, yea derives its original existence, but as He
gives His life to death for that purpose, and in His blood makes
us especially partakers thereof, He is also the vine. The juice
of the grape, the juice of stem and branches generally which is
to be glorified, as it were, into a spirituous energy, is, according
to the profound phraseology of Scripture— which has its classical
analogies in the aiwa Botpiwy of Ach. Tatius, the sanguis terre
of Pliny, the uvarum frigidus sanguis of Cassiodorus—the blood
and life of the noble plant; and hence the expressions of Gen.
xlix. 11; Deut. xxxii. 14; 1 Macc. vi. 34; Isa. Ixi. 2, comp.
Rev. xix. 13, 15, etc. This was one blood, one sap, one life
to circulate in the true branches of the true vine :—and here we
have a broad and deep foundation in nature and Scripture for

1 But this must not be taken as Herder strangely put it: ‘‘ The Evangelist
might not introduce the misused symbol of the sacrament which had been
(by perversion at first?!) incorporated into Ghenteaniiys but instead of
that he unfolded most expressly its true significance.”

JOHN XV. 267

the so-called “ similitude,” while the sacrament was its point
of immediate connection. Pfenninger’s poetical notion, how-
ever, is too far-fetched, that the disciples might have asked, on
account of Lu. xxii. 18, “ Lord, when shall we drink again with
Thee the fruit of the vine?” and that now the answer came,—
For the present and till then I am Myself the Vine, from which
ye are to derive as branches the sap of your nourishment and
life !

The discourse of the vine and the branches is full of gracious
promise, but it is also hortatory, and even warning in its tone
(vers. 1-4) ; it gives such strong encouragement and so con-
vincingly humbles at the same time, that it may be employed
as a Gospel for Advent, as well as for the text of specifically
evangelical sermons of penitence and confession. ‘“ What the
Apostles afterwards taught with regard to our justification as well
as our sanctification being derived from our being in Christ—are
all truths taken from these discourses of our Lord.” (Rieger.)
The more exact disposition of the whole, especially down to ver.
17, where a new element is introduced, we have already given."
Vers. 1-6 embrace the preparatory similitude in itself, though
developed already into its signification. The proper subject of
the figure precedes in vers. 1, 2; there is then interposed an
unfigurative clause, ver. 3 (reminding of the feet-washing), in
order to lead the way to an intenser repetition, going beyond
the figure in cafas and rrovety odév—I am the Vine, ye are the
branches! Then comes the unfigurative discourse : —the abiding
in Him, that is, in His love, vers. 7-10 ; and once more, as stand-
ing in the midst of all, the word concerning joy, ver. 11; and:
then on the ground of this the most precise development of that
friendship with Him who laid down His life for them, to which
they are chosen and appointed, vers. 12-17. 3

Ver. 1. This is the normal passage for the illustration of the
so-called Johannaean meaning of the word dAnOwos. As in St
John dda very frequently indicates not merely what we
eall in current language truth, but essential reality—whether

1 B.-Crusius disposes otherwise this entire chapter, after the logical
arrangement of bad sermons: How the disciples are to walk after His de-
parture—as it regards Him, vers. 1-11; one another, vers. 12-17; the
world, ver. 17 to the end.

268 THE VINE.

of things answering to their types, fulfilment consummating
prophecy, accomplishment completing preparation—so likewise
is d\nOvov the true and genuine, that which is real and proper
in the full truth of its word and idea. Hence the true light,
ch. i. 9—the genuine worshippers, ch. iv. 23—the true bread
from heaven, ch. vi. 82. In full protest against the inadequate
view which would make the material production of the earth
which bears this name the “ real” vine, our Lord testifies, and
His meaning alone gave the Evangelist his Greek word, that He
Himself is the real, the essential Vine. This is not in opposition
to a false, spurious, degenerate growth, as in Jer. ii. 21, NOX yn"

—nor (as Braune thinks) to the artificial imitation of a vine
on the gate of the temple. But it would say, The vine in
nature is only a figure and symbol pointing to and prophesying
of Me; just so Israel as God’s vine in the prophets is only an
imperfect type; but the full reality of all that these figures of
nature and Scripture indicate is found in Me as the second
Adam, as the root and stem from which My people derive their
growth and life, and produce their fruit. Yes, verily, in virtue
of His human nature, as Augustin rightly remarked, Christ is
to the world such a vine, the root and stem of a new fruit-bear-
ing life :? and therefore He goes on to speak of the Father who
sent and implanted Him in humanity. This is the truth, and
not what Lange says of the “ eternal Vine in the midst of the
world and humanity—whose shoots men are in their relation to
Him—whose roots in the life of the Logos pervade the ground
and soil of the whole world.’ As it respects the individual
expressions here used, it has been usually remarked that yewpryés
is used in classical writers specifically for duzredoupyés, and hus-
bandman for vine-dresser; and this cannot be denied. (Hence
we have even yewpyetv with such a limitation in Plato, with tv
dprendov in Achill. Tat., and often in the writers on husbandry
with otvov.) Further, that yewpyos, as distinguished from
yew7roves, does not so much indicate the labouring servant as
the owner of the land, the lord who manages his own property.’

1 Which Ebrard adduces, and also without authority places in the origi-
nal of Isa. xxvii. 2.

2 Nonnus well says, éya rarwevkel xdouw Cans durercs eins.

3 Lampe referred to Philo’s Comment. on Gen. ix. 20.

JOHN XV. 1. 269

In all this thus much is true, that the yewpyia or cultivation of
the land in general includes also the tillage of vines as a very
important part of it, so that we accordingly speak of cultivating
the vine, or growing wine; as also that the yewpyos may be at
the same time (whether labouring himself or not labouring) the
actual owner.’ Thus here, though we would translate almost
unhesitatingly with Luther “ vine-dresser,” it appears to us
that the use of the more general expression (where the more
specific was close at hand) points to a more general accepta-
tion, as appears in the Oeod yewpysov of 1 Cor. iil. 9; similarly,
though in Lu. xiii. 7 the subordinate labourer is called apre-
Aoupyos, we would not say that here God is designedly dis-
tinguished from such. The Father is, rather, in the highest
and most proper sense the Planter and Cultivator, as the Lord
of all that grows in the world, and especially in the kingdom of
God; consequently in an especial manner of that very Vine of
which the words here speak. He planted His Son as the Son
of man to be the Vine which should put forth its branches,
already in His birth in our flesh; but now in His death, which
is itself no other than the full birth, the fructifying, the glorifi-
cation of the Son of man, He plants Him more deeply and effec-
tually, and makes Him that which He here says—’Eyo eips 7)
apmedos 7 adnOw7. Luther's exposition, therefore, is entirely
right in apprehending the meaning to be that Christ is made of
the Father through the sufferings of death a vine putting forth
its branches. “ This is a most gracious figure. It is a tender
prosopopeia in which He places before our eyes not a useless
unfruitful tree, but the beautiful vine, which is indeed not pre-
cious to look upon, but bears much fruit, and yields the most
gracious and sweetest juice. And He explains that all the suf-
ferings which both He and they should encounter are no other
than the diligent care and watchfulness which a vine-dresser
bestows upon his vine and its branches, that it may thrive and
bear plentifully.” It is, indeed, as if the Lord had gone on to
say: Let My heavenly Father now (when the prince of this
world cometh, but only as an instrument in the hands of His
government) do with Me what He will, it will all turn to the

1 See, e.g., in New Testament the yewpyovs, Matt. xxi. 33, and the xoms-
evra, 2 Tim. ii. 6.

270 THE BRANCHES.

bringing forth much fruit (ch. xii. 24). Do ye not suppose that
this supreme and true yewpyds understands well how the land
or the vineyard is to be cultivated? It is fruit which He looks
for; and to that end He doeth diligently and wisely all that in
Him is; first upon Me whom He has planted as a vine, or
rather whom He now first is truly planting, and then also upon
you and all My branches. ‘This is the connection, and transi-
tion to the following verse.

Ver. 2. In the related parable the discourse is of an entire
vineyard, but now (on the ground of those before-cited passages
of the Old Testament) it is plainly brought out that the whole
planting consists in one stock, from which all other growth pro-
ceeds as only a branch, and one which must abide in Him. But
who is a branch in Christ? Exposition too often, and preach-
ing very generally, takes a restricted view of this, limiting it to
those who have been converted to Christ in conscious faith, and
born again through ‘the full impartation of the Spirit. This is
manifestly wrong; for the Lord also speaks, and at the very
first, of altogether unfruitful branches; we have no liberty to
lower the interpretation of this 47 dépov xapmev, which is made
still stronger by the contrast with the opposite. And yet it is a
branch in Him—there is in this something at once startling and
peculiar. It may be said, indeed, that those branches are here
intended which bear fruit at first, that is, give early promise of
it, but by not abiding in Him—2bdring no fruit to perfection.
(Lu. vii. 14.) And this is right, as appears afterwards in vers.
4-6; but these are only included, and the absolute clause, be-
ginning the sentence, leaves something more general behind.
For this is the point of the punishmemt afterwards threatened,
that a branch giving good promise at first shall and must be
treated similarly with one which had been unfruitful from the
beginning. But the Berlenb. Bible is far too general (falling
into a great oversight for once) when it says: “ Christ is a Head
to all men, and thus in this sense all men hang upon Him; all
races upon earth have a portion in this vine, and are called to
the knowledge of it. The right to it is for all.” For then the
aipew must at once be referred onwards to the last judgment ;
whereas, being parallel with xa@aipew, it belongs first of all
undoubtedly to the present care and labour put forth upon the

JOHN XV. 2. 271

great Vine. In the end we shall find those alone exhibited who
are in some way called, and who manifestly or secretly are trans-
posed into the second Adam in the bond of grace, thus being
fitted, and under obligation, to bring forth fruit; but if we
would now apply what the Lord plainly speaks for a present
application, then His entirely unfruitful branches are—not so
much those who have all Divine might in the knowledge of
Him who called them, albeit they again become barren and
unfruitful (2 Pet. i. 3-8, where there was a first Pépew xap7rov) ;
but, as our Lord plainly discloses to us in this seemingly strange
saying, they exhibit to us the preparatory election and incorpo-
ration of many into a church which embraces souls from their
birth, through the grace of baptism, and all the ecclesiastical
communion which hangs upon it. ‘Thus they are “ Christians”
especially, who have the word and sacraments, but receive them
in vain; and to these the preacher should earnestly apply this
saying! They are indeed planted in God’s vineyard like that
fig-tree, Lu. xiii. 6—even grafted for a beginning into the
Vine.t Lampe, who might have learned here to correct his
Reformed dogmatics, cannot but see at least that the év €yo/ is
not to be severed from xAjpa and attached to dépov xapzrov (it
is evidently assumed otherwise in the following cat wav)—as,
after the example of the Pesh., many have done. He falls
afterward into embarrassment: etiam spurios palmites guadan-
tenus concipi posse, guasi in Jesu sint, supponitur; and again,
‘in debiliort sensu it may be said of those who are found merely
in the external church. But here there is no quasi; the same
real év éuwoi is a foundation for the whole. As, according to
Acts xvii. 26, all nations of men have sprung from the one blood
of the first Adam, so there is now a fellowship with the second
Adam which is mediated by the calling word and the prevenient
sacramental blessing, and which embraces in succession the
nations as a whole, implanting the germ of regeneration and of
growth together in a body. ‘These are called and they are
collectively branches already in Christ, although more is then
required in order to their becoming (in the stricter similitude of

1 For although the figure goes not expressly so far back, yet in its

deepest principle Loskiel is quite right in saying—‘“* Here only ingrafted
branches can be spoken of.”

272 TNE PURGING.

the Apostle, which, as must be seen, is by no means simply
parallel with this) living members of His true body. See, more-
over, Rom. vi. 8-6, which truly holds good for the baptism of
children, although in such a sense that in the case of the greater
part a growing together is supposed subsequently to follow.
Where it is not so, the taking away of the unfruitful is assuredly
for the most part (though not altogether) only a manifestation
of the separation from Christ which had already taken place.
More will be seen upon ver. 6. The figure preserves its truth
just in this its centre, the connection between the stem and the
branches; although the é, other than which no expression
could have been employed, passes onward after a manner from
the mere “on” into the more proper “ in”—an interchange
which Luther’s translation has well preserved by the-correspond-
ing “ an” and.“ in.”

Secondly, what is the fruit on which all depends? We must
not superficially speak immediately of good works, instead of
seizing more internally the fruits of the Spirit, according to
Gal. v. 22; nor must we too exclusively emphasize the results
of external activity, by which one branch produces others. All
this is indeed included, inasmuch as the Spirit’s life in Christ
will assurecly exhibit itself in outward works, and every living
Christian does mediately or immediately, consciously or uncon-
sciously, work to the winning of others; but the fruit which
the*V ine-dresser desires is in its general principle only the con-
summation and ripening of our own regeneration, as the cluster
so to speak is the glorified form and complete manifestation of
the virtue of the branch.

Finally, the purging, by which the fruit is increased, accord-
ing to the capacity and obligation of the branch as deriving its
vigour from the vine,—is a most important and prominent
feature of the similitude, the most essential point in the diligent
and wise culture which the vine itself needs! Everything here
goes strangely against appearances. As it regards the vine-
stock itself, before it puts forth its shoots, an imexperienced
person might ask, For what purpose is this crooked and un-
sightly tree in this beautiful garden? And then the unpitying
cutting away of so many shoots, seemingly so green and healthy.
This has reference in part to entire branches which are worth-

JOHN XV. 2. 273
%

less, and in part to the very best branches: themselves, from
which must be lopped off everything which would grow wildly
into wood and leaf, to the injury of the vital energy required
for the fruit. This connection is even expressed by the paro-
nomasia between ailpes and xa@aipeu (well imitated by Lange's
abschneiden and beschneiden), which is against the etymology,
and of course belongs simply to St John’s reproduction of the
words, but must be recognised in itself. That xcaOaipew had
been the actual term for the pruning of vines cannot be proved,
but it was an obvious expression which might sometimes be
used for that purpose. Thus there may be found in it a certain
allusion to the state of circumcision ; but the fundamental sig-
nification of the word must hold its right. The Lord did not
use any such direct expression as 121; for ver. 3 connects the
xaOapoi of His interpretation with this ca@aipew, which already
is a transition to unfigurative language. The noble Vine itself
and in itself needed no pruning and purging, nor is the taking
away of the unfruitful branches so regarded ; but the fruitful
branches undergo this taking away, that they may not them-
selves be cut off, but rather become continually more fruitful.’
The pruning-knife of the heavenly Vine-dresser is applied to
us indeed in that external tribulation and discipline which none
of us can escape; nevertheless the work is done only by inter-
nal discipline, and there is, as we shall hear presently, a purifi-
cation which is effected through the word. But before we pass
on to that, we must note the expressly twofold wav, which inti-
mates that it is applied without respect of persons, sparing none
and pretermitting none, rigid and faithful according to the
vine-dressing rule which aims at fruit and the utmost possible
fruit :—thus does God cultivate His vine, and rigidly prune all
its branches. Without respect of persons—we may well say,
for in this wapoumia concerning living branches, which are free
to abide in the vine or not, which must be cleansed, and to
whom the word is spoken, the figure and its interpretation pass
one into the other from the beginning. Hence in ver. 3 a
simple unfigurative word is interposed, in order to lay the
foundation for the mired figure and interpretation in vers. 4—6.

1 Bengel: Quodsi auferri a te que mala sunt nolis, auferre te ipsum
oportebit.

VOL. VI. , Ss

274 THE PURGING.

Ver. 38. Even the Apostles, whom now the direct address
takes out from among the many branches contemplated in ver.
2, were by nature not clean or not capable of that fruit which
the Father now expects from His vine; but their connection
with Christ established through their first faith has made them
branches: and that is their first fundamental purity. The
Lord undeniably recalls to their remembrance the words of ch.
xiii. 10; but the word on account of or through which* they
had become clean, is not generally “any single word of the
Lord in which there could have been salvation.” (Schleierm.)
—Therefore not that assurance given at the feet-washing—but
the whole of the words of His discourse with them, which they
had received in faith. The AeAdAn«a which so often in these
discourses presupposes a close and departure, does not hinder us
from including all the other words which nevertheless followed
down to ch. xvi. 27, 33. Olshausen says rightly that o Aoyos
is here quite the same as Ta pryata, ver. 7—with which also
ch. xvii. 6, 8 may be compared. Since 7j6n xafapoi apparently
contradicts the previous xa@aipew, as if this latter were now
unnecessary, it drives us to a deeper understanding of these
relative expressions, with their only hinted meanings; but the
Spirit brings us to this understanding in living knowledge and
experience. The xa@apoi éore retains, according to ch. xiii.
10, its full truth: thus it is neither, Ye might, and ought to
have been already clean—nor is the 767 to be referred to the
time of the Holy Ghost as brought forward into the present,
for the word already spoken opposes this latter. But still less
is this first cafapds to be taken in the full meaning of the pre-
dicted xafaipew, as Stolz strangely interpreted—already cir-
cumcised and pure! But there is here indicated the important
difference between the first, mighty speaking clean of justifica-
tion which unites with Christ, and the continuous sanctification
unto holiness. By this first election of grace (compare after-
wards ver. 16), the wild plant is ingrafted into Christ and made
into a branch; without this fruit could not be spoken of, much
less the increase of fruit through purging. Those who are
spoken clean at the beginning are clean; yet there follows on

1 See on this transition of the ideas in sa, in Jno. vi. 56, 57.

JOHN XV. 4, 5. 279

that very account the deepening appropriation of this grace,
which in continual mutual influence results from holiness unto
holiness. Hiller: ‘“ That which is clean bears fruit ; that which
bears fruit becomes also clean.” But this latter, the striving
after holiness (ayvifer éavrov, 1 Jno. iii. 3), which is awakened
in the joy and new power of personal redemption, goes not for-
ward, on account of our weakness and still-remaining impurity,
without the help of the pruning-knife of discipline, which takes
away every wild out-growth. Again, all the cultivation and
care of disciplining grace is efficient only on the condition of
our own receiving and faithfully keeping His word, our abiding
on and in Christ. If the purging was before especially attri-
buted to the Father, we now see that Christ, the living Vine,
at once begins by His word to cleanse, and thus is Himself the
Vine-dresser ; for where the figure fails the plain words must
complete the sense; thus exhibiting everywhere the essential
unity of the Father and the Son. Chrys. and Augustine made
use of this against the Arians, and we may add the I have
chosen and appointed, ver. 16. All is originally from the
Father, who plants and watches over His Son as a vine; but all
is in equally essential truth from the same Son, who elects and
makes fruitful His branches through His own word and Spirit.

Vers. 4, 5. This is indeed a wonderful Vine, which desires the
abiding in Him; and they are wonderful branches which abide
firm and grow ever more firmly together, even while they yet
may separate themselves, else were they not living branches.
Here the “on Me” has become “in Me,” inasmuch as (for
thus far the similitude reaches) the connection of the shoots
with the stem is no mere joining on, but there is a participation
of the same juice flowing from one into the other. With the
karo év vuiv there follows no second Imperative (as is self-
evident), nor is it a mere promise, Then will I also abide in
you! But they are connected conditionally, So act by your
abiding that I, as I gladly would, may abide in you! The xayo
has indeed been taken for cafes éyo, with a comparison of vers.
9,10, ch. xvii. 21, 22—but that is something different, and,
after the Lord has first given Himself to them, He now makes
His abiding in them actually dependent on their abiding in
Him. This, although contradicting a certain theology, is not

276 APART FROM ME YE CAN DOU NOTHING.

to be denied here, any more than in Scripture generally; we
shall hear presently that those who abide not are to be thrown
away! LEbrard develops the sacramental doctrine well from
this sentence, and says, The two confessions appear to divide
this verse, inasmuch as the one emphasizes the peivare on our
side, and the other the «ay on the Lord’s. Assuredly, without
our abiding in Him there is no abiding of the Lord in us; as
without our receiving Him there is no such coming as ends in
His indwelling. Yet it is not on the other hand to be forgot-
ten, that He ever comes first and offers Himself, as we can
abide in Him only while we—eat and drink. The truth which
is here twice emphatically made prominent as the interpretation
of the figure, that no one ean do anything of himself, without
and apart from Him, coincides in meaning with that utterance
of ch. vi. 53, 56; and Roos thinks it “ remarkable” that Christ
does not repeat the saying about mutual abiding until He had
instituted the ordinance for the eating and drinking His flesh
and blood.

With great emphasis of only seeming tautology, He repeats
the concentrated theme of the whole discourse here uttered :—
I am the Vine, ye are the branches! By no means otherwise!
Ye are nothing more than branches, and only such in Me!
And thus, Whosoever abideth in Me (so that I can abide in
him), he and no other—but certainly every such, not merely
ye Apostles! Much fruit brings, finally, every living, abiding
branch; for the overflowing sap of the vine pervades with so
much vigour everything which isin Him. The following 67: sig-
nificantly connects itself with the wévwv, made prominent by the
odros. We might expect, But without Me nothing! That, how-
ever, would be something different, and a flat repetition of what
has been already presupposed ; therefore now the for refers the
warning also to the already implanted and dependent branches :
—even ye can do nothing if, and so far as, ye do not abide !
How many there are who think they can do much without the
Lord—but “the question here is not of external doing, and
general influence upon men, but of the holy power to save our-
selves and others, through deliverance from sin and death.”
(Schmieder.) Leaves and sour grapes are not fruit; there are
grapes of the vine of Sodom, grapes of gall and clusters of bit-

JOHN XV. 6. 277

terness. (Deut. xxxii. 32, 33.) Whosoever can do anything
which avails before God, with a right mind, and action, and
influence, can do it only through fellowship with Christ ; for
even the “sonship to God which leads to Christ” is only medi-
ated by the already latent. preparatory grace of Christ. The
grace which comes to us universally through Christ is absolutely
necessary to account for even the “little righteousness of the
merciful Samaritan,” for which, however, Hollenbusch, in well-
meaning error, holds “ our natural virtue sufficient.” But how
much more absolutely true is it that for the full fruit-bearing
of actual disciples, the same Christ alone affords the power!
and yet how slow we are in fundamentally learning what is here
declared and testified. “ This word must evermore pursue us, so
lightly do we forget it.” (Berl. Bibel.) Xwpis éuod is no mere
without, which would say too little, and might be understood of
the co-operation of our power and fidelity with His, of the mere
assistance of grace; but it is “ apart from Me,” and corresponds
with the ad’ éavrod of the previous KAja. Once more, this
rigorous word of our Lord refers not simply to those who have
entirely fallen away, as if He should say ywpicbévtes arr euod ;”
but in every instance in which those who hang upon Him allow
themselves to be found “ ywpis euod,” their abiding thus being
imperfect or partially ceasing, all their power and doing is so
far reduced to a nothing. Finally, the zrovety here, where figure
and interpretation constantly interchange, is by no means the
continuation of the figure, in which ¢épew and not roveiv Kap-
mov is the word; but this doing goes beyond the figure, “ falls
into plain words” (de Wette), defends it at least from a too
narrow interpretation, embraces together every thinking any-
thing as of ourselves (2 Cor. il. 5), with every result exter-
nally: apart from fellowship with Me ye can simply accomplish —
nothing, bring nothing to effect—that is, nothing good.

Ver. 6. At the close of the still figurative discourse it returns
to the tuking away of the unfruitful, ver. 2; but, as already
said, in that verse those were especially referred to who have

' This, with reference to Liicke’s unfounded remark against Calvin.

? This interpretation is jesuitically perverted by Maldonatus: Nos recte
colligimus, Nisi in Christo manserimus, nihil possumus facere: ergo si in
illo manserimus, aliquid facere poterimus !

278 THE UNFRUITFUL BRANCHES.

been unfruitful from the beginning, while here the same doom
is decreed against those who abide for a while, have brought
forth a little fruit, but then, instead of being purged and suf-
fering themselves to be stript of self in order to the increase of
their fruit, are at last condemned as not abiding. As in the
symbolical conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. vii.
19,' so here, at the actual conclusion of all our Lord’s preach-
ing, the word of John the Baptist falls also upon the disciples
themselves !—The plain, express language of our Lord remains
in incontrovertible opposition to all predestinarian, unscriptural
error concerning the indefectibility of a state of grace, and the
impossibility that those who have been born again should ever
perish—If a man abide not in Me. Let any one who has
Lampe at hand mark how he struggles here. Alas, we have,
in the Lutheran Richter’s family Bible, the strange statement,
“There is no example in Holy Scripture of any who actually
bare fruit having perished.” ‘This most perilous assertion, which
sets out with a much too limited notion of fruit-bearing, and
may in many ways be refuted, needs not to be rebutted by any
difficult disquisition upon the scriptural examples of final apos-
tasy, even of the saints; the warning to the saints which per-
vades the entire Epistle to the Hebrews is enough, with such
individual passages, of which there are many, as 2 John 8. If,
according to Rev. ui. 11, even the crown may be taken away
from those who hold not fast what they have, how can we so
confidently assure ourselves against losing the little fruit of our
state of grace?

Let us rather mark, with docile minds, how profoundly the
Lord indicates one after the other “ the stages of apostasy and
rejection.” First comes the solitary individual ground of it—
If a man abideth not in Me; in connection with which there
may be for a while the semblance or the delusion that he is a
branch, for he is still in the Vine, in the vineyard. Then the
Jive stages of judgment, the accomplishment of which begins in
time, is fulfilled in eternity :—casting forth, withering, gather-
ing, casting into the fire, burning. Between the first two there

1 See Vol. i.

* With which title an excellent essay of Zeller is to be found in the
Beugg. Monatsblatt. 1836. Nr. 11.

JOHN XV. 6. 279

may probably be room for conversion and holiness, although we
must not make our appeal to the re-ingrafting of the branches
cut off through unbelief in the Epistle to the Romans; but
when it comes to the bundles they seem to belong irrecoverably
to the fire.

The Aorist in the first two stages must be carefully explained.
"E8d76n has been interpreted—Thus is he properly already
east away! Lutherans have so expounded it, without observ-
ing the liability of such a view to predestinarian perversion,
without noting how little the corroborating é£w fits that sense,
and still less the whole of the subsequent progression. Is indeed
every man not abiding ¢o tpso already withered ; does not this
rather point plainly to a gradual process of spiritual death and
destruction, into which he surrenders himself? In perfect con-
trast the Vulgate took these Aorists for Futures, and Glassius
agrees with it; but this as little harmonises with an exact criti-
cism. Grotius approached nearer the truth—the Aorist indi-
cates quod fiert solet. But we must not omit to find in it the
decisive assurance that such is the case, after the presupposed
#7) weivn, as Bengel says: eo ipso dignus est, qui ejiciatur, atque
ejicietur certo—in apodosi ro é8d7On denotat id, quod protinus
evenit, cf. Matt. xvii. 15. Just as Winer: “ every not abiding
has that for its instant result ”—to which Liicke assents, and
B.-Crusius, “ All is as good as done, it assuredly so comes to
pass.” We also regard this as the only true interpretation, and
the more confidently as with xai cvvdyovow the discourse pro-
ceeds in perfect correspondence with it. We further hold with
Bengel that é€ can only be e vinea, so that thus the breaking
off and cutting away from the vine-stock does not come first as
a judgment, since it is the branch which has separated itself
and fallen away.’ Nevertheless, as Zeller rightly expounds,
with this very first @w the sundering from connection with the
kingdom of God, from its holy influence and blessing, is con-
summated. The supply ceases, and it seems actually even here
already as if (at least according to the similitude) no further

1 Thus not with Winer: “he is like a branch broken off and thrown
away, he belongs from that moment no more to the fruit-bearing vine.”
Nor altogether with Grotius: ix@aarcobas ¢Zw in comparatione est precidi
a vite.

280 THE UNFRUITFUL BRANCHES.

growth upon the vine or taking root was to be thought of; for
only that which is still in God’s vineyard, albeit torn off and
lying on the ground, could be partakers of that saving energy
of the Spirit which in its wonderful efficiency transcends nature,
or become, as it were, connected with one of the many roots of
the great Vine which pervades the entire vineyard. Suffice it
that the first stage of rejection is as decisive and complete as the
not abiding was.

The second follows necessarily and naturally. If the sun-
dered and rejected branch still retained a little sap and life
from its former connection (a feature which altogether corre-
sponds with the actuality of spiritual life)—even that must be
soon lost, it perfectly withers. This certainly does not take
place first in the day of judgment, as Grotius thinks—“its use-
lessness becomes apparent.” This withering exhibits itself in its
frightful reality before our eyes in the apostates, in whose case
the delusion of independent power and virtue, and in the most
fearful cases the imagination of a particular Christianity of their
own, increases in the same degree as the last life from Jesus
dies out. These are dry rejected branches, already given up
by the heavenly Vine-dresser—and so must the earthly admit,
after vain essays to re-establish their connection with the Vine.
And if they are perfectly withered—then, but not before, be-
cause even judgment patiently leaves to all their time, they are
gathered together. The sudden transition to the plural avira
would say—Think not that such a fearful case is a strange
exception, it will befall many in time to come! Did the dis-
ciples now think of Judas? We think not; after chap. xin.
29 follows their being undeceived as to the son of perdition in
chap. xvii. 12,—and probably this last word itself was not
understood by them all. But the Lord had assuredly the un-
happy man before His eyes in this description, at least as long
as He speaks in the singular number ;1 but now He looks
through this prototype of apostates” to all that should follow

1 Lampe would even explain the Aorist by reference to Judas—but this
is too far-fetched.

2 Judas was in any case once in Christ in a real sense, even if differently
from others afterward, and almost passively so; otherwise he could not
have been one lost among those given to Him, and not yet ripe for judgment.

.

JOHN XV. 6. 281
down to the most distant futurity. Those who understand
ovvayew of mere gathering out, contradict the figurative de-
scription, the numbers which are suddenly introduced, and the
very word itself. The parallel lies near—ovAréyeras Ta Slama,
Matt. xiii. 40; and according to this we should have here an
abrupt transition to the judgment at the end of the world. Yet
only a transition; for it gives us also an intimation how this
collecting together of those destined to the fire is also fore-pre-
pared in the judgments which befall the world and the outward
kingdom :—to which, if we closely examine it, Matt. xiii. 30 by
€v Kaip® and mpa@tov points. Look, moreover, at the wicked
unions and confederacies in the bonds of hell, into which, in-
stead of fellowship with Christ and His saints, the withered
branches fall, as the already prepared bundles of like sin and
like doom! And they exist where our eyes do not see them,
for there is everywhere a spiritual fellowship of the same
natures. In cuvayovow and Baddover we have not simply the
active for the passive—they are collected and cast out; nor a
meaningless—they collect them; but, as Matt. xiii. teaches us,
it is an intimation of the work of the angels in the judgment.
But the jive is assuredly, even on account of this most remark-
able parallel, in which a synoptical zapa@onry and a Johannzan
mapou.ia so closely touch one another, the oven of fire at the
end of the days—with which the Griesbach-Schott reading eis
To wup, received by Tischendorff, aptly agrees. Zeller trans-
poses even this into the preparatory, commencing historical
judgment of the world, as “the hellish kindling and fury of
passions, the infernal fury of heated strife, fires of sedition,
etc.,” even so accommodating the interpretation of the burning ;
and in this there lies a true thought, but no correct exposition
of the text, which evidently speaks of the end, and reaches and
must reach into eternity, in order to reach its full conclusion.
The casting into the fire as the fourth stage of judgment, is the
still temporal crisis at the great day of judgment—but in «cai
eTat as the fifth there follows the unending continuance of
suffering in this fire. Of course this is the plural as following
avtad;' and the return to the style of speaking which makes

1 Not asin Nonnus: ¢ 02 Qaoyéw wupos ato xasera.

282 THE INTERPRETATION OF THE VINE.

the collected and rejected ones the subject again, in order to
speak out their full doom, is itself significant. But the simili-
tude here ends, it is sufficient no further. It is so far quite
appropriate as withered branches are useless for anything but
the fire (see Ezek. xv., and compare Matt. v.13; Lu. xiv. 35)
—pbut as the branches are consumed when burned, the aptness
of the figure ceases. Those branches of which the Lord here
speaks burn on for ever without being consumed. Luther
well hits this in his translation of the awful xaieras—and must
burn, which the corrected version gives—and must. Lampe,
with a similar meaning, translated et incendium fit, and inter-
prets—Concerning the damned the present may always be
used ; they burn, or they feed the fire.

For the rest, he who is not satisfied with this special develop-
ment of the process of rejection, and would rather regard the
figurative description as merely filling up the details of the
similitude, must hold his own opinion ; but let him not quarrel
with us if we persist in thinking such a rhetorical painting out
of the figure altogether inappropriate, and in regarding an
exact impression or all the particulars of this wonderful para-
ble as altogether in harmony with its close.

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SIMILITUDE: THE LOVE OF THE
LORD IN HIS DISCIPLES BRINGING FORTH ITS FRUIT.

(Ch. xv. 7-17.)

Ver. 7. An unfigurative discourse now follows, which only
at the close (ver. 16) returns to the /rwit-bearing, in order to
show that it is no other than a continuous interpretation. After
the judgment upon those not abiding has been so fearfully an-
nounced, the Lord swiftly turns to consolatory and gracious
promise for those who abide. As if He would say—Only those
who wilfully forsake Me shall ever thus burn; only apart from
Me ye can do nothing and fall to ruin, In Me ye can do all
things! Thus now we have the true, attractive, and hortatory
explanation of the main point which decides—pévew év ewot.*

1 Which expression, according to Besser’s (somewhat uncertain) reckon-
ing, occurs ten times.

JOHN XV. 8. 283

The first abiding, which corresponds with the first cleansing,
ver. 3, consists in this, that we abide in His word (ch. viii. 31),
and allow the good word of God which has been tasted (Heb.
vi. 5) to remain and work its full effect in us. Thus, conse-
quently, His words properly abide in us (ch. viii. 37), and these
words promise all which is lacking to us, they teach us prayer
as the way to an ever more perfect doing. (Ch. xiv. 13.)
The reading airjcacde, restored by Lachmann, appears quite
genuine, for it yet more strongly encourages; and the imme-
diate cal yevnoeras seems more suitable to that than doOjceras.
Ask only, and it shall be, it shall be done unto you! If His
words remain in us, His prayer pre-eminently remains in us, as
He has taught it and sealed it with His Amen :—such prayer
is the fruit of His Spirit in us, and produces, ever new and
increasing fruit. Its being heard is secure, for we then ask
nothing unconditionally personal and external, but everything
only with reference to His kingdom, to His and His Father’s
glory. What ye will—but what we will as His disciples, it
follows immediately in the next verse—the bringing forth
much fruit.

Ver. 8. ‘Ev tovr@ does not refer to the previous abiding and
asking, as many think, but it is to be construed with wa :—by
your fruit-bearing will be or is My Father honoured. Comp.
here ver. 13, then ch. xvi. 7, xvii. 3, vi. 29, iv. 34; 1 Jno. iv.
17, and what we have remarked concerning this iva instead of
é7t upon ch. iv. 34.2. By this much fruit must not be under-
stood, we repeat, exclusively or even especially the results of

1 Roos has a subtle remark: ‘‘ It would not have befitted Him to say —If
I abide in you, because that would have seemed to hint that He might fail
them. Therefore He said—If My words abide in you, My words, that is,
concerning which it was plain that they might or might not keep them.
(Ch. xiv. 23, 24.) To keep the Lord Jesus Himself is not a becoming ex-
pression.”

? Thus not with Wahl: On account of this or to this end (<i¢ roiro) has
the Father revealed Himself to you in His glory, in order that, etc. Liicke
rightly protests against this explanation of i022 as the revelation of the
Father through the Son. Fikenscher repeats it, however, and unaptly
transposes the thought: ‘‘ That was the aim of His glorification, to make
you fruitful in good works!” By no means, God’s honour can never be the
leans to any still further end ; but our fruit-bearing honours the Father.

284 SO SHALL YE BE MY DISCIPLES.

their mission, their influence upon others; this is included, but
here the growth and progress to perfection of the disciples them-
selves is first of allintended. Nonnus: maiotuos €udpova xaprrov.
For the Lord does not go on to say—that ye may become many,
that ye may make many disciples; but—so shall ye be My dis-
ciples, of which more anon. First we must remark that the
Aorist again, édo&éc0n, retains its critical meaning, not being
merely instead of the Present, but—'Therein zs at once and ever
My Father glorified. (See Winer S. 228.) That the sanctifi-
cation of the children of God conduces to the honour of their
Father (for which, however, is here designedly substitued My .
Father), inasmuch as it shines outwardly in their walk, we have
found already in Matt. v. 16—and even without this, if we can
suppose it wanting, the Father has His honour in the fruit of
His grace and culture. Luther: “This means not only that
our works appear in the world honourable as good fruit, but that
they are carried up to heaven and offered to God, so that He
accepts them as His especial honour and highest service.” And
so those may take courage whose light the people will not regard,
whose good fruits men turn to scorn !

In the second clause some (Liicke and Lachmann) read
yévno Ge on account of the wa, or (like the Vulg. efficiamini) at
any rate construe the clause in that way, some examples of iva
with the future Indicative being found in St John, see Winer
S. 238. But we assent to Kling, that the «al yevnoecOe is not
parallel with xaprov dépnte, but with édofdcOn o matyp. That_
is, “the éwod, whether taken as a dat. or as a plur. possess. pron.,"
appears to indicate a co-ordination with o zat7#p—Therein, that
ye bring forth much fruit, is My Father glorified, and I shall
have in you genuine disciples, who willdo Me honour.” Bengel’s
interpretation was just the same; and this alone satisfies our
feeling concerning an utterance which would otherwise be want-
ing in that distinctive complementary reference to the person of
Christ in juxtaposition with the Father which is found every-
where else in this discourse. The assertion that they would be
disciples (if the éuo/ did not introduce a new emphasis), as a
mere exposition or as the result of the bearing much fruit, would

We prefer the Dative, as in ch. xil. 35

JOHN XV. 9, 10. 285

be a feeble supplement. But now this becoming, as co-ordinate
and synonymous with the growing to yet richer fruit, has a deep
emphasis: thé Lord places the truth of this high name pa@nrac
still higher than before in ch. viii. 31. Bengel: fastigium, esse
discipulum Christi! This consummation of the discipleship, as
the Father’s and the Son’s honour, so also their own, even for
the Apostles exhibits a higher aim than their apostolical dignity ;
it is the reXela pabnreia, which, according to the apt expression
of Euthymius (who puts dapticOjcecbe for yevrnoec@e), alone
can fully glorify and rejoice the Father of Christ.

Vers. 9, 10. But the common life, which from the vine-stock
pervades the branches, and produces their precious clusters (as
their ever new sprouts also); the essential Divine element, so to
speak, by means of which this dvddcxanos (ch. xiii. 13), unlike
any other, has wands as branches growing upon and from Him,
through Him alone bearing fruit—this juice of the Vine, this
blood of the Body, this more than mere binding cement of the
living Temple (for this last figure is not here sufficient), is love.
(Eph. iii. 17-19, iv. 16.) Love is the first root-principle in God,
the first living germ in us; and perfect love, as God loves, is
also the last ripe fruit. Our growth proceeds from love to love,
and may therefore be graciously called merely an abiding in
love, inasmuch as the implanted first love bears in itself already
all its consummation, and is the pledge of it under the condition
of this abiding. But now the love, with which the Lord first
loveth His own in order that they may also be able to love Him
in return and in Him one another also, has its origin and deepest
principle in the love of the Father (ch. x. 15). We can think
of nothing beyond this, nothing greater is to be promised than
that the love, in which the Father and the Son through the
Spirit are eternally one, should be poured out also in us. (Ch.
xvii. 26.) That is not merely the first love of compassion for
all the world, which indeed cannot be like the love of the Father
to the Son, but that which we shall find in ch. xvi. 27. Hence
we must not with Luther begin an altogether new clause with
pewvate, but ver. 9 is one connected whole; the kayo belongs
still to the premiss, as Maldon. and Grot. construe it, and as the
obvious comparison with vers. 4, 5, indicates. His love to us
is indeed only the further extension and oyerflowing of the

286 THE LIFE IS LOVE.

Father’s love to and in Him, and in this love we are to continue.
And this of itself shows the sole true sense of the év rH ayarn
Th €uy, concerning which expositors foolishly contend whether
it means love to Me or from Me. When Nosselt, Kuinoel, and
others understand our love to Jesus, they overlook that the pévew
involves a continuation of the yydmrnoa tuas. When, again,
most others (after Cyril, Apollin., Chrys., Augustin, Calvin)
regard it as expressing only Christ’s love to us, they approach
nearer a right understanding, but they are still entangled in an
incorrect apprehension of its fulness of meaning.? Love, both
in ver. 9 and ver. 10, is not to be viewed otherwise than as St
John and St Paul elsewhere speak of the a@ydmn tod Geod in
us with similar fulness of meaning; so that all love (like all
righteousness, according to the formula dvcavoovvn Tod Geod
which must be interpreted in like manner) is livingly imputed,
communicated, and implanted in us at once, from the Father
through Christ.’ As, according to vers. 4, 5, our abiding in
Him is only the condition of our retaining His abiding in us,
not otherwise is it here. Lampe rightly decided upon the ques-
tion whether it is His love to us, or our love to Him, by his
utrumque jungendum ; but we would further add that our love
one to another is actually included also as a necessary consequence.
Far back in the apocryphal, but so far genuine, development of
the Old Testament doctrine, Wisd. vi. 17-20, all things down to
the af@apcia and the éyyvs eivar Geod is derived from aya7n as
its original, yea even the typyots vopev ; but there is now some-
thing more than an éyyvs etvas revealed to us—a real living
and loving of God in us, because the Son abideth in us and we in

1 Eye gyaryoe assuredly refers to the life of the Son in the world, from
the time when His love could flow towards and influence them ; but the
ayernoé we is not similarly to be limited to this earthly life of Jesus (with
von Gerlach), but it reaches back into eternity. Christ has brought down,
has brought with Him the love of God from the bosom of the Father.

2 Klee would find the double sense of the expression, first in ver. 10, in
dvyany mov; we cannot see why, since rz ¢u%, rather, more strongly indi-
cates beforehand that all the love of which He speaks, down to vers. 12 and
17, is His own, proceeding solely from Him.

8 Thus not as Fikenscher thinks, that Jesus, ver. 9, exhorts to an abiding
love towards Himself, and then first in ver. 10 (a very incorrect inversion !)
assures us of His abiding love towards us.

Lard

JOHN XV. 11. 287

the Son, as the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father.
But as there, so here, ver. 10 is supplementarily added for defence
against all self-deception concerning this indwelling life, giving
us the test of keeping the commandments; and this must be
understood precisely as in ch. xiv. 15. The Lord has loved
His own unto the end, which is here ever thought of as already
come; even so He hath kept down to His departure the Father’s
commandment and commission, in His state of humiliation He
hath preserved His obedience in analogy with ourselves, and so
He abideth in His Father’s love.’ Mark the transition into the
Present péva, which at once embraces His glorification; and
the airod which expressly comes first, according to which even
in Christ the eternal love of the Father appears as the sole,
abiding, impulsive principle of all His life and suffering, of all
His acts and of all His love.

Ver. 11. Tadra XeAaAnkKa is again an anticipation, hastening
on to His departure, as if. He would close and had already
closed. My joy in you is as wide and deep in its meaning as the
love; but now the two critical points for our understanding the
sense are designedly separated. First comes the explanatory
én év vpiv (the centre of the whole discourse) which gives us
the true solution ; and then is mentioned the yapa tyav which
flows from the former. Most expositors have, from the earliest
times, overshot the true sense through a misapplied logical divi-
sion, which cannot or will not enter into the mystery of the
new language concerning the union between Christ and us.
That 7 xapa 7 éui cannot be—your joy in Me, concerning Me
and My departure,’ is plain in the very words, for this pronoun
could scarcely be so used; and, moreover, ch. xiv. 28 taught us
that He also still found this joy wanting in the disciples. Most
have applied themselves to defend the translation of & bpiv
(though quite in opposition to the fundmental notion of &
throughout this discourse) thus—My joy in or over you. Au-
gustin: Quid est gaudium Christi in nobis, nisi quod dignatur
gaudere de nobis? So also, e.g., Gerhard, Cocceius, Lampe,
Heumann, Zeltner (in the Altorf Bible), the Hirschberg Bible,
Kuinoel, Hess (“I say this unto you, in order that I may be

1 Nonnus: dzovedpevos (abiens) sisérs winvo.
* As Theophyl,, Euthym., Nonn., Grot., Nosselt, etc., thought.

>

288 MY JOY IN YOU.

able to continue My joy over you’’); and Liicke earlier, “ the
joy of Christ over His disciples, if they should continue in love
to Him.” But Kling protests against this, and compares the
eipjvn of ch. xiv. 27. And Liicke afterwards rightly explains,
admitting this : “the joy of Christ is His own sacred bliss, the
joy of the holy Son in the consciousness of the love of God, of
His unity with the Father; comp. ver. 10.” This is more correct
than v. Gerlach’s only approximate, and mediating view, accord-
ing to which we must first hold fast that “the joy of Christ is
the happiness which He experienced in looking upon His new
creation, His believing, loving, fruit-bearing disciples’ —thus
still making év vyiv, over you—and then after He assures them
of His divine joy, His gracious good-pleasure 1 in them, it passes
over to.themselves, and “ His joy becomes the incessantly
streaming source of their joy.” Ono, that is (if we may so
speak) much too Pauline a derivation of their joy from an
assuring justification utterance—I have My joy in you! for in
the mind of Christ, according to St John, the és év opiv in-
dicates the living interchange of fellowship.

We must not, once more, with Cyril, Erasmus, Meyer, and
others, limit the thought to the sind of joy which Christ had,
that is, in heavenly things, in the love of the Father, with a pact
opposition to false, earthly joy ; as if He meant—that ye may
learn to find your joy where Ido! This is far from the sense
here, and only spoils the thought, as deep as it issimple. Christ
has in Himself and retains joy, not merely peace: this He testi-
fies here on the way to His passion, for that is no other than |
His glorification! He rejoices in His departure (Bengel and
Semler lay the emphasis upon this), but He also rejoices generally
and always as abiding in the love of the Father, and further
He already rejoices, doubtless, over His disciples—but this last
does not lie in the év dyiv, if there at all it comes in after the rest.
All His joy and “joyousness”* would from this time (that is,
when the truth and reality of His proleptic words should be
made present by His Spirit) pass over into His disciples, and
make its abode in them. Thus “ My joy” is pre-eminently the
joy which He Himself has, but then immediately “ might remain

1 As B.-Crusius well says, referring to the antithesis with troubled, ch.
xiv. i. 27. Compare also peace and joy, Rom. xiy. 17.

JOHN XV. 12, 18. | 289

in you” makes it the joy which He gives, of which He is the
foundation and source, as Calvin views it: comp. ch. xvii. 13,
and 1 Jno. i. 4, for the 7Anpotcbar. Consequently, and to
obviate once more a too external meaning, “ your joy” is by no
means only their joy “in Him and His work” (as Liicke first
said), but the gladness in God which flowed from Him into them.
The joy of Jesus of course required no 7Anpodcbaz, for He had it
from the beginning, brought with Him from eternity;' our joy
is made perfect out of His, the more fully we grow together with
Him and bring forth fruit. B.-Crusius, who at first had a pre-
sentiment of the right meaning, most rationalistically perverts it
when he says, “ Your joy may be that gladness which they might
have had already in themselves ; thus—That your own joy may
increase more and more, and My higher joy be added unto it !”
Here there is no being added, but all is entirely in and from Him.
Finally, it is not a contradiction, but strictly conformable to the
spirit of the whole discourse, which recognises both abiding and
increasing in this abiding, that concerning the same joy wévesy is
first used, and then 7AnpodcGavis added. Lachmann’s reading 7
for peivn’” is quite groundlessly defended by Liicke and Luthardt;
by Liicke, because the gladness in the disciples could be re-
garded as arising only after the abatement of their sorrow: but
he overlooks, what is obvious throughout the chapter, that the
ground of their fellowship with Jesus is actually already esta-
blished, and we would rather say with B.-Crusius that the
previous words concerning continuance are here carried on.”

Vers. 12, 18. Alluding to ch. xiii. 34, the Lord adds in repe-
tition the new thought touching the greatness of that love which
lays life down for others, thus paving the way for the great word
that He now called His own His friends. Aitn éotiv makes
markedly prominent this ene thing, in which all specific com-

‘Even Augustine, who, as before quoted, understands His gaudium de
nobis as gratia, quam prestitit nobis, says also: Nec possumus dicere, quod
gaudium ejus plenum non erat, non enim Deus imperfecte aliquando gaude-
bat. See the entire passage in Klee.

2 In the Vulg. and Syr. expressly used (S17"7—-sit) ; recognised in the
Gnomon by Bengel, but afterwards retracted.

3 The 7 might have only arisen, either from an error of transcription
[ev] 1, as Mill—or, as Bengel and Schott thought, from the similarity of
sound in viv.

VOL. VI. T

s

290 LAYING DOWN LIFE FOR FRIENDS.

mandments, ver. 10, are wrapped up ; here the iva is obviously
the explanatory 67,—for the comparison with tadra NeAdAnKa
iva, ver. 11 (depending on which airy might, indeed, be made
to refer to all that preceded, and iva taken in its natural mean-
ing,—but this would be too artificial), is outweighed by the
other parallel, ver. 8, é tovT@ iva, as well as by the obvious
allusion to the commandment given in ch. xiii. Moreover, in
ver. 13, we have a similar tavrns iva again. But the declaration,
asserted with a rigorous ovéeis, that there is no greater love than
to lay down life for friends, has in its reference to our Lord
Himself something strange, as every one must feel. We cannot
say that He spoke merely of what we may do among ourselves,
because in ver. 14 there immediately follows an application to
Himself and His disciples. It is manifest that our Lord gra-
ciously condescends so deeply to a comparison with our human
relations, that He, as it were, leaves out of sight for a time the
all-embracing, and in the solitary sense atoning, character of His
death : comp. what we remarked upon Matt. xx. 28. Richter
makes the same observation: Here the Lord does not speak
(primarily) of the redeeming design of His death, as in Rom.
v. 8, etc.," but of that point of similarity in great love, which
we may recognise and imitate. Satan, in Job u. 4, describes
rightly the selfish natural man, to whom to preserve his life and
save his skin is the supreme object, but there have been on the
other hand, through the prevenient grace of Christ, examples
even among the heathen of the sacrifice of life for friends :—
comp. Rom. v. 7, where the same is still more closely restricted
to a thankful love toward benefactors. ven the future love
of the disciples of Christ would not overpass this measure of
love, than which there is none greater: more than this there-
fore will not be required, 1 Jno. iii. 16. Only that in these
commenting parallels it is made more clear than here, that the
disciples of Christ regard in Him and after His example those
whom the world would call their enemies, as their friends and
brethren, even as they love their souls. And in this we have
the reconciling explanation of the word that our Lord lays down
His life only for His friends—in apparent contradiction to that
affecting and profound passage, Rom. v. 8-10. We must not,
- Nonnus therefore speaks improperly of Avrpov Eay Erapay!

JOHN XV. 14. 291

therefore, say with von Gerlach, “ This entire discourse of Jesus
lingers in His simple relation to His friends ; hence the meaning
— Toward his friends man can show no greater love.” For the
inversion which throws the iwép tav pidwv by anticipation into
the unconditional ovéeis éyer which comes first, is altogether un-
justified; and we have seen from the wav xdjpa, ver. 2 down-
ward, with what far-reaching glance the Lord regards these
disciples as representatives of all future disciples. This much
is true, that on the one hand the Lord did actually die—quoad
effectum—only for His friends or His sheep, the children of
God scattered abroad, see ch. x. 12, 15, 16, xi. 52. But, on the
other hand, the qualification of this must be sought in bringing
forward from the background of this word, which so conde-
scendingly draws this comparison with the greatest exhibition of
our poor human love, the thought, which is more than merely
an edifying appendage, that—Jesus calls even sinners and
enemies, whom He desires to save, His friends, inasmuch as
and because He is first their friend (Lu. vii. 34). This vindi-
cation of His deeper meaning actually follows afterward in
_ vers. 15, 16—I have first called you and made you friends, I
have chosen and ordained you. Hence Liicke, like Luther, has
no hesitation in putting these passages together. Luther: “Ye
were before enemies, but ye are now friends, because I hold you
as friends, not that ye have done any good to Me, according to
the world’s notion of friends—to them Ido good in vain. I die
for such friends as have never done Me any good; only I have
loved them and made them friends.” Liicke: “The love where-
with, according to St Paul, He dieth for sinners, is at the same
time the love whereby, according to St John, He maketh the
disciples His friends. He dies for sinners, only because in the
fulness of His love He regards them as friends.”

Ver. 14. The disciples assuredly referred that “ greatest love,
the laying down life for friends,” although the Lord spoke
touching their dyamav addijdovs, first of all and pre-eminently
to His own sydrnoa ipas. Then are we His friends? We
miserable men, whose weakness and folly have wrought Him
already so much distress? We sinners the friends of the Holy
One, the Son of God? That was the thought which immedi-
ately sprang up in their minds, and the Lord impressively con-

292 HENCEFORTH I CALL YOU FRIENDS.

firms it— Ye are! But with two modifications He confirms it.
First, there is the less warning than encouraging note for the
future, which unites friendship with obedience towards their
commanding Friend—Ye are (and shall be) such, if ye do what
I command you.' Then, in order to avert a legal misunder-
standing of this é€vréXopat, comes the distinctive declaration of
vers. 15, 16—Through My word, in My voluntary love, I make
you and call you My friends! Lampe’s comment is quite cor-
rect: “ They are wrong who follow Salmeron in deducing from
this passage that the Gospel is not a bare promise of grace, but
hedged in by a condition. 'Thereis no condition of friendship with
Jesus here proposed. He prescribes precepts for the future ;
but He already declared them to be friends, and He had before
regarded them so, as the following clause shows.”

Ver. 15. Glassius finds it easy to assert that overs stands
merely for ovx, but exegesis will not tolerate this any longer. —
The reason which he sil tigees has in it some ground of truth,—
“ Christ-had never called the disciples servants in that sense in
which the name is opposed to friends, and denotes a state of
servile fear and despotic restraint ; but He had always conversed
with them, in the most friendly manner, as His friends.” The
ovxétt, on the other hand, maintains its strict propriety, inas-
much as the only passage in which He had ever called them
friends, and which is always quoted, Lu. xi. 4 (with which John
xi. 11 is to be combined), is far from having the meaning which
the word has here, as a developed contrast with “servant.” In
the Synoptical parables they are always servants, and Lu. xvii.
7-10 is strong enough, indeed, for this rigorous idea. In Jolin
xi. 13, 16, the same was said of which they are here (ch. xv.
20) again reminded, for a testimony that the servant-relation
was not to be abolished but to be glorified; but the distinction
holds good, that only from this time, when the Spirit should
bring to their minds the truth of these ast sayings, should the
full freedom and joy of the love of their Lord rise up in their
souls. The proof of the relation of friendship is that open, con-
fidential, unrestrained communion, the typical expressions of

1 The dow is probably a well-intentioned but incorrect strengthening of
the proper reading «, for ‘‘ that which He now imposes upon them to keep
(commits, entrusts), is no other than love, ver. 17.”

4

JOHN XV. 16. 293

which are found in the Old Testament—in Abraham’s case,
Gen. xvii. 17 (hence Jas. ii. 23; Isa. xli. 8; 2 Chron. xx. 7)
—that of Moses, Ex. xxxiii. 11—of the pious generally, Ps.
xxv. 14; Prov. iii. 32; Amos iii. 7; Job xxix. 4. But how far
above that Min iD is this declaration, that the Son makes known
to His own all that He hath heard of the Father, utters and
commits to their fidelity the entire, full truth of the last revela-
tion! A qualification of this wdvta may be thought to be
found in ch. xvi. 12—but these different sayings are perfectly
accordant, since the Lord had actually made known unto them
all that He had heard and received of the Father for them, and
this so entirely embraced the whole truth that the subsequent
revelation of the Spirit should be only an explanation and de-
velopment of the Words of the Son."

Ver. 16. Finally, as said above, though the Lord calls us
friends, this does not by any means imply such an equality and
reciprocation as exist between human friends. He calls His
followers afterwards even brethren, but they all the more reve-
rently call Him only their Lord and their God.? That which
the Lord, preserving His majesty in His condescension, and
asserting His own prerogative as the Vine, goes on to say, is
only the New Testament expression of what we find already in
Isa. xliti. 21-25, the immovable, plainly announced but un-
fathomable mystery of election. Not according to Augustin’s
views of prescience and predestination, but as Rom. viii. 29,
rightly expounded, speaks of it. (See on this passage, Klee’s
note, §. 407.) The truth of the saying which we have now
before us remains—The love between us began with Me and
not with you! (1 Jno. iv. 10.) Not ye have chosen Me:—

1 B.-Crusius is altogether incorrect in his conclusion, that ‘‘ they now
know even as the Son knew—for not merely the object of their knowledge,
but the method of it, is here referred to.” By no means; for no man but
the Son hath heard immediately of the Father, comp. ch. vi. 46.

2 Only in the Old-Testament tone of the typical Canticles, is it permitted
to us to speak of our ‘‘ Friend.” Else, in the spirit of the New Testament
it is unscriptural, though our modern sentimental hymns and prayers may
make thus bold. In the author’s hymn, ‘ Herr Jesu Christe, Gottes Sohn”
(Krummacher’s Zionsharfe N. 168. Rauschenbusch Missions-Gesangbuch,
N. 174), the line ‘“‘ Du Freund voll Milde und Gedabuld” is an unjustifiable
insertion by another hand. ;

994 . MUCH FRUIT.

there may be in this (as Whitby says) an allusion to the custom
of disciples choosing their own Rabbis in Israel, whereas the
Lord had spontaneously called His disciples; but the meaning
reaches much beyond this, as the relation is much more pro-
found. The discourse here is of choosing and ordaining for
fruit, consequently of an éxdéyecOar which can have no appli-
cation to Judas, though he also was chosen in another sense.
How is €@nxa to be understood? It is generally, and with-
out qualification, taken according to the apostolical usage, as in
Acts xii. 47, xx. 28; 1 Thess. v. 9; 1 Tim. 1. 12; 1 Pet. un: 8.
We do not deny that the meaning of the expression tends to
that, inasmuch as it appears to be parallel with é£eré£apnv, as its
consequence and development; but we would not altogether
reject the ancient comment of Chrys., Euthym., and Theoph.,
who explain this €@yxa by éfvrevoa. (Comp. nosy, Isa. xxviii.
25; Heb., Ezek. xvii. 4, and in Sept. é@ero.) For it is evident
that the Lord returns, in the clause following, to the figure;
and inasmuch as é@nxa in this transition is connected with iva
xapTov pépnte, this interpretation is not unwarranted, and does
not by any means carry the figure beyond its prescribed limits.
And this gives a good reason for the remark of Theophylact
(hinted at in ver. 3), that the Son here again, like the Father,
appears as a yewpryos and Planter of vines. The branches be-
come elevated, as it were, themselves into new vines of the second
degree, since the Lord sets them to bear fruit. For (as Fiken-
scher well says, on this occasion) “ He who is united with Christ,
obtains thereby the true zndependence, and stands before God as
a personality pervaded by Christ.” In the same middle-tone
between parable and interpretation we understand (though
‘without contending for it) the appended tadyerv. It is as-
suredly incorrect—since that would be indeed (Olshausen) to
mix the unfigurative and figurative together—to interpret this
trdyew, with Grotius and Lampe, of the going forth of the
Apostles on their missionary labours :—excitantur apostoli, ut
non exspectent, dum homines discendi avidi ad se veniant, sed
ipsi ultro eos querant!* This needs no refutation. Conse-
1 Similarly, Luther too: “ that ye sit not still without work and fruit,

but show yourselves publicly, that other people may have the good of you.”
Lange, again: ‘t They were to go forth into the world, like Himself!”

JOHN XV. 16. 295

quently, we must connect this imdyew closely with xapzoyv
dépew, taking it figuratively in allusion to the increasing, spread-
ing branches; for which we have the support of the well-
known Hebraism of 35m and yp» for increasing in anything,
going on to “more and more.” See Ex. xix. 19 (Sept. po-
Baivovoat)—2 Sam. iii. 1; Jon. i. 11 (Sept. évropevero) — Prov.
iv. 18 (Sept. rpomropevovrat) —to which some have also referred
the mropevopevor cupmviyovras of Lu. viii. 14, in their seeming
growth they are choked, ete.’ Hence Chrys., Euthym., Theoph.,
iva éxtelyncbe av€avopevot; and in Seiler’s N. T. we have it
plainly translated —“ that ye may increase, and bring forth
more and more fruit.” On the other hand, this is an unusual
meaning of trdyew, which certainly seems to allude more or
less to the actual life and energy of individual persons; and we,
therefore, with Luther, Baum.-Crusius, de Wette, Liicke, Lu-
thardt, vibrating between figure and reality, would say that it
is simply an expression of living energy—as a man goes forth
to work in a not idle course, as a plant through the vigour of
its internal life increases and spreads.

It is abundantly plain that the fruit is not to be understood of
external results, of winning and converting others specifically,
for it was to remain to the fruit-bearers themselves (xapzros
jpav), as their own most precious possession and gain. Bengel:
vobis seritur, vobis metitur—to be explained by Rom. vi. 22.
The fruit is not the ever-abiding church which the Apostles have
founded (see Apollinarius in Lampe), for this reason, that the
Lord addresses in these Apostles His future disciples also, and
such as have no missionary vocation ; but it is the consummation
of personal salvation, their ripening into men of God, full, indeed,
of good works and all holy activity, each in his own sphere. And
even when the inscription over Zinzendorf—“ He was ordained
that he should bring forth fruit, and fruit that should remain” —
does not, as in his case, demonstrate itself before the eyes of the
world, the fruit of every living branch will abide, nevertheless,
as its own in the form of those works of righteousness which
follow the believer. (Rev. xiv. 13.)

The second iva cannot possibly be subordinate to the first, as

1 Different from our exposition of the passage—they go forth with utter
indecision.

296 THE ONE COMMANDMENT.

Liicke at first thought, taking it éxSBatix@s for dere, and thus
regarding “ the whole clause as a close definition of the grada-
tion of apostolical work and influence.” We cannot realise the
precise meaning of the idea, that they were to bring forth so
much fruit, or in such a manner, that they might as the result
thereof more effectually pray. For their prayer would itself be
fruit, while it is also in vers. 7, 8 the way to secure that fruit.
Olshausen is right in denying that prayer could be regarded as
the final end of the Divine calling and planting; but his own
explanation that “ they should bring forth fruit, abiding fruit,
so that they might enter into that iternal relation to God from
which prayer in the name of the Lord proceeds,’ is highly ob-
scure and artificial Would not this, apart from the forced
change of the concrete 6, Tu av airnonre, etc., into the principle
of a general relation, be a darepov mporepor still,—first the fruit,
and that increasing and permanent-to eternity, and then as a
consequence the power and the right to ask of the Father?
Consequently, we must, with Liicke’s later view, decide that the
iva in both cases is parallel and co-ordinate,—“ because the
fruit-bearing of the disciples is no other than the proof and at-
testation of the power of their prayer in the name of Jesus.”*
And still more clearly—because it cannot be produced save in
this way, through continuance in ever-receiving prayer. Thus
the prayer is by no means the final end of the planting, that
must be the mature fruit, but it is added with retrospective re-
ference, in order to show how it should proceed in the whole
imayew from the first €@nxa tuads:—I have planted and ap-
pointed you that ye should bring forth fruit, that is, that ye
should secure fruit by your effectual prayer.

Ver. 17. This verse is sometimes improperly regarded as the

1 We cannot understand how Munchmeyer can consider this as “* very
forced ;” to us it appears conformable both to the language (even without
the xa/ of co-ordination) and to the matter. Luthardt thinks it gram-
matically harsh, but how is itso? Alford, who is generally disposed to be
philologically keen enough, takes no objection to this, but says, “ This ive
is parallel with the former, not the result of it; the two, the bringing forth
of fruit and the obtaining answer to prayer, being co-ordinate with each
other ; but (vers. 7, 8) the bearing fruit to God’s glory is of these the greater,
being the result and aim of the other.” This gives occasion to this unwonted,
but not inadmissible form of speech.

JOHN XV. 17. 297

commencement of another section, but it is the summing up and
conclusion of what has gone before. Tatra is taken by Tholuck
and B.-Crusius for todro, and there are examples which may
be adduced ; but for the simple statement of the one command-
ment (airy, ver. 12), such a plural seems to us quite inappro-
priate." We are convinced that tadra, as always in St John
(or almost always), refers back to what has preceded, embracing
not only what had immediately, but also what had more dis-
tantly, preceded—once more as in ver. 11.? The Vulg. has,
Hee mando vobis ut.— We understand the Lord to say—By
all these My discourses and commandments I would specially
point you to that One which I would confirm in your hearts, that
ye love one another! Thus does He ever return to that évton)
xawn, though here it is no mere repetition—This I command
you! once more. The disciples are to love one another—not
then the world without? We have already given our answer
at length on chap. xiii. Should they hate, or scorn, the world ?
Far be it, this is never found in all our Lord’s sayings. But in
spite of all their love the world will hate them, and the Lord’s
meaning in dArjXovs seems to contain a transition to the need-
ful remarks which He would now make upon that subject. As
Ammonius has observed: os weddovT@v piceic Oat Tapa TayTor,
Tapayyedre avtots ayarrav a\Ajdovs—though it does not neces-
sarily follow from this view that tadra iva is to be taken for
TOUTO OTL.

1 Fikenscher helps himself little by saying —‘‘ The Lord had previously,
vers. 10 and 12, exhibited the commandment of love as several and single ;
moreover, love is regarded as contained in its manifestation, good works.”
Let him whom this pleases, be satisfied with it!

2 Miinchmeyer thinks this quite erroneous, because in that case we must
have had the Perfect as in ver. 11—a very weak reason! And because
evrearsobas is not AwAsiv—which is equally inconclusive, for in these dis-
courses the Lord has used evroru/ wou, Advos, buuata, as we have seen, inter-
changeably,—comp. Matt. xxviii. 20. Finally he contends that with évéa-
Aowos and evrory the substance of the command is introduced always by iva.
Now évréarsobas is not elsewhere found with iva; :vroaq is thrice, chap. xi.
57, xill. 34, xv. 12; but this gives no absolute law of usage. Luthardt
unhesitatingly oy that ver. 17 looking back and embracing all that had
been said, forms a transition to a new subject.

298 THE WORLD'S HATRED

THE HATRED OF THE WORLD TO THE DISCIPLES OF THEIR
LORD: THE INEXCUSABLE SIN OF UNBELIEF.

(Chap. xv. 18-25.)

Ver. 18. When in our general analysis of the whole we said
that the dyamare adXXnXovs awakened anew the thought of
the world’s hatred, we spoke only in the ordinary style of such
analysis. Not as if the Lord did actually come to speak, through
the suggestion of the word concerning brotherly love, of that
world which would not suffer itself to be drawn within the circle
of love. He had already in chap. xiv. strongly laid down the con-
trast and the distinction between His disciples and the world ;
from beginning to end (see chap. xvii.), it was indispensable that
He should give to His own, for their subsequent encouragement,
plain pre-intimations of the world’s hatred and persecution. Since
ver. 14 it seems probable that the enemies were in His thought
who would be distinguished from these friends ; hence one might
in ver. 17 hear such an undertone as this, preparing for the sub-
sequent sentence— Yea, there is need that ye should be all the
more closely united in My love, for the world hateth you! We
doubt much whether we can accept the meaning which Richter
inlays into the words—“ Against this great hatred ye must find
your great compensation in love, the blessedness of which maketh
the bitter sweet ;” since this developed thought rather presup-
poses than leads to the words concerning the hatred of the
world.*

A loving heart would fain find or create love everywhere: to
be ungratified in that desire, and more than that to be hated, is
a hard and bitter lot, the bitterest ingredient in all affliction.
Therefore the Lord discreetly and faithfully prepares them for
this, that they may not r arvel at this destiny or count it a
strange thing, as the Evangelist in his Epistle (1 John iii. 13)
has expanded the theme. They must for their own part love.
and preserve peace, do nothing, which they may omit without
sin, to provoke or warrant the hatred of the world: therefore

1 Still less ‘‘ that it may sound the alarm for strife.” (Rieger.)

JOHN XV. 18. 299

He speaks deliberately with an Jf concerning this lamentable
and unavoidable circumstance. In His further explanation it
appears plain that to be hated of the world will be a necessary
consequence and an inseparable mark of His true discipleship ;
nevertheless He speaks here not so much for the condemnation
and warning of those gentle ones who do not disoblige the world,
as for the pure encouragement of oppressed and discomfited
souls. The most conscientious and tender Christian is the most
likely to fall, into the temptation of seeking the cause of the
world’s hatred solely in himself, of thinking that if he were per-
fect in goodness, love, humility, and meekness, the evil of the
world must needs be overcome. And this again might lead to a
false compliance, and a renunciation of the rigour of His word.
Against such trouble and such temptation the Lord arms us be-
forehand: He teaches us to perceive and bethink ourselves that
he who will not be holily loved, and return our love, cannot even
by God Himself be overcome and constrained; He sets before
us as proof the pattern and testimony of His own treatment in
this evil world. “If the most holy love upon earth fared no
better, if He did not succeed, if He could not in His wisdom
avoid hatred when it arose against Him, all the more fiercely
ag His pure love more brightly beamed upon it—How could
we hope altogether to escape this hatred? Or do we vainly
imagine that we can surpass the love and the prudence of our
Lord?” (Dietz.)

In the same sense as in ch. vu. 7 Jesus had already spoken
of the hatred of the world, being constrained to utter to His
unbelieving brethren the mournful word, The world cannot hate
you, because ye still belong to it ;—-He now assures His believing
and devoted disciples on the other side, The world cannot love
you, it must hate you as it hates Me! That is the presupposed
ground for the abruptly beginning, Jf it hate you—spoken
rather for the future than the present, like everything in these
discourses. These poor disciples had hitherto but little ex-
perienced the direct hatred of the world against their unim-
portant persons; that which their Master had foretold, when
He sent them on their trial mission (Matt. x.), still waited for
the main part of its accomplishment; it was probably almost
forgotten before, but must now have been revived in their re-

300 THE WORLD’S LOVE TO ITS OWN

membrance. But that the world hated Jesus, and already for
some time had threatened His death, they knew very well: see
ch. xi. 8. Of that He now says yiwwoxere: think well what
this means, and what will follow from it to yourselves; that ye
may know and prepare to suffer that hatred which will be
essential to My discipleship. II pa ov vuer is to be taken
adverbially —before you, even if it follows the form of ch. i. 15
spatcs you.t And in this is already intimated, for the reflect-
ing yweoxev, the immediately afterward expounded cause of
the hatred; for in the new beginning which the Lord intro-
duced—in which He provoked and experienced the full hatred
of the world—lies also the ground of a similar relation for His
followers as belonging to Him. In connection with which it
is self-understood that to our pondering the Lord’s words as
it were run on—And nevertheless love this world, as I have
loved it !

Ver. 19. Five times with emphasis is the world mentioned in
this single verse. Would ye then—this is what the Lord de-
signs so strongly to emphasize—rather be loved of the world?
That would be wretched indeed; for then—ye would be also
of the world! (1 Jno. iv. 5.) The ov« eivas ex Tod Koopou,
which in ch. viii. 23 He had asserted of Himself (even there,
properly speaking, humbling Himself to a level with His dis-
ciples, in opposition to the unbelievers and evil), He now most
expressly for the first time attributes to His own. They are,
indeed, in the world, and were to remain in it, like His king-
dom, and like Himself at first (ch. xiii. 1, xvi. 14-18; 1 Jno.
iv. 17)—but no more from and of the world, since He had
chosen them, and implanted in them a new principle of life
from above, since they had become branches of the Vine
planted by the Father upon the earth. If they were still of
the world, the world would love its own—but that is not merely
as it is superficially and generally interpreted, Because like

‘1 Cyril, Cajetan, Cocceius would translate principem vestrum; and
Calvin preferred this—that Christ, although the greatest and highest, and
so far above them, nevertheless escaped not the enmity of the world. But
we hold fast, with Syr., Vulg., Nonnus, and most others, the more simple
view: 1 have gone before you in this, have broken this path! De Wette-
I have first undergone this lot, let this be your comfort.

2)

JOHN XV. 19. 301

seeks like. (Ecclus. xiii, 15-17.) Euthymius indeed com-
ments in that style: yaipes yap T@ opuoi@ TO duovov—and in
van Hss it is concisely translated, “ you as their fellows.” But
ro idtov is not just To dwotov; a much deeper thought lies in
this expression. It is the manner of the world to seek its own ;
therefore where and when it loves, it is the character of this
false, so-called “ love,’ which in its selfishness contradicts the
nature of all true love, that it in others essentially seeks only its

(Comp. on Matt. v. 46.) Therefore the Lord selects His
expression, as we see when we examine it closely: this world
would—not indeed love you (for it cannot truly love at all!)—
but zts own in you, that is, so far and so long as it finds that in
you. And this leaves room for Lampe’s remark, which con-
tains a truth attested by experience: “It is not indeed sincere
love, but mere duAavria, in that the world loves in the worldly
what is its own. For although worldly men often quarrel
fiercely, which is one of the characteristics of corrupt nature,
Tit. iii. 8, yet these enmities are only about particular conflict-
ing interests. Jn the great essentials there is always a perfect
accord among them.” Even he who holds with the world must
not expect for his own person only love and peace ; it is only
where opposition to Christ and the kingdom of God is con-.
cerned that the world will recognise its principle in him and
altogether hold his side.

The first thing, on the other hand, which provokes the world’s
hatred is the aim to be different and better—which is given
here at first in the é£ereEaynv: the world feels itself aggrieved
and injured by such a pretension to election, and repels it as
pride—until, comforted by the thought that it is only pretension,
it falls back upon its own again. But when the world cannot
but know that we no longer are of it, and, more than that, as
we testify, through that Christ whom the world from the begin-
ning (apatov) hated—then indeed is its full hatred excited.
Awa rodro thus refers (as ver. 18 already deduced this conclu-
sion from éyé to duds) specifically to the previous prominent
éyo, in which B.-Crusius could find no direct significance. It
has indeed a twofold important significance. First, as we have
said- It is the ground of their strongest hatred that I have
robbed the world of you. Again, it gives the disciples a whole-

302 THE MASTER FIRST HATED.

some remembrancer, in order to quell all hatred and counter-
scorn on their part (just as Tit. iii. 2-5), that even they were
formerly @idcev (Eph. ii. 1-3) children of the world; and thus
with great emphasis ascribes their é«déyec@av altogether to
Himself. For we must take into account, what is declared ch.
xvil. 6 and will there be expounded, that these disciples at least
were already, previously to their last decisive calls to Jesus,
téxva Qeov of the old covenant; nevertheless the Lord says,
including this also—I have chosen you out of the world: just
as in Matt. xxii. 37 He shows Himself to have ever been the
source of all calling to Jerusalem and Israel. Thus the éyo
has a twofold emphasis: as to the world, its hatred is reduced
into hatred against Himself; as to the disciples, it is correspond-
ingly impressed upon them, that He alone is the origin of their
new life, even that of their preparatory election.

Thus in the explanatory va todro the hatred of the world
becomes to us a precious note that we are His. Not indeed the
first or the only mark ; that is rather the loving one another, the
continuing in His love until we, like Himself, can love the hating
world. As the second note, it neither begins our test, nor must
we seek it or wish it; but 2, alas, it incessantly comes, then it
is time to comfort ourselves in the reflection that the love of the
world would be a sad condemnation: Luke vi. 26; Gal. i. 10;
Jas. iv. 4, etc.

Ver. 20. An explanatory remember follows ye know. It is
the Lord’s will that we should forget no word ever spoken by
Him. Yet Xoyos has here the specific meaning of adagium, as
in ch. iv. 37, and as we shall afterwards find in ver. 25. The
application now given to this saying is by no means a new one
(see already Matt. x. 24, 25), by no means an altogether differ-
ent one from ch. xiii. 16 (to which the ezrov tpi primarily
refers) ; for we saw that even there something of the same kind
was the undertone of meaning. But it has a subtile significance
which few find in it,—that the Lord reckons here as His own
honour the being hated and persecuted, and suffering: He ex-
perienced all this not merely as 7patos, but as xupios, as Lord
and Head. Consequently, the consolation has an undertone of
demand, that they should rejoice and feel themselves honoured
in being ccunted worthy to suffer as He suffered. (Acts v. 41;

JOHN XY. 20. 303

1 Pet. iv. 13, 14.) Should we be, would we be, less than He?
“Thus it belongs to the perfection of a disciple, who would be
as his Master, that he should encounter the hatred of the world”
—as Braune excellently brings out this neglected meaning.

The e¢ in the following specific unfolding of the general Adyos
is of course etiological, as the e¢ and the ére in the previous
verse ; it is founded upon those previous sayings, and presup-
poses them. Jf ye are My servants and followers, then must
that other immediately hold good—J/ they have persecuted the
Lord, they will also persecute the servant. The saying, which
is repeated e.g. in 2 Tim. iii. 12, not only in general retains its
truth, but so absolutely that no one can be excepted ; although
a superficial understanding of it has led to much anxious ques-
tioning whether the discipleship of one not actually persecuted
can be genuine.’ For there is a very subtile (often all the
more keen on that account) due, even as there is a very
honourable and seemingly Christian world around us; but the
hatred of the heart, consequently also its expression, against all
who would with all their soul live godly in Christ Jesus, is never
wanting. The general tolerance of a tolerant world is always
grazing the limits of its liberality, where its secret principle be-
comes manifest, and its concealed hatred to Christ in His people
must break out ; when the I have chosen you out of the world is
obtruded upon them in all its earnestness, then begins their
exclusion, their ban, their rage.

But what of the typety tov Adyov, which as thus connected
with the dvexewv, has been the cause to expositors from the be-
ginning, and to almost every reader, of so much trouble? The
old expedient is well known, which Bengel also adopts, —that
of taking, on account of the “ parallel,” rnpei for raparnpeiy,
thus maliciously to watch the words, to pervert them, etc. But
there is no authority to be adduced for such a use of the word ;
the only passage, tnpijce, Gen. il. 15, is quite peculiar in its
kind, and is moreover very uncertain ; such places as Matt. xxvii.
36, 54 can be brought forward only through entire misunder-
standing. It is out of the question to apply St John’s rypeiy
Tov Noyov, retaining as it does the same sense throughout the

* As in many of the conferences at Barmen—and probably elsewhere.

504 IF THEY HAVE KEPT MY WORDS.

Scriptures, in malam partem, and to give it an evil meaning.

Winer would help the matter by explaining the double clause
as a general indefinite and hypothetic evolution of the one Adyos,
viewed in two aspects. “ Your lot will be like Mine: but that
can be only twofold, persecution or acceptance. The words them-
selves leave it undecided at the moment, which of these two lots
befell Jesus.” But this tame generalisation, which would leave
that for a moment undecided which has just been so strongly
declared, can do little to enlighten us; and it contradicts the
spirit of that solemn and deep feeling in which the Lord speaks
throughout this discourse. Indeed, even in ov« éote peifov as
here used there lay a reference to dvoxew and picetv. It is not
merely — He has no other fate, only if the Lord finds acceptance,
the servant finds it. To translate, with Kuinoel: si meam
doctrinam observassent, Liicke rightly declares to be wholly in-
correct ; for this would require also a si persecutt essent, the ei,
connected as it is with the e¢ and ére of ver. 19, would lose its
entire force, and the whole saying its decisive earnestness.
Liicke agrees with Winer in allowing no irony here, and thinks
(though disagreeing with Winer in this) that it was left to the
disciples to draw the conclusion that they would chiefly experience
persecution (though also, with that, some slight acceptance),
like Himself. Quite right, if only the e¢ did not stand in each
case in so manifestly contrasting a sense, so that in both cases,
in the duxew or in the rnpetv, their entire lot is embraced!
This last meaning is necessarily obtruded upon us in spite of
ourselves ; quite other would be, Jn as far as it has persecuted
Me,—as much or as little as it has kept My words or accepted
Me.” The subject of édiwEav and ér7jpncav is manifestly quite
the same, the hating world now referred to in the plural. And

1 Braune, whom we quoted before with approbation, here follows Rieger
in his error, who (after Bengel) could write :—It provokes those who peal
the power to persecution, others to crafty spying.

2 Many, however, contend, with all kinds of applications, for an earnest
promise of some measure of acceptance for their words. Olshausen: ‘‘ But
as many have kept My word, so will there be some who will receive yours.”
B.-Crusius: ‘‘ They will be believing and unbelieving in regard to you, even
as they have been in regard to Me”—which, perceiving his difficulty, he
defends thus: ‘t The subject of both clauses is men generally, not the world ;
hence, designedly, the Plural.” But how came that to be the case just this

4

JOHN XV. 20. 305

the literal phraseology must be violently forced if we would evade
the ironical sense, a too sensitive opposition to which is the cause
of much of the error here. This keen irony and nothing else
is the undeniable meaning of the striking words, which by ed
érnpnoav speak of something that had not taken place as if it
had. The consolatory reference to an acceptance for their
words, at least among some, has no place, according to our feel-
ing, in this verse, nor generally in the whole discourse from ver.
18 to ver. 25. Ver. 21 obviously goes on with tadta mwavta
concerning persecution alone. ‘The words deal exclusively with
the world, not with the believers in the midst of it; they, rather,
are already reckoned with the disciples themselves. Thus Grotius
correctly : “If they have heard Me, ye may expect that they
will hear you. As if He should say, There is no ground to ex-
pect wt.” (Hirschb. Bibel: As little as they have received My
word, so little, etc.). And Lampe: “There is a sorrowful
meaning in the words.” And he afterwards assents to those qui
censent ironicum subesse sensum, quasi dixerit: “ As miserably
as they have kept My word, will they keep yours !”

This view will perfectly justify itself as the only correct one,
when we finally consider how and for what purpose the word is
here introduced. We may say at once that as the discourse is
ef standing and testifying. against the world (ch. vii. 7), first in
the Lord’s own case, and then in theirs, person and word must
come in juxtaposition. The person is persecuted ; their word is
—received and kept? See in what a manner they have received
it already! Comp. the intimation of 1 Jno. iv. 5: they speak
of the world and the world heareth them. But we speak the
truth, which is of God; anid that is the real cause of their enmity
—in order that they may not be constrained to accept the word,

once? Von Gerlach: ‘‘ Most had persecuted Him, yet some few had kept
His word. Jn the same relation, and in no other, were they to hope for
success!" That would be éoo:, cow or 2Q coov but not <i. Fikenscher still
more recklessly : ‘‘ Jesus had found true followers, and the servants of the
Lord should never bear witness to His grace in vain.” Braune, finally,
entirely agrees with Liicke.

+ Luthardt’s protest against the irony is scarcely justified by his flat
hypothetical view: ‘‘The disciples were to answer for themselves, which of
these two cases would hold good here!” We are obstinate enough to find
even in this no other than an ironical tone.

VOL, VI. U

306 HATRED OF THE NAME OF JESUS.

they persecute the person. Tholuck: “The ungodly minded
man might probably, seeing that he cannot altogether suppress
the conviction that the thorough Christian is a noble exhibition,
let him alone or even give him his commendation, if he would
only talk of his Christianity as something individually his own,
and as it were a natural gift.’ Ah, but the testimony—Ye are
the world, the grace of Christ hath saved me from it, save ye
yourselves from this untoward generation !—As the Lord uses
the words Tov dpuérepov Acyov, He seems to say these two things :
Let not their hatred cause you to keep back this word; but,
also, Oppose the world with your word alone, do nothing more,
for the rest suffer patiently, as I have suffered, all that may be
done unto you ?*

Ver. 21. Now comes the explanation by a second 6a TodTo,
which now first properly penetrates to the true ground of the
whole. Him, the Son of the Father, abiding, living in eternal
love, who would make all sinners His friends—Him, the great
Helper and Saviour—to hate and to persecute, and carry on
their increasing persecution upon His followers too! Whence
and wherefore is this? The answer is, For His name’s sake we
are persecuted ;—but He also first, because they know not His
Father who sent Him, that is, they will not know Him, they
hate Him in their inexcusable sin. -But this sin is practical,
persevering, opposing unbelie/, which only in the abyss finds its
true cause or causelessness. ‘This is the connection and the
substance of the whole down to ver 25. The adda gives so far
the reason, as it takes away the ground of their astonishment,
and by a disclosure of the true principle of the world’s hatred,
consoles their minds. He had elsewhere testified to them, Matt.
x. 22, xxiv. 9 (comp. Matt. v.11, €vexev €uovd) that His disciples,
for His name’s sake, because He inwardly and essentially lives
in them, and by their external testimony is avowed by them,
should be persecuted ; so is it here in vers. 18-20, and therefore
ver. 21 does not any longer lay the emphasis upon that, but upon
the declaration 67 ov« oldacr. Thus the ddAda is not spoken,
as it were, because the disciples might have thought that for

1 Hiller: ‘* Here is no room for Elias’ fire ; wid if the Lord has patience,
what is His servant’s duty ?” “

JOHN XV. 22. 307

their own sakes all this would befall them.’ Church history,
from the earliest persecutions down to the present time, furnishes
proof that the confession of the name of Jesus, yea this hated
name itself, has always been the exciting cause of hatred. It
holds good now as formerly—Apud Christianos nomen dam-
natur, non crimen.

Tatra ravra connects itself—in proof, too, that in the ac-
companying clause nothing else was predicted—only with the
dv@xecv, as the rrovetv tw (or if Lachmann’s reading, els tyuas,
be genuine, the zroveiv eis —) manifestly proves. But the en-
larged tadra contains the presupposal or declaration that the
Sv@xew will include or bring with it many individual acts of
evil; see afterwards ch. xvi. 2, 3. Ovx oidacu stands absolutely,
without doubt; and not simply as meaning that they do not
acknowledge God in the particular character of the Sender of
Jesus. See on ch. v. 37, vil. 28, viii. 19, 54, 55. They say,
indeed, that He is their God, but they know Him not. This
God hath sent Jesus, that is, into the world that the world might
be saved, consequently also to them; but this they know and
acknowledge not, because they will not believe Him. This is
included as the undertone; but for the first the not knowing is
specifically brought forward, in order in the following verse to
press it further: “ Ignorance would,be otherwise an excuse” —
but here it is in the fullest sense inexcusable.

Ver. 22. Before all things we must seek the pregnant meaning
_ of duapriav ov« eiyov in ch. ix. 41, and refer to what was
there said. Sin enough they have, forsooth; but all their sin,
from their original depravity through all their opposition to
God’s commands and unbelief in His promise, their lie and
hypocrisy, and all the evil deeds in which they were entangled,

1 We may, indeed, make another application of the isolated saying: This
hatred does not touch you and your various failings, but the name of the
Lord!

2 The od yep ofdac: ri x 010001, spoken from the cross, has quite a different
and milder meaning. Hence Dietz introduces the thought into our present
text erroneously, when he says, ‘‘ The world could dare to persecute the
name of Jesus only because Jesus is not to it the Son of God.” For the not
knowing here is at the same time a well knowing, a not willing to know in
spite of all conviction, and therefore a hating. As is undeniably proved by
ver. 23.

308 UNBELIEF.

would have been forgiven and taken away through Christ, if
they had received Him in faith. Luther's marginal note goes
at first not far enough: “ Through Christ original sin is taken
away, and since His coming condemns none but those who will
not let it be taken away, that is, who will not believe.’ (Only
afterwards in this “ not letting” he corrects himself by includ-
ing all actual sin.) That the only remaining, imputed sin, of
which Christ speaks, is no other than unbelief, appears through
the whole of St John’s Gospel, and in the connection of these
last discourses especially (see our analysis), as it is decisively
confirmed by ch. xvi. 9. De Wette strangely thinks that this
takes away all meaning from the clause ;—but this is its mean-
ing, and it cannot be enough pondered that after the 7\@ov and
érdanoa of Christ all the sins of unbelieving sinners are con-
centrated into, confirmed and consummated by this unbelief
alone. The sentence does not, indeed (and this we remark
against Alford), make the idle assertion, If I had not come they
ae not have fallen into the sin of unbelief; but, Unbelief
would not have become their last, complete, and ruining sz.
For it is obvious of itself that in sie condemnation of unbelief,
all former sin is included as unforgiven. And here we may,
once more, draw our own conclusion, whether all the heathen,
to whom Jesus has not come and to whom He has not spoken,
can be condemned, when even Israel falls into judgment not
before, and only because, they had heard and seen the works
and words of Jesus in vain! (Comp. Matt. xi. 21-24.) It is
plainly enough to be observed, how the Lord here plaees Him-
self by a great distinction pees: all other messengers speaking
from God who had come before Him; as also that, while all
previous persecution and opposition might have heat forgiven,
the rejection of Himself alone definitively precluded all sal- .
vation.

In the 7A@ov the entire public, witnessing, and working
manifestation of the Lord is embraced, and placed first: in
the é\aXyoa is embraced, with like comprehensiveness, primarily
the testifying word, as “ belonging te the full idea of the com-
ing ;’—as previously in ver. 20. Not, with Luther, And had

1 In Nonnus: a&airpootvn vexsonwov, blasphemy meeting its appropriate
vengeance.

JOHN XV. 22. 309

told them this—although the meaning comes almost to the same.
For, spoken to them means: All that was to be discoursed and
spoken to them, withholding nothing of the whole counsel of
God, pointing out to them their sins and the way of their sal-
vation. Not every one, indeed, in every corner of the land fell
under this condemnation, if without fault of his the Lord had
not come to him, and uttered His words in his hearing ; but, on
the other hand, there were many of whom it might be said, they
might and they ought to have heard Him;—all sincere con-
sciences would have felt, “ Let us hear Him first.”

But now they can bring nothing forward to excuse their sin:
we would hold to this translation of Luther [vorwenden], as also
the Berlenb. Bible, Bengel, Stolz, and de Wette, who retain
“ pretence,” while other modern translators place instead “ ex-
cuse,” or “ excuse themselves.” We should expect, after the
analogy of Rom. i. 20, the denial of a grounded, valid excuse ;
hence the Vulg. excusationem (which Erasmus changes to: quod
pretexant), while Theophyl. explains tpddacis by dazronoyia.
Klee also thinks that the word can signify only a sound apology.
How does it then stand? Certainly zpodacis means funda-
mentally only pretextus, obtentus, an evasion, that which only
says to conceal or defend something thereby—a sense which
the verb mpogacifowar retains. Stephanus pointed out, and
_ Lampe quotes him for the general azronoyia, that the expression
generally was used as a juridical term bono maloque sensu pro-
miscue; but in the legal domain this might have been a cata-
chrestical transition of the meaning, and in that way the passages
in Eurip. might be explained. And there are not wanting other
decisive passages—not merely where the word passes over into
the idea of “ occasion, circumstance causing, reason”? (Hesych.
aitia, Syr. in our passage Nn?y), but where the truth of the
mpopacus is expressly acknowledged, as Demosth. xviii. 156, trav
pev arn mpopacw, Thucyd. i. 23, adrnbeotarn rpodacts.
But we maintain, nevertheless, that in the New Testament the
latter unusual signification can scarcely be assumed, and that
St John has used zpodacis in its common and rigorous mean-
ing. Compare the body of passages in the New Testament,

1 Only not, with Pfenninger: persuaded them!
2 Mediated by, ‘‘ what could be stated about it.”

310 NO EXCUSE FOR THEIR SIN.

e.g., especially Acts xxvii. 30, and the very plain antithesis in
Phil. i. 18, e’re wpopdcer elite GdnOeia. Schottgen (ed Spohn)
would pave the way for excusatio in John xv. 22, by a reference
to the more general causa, ratio, in 1 Thess. i. 5, where év zrpo-
facet is taken, as parallel with év Ady@, for a mere paraphrase
of the substantive connected with it: so also Koppe and Rosen-
miiller. But almost all other expositors adhere here also to
pretextus, as Bengel, see on this subject Olshausen.1 We
regard Matt. xxii. 14 as the true parallel. Thus the New
Testament uses mpodacis only for pretext, as Wahl admits,
placing this passage at the head. And in this word of our
Lord there lies a subtile and important thought, which for Israel
overpasses that elvas dvamoNoyntovs of the heathen. Israel,
the clearer the testimony which it ever has (not merely in the
conscience) against its sin, seeks in its pharisaical degeneracy
pretexts to oppose that testimony ; it is, as it were, the people of
mpopacis in the largest sense. Our law and our God, their
honour—this is what they hold up now against the Lord, to
conceal their hatred to the truth and love revealed in Him. But
the Lord now says, as emphatically as truly, that this pretext
(before God, and man, and their own conscience) is also taken
away: no more can they with any authority and reason defend
themselves by any pretended plea, still less can they vindicate
or excuse themselves. The zpodacis falls away, the awaptia
of zscety tov Gedy is disclosed! That, moreover, in the cruci-
fixion of Christ the hypocritical arbitrary pretext first takes its
- culminating form; as, also, that in many individuals, who in
various degrees of good conscience are opposed to Him, like
Saul, some answer to the great question put to Israel, ri pe
Su@xets ;” might be admitted as actual dzrodoyia and aitia—is
by no means denied by our Lord’s words. For the viv 6é, of
which the Lord speaks, is proleptical; its fulfilment begins in
the testimony of the Spirit, which glorifies all the words and
works of Jesus to faith, but opposes them to unbelief (ch. xvi.

1 Luther's indistinct translation is now corrected —with dissembled cove-
tousness. Berlenb. with pretext of covetousness. De Wette: covetous
hypocrisy.

* Mark, however, the quite general sense of this expression as used to
Saul!

JOHN XV. 23. 311

9), and has been ever since going on in Israel, as in the Christen-
dom which resembles it.

Ver. 23. This is one more of the many consequences which
result from the unity of the Father and the Son—the most
lamentable of them all! He that seeth Me, seeth—he that be-
lieveth in Me, believeth in—he that loveth Me, loveth—he that
hateth Me, hateth—the Father! See also Lu. x. 16, previously.
He that can hate Jesus, the manifestation of God in the flesh,
must bear in himself hatred to God—how else could that be
possible? ‘Thus it is not so much the consequence drawn, as an
inference back to the true principle underlying the zpddacrs."
Just so he that hateth the disciples of the Lord, only confirms
and declares his hatred to the Lord Himself. The Jews did
hate God before, for as faith begets love, so unbelief bears
hatred; but now they also hate Him as the Father and Sender
of Jesus Christ. The order of our Lord’s thought here coin-
cides specifically with that of Ps. lxix. afterwards quoted, a
psalm which predicts the judgment of Israel’s hardening and
rejection : See there, ver. 10, 23 0B) yan nian. As the Lord
was zealous for the honour of God in Israel, all the scorn and
blasphemy with which Israel contradicted their God falls as suf-
fering upon His head. (Rom. xv. 3.) That all this destiny
was not accomplished once for all in Israel, but as the type and
beginning of the future hatred of the world to the disciples of
Jesus down to the end of the world,—has been made plain by
the spirit of the discourse since ver. 18, and is now brought to
remembrance by the general formula 6 éué picdv. Is it not so?
“‘ To the world the personality of Ged is itself a dismal idea”
—says Fikenscher here. That is, His living holy personality ,
not the imagined delusion of a God which they call “ their
God,” and even (as ch. viii. 41 exhibits to them) without and
against Christ, although only from His words, “ their Father”
—just as the modern Jews. If, nevertheless, the living per-

1 This is plainiy what Luthardt means: ‘‘ As they hate Christ, they
hate God; therein was the greatness of their sin to be seen.” How then
can he contradict me afterwards, ‘‘ Not because they hate God, hate they
Christ.” (Stier)? Would that the worthy writer read more carefully !
What could be plainer than ‘ not so much the consequence drawn, as the
inference back ?”

312 NO EXCUSE FOR THEIR SIN.

sonal God appears before them in the wzpocwmov of the Son,
humbling Himself to them, and effectually witnessing to them
His truth, then is the hatred of the haters only made manifest.
Ver. 24. To the previous Nad, which had already been
referred to as conclusive for the condemnation of unbelief, the
épya are now added, quite in the sense and spirit of ch. v. 36,
x. 37. Not that ver. 22 is in any way retracted, as having said
too much: for even there the 7\@ov of our Lord’s entire per-
sonality included also the works, and here the works are not
simply the miracles. Thus what now follows, is, properly
speaking, only a confirmation of what had before been said,
exhibiting more clearly its reason, and more sharply defining
its character. We must not undervalue the strength of the
evidence of miracles, against our Lord’s plain utterance; but
we must understand His words, as we have abundantly shown
already, that the strength and significance of these special épya
must be closely connected with His holy life and His true words.
Augustin incorrectly understood év adrots to mean in them; and
further interpreted (followed, too, by Thomas Aquinas) in
eorum corporibus, a restriction to His healing beneficence which
is here altogether out of place. "Ev a’rois must rather be com-
pleted by av, as in ch. xii. 35, comp. ver. 37, Eumpooev abtrav.
(Syr. has here fy, before their eyes: Nonn. airév Sepxo-
pevov OTe wapTupes Hoav oTwrai.) Hence again, Acts ii. 22,
év péow vua@v. Such works as none other had done:' they
themselves admitted this, ch. vii. 31, ix. 32. Not only so many
(ch. x. 32) but so great,? and further, so entirely benevolent:
never any miracles of punishment, as in the case of former
workers of miracles; altogether in harmony with His entire life,
such as never before had been exhibited in sinful man. Hence
it is needless and. perverting to refer the no other to false pro-
phets who had done nothing of this kind; this would be here a
very strange thought. The twice redoubled «ai has a great
emphasis in the defining of all their dwapria; but on that very

1The question between zexo/nxeyv and évolxeey makes no difference,
though the latter would more strictly suit the past.

? Lampe: Nodum in scirpo querunt Augustinus et Beda, putantes non
posse proprie dici, quod Jesus majora Mose et Prophetis fecerit, sed solum
quod plura.

JOHN XV. 25. 313

account it is not to be taken each time in precisely the same
sense. Kai éué xal tov warépa qov is explained by ver. 23 to
mean—not merely Me, but in that also—Jlike Me, the Father.
On the other hand, in the first cal éwpdxact kal pemsonKace
there lies, on account of the positive and strong pewojKaci,
something more than in the similar formula, ch. vi. 36, where
the translation is no more than, Although—nevertheless.
Here the contrast is carried to its extreme point—My works,
Me (and the Father) in them—+¢o see and yet to hate ;' these
two irreconcilables are reconciled by a God-hating world! (as
Liicke has well expressed it.)

Ver. 25. Once more an dAda, which, like the former in ver.
21, obviates offence, and answers the objection— How is this
possible, and permitted by God? The last solace for the
fearful, actual hatred to Christ which the God-hating world
exhibits (and which first fully manifested itself in Israel) lies
in the counsel of the Divine wisdom which foretold all this; as
the Scripture declares. At the same time is included: So
little do they effect by their hatred and persecution, that they
rather only fulfil the Scripture, while they themselves must
draw upon themselves the judgments written in that Scripture.

The citation, which is introduced by the frequent recitative
671, and uuhesitatingly changes for the present occasion the oi
pucoovTés pe into eulonody pe, may be sought for in Ps. lxix.
4, or xxxy. 19. We have shown that we prefer a direct refer-
ence to Ps. lxix.; for this is a Psalm which is elsewhere
frequently interpreted in a Messianic sense (Jno. il. 17; Rom.
xv. 3, xi. 9, 10; Acts i. 20), and has other uninterpreted refer-
ences to Christ, of which we will mention only vers. 9 and 22.
Awpeay, as the LX X. used it in this Novos, means not “ without
result” (as Bengel has: in vain); but simply—without cause.
This is absolutely true only in the sacred Son of God, who hath
nothing in Him which could provoke hatred; if His types or
successors can appropriate the same complaint, it can be only
in as far as they are in Him.

In Ps. Ixix. 5, as in xxxv. 19, this sense of 037 is explained by
the parallel 1pY ‘iN, adicws, as also by the frequent recurrence
of the same or a similar expression. The sixty-ninth Psalm

1 Not, They have seen it or them, but éwpaxacs belongs to xal gud x.7.A.

314 THEY HATED ME WITHOUT A CAUSE.

certainly belongs to those which prophesy less directly than
typically of Christ ; for we must make this distinction, although
the most direct prophecy has something typical in it, and the
transition generally is very undefined. Compare closely the
strictly related Ps. xxxv. (see especially vers. 11, 12, 17), which
also might have been quoted in the New Testament.’ It is
obvious that we must think of this Psalm, too, in our passage ;
and we think that, with many others, it is included in the refer-
ence, though Ps. lxix. is pre-eminently applicable. The mere
typical nature of this prophecy to be fulfilled, is indicated by
6 NOYoS O yeypappévos, not merely 7d yeypapypévov. We would
not, with Surenhusen, by any means take it for the allegationis
formula 83” 7D, que adhibere solebat quando ad rem sub-
obscure indicatam alludebatur (for Ps. lxix. at least speaks in
almost the plainest terms of the Messiah)—but, on account of
the yeypappévos added, would assign to the Adyos the same
specific meaning as in ver. 20, that of a recurring sentence, a
proverbial word. Compare, besides Ps. Ixix. 5 and xxxv. 19,
also Ps. xxxvill. 20, cix. 3, cxix. 78, 86, as also Ps. vii. 5, xxv.
3 (BP) temere, sine causa).? The added €v 76 vopu@ adrar, fur-
ther, has here an intense meaning, just as in chap. x. 84, we found
in it more than mere voyos instead of ypady. Bengel: in lege
eorum, quam assidue terunt et jactant.? But even this is not
enough, while the “bitter irony” of de Wette—“they truly
follow, indeed, what is in their law!”—is, on the other hand,
too much. This would be too bitter here where the mpodacw
ovk éyovot gives us the fundamental thought and feeling of our
Lord—Their hatred and unbelief are inexcusable, no longer to
be disguised or palliated! ‘Therefore, though the undertone of
vopos av’Ta@v may possibly be—On which they rely (against Me),
thus indicating the mpdodacis they alleged; yet we cannot but
think the fundamental idea to be that their law testified against
them, that their Scripture, which gives the right utterance upon

1 As we have observed in our Psalmenkommentar.

* But oem mssy Ps. xxv. 19 is something different.

. Similarly Surenhusius: Vox airéy hic exprobrandi vim habet, quasi
cum iracundiad quadam, ac si dixisset Jesus, non miror quod Judei me
gratis odio habebant, cum hoc jam diu dictum sit in lege ipsorum, in qua
usque adeo gloriari solent, quod ipsorum lex sit.

JOHN XV. 26—XVI. 4. S25

everything, already most convictingly called their sin by its
’ right name. ‘This would be strictly parallel with Rom. iii. 19.
All Scripture becomes a condemning law against Israel, because
they have not believed and attained unto its promise. In this
fearful wrcetv Swpedy reveals itself the satanic groundlessness
of their sin, its nature as coming from the abyss; as hatred of
God it has no further valid reason. For here it may be said,
“Tn sin there is neither reason nor righteousness.” (Berlenb.
Bible.) It is remarkable that even the blind Talmudists were
constrained to observe something peculiar in the 030 nyiv—
while they do not acknowledge this guilt to have been consum-
mated upon the Messiah who had come, they do regard it as in
itself the heaviest guilt, and the true cause of their last long
exile.’

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH AGAINST THE
WORLD: PREDICTION TO OBVIATE OFFENCE.

(Ch. xv. 26-xvi. 4.)

All that has been said since ver. 18 was intended by our Lord
to console His disciples beforehand in prospect of their oppres-
sion through the world’s hatred; but this plain fore-anounce-
ment, that nothing else awaited them, must at first have all the
more terrified their already saddened hearts. He, therefore, goes
back to the original promise which pervades all these discourses,
that the Comforter and Helper would come. It was presup-
posed in vers. 20, 21, that the disciples would be hated like Him-
self, on account of their word which would confess the name of
the Lord. He predicted this fate to them as His witnesses. It
was obvious that they should think, But how shall we poor
weak men persist in our testimony, yea, even begin it, in the
face of such predicted hatred? and He confirms to them their
vocation, and predicts to them with equal clearness that they

1 In the Talm. hier. tract. Joma we find the question—Wherefore was
the second temple, which certainly some righteous men served, laid waste?
And the answer is, b:t my22302. For hatred without cause is worse than
idolatry or blood-guiltiness.

316 PROCEEDETH FROM THE FATHER,

should bear His testimony in the future. Not of themselves,
however, and in their own human persons: the Paraclete will
conduct the cause. He then, however, returns to the former
again, and consoles them by the emphatic assurance, —That ye
might not stumble at this, I have now (more clearly than ever
aii foretold to you both the coming of the Spirit as a Witness
against the hatred of the world, and at the same time the con-
tinuance of that hatred in spite of His testimony.

"Orav 8é éXOn refers back to the already given promise, which
is presupposed ; here the all-embracing comforting name wapa-
«Antos, and then the other, which as in chap. xiv. 16, 17, makes
prominent a specific character—vedpa tis adnGeias.' The
distinction and the new element in this saying lie first (as we
remarked before) in the change of the expression—lI will send
Him unto you from the Father (in chap. xiv. 16, 26, the
Father will give Him at My request, send Him in My name) ;
and then in the peculiarity of the definition, which hints at a
deep meaning and significance in the thought—o mapa tod
matpos éxtopevetat. If we take first the superficial connec-
tion of the most general meaning, we see plainly that after the
Lord has mentioned the already known official name of the
coming Person (co-ordinate with the Father and Himself), He
goes on to apply, for the special consolation of His disciples,
two predicates of dignity to this mighty Witness, unconquerable
by the hating world. Heis the Spirit of truth who yields to no
lie and contradiction—and He comes out from God, yea (as we
might at once view it) right immediately from the Father, out
of His essence; consequently “ His Divine power will be irre-
sistible.”’?

The interpretation of Grotius, which would resolve the first
Tapa Tod matpos with 7éuyyw into the more indefinite ex domo
patris, ex ccelo, is certainly wrong; for éy and marpos are the
complement one of the other, and the same thing is said con-
versely which the former promise said—that in the Spirit’s com-
ing and being sent the Father and the Son are alike the source
and cause. The éxzropeveras afterwards certainly opens a deeper

' The opposition (just as there) belongs here to rapéxAnros, not to ¢y—
thus the Vulg. spiritum is wrong.
* As von Gerlach well expresses this first connecting thought.

JOHN XV. 26. 317

ground (as Grot. himself admits) for the rapa rod warpos. This
~ word, here alone used concerning the Holy Spirit (parallel with
the e£€pyeo@at of the Son) is assuredly something different from
méumetat—for the Lord does not speak with rhetorical tauto-
logy, but in a well-weighed progression of language and thought.
Luther’s view, “ Who both proceeded from the Father and is sent
by Christ” —would give a very tame repetition of the éy@ mapa
tov matpos. ‘The present which now follows the zéuba, espe-
cially as accompanying wvevma ths adnOeias, manifestly is
intended more closely to define and characterise the nature of
this Spirit. It does not help us to take the éxopevecOar as a
Jigurative expression—like a flowing water, or a stream pro-
ceeding from its fountain: this Olshausen does (after Chrysos-
tom’s Homily on the Holy Ghost), referring to the passages
which speak of the Spirit as poured out or flowing forth. For,
not to mention that here, where To wvedua is interposed between
the personal designations vapd«dntos. and éxetvos, a figurative
allusion is scarcely probable, the figure itself must presuppose a
corresponding nature, and this would have to be further inquired
into. Grotius translates with perfect propriety, de patris ipsius
substantid procedit. Leet all this be refuted by those who can
refute it; the living impression of this striking word upon my-
self obliges me to maintain that we cannot limit it to a so-called
economical procession or derivation of the Spirit from the Father ;
for that would be no other than the mere parallel wéu7ecOas
already rejected. The rréuzrec@ax belongs to the tapaxdyrTos, to
the wvedmwa the éxmopevecOar. Here, rather, by the side of
and after the economical relation, the essential relation is also
designedly defined; even as this discloses itself in that, and is
the foundation of it. Although Lampe (whose weak reasons we
are not now disposed to answer) at large, and Liicke with a per-
emptory sentence, denies this—the éx7ropevec@ar is assuredly,
like everything similar in St John concerning the relation be-
tween the Father and the Son, to be taken metaphysically."

1 This we hold still against Hofmann (Schriftbeweis i. 177), who would,
with an arbitrary restriction, read, ‘‘ The Spirit proceedeth from the
Father, when Jesus sendeth Him’’—as also against Luthardt, who follows
him, and takes this word in its simple “ historical” meaning. What can
be the motive for taking all metaphysical statements away from Scripture,

318 FILIOQUE.

But nothing beyond this would we now maintain, nor enter
into the old and rather unwise contention concerning the jilioque:
Such questions must be fundamentally and comprehensively
considered : otherwise, they should be modestly omitted. The
germs of the contention which divided the churches of the East
and West were easily found in Trinitarian speculation. While
the Greeks sought to establish the Unity in Trinity by referring
all things back to the Father as the apy, they were disposed to
limit the procession of the Holy Ghost to the Father alone; this
suited the view which came at last to think of and define the
Father as working (causa efficiens), the Son as mediating. Hence
the formula, The Spirit proceedeth from the Father through the
Son,—for there is only ula dpy7—to Tvedwa éx TOU TaTpos
tpictarat. (Basil.)? In the West, on the other hand, the
ooovatov, as opposed to all subordination, required as its conse-
quence that the Spirit should proceed from the Son as well as
the Father. Augustin, more profoundly and comprehensively
thinking on the Trinity, could nevertheless not refrain from
allowing a principaliter de Patre (de Trin. xv. 12). Indeed
Theodoret (against Cyril’s Anathemas) repudiates altogether the
saying that the Spirit has His existence from the Son or through
the Son—appealing to Jno. xv. 26 and 1 Cor. ii. 12. All this
properly belongs to the defence against Arian notions; and so
intended, it is right. But what is the result of an unprejudiced
speculation upon the dogma, of an investigation of the analogy
of Scripture upon it, and of a calm consideration of this locus
classicus in St John? ‘The opposition to the jiloque must be
pronounced unfounded, in spite of some specious arguments on
the other side, because the fundamental position cannot be broken,
—that everything which the Father doeth and hath (save that He
is the Father and begetteth the Son) is at once also appropriated
to the Son. The Spirit is at the same time the unity of the.
Father and the Son. It would be an unsound subordination: of

in opposition to the ‘‘ ancient church” and the sanctified speculation of all
ages ?

1 But we must partly agree with Thiersch (Kathol. u. Prot. ii. Aufl. 1.
228) that the profounder differences of this Trinitarian speculation cannot
be decided from Scripture alone.

* Just as John Damase. in the éxdoors &xpiBis.

JOHN XV. 26. 319

the Son in the Holy Trinity, if the Spirit were not regarded as
also of His essence. According to Rom. vill. 9; Gal. iv. 6;
Phil. 1.19; 1 Pet. i. 11, the Spirit is wholly and entirely, even
before the incarnation and glorification of the Son, the Spirit of
this Son. In Rev. xxii. 1 (which has been compared) the stream
of living water proceedeth from the throne of God and of the
Lamb. Does the Lord then here (Jno. xv. 26) speak exclusively
in rapa Tod Tat pos éxtropeverat, or not, rather, complementarily,
admitting therewith and presupposing a apa tod viod. We
think the latter only. “ Not alone from the Father is the pro-
ceeding forth of the Spirit, but also from the Son: not alone from
the Son is the sending of the Holy Spirit, but also from the
Father.” Thus does Klee, with excellent discrimination, point
out the sense of this passage. As, supplying the lack of ch. xiv.
26, He has assumed for Himself the éya réuxyo, He must now
in order to guard on all sides the equal dignity of the holy Three-
One, not only give the Father His right by the first apa rod
matpos which He therefore appends, but also, in order to obviate
all appearance of an exclusive subordination of the Spirit under
Himself, the Son, and to indicate the Spirit as of like Divine na-
ture with the Son who came forth from the Father (ch. xvi. 28),
expressly utter the éxzropever Car mapa Tod tratpos which advances
from the economical to the essential relation. This alone is the
reason and the meaning of this utterance. Here as the Son of
man He has on His own part occasion to speak only of a wéu-
mew. When, after His glorification, “the Spirit proceedeth from
Him in a new manner,” that is, mediated by His corporeity, it is
not denied thereby, rather presupposed (Jno. xvii. 5) that the
Spirit essentially proceedeth from the eternal Son, as from the
Father. The determined opposition to the consistent filiogue—
which we would not regard, with Marheineke, as a mera perti-
nacia— can be treated with respect only when viewed as a fruit
of narrow conscientiousness, determined to speak literally only
in the letter of Scripture.

For the rest, in all dogmatic statement concerning the pro-

1 In the same sense as in the confirmation of the Nicene Symbol. in the
second council of Constant., the Spirit is named—vro xvpiov, +6 Cwororory
TOV EX TOU TaTpes Exmopevomcvor, cuLmpoonvyovmevoy xal cuvdoealousvoy Tarpl

‘ Thee!
xa vig.

320 HE SHALL TESTIFY OF ME.

cession of the Spirit in the interior of Deity, we hold generally
with Lampe: “ Which mystery, as it is past explication, is to
be profoundly adored; and, in the silence of Scripture, we are
not willing to obscure, and perchance to dishonour, it by scho-
lastic terms of definition.” As also with the well-known words
of Melanchthon (Loc. Com.): “ We do better to adore, than to
investigate, the mysteries of the Godhead.—The Most High God
hath clothed His Son in flesh, that He might lead us away from
the contemplation of His majesty to the contemplation of our
own flesh, and so of our own weakness.” ‘This is the cause why
the dogmatics thus inaugurated were so practical.

’Exeivos paptupycet rept é4ov—this is even here the main
point to which our Lord directs attention. Had not the Scrip-
ture long ago borne witness of Him, and similarly the Father in
the works? And the Son also of Himself? Quite true, and
yet when the Spirit so comes as He had never before been in
the world, there begins a consummate, final, and so far quite
new testimony, which seals and glorifies all others. The Spirit
shows us the Son and His works in a new and clear light; He
opens the ancient Scripture; He even creates a new Scripture
which was wanting to the Old as its consummation. “ He will
testify of Me’’—mark here, as we rightly said upon ch. xiv.,
that this 7apadxdnTos carries on the interest of God, that is, of
Christ with us (with the disciples and the world) primarily as
the present Representative, who speaketh for the departed Lord
(Grotius: actor causse suv). While He thus previously tes-
tifies of Christ to the disciples themselves, and then through them _
to the world, He becomes at the same time a Counsellor, Helper,
Intercessor, Representative, for the disciples.

Ver. 27. How will He then testify, and what? The answer
to this question now follows: He will not immediately (by
any personal manifestation as the Son) bear witness, but in
and through you: further, He will testify that which ye have
already seen in Me, that which ye have already heard of Me
—nothing besides, essentially different or new. By this we
have the way paved for an answer to a question which has
been so hard and misleading to many, Whether the Lord here
lays down a distinction between the two testimonies, that of the
Spirit and that of the disciples, and what is the nature of that

JOHN XV. 27. 321

difference? Assuredly there is, in the first place, no distinction,
in as far as the preceding éxeivos waptupyces actually embraces,
of itself and as standing first, the whole testimony. The «al
yuets appears plainly to be based upon that, following first
when He had fully come. The disciples were directed to wait
for this, see Lu. xxiv. 49; Actsi.8; and comp. John xx. 21, 22.
Hence B.-Crusius (whose commentary as it proceeds becomes
more and more rationalistic) says very incorrectly, “ Here the
higher and the mere human faculty of the disciples are distin-
guished, and placed by the side of each other!” O no, what
their mere human power was ywpis Xpiotov, that is, without
the Spirit who first fully united them with Him, we have seen
in ver. 5. And what Euthymius with a good intention says is
not careful and precise enough, érdyet wapapvOiav, Neyov Ort
TO TVEDLA TO ayLov cvVEpynaet avTois. Nor is the distinction
well-considered which many orthodox writers labour to establish,
between the direct witness of the Spirit by His manifestation
(the visible signs at the outpouring, the miracles, etc.), and the
words of the Apostles. For signs and wonders are, again, as
in regard to Christ so also in regard to the Spirit, no testimony
in themselves, but become such in their confirmation of the word,
Mark xvi. 20; Heb. ii. 3,4. The disciples bear witness as the
first recipients of the Spirit, who testifies in their persons, who
speaks and offers Himself to others through their words. In
paptupetre after waptupynoe: we are not to seek, with Bengel, an
antithesis between the present and the future—for how far were
the disciples at that time from testifying to the world! But
Liicke is right, that this present expresses and confirms “ their
abiding vocation as witnesses,” although that was not to be fully
established until a time still in the future, though near. After
the great when of the previous verse, the sense of this is plain
—Then shall ye actually bear witness, who are now already
fore-elected to that office. And more, then will your testimony
be the testimony of the Spirit, who will make you infallible in
this vocation and function.

This must be established in our minds, and never lost sight
of, in respect to the unity of the testimony. We have nothing
here of de Wette’s “two distinct views lying at the foundation,
the natural and supernatural!” Rightly understood, indeed,

VOL. VI. xX

322 YE ALSO SHALL BEAR WITNESS.

the whole appended clause with xat tpeis does establish a dis-
tinction in the unity of the testimony; this is most decisively
settled if the 6é (Erasm.: Quin et vos) is taken to be genu-
ine, and, independently of that, by the final and plain words,
Because ye have been with Me from the beginning. Does not
this refer to the human-personal character of the Apostles espe-
cially, and does it not consequently assign to this a peculiar re-
lation to the testimony? We should not indeed translate, with
the Berl. Bible, “ for that (your appointment to bear witness) is
the reason why ye have been within Me from the beginning,
and as such is now confirmed at the end’—yet the meaning
extends as far as this. To the eleven it afterwards rightly
appeared as the first requirement for an Apostle (though they
knew nothing then of the compensation for the lack of it which
the Spirit would supply in Paul) that he should have been with
Jesus from the beginning—am dpyfs abtorrns Kal bmnperns,
Acts i. 21; Lu. i. 2 (which parallels explain the true meaning
of am apyis, just as in Jno. xvi. 4, vi. 64, €& dpyfs). See,
further, in Acts x. 39-41, the emphasis laid upon eye-witness of
the life and acts of Jesus before and after His death; as also
in Acts v. 39 the same distinction as in our present passage—
We are witnesses, and so is the Holy Ghost. When we have
first established it firmly in our minds that the former could
never have taken place without the Holy Ghost, not only that
the fishermen and publicans could never have come forward as
witnesses without a pentecost for their own hearts, but that also
without the demonstration of the Spirit and of power all their
human personal testimony would have effected nothing, con-
verted no souls, established no churches—then we may turn to
the more direct consideration of the special nature and meaning
of their human-personal testimony.

The excellent Olshausen strangely misses his way when he
says that the disciples are exhibited as especial witnesses for the
Lord—“ only inasmuch as they were those who were the con-
stant attendants upon Christ, and had opportunity to mark the
most subtile movements of His inner being (?), and yet could
never impute to Him any sin.” Was it then with them, as with
the centurion under the cross, that they were convinced é6vTas 6
avOpwros otros Sixavos jv—and was that which no human eye-

JOHN XV. 27. 323

witness could make absolutely certain to be made certain to the
world by the word of venerating disciples? We prefer to think
that the entire humanly manifested life and work of the Lord,
so far as men might observe it and become actual witnesses for
it, was committed to historical evidence through the records of
the disciples (1 Jno. i. 2, 3)—and, on the other hand, that the
conservation, attestation, communication, and diffusion of all the
light and life of God which their history contains, was committed
especially to the Spirit accompanying the word. Not a specu-
lative idea after the notion of Baur,’ but a historical fact, is the
ground-work of the world’s salvation; but God introduces the
historical element historically into the world, as these plain
Apostles who commend themselves to every man’s conscience
“as truth-loving men” speak simply and as men that which they
had seen and heard, since they had been with Jesus. Thus their
testimony as human persons, and as thus distinguished, refers
especially to the human history of our Lord; but the same
Spirit who made them capable of this by being their Remem-
brancer and Inspirer, infuses His own energy, which effects
much more than a mere historical faith,? and further brings.
additional instruction and prophecy out of and upon the ground
of the evangelical records. This distinction is therefore by no
means the same which we express by the external, instrumental
word, and the internally efficient Spirit; but where St Matthew
and St John in their Gospels, and St Peter in his Epistle (2 Pet.
i. 16-18) relate, each speaks precisely in the sense of our Lord’s
word which we are now considering—I am His witness (John
xix. 35, xxi. 24)—-where, however, St John in his Prologue, or
St Paul in his Epistles, speaks something beyond that, there the
Holy Ghost bears His own specific witness through them. Sé
Paul assuredly is by this not “excluded from among the witnesses
of our Lord” (as Miinchmeyer strangely deduces from my ex-

1 Whose hallucinations are wrecked upon this passage, as upon this entire
Gospel. Speculative ideas without historical reality are vxépoyxa waraio-
tyros, and of them the world had enough before Christ. But in the Gospel
we have reranpoQopnuive zpayyere, in St John as well as in St Luke.

2 And even this, of course, the accompanying Spirit works. For to this
history of the world, so long as it opposes the Spirit, refuses acceptance, in
‘spite of all other historical criticism: hence, ‘‘ The people think they have
seen and heard it all, but it is not yet true!”

324 YE ALSO SHALL BEAR WITNESS.

position) —but hs testimony for the Lord is different from that
of the eye-witnesses, and belongs only to that one first witness
to which our Lord gives the first place in His saying. Here we
are altogether at one with Liicke, whose words so appropriately
meet the case, that we may quote them in full. “ There were
testimonies for Christ independently of immediate discipleship,
as the testimony of St Paul. But the immediate testimony of
the Spirit subsisted not without the historical testimony of
Christ’s body of disciples." This latter was firmly established,
even after the direct witnesses were removed, in the writings
kept by the Church, as the permanent historical foundation for
the former.’ To the absolute testimony of the Spirit concern-
ing Christ, which may be conceived as quite apart from the
Apostles, is added the disciples’ historically to be preserved testi-
mony, that of the first witnesses.” And if this last clause might
appear one-sided (though it appears clearly enough included in
Kat vets 5é), Liicke supplements it out of our Lord’s own word,
which applies in both directions. “ We have in ch. xvi. 8, etc.,
the corresponding opposite point of view, according to which the
glorifying testimony of the Spirit (only not merely glorifying !)
is brought forward in addition to the historical testimony of the
disciples, even as it regards themselves.”

We would now apply our exposition to the use of the preacher,
who, according to Matt. xxviii. 20, should refer this text to all
Christians, and not permit himself to limit it to the Apostles
and first disciples. It must, however, be remarked that there is
something in it which applies only to them. Assuredly, the
Lord does speak for all futurity of the obligation and impulse
of all true disciples to testify of Him in their vocation and sphere
—not only those specially set apart, but every man who is His
disciple and a professor of His name. He promises to us all the
Spirit as One who shall bear witness in and through us all. But
the special meaning of dz’ apxns mer éwod éore no longer holds

1 Hence St Paul’s Epistles presuppose the essential and entire evangelical
tradition. He who will not receive St Paul’s words, must first give up the
Gospels ; again, he who does the latter must endin denying the genuineness
of St Paul’s Epistles.

2 To this belongs the proemium of St Luke ; but also the testimony of the
Spirit to the authentic tradition down to our own day.

JOHN XVI. 1, 2. . 325

good of us; there can be only an application of it corresponding
to our own relation. As, according to chap. xiv. 26, the Spirit
brings to our remembrance also the words of Jesus heard before,
although not immediately from His own lips—similarly do we
testify, when the Spirit has come to us, as those who have been
with the Master in an internal experience and guidance from the
first commencement of His teaching. We first livingly expe-
rience and receive, through the New Testament Scriptures, the
life, deeds, and sayings of our Lord, as eye and ear witnesses of
the second degree ; and in like manner we have added to us the
first history of the Church and teaching of the Apostles. Then
we also wait humbly for power from on high, so far as word and
Spirit may be regarded in us as yet distinct (which, strictly
speaking, is no longer necessary) —and only then, but assuredly
then, it is our obligation and right to testify with power and
success what we have seen and heard in historical conviction
and living experience. And here much may be preached against
the presumptuous and uncalled, who think that they must do
and speak much for the name of Jesus, before He has rightly
taught, and furnished, and sent them. How much confusion
and injury has this wrought in the Church! Thou canst not
truly and efficiently convince a child of the truth of a word in
the catechism without the Spirit; but if the alone witnessing
Spirit has come to thee, thou wilt and thou must give thy testi-
mony before all the world. For He who once said, I receive
not testimony from men—now makes men His witnesses to the
end of the world and to the ends of the earth.

Cuap. xvi. Vers. 1, 2. Taira refers here not only to the
prediction of the world’s hatred, but also to the promise of the
witnessing Spirit :—to both in their true connection. The for-
mer is paralleled by the latter, as an equivalent, and thus the
disciples are defended from making it a stumbling-block to their
hurt (see cxavédanrifec Gar, Matt. xii. 21, xxiv.9,10). The then
present disciples, although the Lord had often spoken to them
of it, had never yet thought that their future persecution would
be a great reality, that they must suffer patiently; they had
always expected a very different kingdom, and a very different
might and defence against the evil world than—the Spirit of
testimony. Therefore the prediction is now decisively confirmed

326 THE PERSECUTION OF THE DISCIPLES.

—It will be actually so, but ye shall nevertheless continue your
testimony: yea, then first shall ye begin rightly to bear witness.
The drocvvaywyous trovety began already in ch. ix. 22, xii. 42 ;
and had been somewhat more darkly pre-intimated in Lu. vi. 22,
When they shall separate you, and cast forth your name as evil.
It shall befall the fruit-bearing branches that they shall—in ex-
ternal appearance, and as the exact reverse of the truth—be as
if they were cut off and cast out as withered! And this not
only shall the Jews do in the beginning, as their special act is
here the foundation of the typical expression; but the members
of the true church will be oftentimes cast out of the external
church.! And more: it shall touch their life, as that of the
Apostles and first Christians. For although it has been said
that excommunication is an evil more sharp to the soul and
more difficult to be overcome than all assaults upon the body
and the life—yet that is not strictly true, and the Lord does not
here so regard it. He who is strong and confident in the truth
may suffer that truth to be called a lie without being much
agerieved ; but, to our weakness, and our unsinful natural love
of life, the death of martyrdom must ever be the crown of pa-
tience and endurance. Therefore the Lord advances, not merely
heightening the enmity, but pointing out the still greater temp-
tation to apostasy, by a stronger adAdd, which has the significance
of imo et, guin imo. (To be explained by the ellipsis of od povoy
before ; Glassius, quandoque significationem PBeBaiwors habet,
Comp., ¢.g., Lu. xii. 7; Acts xix. 2; 1 Cor. iii. 2, iv.3; 2 Cor,
vii. 11; Phil. iii. 8.) So also the wa after épyerar dpa, as in
ver. 32, equivalent to a dru pointing to the future, not quite the
same therefore with 6re—see on ch. xii. 23.

Not only, Ye shall be declared unworthy of, and unfit for, the
service of God, and be cast out of the fellowship of Natpevew 7h
GeS— but it will be regarded by the perverted and perverting
cuvayoyn as itself a Aatpeia, to kill you! In this transition,
indicated by the avd, lies the true answer as to the meaning of
this expression, which Luther has well caught— Will think that
he doeth God a service therein. It has been asked whether

' Not to say, Members of the true church, of evangelical bodies professing
the name of Christ alone and His salvation, will deny each other the com-
munion

JOHN XVI. 1, 2. | 327

Nacpela (corresponding to the Heb. 7732, as Aatpedew to T2Y)
must not be here in specie equivalent to sacrifice. The Peschito
translated 39? N224P7; similarly the Pers. and Arab., Nonn.
and Euthym. ; ; and Lampe (although in translating i adopts
the cultum of Erasm., instead‘ of the too general obsequium of
the Vulg.) maintains strongly that the rpocdépew connected
with it is decisive for sacrifictum. And many follow him even
now, bringing into comparison Rom. xi. 1; where, however,
AaTpeia in connection with @voia, has only the more general
idea, a sacrificial offering, only in as far as this already passes
over into the service of God. ‘This might be taken as the true
meaning of our present passage ; the view is very plausible, and,
indeed, in this most special sense our Lord’s words have some-
times had an actual fulfilment. We may compare vrepuxd0appua,
1 Cor. iv. 18, which word the Sept. puts for 125, Prov. xxi. 18
(Aq., Sym., Theodot. é&/Aacya) ; and think of a similar notion
as entertained by the heathen from the highest antiquity, and
which recurred in the great Christian persecutions ; as well as
of Rabbinical sayings, which (probably based on Ex. xxxii. 29?)
term the slaying of heretics a sacrifice;+ and of the practice
of the Roman Catholic Church.’ Nevertheless, although this
strongest meaning is included, and even intimated in trpocdépeuw
(inasmuch as all cultus is also a sacrificium), it seems to us too
special to stand by itself in its interpretation of as 0 dzroxreivas.
This general word must include more, and refer also to those
who, while they do not see in it a sin-offering and means of
propitiating God, yet think it a work well-pleasing to God, a
Nat pela.

O that unhappy thinking, into siti the hatred of unbelief
may be hardened and blinded, while it seeks to justify itself
before God! As the Lord had in amoouvayeyous taken His
expression from blinded Israel, so He does still; yet He refers
in the expression to the heathens likewise, and even to future
Christians. We cannot say with Lampe at once that mas

1 Jalkut Schimeoni fol. 245, col. 3. num. 772, and Bammidbar rabbah fol.
229, col. 3, jacp apr ibss ows Sv pat jew >>. Comp. on the slaying of
Christians eats Eisenmenger ii. §. 202-217.

* Hiller: Ye witnesses of the last time, know ye the city in which the
slayer of a heretic has an eternal indulgence ?

328 I TOLD YOU NOT FROM THE BEGINNING

evidently includes the Gentiles also (for which the Sing. 7é
Qed does not suit), but the general reference lies still further
back. ‘The discourse had been hitherto always concerning the
world generally, in which expression the disciples would be
inclined to think first of the heathen world; but the Lord had
instructed them more particularly to include in it all who stood
in opposition to God, and even the Jews pre-eminently; and
He now concludes most earnestly, Also from these who have
hated and will slay Me, expect nothing better for yourselves!
To which, further, the general thought underlying the whole
may be added, And the Holy Ghost will not protect you against
their hatred by any external power.

Ver. 3 returns to the principle already disclosed in ch. xv. 21.
Even the true church should and must cast out, for the sake of
truth and love; but it belongs to the false synagogue to treat
those differing in faith with hatred which reaches unto persecu-
tion, and putting to death as Aatpeia. The ov« éyvwcav ap-
pears now, as it has been prepared for by d0&y, to have a more
general and milder application than the wilful not knowing
before mentioned; it is to be found in various degrees, even in
the zeal, forgiven by grace and turned to its right object, of an
unknowing Saul, who nevertheless literally acted according to
vers. 1, 2. And, inasmuch as we cannot distinguish these
degrees, it becomes us (as Lange says) “to deal very mercifully
in our hearts with our enemies unto death”—to mourn over
our blind persecutors, and, like Stephen, to continue the Lord’s
own intercession for those who know not what they do.

Ver. 4. The adda once more, as in ch. xv. 21, is intended to
compose their minds, but with a specific meaning here— They
know not, but I know all beforehand, and ye also should know
what I have said to you concerning it. The éy before eizrov
has a deep though generally overlooked emphasis, which Beda
(see in Lampe) exhibited in all its force. I have told you that
ye shall suffer such things—the memoria person dicentis is
here most impressive. I, who am the Truth, who go before
unto death in love to you and the world, who have might
enough to defend you, who will compensate your patience,
strengthen you in your sufferings by My Spirit, save you from
death, and take you to Myself! As long as I was with you

JOHN XVI. 4. 329

My presence was your defence, hatred made Me its object, the
hour of persecutions for you was not yet come. Therefore did
I not before speak thus unto you, although I knew all this from
the beginning.

But now come forward the exegetes of all ages and remind
us that in the Synoptic gospels the Lord had actually from the
beginning said these things— Matt. v. 10-12, x. 21-28, xvi.
24, 25, xxiii. 34, xxiv. 9; Lu. vi. 22, etc. How are we to
reconcile with all this the J said not of St John? Augustin
would obviate all difficulty by referying these things to the pro-
mise of the Paraclete, but that does violence to the whole con-
nection. So much is true in this (and it has been overlooked
to the prejudice of a sound interpretation) that this last tadra,
as well as the first in ver. 1, does include the comforting pro-
mise in the whole discourse; but that the fore-announcement
of persecution is primarily and chiefly meant is plain from the
dtav €XOn 7) @pa repeated from ver. 2, as well as from its im-
mediate connection with tadra moujcovow. ‘The latter com-
mentators resolve it in more or less plain terms thus, that the
Synoptics did not strictly adhere to chronological exactness,
but transposed Christ’s later utterances into His earlier dis-
courses ;— not without some tokens of imagining, moreover, an
ez eventu. Lampe dismissed all this with an absurdissime.
Liicke further adds that “John followed in this his own
pragmatism ”’—that is, that he passes by what the other Evan-
gelists relate, because he has not also related it, and lets his
Lord, therefore, thus speak here; but, as it regards the attempts
to reconcile St John and the Synoptics, and to show that the
Scripture need not be broken, he permits himself to pronounce
his decree—“all in vain!”” We shall find reason to pronounce
our decree too, and say with the church of antiquity, oddeuia
ypaghn TH éTépa evavTia éoTl.

Others, as Chrys., have contented themselves with assuming
that the Lord had not so perfectly, at least, so strongly and
plainly, declared from the beginning what He now says.
Bengel: He had spoken of the hatred of the world, but less
openly, and more sparingly. That there is a general truth in
this cannot be denied by any one who compares St John’s dis-
course here with the sayings of the Synoptics. B.-Crusius,

330 BECAUSE I WAS WITH YOU.

indeed, candidly admits this difference, but does injustice to the
earlier sayings, and goes too far when he thinks that these
“uttered only possibilities and in quite general terms.” O no,
they also speak of hating, scorning, casting out, even of slaying,
plainly and directly enough. So far Lampe is right, “It is
vainly said that Jesus had not so clearly and perspicuously
predicted these sufferings. He who looks at the cited passages
will find that they are by no means less clear than the passage
before us.’ Admitting this, it is nevertheless true that our
Lord might with good reagon affirm that He had never hitherto
thus uttered what He now says,’ if we only take His meaning
rightly, instead of adhering to the external mention simply of
the impending evil. This is the superficial arbitrariness of
Liicke, when he briefly dismisses with his “all in vain ”—
appealing to Bengel’s remark, which he should have understood -
better—the train of thought which led Lampe in the right
direction. In effect, the comprehensive substance of the pre-
sent declaration, that which is new and peculiar in it, is the
caussarum hujus odii a Judeis perferendi specialior anatome.’
And might not the profound and concise Bengel have meant
this by his aperte? That the world as world, because it will
not know the Father and the Son, cannot do otherwise—where
had He said that before? And we seek in vain in the earlier
sayings, as Lampe remarks, for the declaration that they would
do this under the guise of religion and piety. Adding to this
that He had formerly spoken hints which were broken off,
interposed among other things, or prophecies (as in Matt. x.),
which on account of the distance of the time (before the hour
was come), remained obscure most assuredly to the disciples,
while now since ch. xv. 18, He speaks of it ea instituto as His
farewell utterance—and is not all this of itself enough? But
we cannot refrain from adding further, that as radra NeAaAnKa
tpiv, ver. 4, goes back to ver. 1, while this again depends upon

1 To lay the emphasis of 22 e&pxzo thus—not in the beginning—as if it
was ¢y doy, is not right, partly because J was with you embraces the whole
of the past, and partly because it had been said in the beginning in the
Sermon on the Mount.

* Yet we much reject Lampe’s supposition, ventured on by forte, that
aox%s indicates this—ex fundamento seu ex origine.

JOHN XVI. 5-15. ddl

ch. xv. 26, 27, the prediction of persecution (and this is the
truth in Augustin’s expedient), derives a new character from
its connection with the promise of the Paraclete. Consequently,
He had never said these things to them before—as so directly
not to be misunderstood, as so definitely connected with the
thought of doing God service, with such disclosure of the
deepest ground of this hatred, and finally, as so closely bound
up with the consolatory confirmation of the security of their
future testimony through the Holy Ghost (compare the mere
note of accord in Matt. x. 20). We may therefore confidently
utter our all to good purpose! and go so far as to say conversely
that we might have presumed a priori, from the characteristics
of the Lords method of teaching, that He would not in His
wisdom and love have spoken suddenly and abruptly at the end
what He now so sternly and rigorously and plainly says, but
that He would rather have prepared them for it by some pre-
vious intimations. So that even now, at the threshold of the
Spirit’s illumination, the disciples might already bring to their
own mind—Yes, this is that to which He has often pointed
our thoughts! See this expressly, ch. xv. 20.

THE COMFORTER OBTAINED BY HIS DEPARTURE WILL CONVINCE
THE WORLD, AND GLORIFY JESUS TO HIS DISCIPLES.

(Ch. xvi. 5-15.)

The pe? tyudv juny is now followed by the proper farewell,
which the Lord here resumes, repeating what had already been
said, deepening and illustrating by new views His former words,
_ and summing them all up with great and mysterious disclosures
pointing entirely to the future. Berlenb. Bible: “ Now comes
the main announcement of His departure.” That is, as we have
said before, the most complete and direct indication of all that
which should follow out of and after His going away, prepared
and obtained solely through that. All is primarily concentrated
in the coming of the Comforter, who, as on the one hand He
manifests and consummates the separation of the believing from
the world, so-not the less on the other hand works continually

332 NONE OF YOU ASKETH ME.

for the abolition of this distinction. He has therefore a double
office and work: first, to convince the world, that many may
become obedient to the truth, and make their appeal to the
righteousness of God against their sin, and escape the judg-
ment of the devil; but then also to guide the disciples (those
also thus won) so far into the whole living truth, that Christ
shall be glorified before them and in them. This is the sub-
stance of the whole down to ver. 15, where once more begins
the announcement of His departure and the consolatory decla-
ration of its consequences.

Ver. 5. The common arrangement of the sentence is not to
be changed. Kuinoel interposes a stop, and refers the vip de
imdyw to the former clause, cal ovde/s beginning a new sen-
tence. “For I was yet with you, but now I go to Him who
sent Me. (Then a pause which gives the disciples time, as if
expecting something from them.) And yet no one asks Me!”?
But to what purpose is this? But now I go My way, immediately
connected with J was with you, appears to us flat and meaning-
less; nor is that feeling removed by the solution, “ Hitherto
I have not told you this, because I was with you, but now I can
and I may not longer be silent.’ But as a new beginning fare-
well discourse, it obtains a quite different sense—I go now (as
so often said already)—and ye are only silent and bewildered,
instead of asking and seeking, as I would have you do!

I go My way now actually, after having said so much con-
cerning it—still more direct and penetrating farewell! To Him
who hath sent Me, to the Father,—as ver. 28, ch. xiv. 2, 12,
and before to the Jews, ch. vii. 38. That this twdyew here
embraces the death, resurrection, and ascension, we have been
plainly taught since the beginning of ch. xiv. But here there
is specially involved —Thus My mission, the office and work to
discharge which I came, comes to its end on earth (comp. Tob.
xii. 20, the word of the apocryphal angel) :—wherefore do ye
not ask at the last moment in which I stand to teach, and to
answer,” concerning the proper end and conclusion of My office,
concerning the cause and the effect of My departure, lying in

1 Or, with Hess and others, this last, as a question, and no man asketh
Me—?
? As long as He is here as teacher, the great matter is to ask Him!

JOHN XVI. 5. 333

the invisible world? For this much ye know and feel, that I,
neither in you nor in the world, have completed anything yet!
Do ye not confide in Me and in My Father, that it is in My
departure that the whole mystery of My manifestation will be
solved ?—Do ye not desire earnestly to know this, and to under-
stand it to your joy ?—The Lord evidently longs, standing be-
fore the confounded and silent disciples to whom He had spoken
so much, for a word of affectionate response and understanding
sympathy. But it must be a word of actual response, of really
intelligent sympathy, entering into the spirit of His words. It
may at first seem strange that He should ask for only 70d t7a-
yets; especially after having just said mpods Tov téuapavra pe.
Hence Stark would interpret, Ye ask, and rightly, no longer
about the ITov, that is, ye now full well know that Lam going to
the Father, and nevertheless ye are so sad! But this neither cor-
responds with the condition of the disciples, nor is it reconcilable
with the simple meaning of the but. Assuredly the sorrow is
the reason why they have no spirit nor desire to question; their
words, and almost their thoughts failing them. ‘Thus the Lord
desires their question, and feels it wanting. But Irad they not
more than once asked before? Hence Grotius took the meaning
to be—Ye ask no longer; and Klee, They had so eagerly asked
before, but now yield all up to sorrow! Liicke even finds, with
de Wette, “an indistinctness in the whole statement,” since
ver. 6 ought to precede «al ovdeis; for it should be, Ye are so
sorrowful that ye cannot ask even once more; and the Lord’s
meaning, “ Better an unintelligent zrod iwdyes, than this dumb
disconsolateness.” But we cannot believe that the Lord would
have that first, unintelligent question repeated; and therefore
must (with most of the ancients) more worthily explain His al-
ways pregnant words. “ Those former questions were to Jesus
as none,’—so say we with v. Gerlach, and regard Him as de-
siring a question more truly earnest, more deeply penetrating,
with confidence and gladness responding to His thoughts ; comp.
ch. xiv. 28. The first question of Peter, ch. xiii. 36, was not the
right asking, for it proceeded from unintelligent forwardness—
unintelligent, as if the Lord spoke of an earthly journey (as
ch. vii. 35)—forwardness, I can and I will go with Thee! (as
Matt. viii. 19.) And Thomas’ word, ch. xiv. 5, though it was

334 SORROW HATH FILLED YOUR HEARTS.

not, as many think, an oppressed utterance of confusion and igno-
rance, was yet rather an objection (we do not know!) than a be-
coming question, —therefore that was not the right. The proper
asking now would have been— Wherefore, and for what goest
Thou to the Father? and it is this which we must regard as the
undertone of meaning; but in His mournful condescension the
Lord expresses it again only by 7od—not such an unintelligent
one as the former does He desire, but—Ah, if ye would begin
again with your zrov umdyers, uttered in earnestness and thought-
fully, in faith and in love! In this sense He designedly refers
back to that first questioning.

Rambach founds on this text an application to “ culpable re-
missness in investigating Divine truths” —and this is not merely
a fruitful homiletic application, but the inmost spirit of the sen-
tence as taken out of its context. There is a curious and for-
bidden questioning (2 Tim. ii. 23)—as e.g., on this very passage
concerning the local vod of Christ’s departure, the concealed
mysteries of His exaltation and glorification. But, apart from
this, we should never be too idle or too sorrowful to investigate
and inquire from the impulse of faith and love, and with an
eager desire of saving knowledge ; and the question of all ques-
tions must be ever that which touches the departure of Christ.
The original unfolding of the text which Helferich gives, lies
further from its true meaning: “ How do we attain the wisdom
to adapt ourselves to God’s ways, but by asking God, ourselves,
and our neighbour— Whither goest thou?” Yet this, better than
many expositions, hits the point of the vod tmdyeis, and the
question concealed in it which the Lord would bring out—
What in God’s counsel, wisdom, and love is the issue for Thee
and for us, what is the scope and end of Thy departure? Cal-
vin: Expavescitis neque reputatis, quo discedam aut in quem
jinem. See the answer presently afterwards given by our Lord
to this, in ver. 7.

Ver. 6. The same disciples who afterwards, when the risen
Lord ascended to heaven, returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
without any sorrow for the separation (Lu. xxiv. 52)—could
not rejoice now at the beginning of His departure through death
(Jno. xiv. 28), but were only troubled. Thus had it been since
Matt. xvii. 23. Sorrow, the Lord says, hath filled your heart

JOHN XVI. 6. 335

(Grot. obsedit plane, Acts v. 3)—so entirely seized upon them
and carried them away that they cannot any further think of
the Umdyw which amazed them, not even of the ov which is
connected with it. Hezel is perhaps too strong, “ Just as if My
death were a lower accident, opposing My designs! as if it were
not involved in the great plan of God which I must carry out!”
Afterward he is more sound, “ Just as if I had confirmed you
in false ideas of a Messiah, and My death bafiles your calcula-
tion!” only that it was not merely the baffling of their expec-
tation which so troubled the disciples’ hearts, but at the same
time and still more the loss of their beloved Master, the disrup-
tion of the “ precious familiarity” of intercourse with Him.*
Sorrow in itself. as appointed and well founded (vers. 20-22) is
not blamed; but the zrewAjpwxev was too much, as Rieger says,
“‘ Sorrow, fear, and the like, may be turned into holy ardour,
faith and patience being brought by it to purity; but to let the
heart be carried away by such emotions brings only hurt after
it.” Therefore the Lord would gladly have spared and removed
from His beloved disciples that which as rapdocecOau was too
much for their hearts through their lack of faith and under-
standing; therefore it was that He continued so long teaching
and comforting them, seeming as if scarce able to cease. And
the words which, while they corrected the sorrow, stimulated
their courage, gained this end that they did not altogether sink
under their grief. Here once more He rebukes so graciously
as if at the same time excusing their well-known weakness!
Lampe: “ Under this gentle rebuke there lies a tacit con-
solation. For, while He charges them with having neglected
the question, Whither goest Thou? He teaches them that all was
before His own mind. While He accuses their negligence, He
gives them their own excuse, that it had arisen from excess of
sorrow. And this is the emphasis of the particle add.” The

' Not, as Luther, conversely. After he has preached of the ‘‘ gracious
and sweet familiarity of fellowship,” and how ‘‘ sad.a thing it was to lose
such a Lord,” he continues, ‘‘ But that was all the greater because they had
set their hearts on His being a mighty Lord and King, etc. They now lose
both the sweet fellowship, and the glorious prospects they had formed, and
all their confidence.” We think that the disciples had so far advanced that

the former was the chief thing with them, even in the other; they had no
longer any joy in the thought of a kingdom of God without Jesus.

336 IT IS EXPEDIENT FOR YOU.

Berlenb. Bible: “The Lord knoweth our frame, and of what
stuff we are made. And of this we can remind Him. Heb.
iv. 15.”

Ver. 7. As always, so now also I tell you the truth ! (ch. viii.
46.) Even though it oppose all your knowledge, feeling, will,
and desire, believe this time My truth, which I unasked will yet
more plainly tell you! Jt ts good for you, rather your highest
advantage, that I—go away from you, that I die! Signifi-
cantly first the dzredOeiv before the mopevOfvat,' hence to be
strictly explained, That I go away—if I go not away—but
when I have gone thither. The grievous “ away from us” had
stood before and darkened to the disciples the gracious promise
of “ hence to the Father:” this was the veil over their hearts,
for they certainly (according to the protest of ch. xiv. 28, here
also to be thought of) had considered themselves rather than
Him. They took it for granted, without much thought upon
it, that to Him, the pure and holy, death would be no suffering
or ruin,—but their irreparable loss, the impending presence of
which filled their souls! In precise opposition to these views
the Lord points in silent contrast to the fact that to Him the
departure to the Father through the death of a sinner for sins’
sake would indeed be very bitter (ch. xii. 27)—but all the more
does He turn it into a cupdépea tpiv. Thus does the love
speak which does not look at its own. But the misunderstand-
ing which, through lack of experience, knows not how much
more we receive from fellowship with Jesus in the Spirit than
we could receive from His visible presence in itself, confuses
itself even to this day with the thought and the wish—Ah that
He were with us now, as then! “It might be thought”—so
pursues Storr—“ that if Jesus Himself had remained with His
disciples, they would have needed no other Helper in His place;
and though thus the loss of His visible presence was to be com-
pensated by the assistance of an invisible Spirit, it was at least
no gain or advantage to them that Jesus had gone from them.”
But the “ abiding ever” of the Messiah (ch. xii. 34) would have
done nothing for them; that would not have accomplished re-
demption, or compensated for the obtaining and sending of the

1 The two critical points in the drdys, see already ch. xiv. 23. -

aN eee ee

JOHN XVI. 7. 337

Holy Ghost. The primary thought which, in the analogy of
human relations generally, finds here its grandest application,
is that which we have already made prominent—that only after
the withdrawal of the sensible presence of a teacher and master
his abiding and influential spirit is truly set free and penetrates
our being. But there is something quite different here, there
is, over and above, the obtaining and the sending of the Spirit in
a sense for which human relations furnish no analogy.

The first obvious thought was made prominent by Augustin :
Si carni carnaliter heseritis, capaces spiritus non eritis. Driseke
enters well into this: “ The old Messiah in the flesh is with
them, therefore the new Comforter, the Spirit, is far from them.
What hindered their being comforted? Jesus Himself, who,
comforting, stood before them, was the hindrance! As long
as He, this Messiah, bearing all the prophetic marks upon Him,
stood before them in person, this His person continued to be a
foundation and prop to that system of vanities which bewitched
their heads and hearts. The Form must pass away from their
eyes, before the Spirit could enter their souls. It was good for
them that Jesus should go away. Before He went away, the
Christ after the flesh, the Christ after the Spirit could not come.
When the former vanished, the latter appeared.’ But when
we have firmly established the truth of this, a truth which the
Apostle who had not been with Him from the beginning pointed
out, 2 Cor. v. 16, we must show the error and perversion of
going no further, and of deducing from this disappearance of
Jesus according to the flesh the consequence of the manifesta-
tion of Christ according to the Spirit, i such a manner as
Driiseke does in this last sentence. He carries that error to its
last point, when he continues, “ We must not, moreover, under-
stand this as if the Son of man had not power on earth already
to send them the Spirit. (What! send from the earth?) Had
not all the words which He spake to them been spirit and life ?*
But they had not the capacity to receive the Spirit, on account
of the Christ in the flesh who was among them as an earthly
person.” Ono, that was not all! Although all pedagogic
preparation of our susceptibility up to the day of Pentecost

1 See on this false exposition our exposition on ch. vi.
VOL. VI. Y

338 I WILL SEND THE HOLY GHOST.

from the Old Testament, holds good and belongs to the question;
and although even for this was necessary, as previously the
manifestation, life, teaching, and acts of Christ in the flesh, so
afterward His removal in order that through His cross those
who believe in Him should die to all carnal hopes of a Messiah
—yet here the question is of much more than our susceptibility,
it is also of the justice of God in atonement, and of the glorifica-
tion of the Son of man in Himself, before which He by no means
had the power to send the Spirit. (Ch. vil. 88, 39; Acts ii. 33.)
To pass over and leave out this mystery of the tmrdyew mpos Tov -
matépa, here in ver. 7 (as afterwards again, ver. 10), where it
is properly essential, is an exegetical sin of which alas too many
are guilty. O no! although everything, the coming, living,
teaching of the Lord, was expedient for us as preparatory for
our redemption, this was fully accomplished only by means of
His departure to the Father through death (which is never to be
lost sight of in that departing!)—and this too has its reason
much deeper than in a salutary withdrawal of His visible form.
The great consequence, which is so strongly maintained by the
negation éav yap uij—ovK édevceTat, has its ground not merely
in pds buds, but in the consummation of His mediating Per-
son, in all pertaining to it that is atoning and redeeming. (Heb.
ii. 9, 10, 14, 15.) And this comes out still more definitely if
we read, as we have good reason to do, Lachmann’s significant
éyo a third time,—éav yap éyo pn amvédOo. “ The bless-
ing of the Spirit was the counterpart of taking away the curse”
—is the Berl. Bible’s concise remark, according to Gal. ii. 13,
14. But as that which was once for all accomplished in Christ
for the world, only by degrees is appropriated and perfected in
His disciples, so that first crucifixion of the disciples with Him,
that sorrow out of which the joy of the new man was to be born,
is also the progressive way for us all to a more intimate and
perfect internal coming of the Spirit; and thus in all further
fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, which might seem to
us to be His going away from us, the Comforter repeats to us
this prototypic word of consolation—J¢t is expedient for you!

I will send unto you the Holy Ghost—is the Lord’s constant
word. But “ Jesus never tells how it will be in His sending of
the Spirit, and that makes our learned worldly wise very unbe

JOHN XVI. 8. 339

lieving they devise all manner of methods, but cannot get the
right t.” (Oetinger.) Therefore they imagine a Spirit abiding
in obs words, who was already upon earth though he could not
before penetrate, instead of coming from heaven sent from the
Father: and thus they contradict all Scripture and experience.
The blessed disciples themselves are the clearest evidence of
what degree of the influence of God’s Spirit they had actually
within themselves, as Israel might possess it up to this time—
and how far the essential je whose revelation bore the
same relation to all former DirioN Mm as the incarnation of Christ
bore to all former appearances and energies of the angel of the
covenant, was yet to come. From the time of Gen. vi. 3 the
Spirit (aha is indeed and worketh everywhere) had been and
had been working in the world; Israel especially possessed Him,
partly in the greater number of believers in Him as a Spirit of
righteousness, that is, also of truth,—as the mvedwa dovrelas ;
and partly, in the anticipating hommes de deésir (as St Martin
says, comp. nition ws, Dan. x. 11),—as the mvedua Xpiarod
7m popapTupopevov (Gb Pet, i.11). All things proceed in man-
kind and in Christendom with similar preparations, but the
consummating day of Pentecost now as in the time of the first
disciples comes only to those who receive a preached Gospel in
faith through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. (1 Pet.
1,12.)

Ver. 8. I will send Him unto you, the Lord had said, and yet
He now speaks of the world, which He was to convince. Quite
obviously —through you and your then resulting testimony ;
hence with «cal é\@av we must once more connect mpos twas—
When He has come to you and into you, then will He do this!
“The Apostles were to convince the unbelieving and hating
world, maintain their right against it and conquer it by the
truth they testified—what a task was this! The first link of
connection then is, The Holy Ghost would defend them against
the hatred of the world, in their behalf He would chastise and
rebuke the persecutors and convince them that His professors are
right.” (Oetinger.) In this discourse, however,—the following
words of which, simple as they are profound, furnish a special
testing problem for all fundamental exposition,—the thoughts
proceed from this point of departure far away into the fulness of

340 HE SHALL CONVINCE THE WORLD.

that comprehensive view, backward, forward, and inward, out of
which the Lord spoke them.

Here we have the other aspect of ch. xiv. 17 opened to us,
and that previous utterance is essentially restricted. The same
world which cannot receive the Spirit because it seeth Him not
nor knoweth Him, must nevertheless become conscious that He
is working upon it, speaking to it, and chiefly —testifying against
it! Thus the world’s unsusceptibility for the truth was not to
be understood as absolute or unchangeably fixed; thus the same
Spirit of the truth, through whose coming as its first effect the
distinction between the world and the disciples, between believers
and unbelievers, is evidenced and stamped, works nevertheless
continually in order to the abolition of this distinction. For,
His coming and working is the last stage of the Divine economy
of grace before the day of judgment, Acts ii. 20, comp. Joel ii.
5. In His dispensation there is salvation for many whom the
Lord will call. The last, most effectual, most inwardly pene-
trating, calling to salvation, the final and full separation from
the world, begins—and that not otherwise than as the call of
Christ, like that of all the prophets, to repent! Where
through the rejection of Christ the last degree of unpardon-
able guilt, of incurable sin, of irremovable hardening has been

reached; and that which was spoken of in ch. xv. 22-25 is
accomplished in its full meaning (though this, as the sequel
shows, is far from the case with all)—then there remains no
more than the testimony to sin, and the prediction of judgment.
For the day of the Holy Ghost (the third after the economy
of the Father and the Son, as the type in Ex. xix. 10, 11
intimates) is at the same time the figurative representation of
(avtitvros) and the preparation for the last day. When now
the superaboundingly merciful testimony of the Spirit against
the sin of Israel and the Gentiles in its first consummate ex-
hibition comes with its fiery tokens and inward burning, and
not yet the fire of final wrath—this is the beginning of that
judgment of the nations unto peace of which Isa. ii. 3, 4 pro-
phesies as the end to be accomplished among the vee ihalig and
Jer. iv. 3, 4.as the typical beginning and ‘end of the whole
destiny Bf Israel. The sentiment, so often misunderstood and
perverted, that the world’s history i is the world’s judgment, has

JOHN XVI. 8 341

its truth in this working and judging of the Spirit, this final
preparation for the judgment to be revealed, which again must
tarry for its consummation until that personal appearance of
the Son to which the Spirit points the church. What the Holy
Ghost finds now upon earth, of faith or unbelief, He by no
means leaves as it is, but works upon it now first effectually,
seizing it in its crisis, in order that the faith may be perfected
in the knowledge and in the life—or if that cannot be, may be
brought to confusion ; in order that that unbelief by the final
contempt of the Spirit may become ripe for doom—or be over-
come unto repentance and obedience. The great end of this
never-failing influence, which brings forward the final judgment
into the process of the world’s history, through the perfecting of
sin or righteousness—the final conviction of both, in fact, is clearly
expressed at the close of Scripture, in that book which must be
regarded as beyond all others the book of the calling, attracting,
and judging Spirit before the end comes. (Rev. xxii. 11, 12.)
These hints of the scriptural system, which is truly the already
disclosed system of the Divine government of the world, will
teach us more deeply than is usual to understand how appro-
priately and fully the éXéy£ee of this passage belongs in all
aspects to the coming of the Spirit. This typically or prepara-
torily reproving conviction or over-testimony of the Holy Ghost,
which actually already condemns and yet absolves all who sub-
mit to this condemnation, is the necessary and final expression of
spiritual judgment. The édéyyew is not the same with paptupeiv,
ch. xv. 26; for the testimony is of what is good and true (con-
centred in 7rept €uod), but the reproof is against the evil and the
false, through the revelation of sin, and the taking away of false
righteousness. But it must not be overlooked that even this
éhéyyew does nod more than complete and carry out that pap-
tupeiv,' that the Spirit is still the last gift of grace to the world,
in order that the world, or every man in the world who will, may
be saved. He who penitently confesses, I am guilty! is also ta
be acquitted. For the Spirit convinces not merely of sin and of
judgment, as we might have expected it to be said—these two
essentially belonging one to the other, with nothing else be-
tween them—but previously, in the centre of His exhibition,
1 In the deepest sense of the prophetic word cited in Matt. xii. 20.

342 HE SHALL CONVINCE THE WORLD.

of the righteousness of Christ which the hitherto unbeliever may
at once and shall appropriate when he believes. Briickner and
de Wette deny this double aspect of the testimony, the second
influence leading to faith; but he who livingly and practically
enters into the text cannot give it up. Even Schleiermacher
hits the point rightly: “The reproof, that is, the bringing to
view of our own unrighteousness, could not be without a gra-
cious revelation and offer of the true righteousness; even the
judgment is exhibited before the world only in order where pos-
sible to turn its thought to Him who frees all who believe from
condemnation.”’ Lange does not go too far: “This con-
demning administration of the Spirit among men establishes a
boundless extension of saving grace throughout the world, more
glorious than the Jewish limitation of the disciples could then
grasp: hence the Lord presently adds, I have yet many things
to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” ,

Thus not merely as defensor caussxe” for Christ and His peo-
ple, who are such that they may be able to reprove all others,
does the Holy Spirit so convincingly testify; but in order to
convert, absolve, and comfort every man who submits to His
reproof—see 2 Tim. ii. 25, 26. The reproving office neces-
sarily precedes the comforting. The Paraclete does not, pro-
perly speaking, perform “a strange work, before He comes to
His own work, that of comforting and preaching grace” (as
Luther says) —but the édéyyew also, before as in the waprupety,
belongs in its final and full meaning to Him alone. In a cer-
tain sense it is assuredly true that ‘“ whatsoever reproves sin is
and belongs to the law”—but inasmuch as by the Spirit,
through the glorified Son, God now first properly speaks from
heayen, from the upper Zion of redemption, the word of the
Spirit is really the perfected law, the Sinaitic law only the type
and preparation for this (Heb. xii. 18-25). And it is narrow
and incorrect to say, that “the Holy Ghost rebukes through the
law, making all sin which is not faith” —for the law is in no
sense of faith, as Gal. iii. 12 profoundly and with fulness of
meaning says; while of faith speaks also, and that in way of

1 Homil. iiber Joh. ii. 518.
2 Whose office is éAgyysiy rods avTiAtyouras, Tit. i. 9, as pais here
Bays. i

JOHN XVI. 8. 343

conviction, only the Gospel. We shall rather see that the
reproof of the Spirit brings something new and different in
addition to the first, narrowly so-called, law; that His witness
of sin has only to be received and rightly wnderstood in order
itself to appear no other than a testimony for the righteousness
of grace to faith, and as such a spiritual comforting. .

In the three great words dyaptia, Sixasoctvn, Kpiots the
Lord names the three all-embracing essential elements of truth
and its whole procedure.’ The world has no perfect and correct
knowledge of what sin is, what righteousness, what judgment,
until the Holy Ghost has explained these words. It does,
indeed, pride itself, holding up its zpodaacs, in its first super-
ficial knowledge of them (for where is the man who has not
some knowledge of these three great facts ?)—but inasmuch as
it tarries there, it perverts the beginning of truth into a contradic-
tion to its end, into delusion and lie. No man can be brought
to an experimental and perfect knowledge of these three words,
so current in the world, and present to every conscience,” by
any human power or human wisdom, not even by the external
influence of any letter of the word, or any fact of the work,

even though it be of Christ and His Apostles, or the undeni-

able acts and wonders of the Lord since the day of Pentecost.
This is the office of the Spirit alone, and that as Spirit, by the
mediation indeed of the word and the work, yet only so far as
these are made inwardly efficient in the heart and conscience.
Hence, they are wrong, and go not below the surface, who here
assert and show how the Spirit convinced and overcame the
world, Israel to wit, by certain external events.2 O no, the

1 Bahrdt, after his fashion, here remarked, ‘‘ will convince the world of
the three greatest errors which havé ruined human hopes.”

2 So that the Holy Ghost finds everywhere a foundation for His influ-
ence, but only such as He must rearrange. Luthardt’s notion that the ab-

sence of the articles presents the three points as not definite but general -

well-known truths, is inappropriate and over-minute literality. It is not
the substance of the conviction that ‘‘ there is sin, righteousness, and judg-
ment,” for we may reasonably ask—Did the world know nothing of these
before? Rather, What is essentially sin, that is, the true sin, etc.

8 Orthodox and heterodox writers are daily giving illustrations of this
view. Most strangely says J. v. Miiller, quite forgetting the complement
of the internal history :—‘‘ Convinced of the sin of unbelief by the down-

:
/
j
/

344 SIN, RIGHTEOUSNESS, JUDGMENT.

éréy£er reaches on to the end of time, as long and as far as
there will be a xocyos ; using the instrumentality both of a con-
tinuous testimony of word, and an ever new exhibition of facts,
but exerting His convincing influence only through an inward
speaking, and an internal testimony.

Est autem vis non coactiva sed convictiva—says Lampe at
first, in the right way to discern in this é\éyyew the domain
committed to human will ; and he even goes on, Non agit tan-
quam cum stipite, sed tanquam cum creatura rationali, persua-
dendo. Yes truly, if the Holy Ghost does thus deal with men,
His last gratia must be as well resistibilis as irresistibilis. So
far irresistible as that all must in the end, whether they will
or not, be convinced of the truth of God; but it remains with
themselves whether they submit and obey, turn to the truth
from the lie, in order that they may be saved—or not. When
Lampe further ventures to write as follows concerning the dif-
ference between obeying and refusing, he sets the predestina-
rian dogma in its most pernicious and fearful light :—The cause
of this difference is not in men, but in the operation itself of
the Spirit, which, acting according to the eternal decree of God,
works with less evidence and efficacy in the reprobate than in the
elect! Where is there a syllable of this minor evidentia et
efficacia in this €Xéyyeu for all the world alike? Thus does a
foregone conclusion in theology pervert the eternal words which
might rectify its error.

In the following words the Lord Himself expounds what He
meant by these three great objects of conviction; and we hope
that the way has been paved by our. intimations for the most
universal and profound sense of the whole, sothat this evolution
of His meaning may be otherwise understood than superficial
exposition too frequently exhibits it. Much more is here de-
clared than what George Miiller,' for example, says: “ He will
convince the world by the Apostles that their unbelief in Jesus
is sin, that He was righteous, and that He would be victorious
over His enemies.” Or B.-Crusius : “ The result of the influence

fall of their city, of the righteousness or innocence of Christ by His resur-
rection, of the judgment of the world-prince by—the actual undeniable
planting of the faith!” ihe

1 ‘Vom Glauben der Christen, ii. 143.

JOHN XVI. 9. 345

of the Spirit will be reproving for the world, exalting as to
Christ, and mighty in its cause.”*

Ver. 9. The thrice repeated 674, on which we must pause a
while, has been often translated by because ; and this does not
in many respects alter the sense, but it does not exhaust it, as
we shall see. B.-Crusius is here right in insisting (with August.,
Chrys., Luther) that ére (concerning this, that—as ch. ix. 17)
defines in all three instances the matter of the testimony.’ This
alone harmonises with the connection, since the Lord cannot
possibly presuppose them already to understand the mysterious
Tept dpaptias of ver. 8; and therefore He enters upon the indi-
vidual points not as giving the deep reason, but obviously as
explaining what He meant. Still more plainly: The ore gives
us the thing signified in dwaprtia, duxaoovvn, Kpicrs, tells us what
kind of sin, righteousness, and decision of judgment He means.

Thus the Lord means first specifically the sin of unbelief, as
in ch. xv. 22, 24, x. 41. This is no more here than in ch, viii.
AG a mere error; but it is the foundation and crown, the fruit
and kernel, the true essential substance of all sin of the evil will.
As Jesus Himself had not rebuked their trespass against the
commandments, which was the work of Moses and the prophets
before Him, but their not believing in Himself, so also the
Holy Spirit His Representative continues and consummates
the same charge. He confirmingly, and if necessary awak-
ingly, connects His testimony with that already existing in the
law and in conscience both for Jews and Gentiles against sin—
but He nevertheless reproves now in quite another sense. If
the drz is explanatory, the view must be incorrect which Lampe

1 Further: Properly speaking there is but one thought, The triumph
of His cause—but the words take a threefold division probably with allu-
sion to the three witnesses in judicial matters !—Not much better than the
tria caussarum genera of Grotius: publica judicia de criminibus, +epi &mwep-
tias—privata ex quo et bono, d:xasoouvy— privata certam ex lege formu-
lam habentia, xpicis.

2 Luthardt is once more over subtle. The cvs means not ‘‘ concerning
this, that,” but ‘‘on the ground of whom”—on My account,—if he only
understands this aright! The “ object of the testimony” is already men-
tioned before—on My account! But the oz: brings first in addition the
explanation how this object, thus mentioned, is here intended. And cans
not this at last come to the same thing ?

346 THE CONVICTION OF UNBELIEF.

adopts, according to which dyapria in ver. 8 means not this or
that sin, but the general condition of sin and guilt, while ver. 9
brings forward the specific sin of unbelief—as an example, one
standing for a thousand. It is amazing how mechanically men
sincere and scripturally learned can sometimes deal with the
profoundest words of Scripture! Was it then needful that the
Spirit should now first come into the world, to rebuke sin gene-
rally? Could the Lord have so signified in ver. 8 itself! But
in the fullest sense, by a conviction now first thoroughly pene-
trating, He will assuredly reprove all sin, He will, that is, grasp
it in its root, and bring that to light in its fruit. The Spirit of
Christ according to the economy of the law takes up the work
where it was found before the law since Gen. vi. 3; He begins,
as it were, with the world from the beginning again, but now
first seizes sin in its inmost depth and principle, after it had
entirely disclosed itself through the rejection of the Son of God
made flesh. Of all human sin the original root, the fall of
Adam and Eve not excluded,’ was no other than unbelief in
God. (1 Pet. iii. 20; Heb. iii. 19.) And so in the continu-
ance, increase, and out-growth of sin, this again becomes in
strengthened vigour its consequence and fruit. We may say
with truth in respect to their reciprocal influence that—Thou
sinnest generally and continually because thou hast not be-
lieved the first truth of God ; and, thou believest not His last
truth because thou hast persisted and wilt persist in sinning.
The crown of unfolded sin, that in which its principle must be
disclosed, hatred of God, is now, as was prototypically shown in
Israel, and is ever being exhibited anew in the world and in
Christendom, specifically unbelief in Christ. That is in a pen-
ultimate stage, in which the sin thus convicted of may and |
must yet stumble at the grace of the risen Saviour; the last
stage enters in as wilful blasphemous rejection of the Holy
Ghost. It is most certain, however boldly the world contra-
dicts it, and a truth which should constantly be pressed upon
its reflection, that its unbelief is a matter of perverse will, the
consequence of such wicked resistance of will as refuses to let
sin be taken away by the Lamb of God. Let the Elberfeld
Zeitung (tanquam unum ex mille!) declare the truth of the

1 It may not be said of the devils that they did not believe, Jas. ii. 19. -

JOHN XVI. 9. 347

favourite lie to be demonstrated—“ faith is not a matter of
will, its absence not morally imputed therefore, and by no means
decisive for judgment ;” but Richter’s Hausbibel states a truth
which must be firmly held fast, “The Holy Ghost reproves the
world of lying when it pretends that its unbelief is honest doubt,
etc.” This, however, well understood: in its primary mani-
festation unbelief may consist in this, though never altogether
and alone; this may so mingle with it as partially to be its ex-
cuse ; but when the Holy Ghost, more deeply penetrating, tes-
tifies of Christ, then can He at once reprove unbelief as sin
which is deliberately retained. As it is, each passes over into
the other, and both reciprocally presuppose each other.

And it is to be understood that on account of the dwapria of
unbelief all previous sin and transgression, hitherto condemned
by the law and by grace placed under the Tapes, Rom. ii. 25,
abides on the guilty head: all is comprehended in this ‘atiatrt
and now first is gathered into one. (Hence chap. vill. 24, év
tais duaptiats.) The world goes on in sin because it believeth
not—that is presupposed ; the meaning of the word, however,
calls therefore that its abiding sin xar’ éEoy7v, the sin which
retains the guilt of all others, that it doth not believe. So, fur-
ther, it is plain (as preparatory to the second clause) that all
denying and concealing sin in those who have no faith in
Christ is no other than delusion and mockery of a wilful sort;
all supposed righteousness is turned to sin, and as such reproved
while unbelief remains. There are many, indeed, who even
think they believe, and persecute on that supposition ; but where
sin remains, it is evidence of unbelief in the heart, and the éAéy-
xos of the Spirit passes from reproof of sin generally to reproof
of the unbelief in which it abides. Mark, mark diligently that
the Spirit does not create and give, unconditionally and without
the decision of men, faith in its first original; but He demands
it, and rebukes unbelief as sin! But in this rebuke, when it is
rightly understood and accepted, there is an inexhaustible con-
solation ; absolution being offered in the very terms of the con-
demnation. He who believeth in Him is not condeinned, hath
no longer sin; therefore thus believe, if thou still canst and
wilt, and thou art at once helped in doing so. The reproof of
unbelief is at once a proffer of faith (Acts xvil. 31)—an offer

348 RIGHTEOUSNESS. :

of all strength and grace requisite in order to itt This Christ
is thy righteousness, Satan’s power and right in thee is done
away through Him.?

Ver. 10. We have now fundamentally to refute the favourite
notion of the Rationalists,—not theirs alone, but adopted by
orthodox expositors of older and more recent times—according
to which the Lord means nothing else and nothing beyond this,
that the Holy Ghost would convince the world of His own
righteousness and that of His cause, that He had been rejected
as Innocent and righteous, and thus those who believe in Him
had a righteous cause*—with whatever else has been added to
this view. Thus understood, the resurrection and ascension indi-
cated in the following tzdyw would give the ground of evidence
—thus the 67 would not be declarative, as we before received
it. Grotius somewhat modifies this, making Scavoctvn stand
absolutely, being to be completed by @cod, thus: The Spirit will
show that God is a just ruler, as having received Me, beyond all
invasion of injury (this is what He meant, ye shall not see Me,
as above ch. vii. 36) into the fellowship of His majesty.” Hezel
thought that “the going to the Father must be the dscavoovvn
itself,” thus, id quod justum est; and “the Spirit should con-
vince of this, that thus it was fit, it must be so that I should go
to the Father through death”—that is, in opposition to their
false notions, the true Messiah must actually die! Most of that
class of expositors, however, held simply to the conviction of the
Lord’s own righteousness and innocence. What shall we say
to this? First of all, we recognise the truth which is in the
error, and admit that in St John’s phraseology we are not to
understand Sccavocdvy, as in St Paul’s, to mean a righteousness

1 This last must ever be the initiative of God, and of His working—thus
my critic Munchmeyer consoles himself concerning my Semi-pelagianism !
But God’s influence works faith only in those who believe. 1 Thess. ii. 13
and 2 Thess. iii. 3 lays the guilt of not believing on unreasonable and
wicked men alone. '

2 Let the supremely superficial and foolish words of Grotius be set
against this exposition. ‘‘ The sin of the unbelieving Jews will be revealed
—by what? »» When all things shall happen which I have spoken concern-
ing the Spirit to be sent (did the Jews know then all this ?) —it will appear
that I am a Prophet, according to the test of Deut. xviii. 22.”

* Augustin: arguitur mundus de justitiaé eorum qui credunt. But he
did not make this the only meaning.

JOHN XVI. 10. © 349

to be imputed, a justification ; rather that primarily the words
refer to the Sucavoctvn Xpiotod. We admit that the added
clauses with 67: define the genitives thus: dwaptia Tod Koopov
(that they do not believe)—éccatoctvy scil. éwod (that L go to
the Father)—and so xpiows Tod &pyovTos ToD Kocpou ToUTOU.
But the full and perfect sense, wherefore and to what end the
world must be convinced both of Christ’s righteousness and
Satan’s judgment, after the conviction of its sin, is by no means
exhausted, indeed scarcely touched by this. We have equal,
nay greater right to supply, for the application to the world
which the Holy Spirit was to effect in the conviction of these
three great principles, tod xécpov in all three cases. For if
their sin is shown to the world, was not the Spirit of grace to
show and to offer to them a righteousness also; was He to leave
them or cast them at once, separated from the righteous Christ,
into the condemnation of Satan? Thus, although the most im-
portant authorities among the ancients hold to the idea that the
righteousness of Christ alone must be thought of in the second
clause,! and similarly among the moderns, Beza, Bengel, Morus,
Tittmann, Olshausen, Tholuck, and Liicke, we cannot possibly
content ourselves with this, but find in the righteousness of Christ.
only the foundation for the offer and exhibition of this righteous- |
ness to every man who believeth. Klee says rightly, though |
without establishing his point clearly, “ that He is the Righteous
per eminentiam, the Holy One of God, and the Sanctification and
Justification of the world.” And Roos expresses the transition
passably well, “ How righteous must He be who will go to the
Father from the cross and the grave! Thus will the Holy Ghost
convince the world that, I am a Righteous man, and truly Right-
eousness for man. Thus He who would cast about for a right-
eousness which should be valid before God must—believe m
Me!” There is provided for the world after all an absolution
from their sin, and Christ has gone to the Father, not indeed to
condemn the world, but—the prince of this world.” Does not

1 Chrys., Theophyl., Euthym. The last: ‘‘ The mark of His righteous-
ness that He went to the Father to be with Him for ever” —which Tholuck
accepts, and compares 1 Tim. iii. 16, was justified in the Spirit.

2 So Lange, only that he incorrectly took righteousness at once for justi-
fication. :

~

350 RIGHTEOUSNESS.

this clearly lie in the connection with what follows? Otherwise
there must result from the middle clause—the Christ whom
your unbelief has crucified is Righteous—necessarily nothing
but condemnation for the world.'

But now let us show the connection with the first clause, in
order to justify this view. The sinner who holds fast and con-
summmates his sin through unbelief in a Redeemer, either gives it
all up and troubles himself not about being made righteous,—or,
what in the most obvious sense and its most general fulfilment
in the case of the Jews was the predominant fact, he imagines
for himself a false righteousness of his own. Against both must
the Spirit of truth bear witness; and for this we cannot enough
ponder that in the second clause also, éXéy&eu TOv KOcpor is
the foundation of zrept ducavocdvns. We should, in the spirit of
the world, and without the great solution of the Spirit, quite
otherwise expound the two correlative words sin and righteous-
ness. We should understand by sin only the transgression of
the law, and solve the righteousness to our thoughts in one of
these two ways: either that God alone and His Holy One is
righteous, we sinners against Him therefore all the more surely
condemned ; or, bring forward something of our own righteous-
ness and virtue. Between both lies the wonderful and new
testimony of the Spirit in the midst. Avcavocdvn must assuredly
—this we should hold fast, and make it our starting-pomt—in
application to the world be the opposite of duapria. In so far,
again—let this be added, deduced as a consequence for the con-
nection and transition—in so far as already in ver. 9 the casting
down of false righteousness, which is nothing but sin in a state
of unbelief, was prepared for and included, ver. 10 must attach
itself to this, if an organic progress of thought is to be found.
Thus, fully stated, “'The Holy Ghost convinces the world of
righteousness: partly, that it must necessarily have a righteous-
ness; partly, that it cannot find that righteousness in itself;
partly, that it should seek such a righteousness in another, that
is, in Christ.” So, out of the depths of practical Scripture un-

‘A sermon of Harless (Sonntagsweihe iii. Band), gives a strange and
original interpretation of ver. 10: ‘‘ The righteousness of the apparent
abandonment of the world by Christ”—but we enter not into this side-
thought, which is out of the track of exegesis. ;

JOHN XVI. 10. S5E

derstanding and use, does G. K. Rieger expound—and is he
not exegetically correct? We would add to his expression, in
order to vindicate it, Since the Holy Spirit has convicted the
world of sin, so long as it believes not in Christ, He has already
brought to nought all zs “ righteousness ;”1 thus the first two
thoughts of Rieger lie already in this presupposition, and when
against that righteousness the righteousness of Christ is witnessed,
can that be otherwise intended than with the meaning that this
ts and will be the only righteousness of those who believe? As
v. Gerlach urges against the modern expositors : “ He convinces
the world that there is a righteousness revealed in Christ, a right-
eousness which justifies and sanctifies the sinner.”

As in the édéyyos of the Holy Ghost there could not be
wanting the conviction that there is no other righteousness than
that of God in Christ, of Christ before God,—for the most
perverse and foulest lie of sin, the true cause of the most self-
relying unbelief is no other than the delusion of self-righteous-
ness—even so could not be wanting the offer of the righteous-
ness of Christ to faith, which immediately follows the exhibition
of sin on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 38), and throughout the
apostolical preaching. Or can we think that here, where He
nevertheless designs perfectly to describe the Spirit’s preaching
to the world, He would keep silence on this? ‘Thus the exposi
tion which we have rejected leaves here a melancholy gap,
leaves a sinful world and the righteous Christ totally sundered
from each other; although in fact the Spirit everywhere offers
and holds up Christ to the world— for righteousness.”

And we maintain with perfect confidence that the explana-
tory ote accords with this alone. Liicke says, “Then it must
follow as the ground of explanation that JeSus gave His life
for the salvation of the world, but this does not lie in 6étz
imayo.” We assert that it does assuredly lie in it; for this
vmdyew embraces, and it is sad that any should deny it, the
death of Christ; in ver. 7 previously this iwdyew was used of
a ministering, obtaining, redeeming, departure, consequently not

1 C. H. Rieger: ‘‘ Even the most reasonable thoughts which an honour-
able world had ever had about righteousness are declared by the Spirit of
God to be insufficient.” |

? See Acts iii. 20, and my Exposition in the Reden der Apostel.

352 JUDGMENT.

otherwise now in ver. 10. Christ goeth to the Father for us,
as our Representative and High Priest : see the thought of our
text clearly expressed in Heb. ix. 24. Further, that which is
added concerning the not seeing must refer, in order to its find
ing an appropriate meaning here, to faith in the Invisible; and
thus places the righteousness of Christ to be laid hold of in
faith in opposition to the sin of unbelief. Bengel has explained
why the @ewpetre, addressing the disciples, is used: Nor with-
out reason is the word in the second person; for if any might
see Jesus, the Apostles might: yet even they must believe, and
call all others to believe.

All this sufficiently refutes what has been said against the
reformed interpretation of a righteousness of Christ offered to
faith. It is remarkable as justifying this exposition that (after
its preparation was found in Cyril and Augustine) the Reformers
first (Erasmus with them in this) brought to clear light the
true meaning of this word of our Lord. It is in fact the only
practical exposition, it is constantly forcing itself upon all
preachers who base their preaching upon an experimental
knowledge of the Scripture, and upon all its practical exposi-
tors. It alone accords with the actual witness of the Holy
Ghost from the day of Pentecost to our own day. For we
“must know no other righteousness, with which we can stand
before God—than this going of Christ to the Father, which is
no other than that He hath taken our sin upon His own back,
and for the sake of it hath suffered the death of the cross, been
buried, and descended into hell, not remaining however under
the power of sin and death and hell, bat passing through them
all in His resurrection and ascension.” (Luther.) Thus does
He who is exalted give to Israel repentance and remission of
sins (Acts v. 31), and in this Man every man who believeth is
and will ‘be justified. (Acts xiii. 39.) That is a righteousness
of God according to Rom. iii. 26, sent down from heaven and
valid in heaven. The test-word and motto of the Reformation.
—PT¥ Tim or the Lord our Righteousness—may be misunder-
stood and perverted, but it is and must ever be the centre of all
preaching of the Holy Ghost to the sinful and self-justifying
world; and this is here in its necessary place declared before-
hand by Christ Himself.

JOHN XVI. 11. 353

Ver. 11. Even the Holy Ghost (who was to do away with
all accommodations, and strip off all Jewish embellishments of
the truth), does not put an end to the teaching concerning a
Devil, but rather begins it anew; a fundamental article of
saving truth must be contained in this, without which we can-
not perfectly understand what sin and what righteousness are,
and especially what the redemption which creates righteousness
for sinners is. He who knoweth Jesus, and contemplates the
unbelief of the world, will find through the illumination of the
Spirit the solution of the mystery only in what is stated in
2 Cor. iv. 4.—But how here the judgment upon the prince of
this world (ch. xii. 31) is connected with the whole as forming
the conclusion, is, after all that we said, not hard to explain.
The great cause is lost by the enemy of God, the author of all
sin and unrighteousness, the blinder of men’s minds into un-
belief of a Saviour; and it is won for the world, in which he has
no longer either power or right. In this judgment “the victory
of righteousness over sin iscomplete.” (v. Gerlach.) Itis—“a
judgment, through which the cause of our salvation, if our will only
consents, ts decided.” ‘To testify this to the world is the crown
and end of the Holy Spirit’s preaching ; in which His conviction
is either admitted for consolation and strength, or in the other
case must change into an announcement of condemnation. The
reproving exhibition in itself encourages, if it is truly heard; but
the most gracious and inviting preaching of the Gospel, if unbe-
lief opposes it, is turned into the keenest severity of punishment.

The future judgment to which the world is proceeding under
the deciding testimony of the Spirit, has its ground in the
judgment which has been already accomplished through the
departure of Jesus, and which is held up as future by the Holy
Ghost. On account of the atonement there is no more a hell
for man: only the heaven of Jesus for those who believe in
Him unto righteousness, or the hell of the devil for all who will
continue the world. The Spirit’s édéyyos effects the separation
in such wise that men of three sorts must be made manifest on
both sides. Among those who accept it, the penitent who con-
fess their sin, the believing who are justified in Christ, the holy
who are perfectly delivered from Satan’s power in the full
accomplishment of their salvation. Among those who persis-

VOL. VI. Z

354 JUDGMENT.

tently oppose, there are the abiding sinners, unbelievers, con-
demned. let the opposite sides of this last clause also be care-
fully observed: Satan is either condemned to our advantage if
we lay hold on righteousness, or we remain with him in con-
demnation if we continue as world in sin. By no means, as has
been said, that the Spirit now jirst reproves the sin of those who
do not oppose the powerless, condemned prince of this world ; *
for that would be a dotepov mpotepov in which the édéyyxos at
the close would begin again at the beginning. But the reproof
of sin was necessarily the first, and in that was everything
included pertaining to it; but now, after the dilemma between
sin and righteousness has been clearly exhibited, the Spirit finally
testifies the condemnation of Satan. This He does, however,
in such a way that He not only comforts believers with the
expressed consolation of Rom. vii. 33, 34, but penetrates the
unbelieving by a word of most gracious offer mingled with con-
demnation— Will ye then be and be for ever the devil’s?. Will
ye be condemned with him ??

A not ungrounded observation, finally, and one which offers
many useful reflections, particularly as confirming our exposi-
tion of the second clause, is the note of Bdétticher—that the
threefold office of the Holy Ghost has a corresponsive reference
to the prophetical, high-priestly, and judicial offices of Christ.

Thus have we, as we would hope, done something toward the
full understanding of this word of our Lord, which in its con-
sequences and developments is altogether inexhaustible. We
refrain from making more than one additional remark, and that
is required to complete our exposition. It is, that inasmuch as
the separation between believers and the world is not one which
is at once complete, but some remains of the “world” are
still in the disciples of Jesus, of course the Holy Ghost reproves
their residue of unbelief, preaches to them reiteratedly the
righteousness of Christ, sets before them more and more clearly |

1 As rightly, though in the wrong place, Helferich preaches against the
disgrace of being conquered by one already conquered.

? Schleiermacher: ‘‘ To convince the world of judgment, is to place it in
the way of decision, whether it will walk with that which (him, who) has
been already condemned, or with that which (Him, who) is ever proceed-
ing from victory to victory.”

JOHN XVI. 12. | obs

the fundamental character of the difference between the Con-—
queror and the condemned one. As He shows to the altogether
unbelieving not only their life and action, but, for example, also
their books and systems thereto belonging, disclosing in these
last the mpatov wevddos, to be nothing but sin (peccatum and
error), even so He reproves all in the not altogether believing
which is not going é« tictews eis rictw, every last yet remain-
ing evdos of their life and teaching —as sin through want of faith
in and obedience to the truth of the Spirit. O how different is
the judgment of the Spirit here from that which we tolerant Chris-
tians are wont to exercise; and yet His previously disciplinary
judgment is the type of the final judgment at the last day.
Ver. 12. It is not merely that the Lord here passes from the
one side to the other, as if the connection were—AlI this will
' the Paraclete do to the world; to you on the other hand, ete. |
But ver. 12 must be closely connected in its transitional sense
with what had just been said. The édéyyew of the Spirit was to
be effected through the paptupety of the disciples (as they pro-
bably now very well understood in general) : they consequently
must previously know, and the Lord would have to say and
commit to them, all that afterwards was to be spoken to the
world. Still more, as we have just seen, they themselves, in
order to their becoming perfect disciples, yea even fit and worthy
witnesses, must (partly beforehand, and in part continuously)
be subjected to the same conviction. Does not the risen Lord,
therefore, whose coming with light, life, and peace, was a pre-
paratory approach of the Spirit, reprove His disciples’ unbelief ?
(Lu. xxiv. 25} Mar. xvi. 14.) Thus primarily and specifically
concerning these three great things, sin, righteousness, and judg-
ment, He has much more to say to His future witnesses which
they should say to the world; similarly, apart from their office
of testimony, for their own knowledge of the truth unto holiness
and salvation all is embraced and hinted at in this Trilogy.
Hence rightly Melanchthon: “ The knowledge of these things
is stupendous; that is, how great things sin and the anger of
God are, and this victim of God, His own Son; how great is
the glory of the reigning Messiah, how great the power of the
devil, and how awful the contest between Christ and Satan :—
the knowledge of all this is without limit.” This is the most

256 YE CANNOT BEAR IT NOW.

obvious connection ; but it must be understood that to the ére
amovra much besides, yea everything belongs; and we may
include it all, though Christ has not openly unfolded and per-
fectly told all, but left it to the teaching of the Spirit: for ex-
ample, the abolition of the typical in the old covenant through its
fulfilment in His sacrificial death and high-priesthood ; the right
position of the old law as it regards the new commandment of
His new covenant ; the relation of yet outstanding prophecy to
the future and consummation of His kingdom—ain short, every-
thing generally which the Epistles bring in, and especially which
the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse in the great
conclusion unfold. They only err who regard any one in par-
ticular of these points to be reserved here, without deducing it
from the connection with vers. 8-11.

It is easy to show, further, against the accommodation theory
of the old Rationalism, which is once more brought forward with
pitiable simplicity, that i¢ finds nothing reserved in this sentence :
our readers will gladly enter with us a litle into this point.
What the Lord had said was pure truth (ver. 7)— otherwise the
ért woddad would have been quite misplaced; the opposite is
afterwards all, the whole truth, and only that in as far as it was
developed from what had been already said by our Lord. It may
be enough for us to quote a sentence from one of the opponents
of this theory. “ Our enemies twist these words of our Lord
as if they meant—Till now I have led you into many miscon-
ceptions ; when He shall come, the Spirit of truth, He will lead
you into the truth. Hitherto I have deceived you with many
fallacies, I have nourished and confirmed your superstition ; but
in His time ye shall understand that I have deceived you by
suffering you to remain in your hereditary delusions. Your
practical reason, in its purity, shall liberate you from your
superstitions, etc., etc. —But Jesus does not oppose His errors,
by which He had misled the disciples, to the truth which they
were afterwards to know; not impure truth to pure truth ; but
He opposes truth to truth, the pure to the pure, the less perfect
however to the perfect, the parts of truth to the entire truth,
the elementary institution of religion to its more sublime and
thorough knowledge.” (Weber.)

Ye cannot bear it, Bacrdfew—that is a more gracious and

JOHN XVI. 13. 357

stronger expression than if He had said, Ye cannot receive it,
xopev. The®critics who in their manner decide that Bacrafew
here is equivalent to percipere, intelligere, superficialise the sense
(although the Syr. with its TIAN? takes the lead). The bearing
is not merely the dpevi Bactafew of Suidas, the holding and
retaining of that which is inwardly received: even the parallel
in Epict. Enchirid. xxix. 5 which is generally adduced is far
from being strictly parallel.1_ The Lord considers the weakness
of their oppressed minds (hence the now referring to their present
condition, their hearts being full of sorrow): that they cannot
perfectly understand His words He presupposes already, and will
therefore lay upon them no further, no too heavy burden. (Comp.
in another yet similar sense, Matt. xxiii. 4.) To hear much from
the Master and yet to understand little, oppresses—the disciples
assuredly thought when He thus spake, Alas, what He has said
lies unintelligibly heavy upon our souls! A further development
and exposition of these great things would have altogether weighed
them down, without the understanding which the Spirit should
first bring. Thus His saying retains in its underlying pre-
supposition the general meaning which refers it to the whole
period of the disciples’ learning from the Lord’s lips, that they
were not yet mature and strong enough for understanding Him ;
but there is something further to be added, and which should
not be overlooked, since it is of great importance for our imita-
tion of His wisdom and love in our own teaching. To pour out
prematurely to the people the whole truth, is not only useless,
because it is not understood or embraced, but zt zs also positively
hurtful, since the weak cannot bear it, and may be cast down by
it, that is, may be led to despair under the truth.

Ver. 13. We must here remark upon two things, before enter-
ing into the specific meaning of this clause: first, that the per-
sonal éxefvos is once more designedly placed before the other-
wise sufficient ro mvedua; and then, that after all we have
heard in the éu44s we must include, though with some hidden

1 To attribute to the people a premature knowledge, which has not been
livingly experienced—‘‘ to urge a dawning consciousness into confession,
to enforce testimonies and assertions, to force the unfolding of the inner life,
to denounce in an unhappy manner human ignorance” —is no other than
uncharitableness, and tends not to salvation, Nitzsch.

308 HE SHALL LEAD YOU INTO THE WHOLE TRUTH.

reservation still, all future disciples who should through the
Spirit’s conviction be won from the world by the truth. In this
alone lies our right to appropriate to ourselves this promise.
Instead of es macav Thy adnPevav we read with Lachmann eis
Ti adnGeav Tacayv, so that (by a significant deviation from the
usual was 0—7doa %) these two things are expressed in their
full force: first, by the article, that it is only one and the self-
same truth which Jesus and the Holy Ghost teach ;* and then,
by the mwdcav, closely and emphatically connected with the
adPevav, that in opposition and contrast the Holy Ghost alone
will lead into the whole truth. It is otherwise, therefore, than
when the woman in Mark v. 33 told the Lord racav rnv ad7-
Jevav, that is, without denying or deception. Such an antithesis
to untruth (the pure simple truth, and nothing else) does indeed
lie in the formula which we find in Plato, Apol. Soc. cap. 1,
where Socrates opposes the deceiving complainants—ovdév
années eipjnxaciw vpets 5 pou axovoccOe Tacav THY adnGevay.
It is plain of itself that such a meaning is foreign to our passage,
even if we adhere to the Text. Rec.; but it is a still-stronger
assurance against the theory of accommodation, that 77v adjGear
macay is the oldest and surest reading. Further, that it is not
said that the Holy Ghost would give the disciples the solution
and explanation of omne scibile in heaven and upon earth, is
deducible from the signification of the truth which pervades the
N. T. and St John’s writings especially, according to which it
embraces only the revealed truth of salvation; as well as from
the article 77v itself, as Bengel remarks, All that truth which I
had now to tell you. Grotius, with equal correctness, says,
The universality is to be restricted to that which is here con-
cerned.? See in addition what we remarked before upon the all
in ch. xiv. 26, and compare ch. xv. 15. The Holy Ghost will in
this sense bring for the knowledge of salvation the whole, or, as
de Wette® says, the full truth. But, strictly speaking, He will

1 Bengel: The Scripture is not wont to say truths—a.remark of im-
measurable application to the error concealed in our way of speaking.

2 The same restriction is in Mark y. 83, in the cited saying of Socrates,
in Joseph. bell. jud. viii. 1, and generally in the nature of the case.

3 Better than in his translation, where, in part wrongly, in part misun-
derstandingly, he says—lead you into the way to all truth.

JOHN XVI. 13. 3 359

not then first bring it ; the disciples had already in a certain sense,
with all the specific reversion here spoken of, the complete truth
in the essentially perfect words of our Lord; the Holy Ghost was
only to lead them into this truth, by opening their understanding,
and giving to that understanding a complete and perfect system.

Many carry this too far when they regard the eis (with
Lampe) as standing for ev simply,’ and make the odmyety practi-
cally refer to the obedience of the truth, as elsewhere we have
walking in the truth, or, according to such sayings as Ps, xxv. 5,
exliii. 10, cxix. 35. (“ The truth of the Lord revealed in His
word is considered as a way to be trodden by the Apostles and all
the faithful.”) Not so, but the perfecting of knowledge, the
reversionary saying and teaching of what was not fully expressed.
by our Lord Himself, is here manifestly meant, as the connec-
tion with what precedes and what follows shows. But this
teaching (and that is the truth in error of this exposition) is
called a leading, because it must assuredly go hand in hand with
the life and walk, because we must regard more as promised
than merely, as Hess superficially explains, “ the showing every-
thing in the truest light”—or as the Vulg. briefly gives it— Will
teach you all the truth. The living teaching of the Spirit is a
guidance and leading into truth, in more senses than one. First,
because it must assuredly presuppose, bring with it, require a
constantly corresponding practical obedience, hence bringing no
more to the inner and true understanding than the life is ripe
for and fully willing to be guided by. Braune, “ The Spirit
will Zead, the Christian must therefore walk with Him” -——a
saying of inexhaustible earnestness and force against all false
appeal to the mere theoretical teaching of the Spirit. Then,
the Spirit gives, as we see in the case of the Apostles, His solu-
tions and explanations according to the need and the occasion
(Matt. x. 19, 20)—just as in part at least the laws of Moses
were given according to the emergencies which required them.
“In the activity of his vocation a man attains the region of
truth’—says Braune further. Thus while the leading into of
itself indicates a gradualness, in opposition to the mechanical
and childish notion that the Apostles at one bound were esta-

1 Another reading, obviously to be rejected, has—é» cn aéanbcia raon,
followed by Nonnus.

360 HE SHALL LEAD YOU INTO THE WHOLE TRUTH.

blished in all truth on the day of Pentecost, we have to seek the
reason and the measure of this gradualness both externally and
internally ; partly, in the internal ripening and progress of the
Apostles themselves in their own holiness, with which their
knowledge keeps pace—and partly in the stages of the way in
which their vocation as witnesses led them through the world.

The infallibility of the Apostles, therefore, is not properly to
be proved from this passage. For, at the outset, the same pro-
mise holds good for us all in its true meaning (1 Jno. il. 27);
and, further, this promise permits a progression of development.
It is not true in itself that the Apostles never erred or went
wrong in their common life; for, to every deficiency of holiness
there corresponds in some sense a lack of knowledge, and every
failure in perfect insight into the whole truth is of itself a rela-
tive, which easily brings about a positive, error. Thus, on the
too generally adopted principle which carries back the “ inspira-
tion” of the Scripture to the persons of the writers and their life
generally, we get no infallible Scripture. ‘The Holy Spirit, how-
ever, who protected them from all error in their office, as was
promised in ch. xv. 27, has actually given in the most specific
concentration of their official gift a new Scripture as the con-
clusion of the old; and that this Scripture possesses the same
infallibility (at least!) which Jesus incontrovertibly assigns to
the Old Testament—is a truth which, though it is not to be
proved by any dictum or dogma from without, attests itself ever
more and more clearly, bears witness to its own claims against
every new contradiction that arises, and to the sincere approves
itself in all its plerophory down to its minutest letter.’

When the Lord promises that the Spirit should guide them
into the truth, and ever more perfectly into the entire and full

truth, He did indeed presuppose and imply that which we before

1 But that a proper inspiration is expressed concerning the Old Testa-
ment only in such passages as 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. i. 19-22; 2 Pet. i.
19-21, this not being extended to the New Testament (Lutz, Bibl. Dogm.
S. 429, as also that Rev. i. 19 places the revelation in the seeing, not in the
writing) —is a marvellous assertion of a theology which is not based upon
deep thinking, and is not altogether orthodox in faith. See on the other
hand in Petersen Lehre vy. d. Kirche i. 184 how and wherefore the Apostles,
otherwise fallible, were infallible in writing.

JOHN XVI. 13. 361

rejected as His main meaning—that He would speak and teach
nothing but truth, no lie. He now makes this prominent by a
yap, which, however, does not strictly connect itself with the
last word, but with the name the Spirit of the truth. There isa
spirit of lying which blinds the world into unbelief, ruling it as
its prince ; the Spirit proceeding from the Father opposes Him-
self to this spirit—He can testify only the truth. Every other
so-called “ truth” will be opposed and condemned by Him as
the lie of the liar from the beginning. Condescendingly, and at
the same time convincingly, on account of this unhappily exist-
ing opposite, the Lord attributes to his Representative the same
thing which He had so often asserted of Himself—the not
speaking of Himself. Comp. ch. vii. 16-18, viii. 26, 28, xii.
49, 50, and what we have there said in explanation. In the
same hypothetical and accommodating spirit, for the sake of
distinction from the False in the world, as the Lord spoke there,
it holds good here of the Holy Ghost. In a true sense the
Spirit, like the Son, speaks assuredly from Himself, of His own,
for the property of God in His three Hypostases is the truth;
but in that evil sense of a self separate from God (the impossi-
bility of which as it regards the Son and the Spirit must be
maintained), He will not, and He cannot speak (ch. viii. 44).
He who speaketh to us, and that which speaketh in us aq’
éavtov—in the sense of Godless self and creaturely indepen-
dence—leads us astray from the truth, comes from the lar, is
a lie. Here it is important to distinguish and take heed before
all things of what is called “ spirit” in the world, or even in
ourselves! “If the Holy Ghost may not speak of Himself,
and out of Himself—O Preacher! how canst thou draw thy
preaching out of thyself, out of thine head (or even heart)?”
(Gossner.) Let nothing of thy preaching and testimony come
from thine own mere impulse and will to know and to teach,
before the Spirit hath taught and impelled thee !* |
But what He shall hear or heareth : similarly as the Son hath
heard of the Father. But here we find not—From the Father ;
and we join Kling’s protest against Liicke’s simply so under-
standing it. “If we think of the Spirit as it were by the side

1 ‘ The true prophets are never willing-prophets ” Berlenb. Bibel.

362 THINGS TO COME.

of the Son, hearing from the Father like the Son, the entire
relation is disturbed, and the subordinate and incorrect standing-
point of the Greek Church is entered upon at once.” And
this is expressly contradicted by vers. 14, 15, according to which
the Spirit receives from the treasures of the Son, while all is
again of the Father. Not therefore again,n—of Me; but—
What He will hear or heareth in the mutual counsel of the
triune Godhead, in the eternal converse between the Father
and the Son, the Son and the Father, the revelation of which
is first the word of the Son itself, the exposition of which then
the same Spirit brings who hath received and searched into all
which is God’s, the hidden things as well as the revealed (MADIN
miD23m), Deut. xxix. 28), the counsels of the Father as well as the
testimonies of the Son, from all eternity. Mark the éca dv for
this all-embracing meaning, which at once leads to what follows!
Therefore He already knoweth what will yet in the future be,
and the Son hath not yet expressly told; therefore He will also
foretell ra épyoweva.” In this extension of the words which
point to what the Spirit hath heard, and will fore-announce, we
must be careful of limiting the expression by an incorrect
adherence to the thoughts which then gave rise to the declara-
tion, and which it had immediately in view. Assuredly, the
fact is involved that what the Spirit testifies as true will con-
firm and evidence its truth by coming :—the fulfilment of it will
impress its final seal upon all His testimony. But the things to
come with the definite article says more; it refers actually to
the whole futurity, as of the individual so also of the church.
Not only that through the power of the Spirit “ every man may
become his own prophet, and predict in his own consciousness
what he has to expect in the future”*—not only that a certain
prophesying of the future, with regard to our own life and

1 Luther: ‘‘ In the eternal Godhead, with Christ and the Father, where
_ He seeth and knoweth all no other than it is.” We would not assert, with
Luthardt, that in this thoroughly trinitarian context neither the Father
nor the Son is to be thought of, but only ‘‘ God,” in connection with the
‘‘ hearing ;” but his remark is more correct, that in dow a» éxovoy is meant
— What He from time to time will hear, as the emerging occasion requires.

2 It is wrong to press the dv in dvayyeaac, as if it meant—Again
announce, expound what had been already said.

’ As Herberger preaches in the Herz-Postille.

JOHN XVI. 13. 363

the times in which we live with their results, may be afforded
by the Spirit when occasion may demand it. But the Lord,
rather, promises here pre-eminently, as the fulfilment shows,
that the Holy Ghost will, at the close of the Scripture which
embraces the beginning and the end, yet more clearly and per-
fectly than ever before foretell the whole process of the king-
dom of God to the end. Was not this a knowledge actually
left in reversion by our Lord’s words, which had intimated only
the nearest and most distant facts of eschatology in the destina-
tion of Jerusalem and the final judgment? Did not the church
need a decisive harmonising revelation concerning the relation
of what had already come to pass in Christ to the great future
which is predicted in the Old Testament prophets? And that
is, after both St Peter and St Paul had paved the way by iso-
lated utterances, the Apocalypse confided to St John. If this
be regarded as unapostolical and spurious, we do not simply ask
where would be the conclusion of the Bible, but where would
be the worthy and perfect accomplishment of the word which
St John has here in his Gospel recorded? We should have
then to wait for a still further dvayyédXew Ta épyopeva of the
Holy Ghost! ‘This indeed we may and ought to hope for, in
as far as the announcements of the Holy Ghost were not abso-
lutely closed with the apostolical age, in as far as the exposition
and full accomplishment of His words go on to the end of the
days. But in as far as a canonical foundation is laid through
the Apostles for all instruction—as no man understanding any-
thing of the system of God’s kingdom and its Scripture can
ever deny—such a close of the canon of prophecy was of itself
to be presumed upon and expected. And now let him who hath
ears to hear, hear what in Patmos the Spirit saith unto the
churches through the bosom-disciple who was in the Spirit on
the Lord’s day! Let him see how here the testimony of Jesus
Himself is fully completed as the Spirit of prophecy, and the
mystery of God, as He announced it to His servants the pro-
phets, appears in its final concentration—how the Spirit brings
from the Lord, who is the Alpha and the Omega, a final “ I come
quickly !” and responds to His voice with the answering bride,
“ Come, Lord Jesus!’ in the Amen which ratifies all! Assur-
edly, St John’s Apocalypse is the most real fulfilment of the

364 HE SHALT. GLORIFY ME.

word—The Spirit will show you things to come; and all fur-
ther prophesying finds in it at least its text, even as all the
teaching and testifying of the Spirit from the day of Pentecost
downward has merely expounded what God from the beginning
had already spoken in the Old and New Testaments through
His Son, the Mediator and Angel of the covenant.

Ver. 14. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the mpocwzor, the face and person of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. iv. 6),
is the great and final end, beyond which no self-manifestation
of the triune God is possible. The glorification of the Father
in the personality of Him who already as the eternal Son was
Ilis countenance turned on the creature, and now as the Son
of man in a most perfect personal expression of God has become
its Restorer, is at the same time the glorification of Jesus Christ
Himself —but this will be consummated before His disciples,
and in them only by the Holy Ghost. He shall glorify Me—
in this the Lord names the inmost centre of the whole truth,
around which the periphery of its manifold development re-
volves; as also the most decisive test for every spirit of lying
which would intrude into the place of the Holy Ghost, for all
fanaticism as well as all Rationalism, all apocalypses and all
dogmas and traditions which lead not to Christ and glorify not
Him. “By this is decided in an anti-Montanist manner the
question concerning the perfectibility of Christendom’’—says
Liicke excellently in few words. And Bengel with equal pro-
priety from another point of view, concerning the Romish tra-
ditions: plus quam elementares sunt et nunc etiam minus ab iis,
qui Paracletam habent, ferri possunt. Luther’s critical canon, so
often misunderstood by others and alas by himself, applied with
too little insight sometimes, is perfectly correct in thesi—W hat
preaches Jesus, and leads to faith in Him, is of the Holy Ghost.
For as the Son speaketh of the Father and glorifieth the
Father, even so speaketh the Holy Ghost of the Son and glo-
rifieth the Son.

1 He glorifieth Him also in truth by an ever-increasing disclosure of His
glory. Roos (Lehre J. Chr.) combines John xvii. 4 with this passage, and
says, ‘‘We thus find nothing in the writings of the Apostles concerning
the glory of the Father which had not previously occurred in the words of
Jesus; but on the glory of Jesus the Apostles, under the illumination of

\

JOHN XVI. 14. 365

This is more clearly unfolded and established in the following
word, by which the Lord perfectly closes the circle of the Holy
Three-One, and places the revelation of the Spirit in its right
relation to that which is the Father's and the Son’s. For He
will take of that which is Mine in what He will show— whence
otherwise, being the Spirit of the Son as well as of the Father?
That means, “ not of the high things of the creation, of the many
worlds of the universe,” will He speak to you (as Oetinger says),
but of the kingdom of God in Me and My redemption; the
saving truth, whose centre I am, will He announce, and com-
plete it by prophecy down to the last things to come. But this
involves so strict a relation to the already spoken word, as well
as to the yet reserved treasures of the Son, that no revelation of
the Spirit going beyond this can be supposed possible. For, in
the first place, the Spirit, as we heard in chap. xiv. 26, takes,
makes prominent, and develops out of the words which Jesus
had spoken, His own; so that nothing quite new, and which had
not been expressed or intimated, is to come through Him.’ But
then, secondly, what new He brings, as far as it is new, comes
from the reserved treasure of which é7: 70AXa éyw speaks. This
is also the meaning, for otherwise there would be no foundation
for what follows—All things that the Father hath are Mine.
The Spirit, as we have already said, does not hear, as it were by
the side of the Son, the Father alone; but all that He speaketh
He hath heard also of the Son. The Son in His human nature
hath inherited all, but this inheritance is His original eternal
possession. This all, however, cannot by any means be said to

the Comforter, have taught much which Jesus in the days of His flesh never
uttered concerning Himself; and to this belongs not merely the full exhi-
bition of His Priestly and Kingly offices, but this also, that He is directly
called God.”—We leave this to be pondered, as far as it is true; but think
that the glory of the Father also was still further illustrated, according to
2 Cor. iv. 6.

1 It helps the unbelieving Christian world little, in their rejection of a
development of testimony in the Apostles, to recur deceptively ‘‘ to the
original pure teaching of Christ ;” the convincing Spirit makes their con-
science find even in that teaching of Jesus the entire apostolical system,
even as in this last the whole genuine ‘“‘ doctrine of the Church.” And
this will serve for the limitation and right adjustment of the previous quo
tation from Roos.

366 HE SHALL TAKE OF MINE.

have been eaplicitly and literally communicated already in the
words of our Lord down to His ascension, or in those of the
Apostles in the beginning of the church; therefore as the
Apostles in the freedom of the Spirit add new discourses to the
Lord’s discourses, so also the same Spirit leadeth us, in His ap-
plication and exposition of them, into new testimonies and con-
fessions of the church which are not always to be judged by and
restricted to the apostolical letter. Retaining, however, most
assuredly the spirit of this letter, for on the other hand all the
new lies implicitly in the old. That which the Holy Ghost may
say, from His first coming to the end, is new as it respects the
former word only by illustrating and glorifying it ;? even as the
Christ whom He preaches is in some sense another and yet
no other, as it respects the “ historical Christ” of the Gospels.
To go back still further: All that the Lord spake in the flesh
in such wise that it might afterwards be unfolded in the Spirit,
was in its germ and principle contained in the Old Testament ;
for every word: of God by the FN?D of His face and the Hn
vpn is a word of Christ. “The full harmonious close of all the
words of Jesus is Spirit; the testimony of Jesus is the kernel
and spirit of all the prophets.” (Oetinger.) To him who learns
to understand this Christ is so glorified that he can set his seal
to these words of Jesus, in which He can and must say con-
cerning all understanding of Sceripture—which includes again
all testimony of the Spirit’—He will take of Mine. The Holy
Ghost testifies of Jesus (ch. xv. 26)—that is the beginning of
His office in the world; He glorifieth Jesus—that is the goal
and end of His office in believers. ?

1 Hence Luther’s celebrated saying must be modified in consistency with
this: —The devil easily would lead me astray, if I walk out of Seripture-
round.
; 2 So that the church of these last ages may, having before it the entire
history of the kingdom through which the Spirit had led it, more clearly
and profoundly understand and more plainly express, than the original
writers themselves, many things in the apostolical writings :— but the Spirit
in the Apostles meant and said only this from the beginning. What caution
is needed upon this subject see. stated in the weighty note, 8. 541-546, in
Oetinger’s Theosophie by Auberlen.

3 See the Apocalypse, flowing almost entirely as it does from prophetic

words! And if the Spirit does not always proceed, in His testimony of truth,
directly from Scripture, He yet leads and directs us back infallibly into it.

JOHN XVI. 15. 367

It is obvious, finally, that as certainly as the leading into all
truth is an internal teaching which carries the life and experi-
ence with it, the glorification of Christ before ws must coincide
with the appropriating establishment of His image in us ;- -
although this is not specifically mentioned, but the discourse
clings to the dvayyé\Xew. There is no other receiving of this
glorifying light, no other living growing and becoming perfect
in it, than that which takes place according to 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18.

Ver. 15. The honour of the Father could not be left without
its positive expression: we have found this pervading all these
farewell discourses, but the ‘Trinitarian expression and winding
up of all culminates in this passage. From that earliest, “What
seek ye? Come and see!” to the first disciples—from the fol-
lowing more penetratingly questioning and more plainly offer-
ing testimonies to Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman (to
the man of knowledge —the mysteries of regeneration and His
exaltation on the cross, the grounds of judgment; to the igno-
rant woman—the true gift of God for her sin, the true prayer)
—through testimonies, ever rising higher and yet ever conde-
scending lower, to the dignity, power, and honour of the Son,
in whom alone is the sinner’s salvation—by all these has the
selection of our Lord’s discourses in St John’s Gospel paved
the way for these last-spoken words in the narrow circle of the
disciples, words which, as we have seen, become more and more
apocalyptical for the future explanation of the Spirit, when He
should come and again speak of Him who was still to come.
Assuredly, as has been often admitted, and more often felt
without admitting, not till the church of the last time will this
pre-Apocalypse be altogether explained and glorified in the
light of the Spirit." Meanwhile, all who honestly hang on the
Lord as living branches feed upon it with still increasing know-
ledge; for the deep and inexhaustible things are clothed in the
plainest simplest words, inviting us as if they were perfectly
revealed. So is it also with the doctrine of the Triunity of the
Father, the Son, and the Spirit, which runs through these

1 Generally, the whole Gospel of St John, which we elsewhere called
‘the higher and highest Apocalypse,” corresponds, in its mystical depths
for knowledge and life combined, to the last perfect development of the
church.

368 ALL THAT THE FATHER HATH IS MINE.

chapters; in which the Spirit appears with more and more
personal characteristics, and at the same time the unity of the
Three is more and more firmly established as the close comes.
Simple faith finds here already the whole truth; the doctrinal »
investigation of the church finds here its firmest dicta probantia,
its surest limitations within which it may range, as also its not
yet attained goal.

Glorify Me, take of Afine—to this belongs necessarily, again,
All things that the Father hath are Mine! See ch, xvii. 10,
where this last and highest word, which it could become the
glorified Son alone to say, is found by the side of — All Mine
are Thine! Here belongs Col. ii. 2, 8. When the Lord now
rises from the announcement of an economical impartation, ver.
14, to the eternal foundation of all in the interior, essential,
eternally trinitarian relationship, He does not repeat (as might
have been expected, and has therefore been read) the previous
Amperat, but substitutes for it a AawPaver, in strict parallel
with doa éyes and éud éot. Thus there is opened to us. a
glimpse into the living blessed bond of love in receiving and
giving in the eternal ground of the triune essence of the God-
head. The Father hath from eternity given to the Son to have
life and all things in Himself, yet only as He is the Son who
revealeth the Father, only as the Fatherhood remaineth with
the Father. Lut all things the Son bringeth and giveth to the
Father again, honoureth and glorifieth Him in His being glori-
fied in His people. And this through the Spirit, who with
equal rights in this unity, taketh from the sole fulness of the
Father and the Son, all that He livingly offers in His announce-
ment—in order finally, in the consummate glorification and
unity of love, to bring back the redeemed church through the
Son to the Father; as is afterwards (ch. xvii.) a the Spirit,
therefore without naming the Spirit, declared in prophetic
prayer. Although then the recurring 8a todTo eirov—avay-
yere? bpiv leads back the discourse into the economical Aypperaz,
yet it is grounded upon the relation of essence which was indi-
cated in the AawRaver: the Spirit who proceedeth from the
Father, proceedeth as truly and essentially, since the Father
and the Son are one, from the Son also. Hence Luther ex-
pounds, as if he read AapBdver: “He taketh His own, that is”

JOHN XVI. 16-24. 369

—not merely what He testifies and imparts in the church, but,
because He indeed gives Himself, mediates the indwelling of
God (ch. xiv. 23)—“the Divine nature in eternity not only
from the Father, but also from Christ; and thus there abideth
one eternal essence or Divinity of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, but in distinctive persons”—which Persons, as
we must speak of them humanly, as the complement to the zpo-
owrov of Christ, are again incontrovertibly designated by éye,
éud, NauPaver. Luther, once more, “This is the circle round
and complete ; all Three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in one
eternal Divine nature :—thus the Holy Ghost is Himself true
God, without any difference, only that He hath it both from
the Father and the Son.”

THE WAY OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES, AS TYPICAL FOR ALL FUTU-
RITY, THROUGH SORROW TO JOY; THE JOY OF BIRTH; THE
PERFECT JOY OF SEEING HIM AGAIN IN THAT DAY.

(Ch. xvi. 16-24.)

Thus has the Lord, after so condescending a commencement
with lower themes, risen as He always does to speak of high, yea
of the highest mysteries: or, what is the same thing, He has
penetrated into the depths of God, where the Spirit heareth,
and whence He taketh the things which are the Father’s and
the Son’s, in order to announce and to bring them to the church.
And He has herein once more anticipated the distant future,
reached forward to the great conclusion of all the truth, and
the perfect revelation, when all things that the Father hath,
and which are likewise the Son’s, shall be proclaimed, taught,
predicted, and confirmed in their fulfilment. The disciples
hear indeed what Jesus speaks, but they apprehend it not. This
He also well knows, and yet He must speak it. But after He
has done justice to the preparatory testimony which was neces-
sarily given concerning the work, office, and person of the Holy
Ghost (vers. 14, 15, is the proper final close of this testimony)
—He can as it were stoop once more to the weakness of the
disciples’ present condition. He therefore now begins anew to

VOL. VI. 2A

370 THE SORROW AND JOY OF THE DISCIPLES.

speak to their terrified hearts concerning that which first of all
and immediately should result from and after His departure to
the Father. This also, indeed, must partake of the spirit of
His recent words, and be immediately glorified into a type of
the way and the future of all His disciples;—and soon His
word in vers. 22-24 has again reached forward even to the full
glory and joy of that day, which only dawns in the new birth
of His resurrection, but will be consummate in another, the
final return.— What a transition, or rather what a return back,
between vers. 15 and 16; from the depths of the triune essence
of the Godhead to the immediately near present of His disciples’
destiny, to the great change of the now impending day! There
is, as for Himself the breaking through death into life, so for
the disciples a deeply penetrating, fundamental change from
sorrow to joy. By no means merely their sorrow at His death,
and their joy in His living again, after the analogy of the
sorrow and joy of the children of men in their changing ex-
perience; but as the mediating expression of an essential inter-
nal process which the Holy Ghost completed in their own case,
and which still goes on to the end of all. Thus as this way of
the disciples through sorrow to joy between the cross and the
resurrection of our Lord was already for themselves something
preparatory and typical, it becomes to us a type of the way
which ali His future disciples have also to pass through, all
those who are to be won through the conviction of the Spirit
out of the unbelieving world ;—a way through that godly sor-
row which at first distinguishes them fully from the world, into
the joy of faith and life in the Holy Ghost. That which the
puxpov and mdduw puxpov of the departure of Jesus embraces
during the few days of the Apostles’ waiting is a prophetic
mirror for the course of the whole church, for the great inter-
val from His going away till His return in a wider sense. Let
this be taken preliminarily for the general indication of the
sense from ver. 16 to ver. 24; in which section vers. 16-21 treat
of the sorrow (necessary to the birth which is here in ques-
tion), and then immediately vers. 22-24 of that certainly fol-
lowing, increasing, and finally consummate joy.

Ver. 16. The Lord had spoken similarly in ch. vii. 33 to the
_ Jews, in ch. xiii. 33, and more directly ch. xiv. 19, to the dis-

JOHN XVI. 16. 371

ciples—but now first does He bring it closely home to them.
The word and the thoughts, at least in the first two clauses (the
bond of connection of the third introduces a difficulty), appear
to us now very simple and plain ; but the longer we pause-before
the word the more cause do we find to ask, even as expositors,
What is it that He saith? Ch. xiv. 19 is however distinguished
from the present words, in that here not merely are the disciples
included as for a while, like the world, not seeing Him (this was
there also hinted) ; but the seeing again, which is promised to
them, is connected also with a gracious 7aXuv pixpor, coming
very near.’ This of itself is enough to prove that the ancients
were not absolutely wrong when they referred the clause to the
Lord’s resurrection; this is incontrovertibly the most immediate
meaning of the letter of the contrast between dyeoGe and ov
Oewpetre (if the one removes the bodily visibility, the other gives
it back again). The plain parallel in ch. xiv. 19 proves the
same, as also ver. 22 of this chapter, where it is impossible to
dissever the resurrection from éWouat tas. Olshausen is there-
fore incorrect in saying, “ All the better expositors are now
agreed that a reference to the bodily resurrection is not here the
direct acceptation ;” while he (in company with almost all modern
interpreters, headed by Luther and Calvin) interprets the pro-
mise as referring only to an internal spiritual seeing. It would
be better to say that the sight ef the Lord returning in the
resurrection is the first meaning ;” and to admit that the ancients
in going no further were wrong also on their part. The error on
both sides is no other than a forgetfulness of the typical-prophe-

1 That wixpdy points in both cases to an interval needs no proof, on ac-
count of the vzaiv. The translation is false, therefore, which gives, And
then shall ye for a while, a little time, see Me (as if xara wixpev)—for I go
(presently again) My way to the Father!

2 Luthardt does me some justice here: ‘‘ That the return of Christ to His
church is in a manner promised ; the disciples are referred to the transitory
return of their Lord and their brief communion with Him, as a pledge of
His future return.” In fact, it may well be so, for-the letter speaks un-
deniably of the resurrection. But we assert something mot and different
from this: The Lord does not speak of a transitory communion as the type
of that which was only future, asif between the two intervened a long sepa-
ration and orphanhood, but of the real beginning of an abiding fellowship
and union through the Spirit.

372 I WILL COME AGAIN.

tical perspective, which is so habitually left out of view. This
we must persist in re-asserting, and point to it as the alone satis-
factory hermeneutical principle for the solution of these last
predictions of Jesus, just as we had reason to do upon Matt.
xxiv. The prophetic word receives its first full fulfilment in the
future of the Spirit, according to its spiritual and most essential
meaning ; but it connects itself in its expression with the typical
event which presents the more immediate future as already
present. B.-Crusius is in the right direction, “ As ver. 20 seq.
speak of that sensible re-appearance, this may be the meaning
already in our passage.” As, for the unbelieving world, the
seeing of the Judge coming in the clouds, according to ch. xxvi.
64, begins with the first announcement of His victory over death
and of His justification, but then reaches onward to the last day
—just so the seeing of the Lord, which is known by faith, in
the light and by the glorification of the Spirit, actually begins
in the case of the disciples on the morning of the resurrection
and goes on through the ascension and pentecost. The day of
life, of the Spirit which was suddenly to follow upon the suddenly
darkening night of death, and which the Lord promises as the
ime of a seeing no longer to cease, extends in its grand all-com-
prehending aspect from the resurrection-morning to—the full
consummation of every individual, as of the whole church. The
return of the Lord, of which ver. 22 drowar twas is spoken, has
its great commencement in the resurrection, but is not fulfilled
in its last and deepest sense until that return which was already
spoken of in ch. xiv. 3'—thus in His taking to Himself (as we
there expounded) the individual, and in His parousia at the end
for the entire church.’ So far is Augustin not altogether wrong,
when he referred it to this last and proper return after His de-
parture to the Father. But all these critical points must be
embraced in one, if we would extract from the meaning of the
Lord’s word to the first disciples the meaning which it contained
jor us all.

Bengel thinks that drew, as compared with Oewpety, has a

1 Which Klee perceives, but exhibits it in a one-sided and ungrounded
manner.

> Compare the correct exposition in Géschel, in his doctrine of the last
things (Berlin 1850). |

JOHN XVI. 16. 373

meaning magis cum affectu, and would make this an argument
for a spiritual beholding, with joy and clear apprehension ; but
when we regard the words rigorously, their @ewpetv would rather
(as in earlier passages) be the spiritual beholding, évrew on the
other hand (as is plain in ver. 22) the physical seeing. We
hold the truth to be that the not seeing and seeing in both cases
is to be understood first as bodily, using this as the expression
for the subsequent reference to spiritual seeing. While the
disciples saw not Jesus, their faith in Him, their seeing Him as
the Son of God, was obscured and almost taken away.

The whole passion, the full deep suffering of death, in which,
even for Himself, such immeasurable elements of woe conspired,
is contemplated by the Lord as a brief transition, and He passes
joyfully over it by His rdAw puxpov. For in that and after that
He dies, He goeth only to the Father, to His own glorification,
see ch. xiv. 28. This of itself somewhat explains the striking
clause with 67z,' which has its difficulty still when more closely
examined, and concerning which Tholuck too boldly says, “ This
é7c would be perfectly unintelligible if the Lord spoke of bodily
seeing.” Certainly, if of this alone; but our exposition knows
better. V. Gerlach more cautiously and correctly remarks,
“ The difficulty for the disciples lay in this because of the going
away, and therefore of the seeing; if they had apprehended all
which went before, they would have presently found the solution
of this new word also, which ceased to be a mystery after all
that had passed.” Had not the Lord opened His whole dis-
course (ch. xiv. 3) with “ going away and coming again?” Did
not this coming again occur to them most plainly in the éWeoGe
pe? But this being plain, and giving them the clue to His
meaning, should not the 671 tayo come in before as belong-
ing only to the od Oewpeité we? So Pfenninger (whose zeal for
making everything plain and square often leads his otherwise
keen insight astray) interposes arbitrarily —“ for tn the interval
I go to the Father!” (Against which ch. xx. 17 is to be ob-
served.) The Lord designedly did not thus set forth His za-
powwia, His enigmatical word; the going to the Father is made
the foundation of the entire double clause, indeed, taking into

1 Its absence in many Codd. is certainly an omission, as ver. 17 shows.
Tischendorff very improperly leaves out these words.

374 WHAT IS THIS THAT HE SAITH ?

account the nearer connection and the predominant tone of pro-
mise which falls on the 7dadw, especially of the seeing again and
the return. Though from the going away, the not seeing seems
immediately to follow, but this only presses the paradox into the
deeper thought which was prepared for in ch. xiv. 28 :—My
departure to the Father leads Me to honour and glory, by means
of which I can reveal Myself to you after, and in consequence
of, My death. (Braune excellently puts it, “He is not with-
drawn into the realm of shades from which no return is possible,
but to the glory of the Father, whence He can continually and
for ever reveal Himself to His own.”) Still more explicitly,
after all this: My death and departure to God is that of the
High Priest, for redemption, the opening of heaven, the pre-
paring your place, the obtaining the Spirit—and from this
would arise to their minds the deeper view, that He would not
give Himself permanently to be seen in the body, but in the higher
manner of the Spirit continue it, a final visible manifestation
being the final and glorious necessary consequence of all. But
what is said is spoken in obscure intimation, Ye shall see not
merely My victory over the power of death, which cannot hold
Me, and through this My return from the grave, but ye shall
go on to see soon (all a wd\w puxpov) My ascension to the Father
also, ye shall see Me in this My way, and be altogether satisfied
with My departing and yet remaining. One is almost tempted
to translate, Ye shall see Me, that or how, forsooth, I go to the
Father—but this would be improper as being contrary to the
arrangement of the sentence, which, like every stimulating
enigma-word, must be as simple in its expression as profound in
its meaning.

Not all the disciples inquire and seek in express words the
meaning of what had been said; there are some who do, but St
John does not name them, any more than he names himself —
assuredly one among those who pondered in silence, and pro-
bably having some slight understanding. They are not suffi-
ciently bold, even after the encouragement of ver. 5, to ask the
Master Himself, for they have also to reflect upon the constant
allusion to a future understanding. But as they surround Him,
speaking about His words half aloud, they gradually take time
and get more courage. The words they understand and retain

JOUN XVI. 19. ota

well, so that they can literally repeat them; but they do not
apprehend their meaning, therefore twice, What 1s this that He
saith? First, the twofold prediction, and the strange reason
assigned for both; then, spelling it out, they take it to pieces
(Bengel, They disjoin the two conjunct words), hence the at
ézt, and that with a strengthening éy#.' Thus do they confuse
themselves over the mystery, without asking Him as the Jews
did, ch. vii. 36. It was natural that the most startling word,
that which finally obtruded itself upon them, would be the
pexpov; and at last they limit themselves to this, with a pre-
vious TodTo, indicating that they-embraced all in this one word.
So near was the great turning-point to be, the sorrow and joy,
the seeing and not seeing of which they cannot understand,
because it is stated to be near! The result is, We know not what
He saith—in which they unconsciously utter a general confession
applicable to all His discourses. The apparently diffuse and
prolix style of description here is notwithstanding perfectly pre-
cise in its distinctive shades of expression, down to the slightest
turn.2. The e?zrov ov and éXeyor ody (even with the xai between),
do not indicate, as Lampe thinks, different words of different
parties ; but the same some of His disciples is the subject, though
they are speaking to one another. They are not able at once to
ask, but they revolve the question and His word in their thoughts;
and their ov« olSapuev passes finally into that which Jesus re-
marks, encourages, and anticipatingly responds to before it is
uttered— Now we will ask Him instead of one another !”

Ver. 19. “ Christ repeats to them the words once more which
St John also recites, because they contain matter of permanent
thought and embarrassment to His people.” So does the Ber-
lenb. Bibel hit the true emphasis of the seven times recurring
“little while” —the title given to the Jubilate between Easter
and Pentecost, and which gives the profound reason of the true
jubilate which should spring in a little while from the plorabitis
et flebitis. St John tells us that they desired to ask Him, only
that he may show us that Jesus marked it. But Jesus, hum-
bling them, and yet humbling Himself to their thoughts, first -

1 Which may be genuine the second time, in the repetition.

2Thus we see no reason for changing the Text. Rec. to suit Rinck’s
lucubrations.

376 YE SHALL WEEP AND LAMENT.

touches their inquiring among themselves ; and then once more
declares to them, in prophecy still, what He had before said
(but without the I go away) ;—thus seeming to say, Do ye con-
tend about these plain words? But He then goes on to take them
for the text of a yet more plain and penetrating prospective
explanation of the experience which should presently befall the
disciples.

Ver. 20. He designedly omits the going to the Father, as this
would have required Him once more to lament over or reprove
them for their not understanding it. But the not seeing and yet
seeing again He now describes still more plainly by its effects,
or rather by the position in which it will place the disciples ;
and His Amen, Amen, is the preface of a plain declaration how
it will be with their souls. Ye shall weep and lament—Ye shall
mourn over Me as dead! Ye shall see Me go as by a fearful
dying into death! This xkAravcete cal Opnvjcate is more than
the only similar wevOety cat xralew of Mark xvi. 10. For the
words run just like the ordinary wailing for the dead, concern-
ing which Opyvetv (Luke xxii. 27, vu. 82), and @pijvos (Matt.
ii, 18; 2 Sam. i. 17; Jer. ix. 17), in particular were used.
This of itself was dreadful enough for the poor disciples—
Lamentation of death over the Son of the living God, their
sole unfailing Comforter! But now to deepen it follows the
joy of the world, not for the sake of referring to the world—
which would be inappropriate here—but to intensify the word
for the disciples. No man will comfort you or sympathise with
your sorrows; rather will the whole of the rest of the world
around you rejoice over that which is your sorrow, and laugh
at and mock you. They will rejoice that they are rid of Me,
as they will imagine, Ps. xxii. 18, xli. 9. They will institute
a new Purim feast, days of prosperity and joy, in which to
congratulate one another with gifts, as if Haman the Jews’
enemy hung on the cross. This rejoicing of the world is the
keenest sword to weakness and unbelief, as well as to the true
dependence of the sorrowful disciples trusting in God. (Ps.
xlii. 11.) Once more the Lord condenses, for the tpets thus
set in opposition to the xocpos, all into one deep AvirnOjcecde,*

1 We must not read dsis 6, for the antithesis does not any longer point
backward, but forward in the éaaz.

JOHN XVI. 20. BY a

‘concerning which B.-Crusius says with right feeling, “AvzretcGas
is still more than the @pnveiv and xraiew.’ But now the seeing
again and the joy! By a saying (€v mapoumiats) very common
in ordinary human life and in Scripture the Lord describes the
change and transition which should in their case take place in a
peculiar and incomparable sense. As it is written in Esth. ix.
22, concerning the ungodly, revengeful joy of the saved Jews,'
which nevertheless was a feeble type of a better joy,—on> JEN
ain Dir? PAN nimob/2 fin (Sept. éotpadn adtots azo révbous
els yapdv)—just so does the Lord here speak, probably not
without an echo of this well-known formula, which would then
contain a secret ironical allusion to the reversal of the false
Israelites Purim. If such a reference seems too farfetched or
inappropriate, we find the saying concerning the conversion of
sorrow into joy often enough recurring in all kinds of forms, as
in Ps. xxx. 12 (com. Job xxx. 31), and see particularly Jer.
xxxi. 13. The expression here is heightened to the utmost,
however, since the sorrow is ttself to become joy; it is not merely
to be lost in or exchanged for joy, but the subject and ground
of the sorrow becomes the subject and ground of the joy. This
is here true in an abounding sense: the cross of our Lord is
glorified into an eternal consolation ; out of the sorrow at the
cross and the sepulchre, because in it there was the believing
and loving seeking of the Crucified, is born their joy in the
Living, Risen One, who goes before into the heavens. The
same holds good as a universal promise to all sorrow which is
not sorrow of the world, but Avan cata Pedv—which can no
longer rejoice where the world exults. ‘Those who weep bear
already the precious seed which rises again into sheaves of joy
—‘“on the flood of tears we float out of ruin” —suffering was
to the disciples as to their Lord the necessary and afterwards
thankfully acknowledged passage to bliss.

Christians, as we shall hereafter more definitely show, may
hope for an ever new repetition of this change. When the
world is in sorrow it still has a hope that sorrow will be turned

1 It is to intimate this that Mordecai, led by the Holy Ghost, throughout
the whole of this book which shows us Israel at the lowest depth in which
it was recognised and even defended as the people of God—suppresses the
name of God and the word prayer.

378 THE WOMAN IN ‘TRAVAIL.

again into joy, and externally and for a while its hope is often
fulfilled ; but all the more certainly will the final separation
take place at the last. The Lord does not here expressly say
that all the joy of the world must finally be turned into woe,
because that at present does net conduce either to His own or
His people’s joy, and because He would avoid every appearance
of a reciprocation of gladness in the world’s righteous condem-
nation.’ But this was also to be understood: see Lu. vi. 25.
Ver. 21. The definite 1) yuv7 begins once more in a proverbial,
figurative tone, and sets clearly before us the similitude to be
explained afterwards. No accusative was wanted with the 6rap
tixtn, for tixrew stands absolutely for @divew or xveww, as fre-
quently appears. And so we find yevvay as here used of the
mother (Gal. iv. 24; Matt. i. 25, ii. 1), although not often, and
for the most part not without a special emphasis which ex-
presses rather the perfected bringing forth of that which was
already begotten, than the simple bearing in itself. What
would be the father’s begetting if the mother did not bring
forth and give full birth to the offspring? Hers is thus the
decisive labour of sorrow therein! Augustine would take 76
matoiev (on account of his mystical meaning) for the male child;
but without any reason, for it is quite general and almost the
same as yévynua, TONTNN m2 Os. But the little child, however,
is already a man, complete for future growth, as the common
note of mothers’ joy rans—“ The blessed God hath forgotten
nothing in him.”? That a sinful man is born into this tem-
poral, miserable, perverted wor id—alas, that in itself says but
little ; without the grace of God coming to nature’s help all
mothers’ joy is but vain, and may be the ground of future woes,
as in Eve’s yet icnorant YS ‘2p. Nevertheless, in the symboli-
cal domain of nature, this joy has for the first its full propriety ;
1 There is nevertheless a pure joy which the perfectly just may feel in the
righteous judgment of God, and which must not be called rejoicing in evil!
(2 Thess. i. 6; Rev. xviii. 20.) Which meaning of the Spirit in the typi-
cal Old Testament (e.g. Ps. cxxxvii.) must be carefully distinguished from
the human joy which might be connected with it. There may be in heaven
a most glorious realisation of the true Purim joy, in the name of the Lord.
2 In this mother-joy in the birth of a ‘‘man child,” Braune sees still

more, ‘‘ The woman has the deepest and most living interest in—humanity.’
(Our Age and its Mission, Leipzic 1850.)

. JOHN XVI. 21. 379

God has wisely and graciously so ordered it, for the compensation
of pangs and the continuance of the human race, that the mother
presently remembereth no more the anguish, and therefore fearlessly
hath her desire towards her husband still. Gen. iii. 16, JU*87s
3NPwn—whence immediately follows his lordship.

But all this, since the Fall which introduced it, is only a sym-
bolical prophecy, written in nature by the finger of God, of the
new birth of the true, restored man, as we have already seen in
ch. ii.; no man doubts that here also the Lord speaks év wrapoi-
vig, although the current interpretation of the words exhibits
all variations of depth. The immediate and sudden transition
from the greatest anguish to the most compensative joy, as in
the case of the mother when she hath borne her child, and fur-
ther the necessity of these woes, and their being in the fruit of
them themselves turned to joy,—is a type of the corresponding
spiritual process which admits of comparison with no other in
the whole domain of nature. The first and fundamental tertium
comparationis, therefore, lies in the simple word— Your sorrow
shall be turned into joy. Further, in the spiritual fulfilment of
this the same man is even both in one person,—the bearing
mother and the child borne. In the Old Testament not only
are the pangs of birth a frequent figure of the greatest anguish
and distress generally (MPD), but the similitude often presses
onward into its spiritual interpretation. See Micah iv. 9, 10;
Hos. xiii. 13, in the right translation and exposition; but espe-
cially the remarkable passages Is. Ixvi. 7, 8 and xxvi. ,17-19,
into the deep meaning of which we cannot permit ourselves
now to enter, but leave it to the investigation of the thoughtful
reader.

Who is then the bearing one, to whom Jesus here promises
joy after and out of anguish? Manifestly, in the first place, as
in ver. 20 before and ver. 22 afterward it is declared—His dis-
ciples. How and when were they so troubled? (Lu. xxiv. 17.)
How did the resurrection tidings astound them as they mourned
and wept! (Mark xvi. 10.) And was not this sorrow concern-
ing Christ, this passion-sympathy, actually to them first of all
the anguish of the new birth, a divine sorrow on account of sin?
We may say that what was wanting in these first disciples to
the full deep penitence which must precede the reception of the

380 THE WOMAN IN TRAVAIL.

whole grace of Christ, was experienced now first in its depth
during these days. In their ears also sounded the word, piercing
their heart and conscience, which the Sufferer cried —Weep
not for Me but for yourselves! Under the cross of their Lord
they learned to sorrow for sin, as they had never been taught
before, with full understanding and feeling :—the joy of the
world showed them what the world was, and delivered them
from all the dreams of a Messiah’s kingdom in this world; this
drove them back into the depths of their own hearts, where they
found the root and essence of the same sin, and in the entire
obscuration of all else it was to them as if they were themselves
no better than the world, unworthy of their heavenly Friend ;
as if the triumphant power of sin in them had put an end to
all which their faith had hitherto apprehended and hoped for.
They saw Him no more, not even in the light of faith in remem-
brance! All their previous unbelief must become manifest to
them as condensed into one whole, their weakness must sink into
impotence and despondency. They saw and they tasted with
Christ, as far as in them lay, the sin of the world, and they,
moreover, their own sin in it—they were almost reduced to be-
come conscious only of stn, without a propitiation or redemption.’
This way from sorrow to joy was to the first disciples as the
pangs of birth for the outburst of resurrection-gladness; and
their way, as we shall see more plainly soon, shadowed out our
way to the same result. None of us appropriates, in true per-
sonal experience, the joy of Easter and Pentecost until the pas-
_sion-sorrow has first prepared the way.

But let us now penetrate still more deeply. What was all the
suffering of the disciples but a fellowship with the sufferings of
their Lord? Did not He first, in the deepest reality, feel in
Himself that anguish on account of sin, did He not experience
all the throes and pangs of death that He might, by suffering,
bring forth life? He Himself in such reality that His disciples,
to the end of their days, and of all time, might enter more and
more fully into the fellowship of this suffering unto their full

1 “ As if there were upon earth only sinners who godlessly mocked in
their sin, and sinners who wept helplessly beneath it.” The author unfolded
all the thoughts of this passage in the third of Zwanzig biblische Predigten,
Kempten bei Dannheimer, 1832.

JOHN XVI. 21. 381

consummate birth into life? He who does not at last refer
ver. 21 to Christ Himself has not yet extracted the whole mean-
ing of the word. Thus not merely (as Driseke says), “ With you
it will be as with a mother ;” although Fikenscher truly observes
that “Jesus would apply the similitude of the labouring mother
only to His disciples.” His express words of interpretation, that
is, speak only of them; but this interpretation itself is not other-
wise to be understood than as we first penetrate to the ground
of the matter, and perceive how Christ in His person endures
the regeneration-pangs of entire humanity. Cross and new-birth
are closely connected in one, as was shown to Nicodemus at the
beginning ; if for us the second comes out of the first by means
of the crucifying with Him of our old man, so must the Son of
man, who draws us into this fellowship, Himself first have entered
into a real fellowship with this old man—though without sin of
His own. An intimation of this is already found in the fact that
our Lord says here with the same emphasis—her hour 1s come—
as He previously had said concerning His own sufferings ; but it
more certainly approves itself by a right understanding of the
great matter itself." The death of Christ was “the sore birth-
act of entire humanity” (as Olshausen expresses himself), for
humanity was in Him not merely represented in efjigze, but essen-
tially comprised in Him. The Messiah, suffering and scorned,
bears the peoples all in His bosom, —thus is Ps. lxxxix. 50 rightly
interpreted and expounded ;” this is the seed which He has, the
fruit which He bears, the “943 DY to which the righteousness
shall be declared which He hath accomplished. (Ps. xxii. 30, 31.)
That which in Him is flesh of our flesh, infirmity derived from
Adam’s fall, becomes the vessel and instrument of redeeming
sensibility to sin and experience of death, by which comes in
the first breaker-through, the great birth of the new man in His
person, which may be regarded as the fully born Son of God

1 And this we would desire for Luthardt, who has adventured somewhat
too early on St John’s Gospel. Forgetting his earlier admission, he makes
the Lord here again speak for the time beyond the death and resurrection
—literally and alone concerning the new birth of the glorified church at His
coming! This is exegesis which condemns itself by its utter inappropriate
ness for the pulpit, contradicting the Spirit who preaches in the church.

2 See my Psalmenkommentar, which establishes this grammatically.

382 YE SHALL REJOICE.

in humanity, as well as the more than reinstated heavenly man
glorified in the Godhead. (1 Cor. xy. 47, 48.) Chrysostom,
bordering on this mystery, refers our saying to the @divas Tov
Oavarov, Acts ii. 24, in which we must be on our guard against
finding, with the superficial, an error of the Sept. for “ bands.”
The Sixw an, Ps. xvi. 5, the sorrow of hades, Christ has al-
ready secieatell upon the cross, so that He comes to the place,
where, indeed, many will yet be born to Him, as already the
living Forerunner and Conqueror.’ In this great process of
birth in death, the real prototype of the regeneration of every
child of ok Mate which is thus made possible, He is Himself the
labouring mother; but we may and we must more precisely say
that the oe of all birth and new-birth is the Spirit, who at
the beginning of the new-creation out of the first ruin, of light
out of the darkness, wrought brooding upon the waters (Gen. i. 2
nan>),’ who now as wvedua aidviov (Heb. ix. 14) overcomes
the flesh, rends the veil of death in order to the breaking through
of the Godin previously prepared for in humanity, but now
made perfect; who since then as the Spirit of the church brings
to their full issue all the further pangs which produce the bre-
thren of the First-born. Here we can speak only in the lan-
guage of Theosophists and Mystics; and common pits is
impatient of this, and turns away from it.

Ver. 22. The three stages in the experience of the oe
which are here brought into one perspective of prophecy and
yet plainly distinguished, have been brought into prominence
by Beck,’ with his wonted depth of insight into Scripture.
“One feast followed another after the passion, in which they had
sorrow: at the resurrection He saw them again, but (we would
add) they saw not Him yet in full clearness, they had not their
full joy through fear of the Jews; first at the ascension, when
they saw Him go to the Father (@Aerovtav aitav, Acts i. 9),
their hearts rejoiced; but this also would have vanished as a

1 See my Reden der Apostel i. 42, and the Psalmenkom., where the
whole difficulty of the distinction betaveen “>a from >3h nad “oan from
bah is fully entered into.

2 Basil. lib. 2 Hexam. cvédeare xosi Cooyoves Thy TAY vdaTav Diow nord
Thy ixovee THs Erwolovons dpyidos; comp. Deut. xxxii. 11.

_ § Christl. Reden ii. Band S. 63 ff.

JOHN XVI. 22. 383

beautiful dream if the Comforter had not assured them at the
pentecost that no man should take from them their joy. Here
also we see why now dyrowae stands instead of dweoGe, for not
only does all spring from His return in the resurrection, but
their seeing and beholding will be first consummated in the
Spirit as the consequence of that. That their heart should re-
joice—is the echo of Old Testament words, as in Ps. xxii. 27
the pregnant ayo p23? m—and still more plainly Is. Ixvi. 14,
Kal drpecOe, al xaphoerat 4 Kapdia tuav. This last parallel
teaches us at once two things: that the last fulfilment of this
promise reaches forward to the end of the chirch’s victory, and
that this joy of heart is the contrast of the world’s joy turned
into mourning. (Is. lxv. 13,14.) Yes, indeed, this is a joy
against which (even now) the laughter of the world is a
howling!” Did the world rejoice around the cross of Christ
according to ver. 20, in any such sense that their heart actually
was glad? That could not have been, nor can it be so ever.
The joy of the world is no deeper than the skin; it is a sickly
spasmodic tumult in the flesh, against the feeling of the heart
and the testimony of the conscience. “They laugh—but
anguish is in their hearts!” It is only because they enter not
into their hearts that they can for a while enjoy a forced satis-
faction. The world which, with or without Christ, would evade
the thought of sin and death, the deepest ground of all sorrow,
can secure its joy only by the dissipation of its inmost nature,
and by becoming deaf to its voice. Therefore its joy is loud,
while yet silent joy is alone genuine and profound. When its
gladness and mockery become silent around Golgotha, nothing
remains but that all the people smite upon their breasts. The
world needs something from without for its joy, because it has
not its source within, no child of this world can rejoice alone
with his God; but the children of God through Christ seek it
in their hearts, and in their hearts they have salvation, their
true joy. The world is satisfied without satisfaction—We lose
not the hearts’ peace in the midst of all the tribulation which
may befall. The world misunderstands and perverts the word
of Ecclus. xxx. 22-25, which the pious man intended not indeed
in the sense of Wisd. ii. 6-9, but yet, being without the Spirit
of inspiration, has expressed in a way easily misunderstood—It

384 YE SHALL REJOICE.

fears and drives from it sorrow, as death! But believers under-
stand better, according to 2 Cor. vii. 10, and resign themselves
willingly to that wholesome tribulation which only increases
their joy.

And still the Lord’s last words are true to them— Their joy
no man taketh away! (Mark the hint that it is otherwise with
the world.) The root and principle and strength of their joy
cannot be touched, however afflictions may come; for 2 Cor.
i. 5 holds eternally true, and suffering with Christ becomes itself
ever increasing consolation and joy. As long as the disciples
are in the world, they do indeed need a preservation from evil ;
for there is danger ever present of their joy being taken away.
But if they do not themselves fall from it and destroy their own
peace, no man else, not the world and its princes can rob them
of their once-received joy. (Just as chap. x. 28 was expounded.)
The present apes, once more,’ has great emphasis, it embraces
the whole time to come, but means finally the goal of consum-
mate security, 1 Pet. i.7-9. Thus the entire promise, in as far
as it includes not merely the whole future life of these first dis-
ciples but the whole succession of future disciples, extends very
far, actually even to the end of the days. ‘This is the truth of
the exposition which would be prematurely eschatological. And
here we plainly perceive (preparatorily to ver. 23) what is the
key to the understanding of the inmost meaning of the word,
that which alone satisfies its meaning: The way of the first dis-
ciples between the passion and pentecost is a type of the whole
interval of the Lord's church between His departure to the Father
and His final return. This is to be understood according to
the genius of the New Testament, where the prophetical-typical
history already carries in itself the essence of its fulfilment
(which in the Old Testament only sometimes and in a certain
sense preparatorily is the case).

The child-bearing woman is further the church through the
Spirit within her, yea, humanity itself as far as it is called, and
by the Spirit also within it prepared, to become the church.
Now are the many children born, like the dew of the morning-

‘
1 For neither ¢Zere nor dei is a correct reading: both originated in an
ignorant emendation.

JOHN XVI. 22. 1 385

dawn; but the dawn is ever preceded by the night. That
which is received and prepared in secret (Ps. cxxxix. 15) is, in
every one who withstands not this preparation, at the right time
when his hour is come, born in a first complete birth. But the
new-born disciples of Christ have still much sorrow in the
world, they enter through much tribulation into the kingdom
of God; the whole church included as One in Christ has no
other way to pass in its process through the ages. In the
meanwhile, and all around it, the world rejoices on. The
children of this world take their childish pleasure in natural
life, in its strength, gifts, and advantages—this is the least
thing, although that which in children is natural and relatively
innocent, in the adult can be no other than folly. Great folly
indeed, to be willing to pursue their undisturbed pleasures—
and to be able, in as far as it is a maiter of will, and there is no
heart towards God and eternity! But the case is worse, for in
the ground of the heart and conscience the claims of God are
ever enforced, His reproving Spirit continually speaks. Thus
the world rejoices not only without God but against God; it
rejoices wilfully im sin, makes that its pleasure, which should be
the ground of all true and salutary sorrow. Then cometh the
Christ, whom the Spirit preaches, across its path—and the
world despises and crucifies Him in His members, rejoices in
an imaginary victory over Him; and that is, in the awful ful-
filment of the first type, the lying Passover and perverted Purim
which our modern pseudo-Christendom, with its babbling about
its own God and its own “redemption,” celebrates.

But he who—and he alone who can no longer rejoice with
this world, finds imperishable joy, and that ever more increas-
ing in the way through true sorrow. If we are found in this
way of true discipleship we cannot idly enjoy this life, for we
have learned with the Preacher the vanity of all things earthly,
and the dread solemnity of death and judgment. We say to
the laughter, which dances on the edge of the abyss, It is mad ;
and to the mirth, which -prepares for itself eternal anguish,
What doeth it? (Kccles. ii. 2.) We have known and felt,
yea, we know and feel in more and more entire crucifixion with
Christ, our own sinfulness and sin; and if in this our sorrow,
as we hang upon the cross, the world in mocking sympathy

VOL. VI. 2B

386 IN THAT DAY YE SHALL ASK ME NOTHING.

would reach to us its deadening potion, we put it from us as
our Lord did. All worldly consolation is a mockery and
horror, in all worldly joy we taste the bitterness of sin. There-
fore we also mourn and weep, as our Lord did over Jerusalem,
over the sin and blindness of the world, in the spirit of His
members and brethren, Ps. xxxv. 12-14. Those who are
marked with the n of the cross sigh and cry for all the abomi-
nations that be done in the midst of Jerusalem, Ezek. ix. 4:
And in this last sense we have much distress, that we see not
Jesus.'_ Nevertheless, with all the ever-recurring affliction? of
His people, there is ever recurring also for His church and
every individual member of it the Easter and the Pentecost,
witnessed by constant external and internal victories, in which
the Living One sees us again and quickens us; infuses into our
hearts new joy through His Spirit, a joy which finally no man
can take away. As the sum of all: Every disciple of Jesus
through his entire life, the church of Christ as a whole down
to the end of the days, learns and experiences in the cross of
Christ that true sorrow which genders joy, receives and enjoys
this as the fruit of the resurrection and Pentecost in a progres-
sive measure ever approaching perfection—until the great day
dawns which will be followed by no night, because light and
darkness, the new heavenly humanity and the humanity which
is lost, will have then been sundered for ever through the
throes of the Spirit which continue through the ages, and bring
that to perfection in the church which Christ brought to per-
fection in Himself.

Vers. 23, 24. When, in immediate connection with what has
just been said, we find the greatest promise connected with the
strikingly prominent év éxeivy Th 7épg—it becomes needful to

1“ Yea, the Christian grieves that he does not jind Jesus, whom he would
fain meet everywhere, in so many ages and in so many places, in so many
men and in so many families, in so many circumstances and in so many
solemn offices. It irks him sore that he seeks Him in vain without whom
there is no truth, no life, no peace, in so many books, churches, sermons,
songs, and prayers!” Brandt’s Predigtbuch zu Jubilate.

? For every new generation of men must undergo this pang of birth, the
same transition from sorrow to joy, which is by no means the result of our
““ weakness of faith.” (This against Schleiermacher, who will evade the
strict reference of this to every individual! Homil. ii. 533.)

JOHN XVI. 23, 24. 387

mark carefully the meaning of this formula. It is obvious that
it cannot mean any actual individual day; and we cannot avoid
seeing that the time signified by it begins with the day of the
resurrection, if we have rightly understood that the great turn-
ing-point of the Future, which our Lord since ch. xiv. 3 has had
always before His eyes, has its commencement in the resurrection
morning after the night of suffering and death. The same form
of expression is used to signify this in ch. xiv. 20. But as cer
tainly as we have seen embraced in vers. 20-22 a comprehensive
glance at all the future of the church, must we, in this connected
but heightened conclusion of all, give the words their furthest
reach of signification. ‘The Lord, as we think at least, intends
this év éxeivn TH t)€pg, corresponding with the prophetic O12
8177, first of all to include the whole period of the dispensation
of the Spirit, which already typically commenced in His first
return and seeing them again ;—and then pre-eminently the end
of this time, the consummation of the fulness of the Spirit in His
_own, when He shall have unfolded and imparted all that is
Christ’s to His people. This is plain from the greatness of the
promise connected with it, which can never have its full realisa-
tion till that goal is Seihsluae: And in that day ye shall ‘ask Me
nothing! Great and unfathomable word! The ancient exposi-
tors, finding that aireiy is subsequently spoken of, would take
épwrav in the same sense of putting a request ;' Grotius, and after
him B -Crustus, repeats this, the latter asserting that “ cparav as
in ver. 26 is that referred to an individual matter which aitei-
o8at is in general.” But ver. 26 is far from being as decisive as
that in ver. 19 épwrav is questioning and so recurs in ver. 30 :—
the necessity of asking, as abolished through consummated
knowledge in the light and life of the Spirit, is evidently the
fundamental idea. It may be remarked that as both meanings
are included in the one Heb. 5yw%, the ideas of begging and ques-
tioning pass one into the other; hence Theophylact more cor-
rectly afterward, and Augustin, admit both senses in the word.
We shall see how much truth there is in this; and now holding
to the main idea obviously indicated, we would ask ourselves,
long after Pentecost, whether we have reached such a point

1 So Chrys., Theophyl., Theod. Mops., Theod. Heracl., and others.

388 IN THAT DAY YE SHALL ASK ME NOTHING.

that we have nothing more (ov«-—ovdév) actually to inquire
about? Whether the Apostles themselves reached that point
even in their life? Augustin says, We hear the Lord Christ
inquired of, after He had risen. The last question at the ascen-
sion, Acts i. 6, is inquiring enough, and is even repelled by
being referred to the far futurity. It is true, indeed, that a not
asking through joy and contentment is here promised, even as
in ver. 5 the not asking through sorrow was blamed ; it is never-
theless wrong to restrict this strongly emphasized word to mean
merely, Ye shall not ask concerning that which I now speak of,
ye shall not despondin sly ask about My going away. (Theophyl.:
ovdev ToLovToV olov Kal mpanv: Tov dmdyes ;) For the mod
viayels, which the Lord desired in ver. 5, was not the question-.
ing of sorrowful perplexity, but the true inquiry of spiritual
intelligence; when therefore He now speaks of “ asking no-
thing more,’ He can mean only the consummate satisfaction
both of knowledge and of experience (which always go together).
(Theoph. afterward correcting himself, says, ravta yap yvooerOe
év mvevpatt.) Had the disciples reached this point at the day
of Pentecost? Did not the Spirit lead them by degrees into
all truth? And lead them, too, through the instrumentality of
this further prayer for increasing light and power of life in the
Spirit? And is not praying also a kind of asking?! We find,
indeed, in ver. 26 an aitrjcecGe connected with the év éxeivyn 7
nvépa, but this contradiction is only thus to be explained, that
there the entire period of the dispensation of the Spirit is re-
ferred to, while here in ver. 23 it is specially its goal and end.
The way to no more supplicating and no more questioning, is to
supplicate and question all the more diligently till that day
comes :—that is the connection in which ver. 23 is continued.
This connection, however, is very generally misunderstood.
Even Meyer restricts the not asking, as if their praying never-
theless was altogether parallel and simultaneous, when he re-
marks, “ Ye shall be able then with all your doubts, etc., to
turn directly to heaven, ye shall need My visible presence in the
flesh no more.” Just as Neander, “ They should then need His
sensible presence no longer, the Father Himself would impart to

1 “ Thus all asking will not cease, since every petition is also an inquiry.”
V. Gerlach.

JOHN XVI. 23, 24. 389

them all things.” Grotius, similarly, “ The éwé preceding
seems to prove that this member is to be opposed to what fol-
lows. The disciples were troubled, because they would not then
have Jesus present.” Nor otherwise Bengel, Ye shall apply to
the Father Himself. And that with the dismissal of all desire
for the visible presence of Jesus." Origen pressed this so far
as to deduce from the imaginary antithesis between éué and top
matépa the inference that prayer should not be directed to the
Son. (de Orat. § 50.) But we need only to push the thought
to this its extreme point, and its incorrectness immediately ap-
pears. It would be altogether out of harmony with the funda-
mental idea of these last discourses, that Jesus should thus place
His own person in opposition to the Father (or even to the
Spirit). It is obvious that then first do His disciples pray to or
ask of Him aright, when they pray to the Father or inquire of
the Spirit. (And we do not find with the aire?re a second time
Tov Tatépa expressly added, just as we do not in ch. xiv.—and
this is here of more significance!) Thus the emphasis does not
lie upon the eué, but on the strong otk épwrijcere ovdév, the
full meaning of which must not be impaired. In ch. xiv. 20
perfect knowledge was promised; but in this passage that con-
summation comes into more decided prominence, as the proper
and final goal of all. We were right, consequently, in asserting
at the outset that the promise of the coming again in these chap-
ters embraces all that may come under that idea in one great
perspective, extending finally to that great day ;? we see here
how that assertion approves itself, and how most appropriate it
was that these farewell discourses for His then present and

1 Similarly Fikenscher, ‘‘ The emphasis is on the word Me. The dis-
ciples should no longer ask Jesus, but His Spirit—then would all curious,
spiritless, anxious, carnal questioning cease.”

? Kling reaches the same result, and finds here in Jno. xiv.—xvi. ‘* that
the Parousia of Christ in a wider sense rules all, there is a continuous reve-
lation, a continuous coming and making Himself present—which, however,
is in a more marked and decisive manner evidenced at the great epochs of
the history of the kingdom of God, and at the turning-points of its develop-
ment.” (Rheinische Monatsch. 1846.) He rightly places Matt. xxviii. 20
by the side of Jno. xiv.-xvi. as the ground-text of eschatology, but we
would add that the “ until” is not wanting even in St John; we have it in
ch. xvi. 22, 23.

390 IN THAT DAY YE SHALL ASK ME NOTHING.

future disciples should have so extensive a reach. The éyrouast
tpas here in ver. 22 is, in its general meaning for the church
still from age to age pursuing the way of the cross, the same
final and absolute return which we found in the beginning at
ch. xiv. 3:—to the individual when he is taken home in death,
to the whole body at the Parousia which we wait for. Thus
the end falls back into and coincides with the beginning.

In the eternal glory, which will be the final issue of all tem- |

poral adversity, “all our past doubts will be solved, all our
complaints silenced, and all our questioning answered for ever ;
then will be fully accomplished the saying, And in that day ye
shall ask Me nothing more; that is, ye shall know and under-
stand all, ye shall look through the whole way through your
sorrows past into eternal joy, the whole way through the world
of your tribulation unto Me who overcame the world.”* Dietz,
after discoursing upon our bias to ask unseasonable questions in
our affliction, says, “ But one day in that world He will, in a
manner beyond all comprehension of ours, justify Himself for
all; He will make it clear to our eyes that His ways were alto-
gether goodness and truth.” And then shall we ask Him no
more.” And in the same manner speaks Luther in his Jubilate-
sermon, where, doing full justice to the understanding given by
the Spirit, he asserts notwithstanding, “ But in this present life
nothing is to be fundamentally and fully understood.” These are
thoughts which a preacher applying the words to the congrega-
tion cannot avoid deducing, and this homiletic exegesis must
approve itself to be the sole perfect interpretation. Do we now
carry our thoughts upon the Lord’s promise further than He
Himself*carried them? Storr, bound by his false grammatical-
historical exegesis, asks nevertheless with all simplicity, “ May
we not also apply to the final goal of hope which Jesus had set

1 As many years ago I expounded it in the sermon quoted before.

2 Then will the fulfilment go beyond the figure of the woman in labour,
since the no more remembering the anguish will be fulfilled in heaven, and yet
not fulfilled. In nature, as in the beginnings of grace, we must forget the
anguish in order to be happy ; but the pangs of the passion and new birth
of the soul will be an eternal memorial to the honour of God, whose spiritual
working they proclaim ; and in heaven first will the anguish itself become
joy. The remembrance of penitence and chastisement, and therefore of the
sin which needed them, will not interrupt but heighten our happiness.

— =. = oe

JOHN XVI. 23, 24.°, 39

before His Apostles, and of which His visit after His death was
the seal, that which He spoke concerning the time when they
should at His resurrection see Him again—In that day ye shall
ask Me nothing? Will it not indeed be pre-eminently true of
that period when we shall be with Jesus in His Father’s house,
beholding His visible glory for ever, that then we shall need to
ask no more?” But what right should we have to push the
meaning of our Lord’s words so far beyond the meaning in
which He is supposed to have used them? The solution of.
the whole lies here, that He spoke this ov« épwtjcete ovdév
concerning the day of resurrection or pentecost, only in as far
as that introductory day was the starting-point and type of the
perfect day of the Spirit, and in its strict literalness only of the
consummation and close of this latter.

Our way to heaven, also, in the following and fellowship of
Jesus in His way through sorrow to the Father, is conducting us
to this same end, the perfect issues of this great birth. Jesus is
still continually giving us His pledge that we shall in a little
while see Him again; the difference is only this, that now the
day has already dawned, the access is open wide, inasmuch as
true asking and praying presently finds hearing and answer, and
faith having the earnest of the Spirit has the victory of the future
already in anticipation. Jesus takes His farewell of the disciples
in the word which we shall hear in ver. 33; thus there is as yet
no perfect joy and satisfaction, there is ‘still the interchange of
anxiety and confidence, of dying and living (2 Cor. vi. 9, 10)
—after the forgotten pangs of travail new tribulation —after
the I believe! I know! many a new doubt and mystery. And
on this account our Lord, after having pointed to the final goal,
continues His encouragement in the way thus— But now, in the
bright hope of that great day, ask and pray as ye have never done
before !

The ’Apyav anv which commences this gracious encourage-
ment has misled many, as in the church pericopes (where it
might be justified), so also in exposition, to begin a new section
with this Verily. Luther: “ He has now ended the sermon,
and told the disciples all they were to know. He will now close ;
and gives a final encouragement to prayer.” But this disturbs
the compact connection—Till then pray on! and the new and

392 ASK AND RECEIVE.

closing section is indicated plainly in ver. 25 by the rabdra
AeAdAnKa. The Lord simply repeats. here what He had said in
ch. xiv. 13, 14; and we must refer thither for the exposition of
praying in His name, and of the universality of the promise (here
dca dv—). Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My name—this
is not a “reproof” (as Braune and Rieger think), but confirms
our exposition in ch. xiv., of what this praying in the name of
Jesus properly is. Such prayer had not been possible to any even
the highest saints and petitioners, not’ to the disciples themselves,
before Jesus was glorified. The Lord’s Prayer itself became
then a great truth to the disciples, when they came to know that
Jesus had gone from them to the Father, and for what end He
had gone. “ This manner of prayer generally had never yet
been known among the saints upon earth—it announces itself as
something altogether new.’ As in the Old-Testament way of
holiness the problem had ever been to learn better how to pray,
so also we have in the practice of prayer in the name of Jesus the
only way of progress toward perfect holiness, knowledge, and joy
of heart. All the discourses, exhortations, encouragements of our
Lord find their ultimate aim in directing us to perfect prayer:
therefore we have this word of the beginning of the discourse,
which stands also in the middle of it, ch. xv. 7, recurring with
all its emphasis at the close. Aire?re—this imperative of the
Sermon on the Mount, now illustrated and strengthened by in
My name, is uttered here at the farewell with the utmost graci-
ousness. It is the most benevolent permission, as well as the
most solemn and urgent commandment, of Him whose desire is
our joy. Ask, so shall ye receive! Many alas who only half
pray, and do not urge their knocking even to pressing in, cannot
afterward receive even what they have prayed for! But persist-
ent prayer “ obtains for me the blessing that I can receive and
appropriate that which the Father gives. I actually obtain the

1 In Krummacher’s Elias ni. S. 85-102, there is an episode on praying in
the name of Jesus which gives the truth beautifully, but in too paradoxi-
cal expression. Thus, when it is said with strong emphasis that it is equal
to our standing in the place of Jesus, we miss the befitting counterpart
—rather Jesus standing in‘ours. And the substance of our prayer is indeed
presupposed, but not adequately expressed, —that we must pray only as

touching the kingdom of God, and for everything else as subject to its con-
ditions.

| JOHN XVI. 25-33. 393
hand which enables me to lay hold of and receive the heavenly
gifts.” (C. K. Rieger.) Only in this way will His joy in us,
even as our own finally, become full, wemAnpwpévn, so that no-
thing more shall be wanting to us! See ch. xv. 11, and mark
now the goal to which ver. 22 pointed. The world has its vain,
sinful, distracted, enforced joy over the abyss into which it is
plunging; and that it cannot pray, either in joy or in the tribu-
lations which already give their warning, is its true misery and
the beginning of its judgment. But the disciples of Jesus pray
themselves in the way of the cross even into heaven, where they
finally have their full fruition. Then will they see Him, whom,
having not seen, they love, and have believed in; but the faith,
which looks to this end, must, during the whole progress of the
way, rightly understand and joyfully appropriate the word of the
true Comforter— Yet a little while and ye shall see Me, for I will
come to take you to the Father where I am, I will return to
fetch you home.

FINAL REFERENCE TO THE GREAT FUTURE: NOW IN PARABLE,
THEN OPENLY : THE LOVE AND FAITH OF THE DISCIPLES IN
MUCH WEAKNESS; LAST CONSOLATION DERIVED FROM HIS
OVERCOMING THE WORLD.

(Ch. xvi. 25-33.)

Ver. 25 opens the final winding up of these discourses to the
disciples, the proper conclusion of the whole, rounded by “ these
things have I said unto you” both at its beginning and end. Ina
last reference to their future understanding the Lord declares
emphatically all His previous sayings to have been obscure, to
be as yet—not so much unintelligible in themselves (for how
could He ever so speak?)—as not understood by the disciples.
The reason of this is twofold. As no prophetic word can be
properly and fully understood before its actual fulfilment, so
here—-When the things of which He had spoken shall come to
pass, the veil of obscurity will fall from His mysterious words.

1 “ Until ye obtain all things and have your full joy ; which prayer will
be first fulfilled on the last day.” (Luther.)

394 IN PROVERBS AND OPENLY.

Nevertheless, the blessed disciples would have understood at least
much more than they did, if the veil had not been upon their
hearts and minds. Yea, they believed in Him and loved Him, as
He graciously and solemnly testifies here; but their faith is so
little based upon knowledge, their love is still so weak, that He
is constrained to connect with this the fore-announcement of
their immediately impending cxoprifec Gat eis ta idva. His con-
cluding address, therefore, resolves itself, as we said in the intro-
ductory analysis, into three parts. In vers. 25-28 He consoles
them, while He, without any questioning or suggestion of theirs,
alludes to the feeling of His words’ mysteriousness which filled
their minds, by the promise of a future avayyé\Xew trappnoia*
from which will follow their asking and receiving unto fulness
of joy ; yea, He goes so far as to assure them, for the sake of
the love and faith, which they already have, of the especial love
of the Father, and to seal this again in ver. 28 by the plainest
recognition of their faith in His having come forth from God.—
But when the simple disciples prematurely suppose, thereby re-
vealing their ignorance, that they already understand Him, and
regard this as the promised future enlightenment, asserting their
.weak confused we believe with an emphatic by this—He is con-
strained in vers. 31, 32 to answer, It is true that ye do believe,
but how soon will My passion make manifest your real and great
weakness! And now He is come to the very threshold of the
hour, He can say no more but must let it come, that it may bring
all things with it and make all things plain ; He therefore breaks
off abruptly with a final word of encouragement and victory
which merges all the anxiety of His present and future disciples
(not forgotten even here !) into the peace which He bequeathes
and promises, the foundation of that peace being His own victory,
anticipated before the conflict in perfect faith. Finally, to wit-
ness and seal the J have overcome there remains nothing more
than the prayer to the Father who glorifieth Him and-whom He
glorifieth.
Ver. 25. IIapowia is, in common Greek, as we all know, a
proverb, a common current word, which not only—as in the
proverbs of all nations—sets forth a general truth and often

1 For we read dveyysaw here also, after vers. 13, 14, 15, and not, with
Tisch. and Lach. zzeyvy<aa —of which more anon.

a ee

JOHN XVI. 25. 395

recurring fact in a figurative form, but also in this figurativeness
intimates a teaching—wise or the reverse—which is not at once
manifest." In oriental scriptural phraseology it appears still
more plain that every twapowuddes is also aivwywarades. And
we know the pregnant meaning of the Hebrew own, for which
the Sept. not only in the superscription of Solomon’s sentences,
but frequently elsewhere (e.g. 1 Sam. x. 12; Ezek. xvii. 2), has
mapoiwia. In Sirach it is the common expression for the sen-
tences of the wise which are to be pondered—ch. vi. 35, wapor-
plat cvvéoews—ch. vili. 8—xlvii. 17, rapowpias Kai trapaBonais
—ch. xxxix. 3, amoxpuda Tapoyuar, év aiviywace TapaBonrov.
When the Lord here says that He had spoken év rapowiass,
He presupposes first (what is generally overlooked) that He,
Himself the truth and more than Solomon, could not do other-
wise than speak in sentences full of deep meaning; but then
He makes prominent the mysteriousness, unintelligible to the
disciples, of His sayings, as the opposite wappynoia immediately
shows. Further, His radta XeAdAn«a refers not merely to what
had directly preceded, but first to the whole of the farewell dis-
courses, and then further back and more generally to all His
sayings. We must not adhere too closely (in opposition to the
whole scriptural usage as derived from the Old Testament) to
the specific signification proverb, parable, or similitude, as if only
such were meant in the mapoiuias as that of the shepherd in
ch. x. 6. It is true that since ch. xiv. 1 there has been much
proverbial, parabolical, figurative expression ;—the woman in
child-birth, the friends and the servants, the vine; and, besides
these, even the way, the house, the dwellings, yea even the
official name of the Spirtt, wapdxAntos.? But has there not

1 The derivation from rapa and ojos, on, the way, is certain, but the
signification not so plain. Most probably—obvia usuque trita formula
dicendi. Not derived from the sentences which have been set up as way-
marks—as some have artificially supposed. Thus, not in the etymology,
but in the thing itself, for which the word was originated, lies the further
idea that it is (as Lampe cites a definition) —aédyos trinarvrrav TO oaQEes
adoaQein 4 06 aicbyrav rpmyeaTtov — TPLy LUT oe vONTa, 4 ET InExpuye-
evny thy dAnbeiav ereuQaivav.

2 The remark of Hess as it respects ‘this last is very acute, that in the
Acts and the Epistles this figurative expression is no longer found, because
the then present Comforter is known and experienced as the Spirit. Else<

396 IN PROVERBS AND OPENLY.

been as much or even more plain literal discourse interposed, in
the form of which there has been nothing mysterious or con-
cealed? And yet all this must be included in these things !
We must consequently regard two things as established in this
still figurative sentence:—that “in proverbs” indicates ob-
scurity generally, and that the ground of it was specially in
the disciples themselves. When in Ezekiel the third great
period of prophecy began,’ in which prophecy assumed its
clearest form, as literally plain as was then possible and fit,
Ezekiel—who unites in himself as it were the more plain Jere-
miah and the most obscure Daniel—gives always the interpre-
tation of his visions and similitudes, even as afterwards Zech-
ariah did. Nevertheless they say of him (so that he finally
spoke in plainer terms) —817 Down Bion Non, ch. xxl. 5 (xx. 49).
In the same sense all that which the Lord had now spoken so
clearly remains to the disciples, év mrapoupiats (for which the
Heb. N. T. should rather have put Dw? than nivN3); and
concerning His plainest words they say—we know not what He
saith. This is the meaning of the Lord, by which He dis
closed their thought and laid bare their darkness, as they after-
wards, ver. 30, acknowledge. Thus Glassius is not to be
despised here, when he remarks :—The év zrapoupias is to be
understood here dawopévws, putatively, res pro ret opinione—
only that this not understanding of the disciples has itself an
objective ground in the futurition of the things spoken of.
The Lord also had expounded His parables to the disciples, as
Ezekiel to all the people, had commended their seeing eyes and
hearing ears, had graciously imputed to them an understanding
of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. (Mark iv, 34;
Matt. xiii. 11, 16.) But in that higher degree of contrast
with a true understanding which the evayyédvov mvevpatiKoy
discloses, those expositions themselves, equally with the plainest

where we find, e¢.g., in the letters of the churches of Lyons and Vienne
(Euseb. v. 1), that a martyr had éy éavre@ roy rapaxanrov.

1 The first was the directly historical prophecy from Jacob’s blessing
downward, culminating in Samuel’s predictions; the second introduces the
typical cycle, which rests upon 2 Sam. vii., develops itself through the
Psalms and Prophets, and conclusively in Jeremiah and Daniel. Compare
my Isaiah, Introduction, 8. 21-30.

JOHN XVI. 25. 397

words (see Lu. xviii. 34), remained even to the disciples pure
parable, which yet waited for its interpretation.

The épyerat dpa which follows appears to lose its strict con-
nection through the add, which is at least an uncertain reading,
and inserted simply for the sake of a superficial meaning. It
should be either cai épyetae (which also may be a mere inter-
polation), or, as we prefer, the plain unconriected épyerau.
This best corresponds with the Lord’s meaning, in which the
consolation was intended to follow directly, and so far quite
parallel with the former clause as in both sentences something
real and necessary in the process of the matter was to be an-
nounced. They might even be connected by yép—All that
has been hitherto said must necessarily have been obscure be-
fore the day of the Spirit, for this will first come in order to
your understanding! Then the soothing and reassuring pro-
mise is found already bound up in the former clause. We see
that wappnoia, or év wappnoig, proceeding first from confidence
in the speaker (ch. vii. 13, 26), indicates further generally that
which is disclosed and open, as in Mark viii. 32, Col. 1. 15, and
in other passages of this gospel, ch. vil. 4, x. 24, xi. 14, 54
Lachm. and Tisch. would read dzrayyeA@ instead of dvayyedo,
which however in the Synoptics as well as in St John, ch. iv.
51, xx. 18, has reference rather to external reports; the avay-
yéAXewv is more in St John’s style, and here reminds of ch. xvi.
13, etc.: The Lord Himself will do it, in that the Spirit doeth
it. Compare also for the emphasis of the word the Samaritan
woman’s expectation—dvayyere? tiv wdvta, ch. iv. 25. We
cannot see how, as Liicke thinks, there is a mrapowuia in the
Lord’s describing the Spirit’s communication as His own; this
interchange of the expression throughout these chapters (now
—I myself; now—the Spirit), contains rather a profound
truth, as we have already seen. Does not the Lord most ac-
tually and essentially come and speak Himself in the Spirit,
with whom He is one?

TIept rod wratpos has been understood in two ways: either as —
equivalent to ra zepi, the counsels of the Father ;* or, speci-
fically (according to ch. xiv. 20), concerning the Father as

1 Grotius: What is the Father’s will touching My kingdom, and what
things ye ought to pray for from Him.

398 IN PROVERBS AND OPENLY.

Mine, that I am and how I am in and from the Father, and
the Father in Me. But there is no dilemma here; the two are
indissolubly one, the former being wrapped up in the latter
alone. ‘The final and full revelation of the New Testament
through the Son in the Spirit terminates in what could never,
properly speaking, be plainly revealed in the Old Testament—
that there is a’ Father in the Godhead. And thus, inasmuch
as we penetrate through the Son to the otherwise hidden primal
principle of the Father-God, this is the most emphatic and
perfect note of His full revelation—-epi tod matpos avay-
yer@; and Liicke with great propriety compares ch. xvii. 6, J
have manifested Thy name.

But when came the hour which the Lord here promises ?
Assuredly not first at that end of the day to which ver. 23
especially pointed, for @pa must indicate a specific time within
the bounds of that day. Thus it is the first hour of it, the
dawn in which the day is actually come; and because it is come,
ver. 26, returning back from the end in ov« épwrav ovdév to the
aireiv which leads to that end, speaks again of éxelvn TH Hmepa.
Nevertheless, the “coming” hour is especially the beginning,
and that as opposed to a preceding hour of distraction, anxiety,
and obscuration of faith, of which ver. 32 speaks designedly
with the’same expression. The two hours are altogether the
same, as we find them described in juxtaposition in ver. 16;
consequently, what was there said concerning the terminus a
quo for the seeing and knowing of the disciples, holds good
here. The great transition begins in the resurrection, and
during the forty days the Lord can already speak to them
aappnola of the kingdom of God, and open their understandings
to comprehend the Scripture and His discourses as they had
not been opened before; but it is the Spirit who brings the
completion and sets the seal upon all. Even at the end of the
forty days (as the last veil upon the Apostles’ minds shows, Acts
i. 6), the promise of the Holy Spirit was yet pending, and what
Luther says was true: “ That which I now tell you in bodily
presence, I will by the Spirit illustrate and speak openly, so that
ye shall apprehend the Father, and what My going to Him is,
—that I sit at His right hand as your Representative and In-
tercessor, that all things have come to pass in Me in order to

JOHN XVI. 23. ; 399

your being able to come to the Father also.” Yes, verily, of
the Father, that He through Me is yours also, and ye His be-
loved children who have free access to His presence—this
also is plainly included in the simple tod warpos, which from
this time is the only expression used, vers. 26-28 and again
ver. 32.

When the Romanists bring ver. 25 to support their pro-
minent doctrine of the “ obscurity of Holy Scripture,” they are
guilty of the folly of either disowning the free and living ad-
ministration of the Spirit in connection with it, or of digging a
channel for the Spirit in ecclesiastical tradition and authority.
Does not the Lord promise here, when He is speaking of that
obscurity, the coming of clear light, and that for all His dis-
ciples, for every inquiring and praying mind, without any fur-
ther instrumentality ?—When Olshausen somewhat restricts
the fulness of the promise by saying, “ But it may be asserted
that human language generally is a wapotpia, since it'can never
be adequate fully to express Divine things,” he is so far right
as his meaning is that of the Apostle in 1 Cor. xiii. 12. The
figurativeness of all human speech in bringing Divine things
into human relations, must be conceded with its proper limita-
tions; and consequently the imperfection (6: écdmtpouv év
aiviypate) of all our thoughts and notions as bound down to
human language; even the apostolical words and writings, in
which the Spirit speaks, retain their Drouin into which we with
the Apostles themselves desire to look, not attaining to that im-
mediate contemplation which is reserved for eternity. But the
avayyédxXeur, which is internal in the Spirit (not aXe again)
is something very different from the expression of what it deals
with. Nor is it asif the Lord “were opposing to the use of
this weak medium (human speech) the promise of the inter-
position of a more internal and essential medium”—for the
speech of the Spirit is as speech perfect and strong, as in itself
the Aadetv of the Lord had already been, but there comes with it
and in addition to it the internal opening of the essential under-
standing which can indeed never be represented in word. He
who speaketh in the Spirit knows and means more than the
letter can express; yet the letter again is perfect to this end,
that all who hear the Spirit may thereby receive the true know-

400 I SAY NOT THAT I WILL PRAY FOR YOU.

ledge; it expresses even more than may as yet be developed in
the personal consciousness of him who is thus moved by the
Spirit. But the knowledge given by the Spirit is and must
ever be,—albeit only approximately in gradual progression
reaching to the final goal,—in reality, and i as far as it is a
living union with the object of that knowledge, perfect know-
ledge, a continuous explanation of all mrapowwia, which every
Nadia in human words, even that of the Spirit, must always
contain for the limited understanding of man.

Vers. 26, 27. The state of perfection which knows no need
is not yet; there is still the asking, and yet it is the same day.
When the end of that day is reached, in which it will melt into
the fulness of eternity, into perfect light and life, then indeed
there will be no more asking. Now in the meantime the grow-
ing knowledge of the Father of Jesus Christ as our Father leads
ever more deeply into prayer; but the exercise and experience
of prayer requires again that knowledge. ‘The first prayer of
all, which follows, and is prompted by the all-attractive, never
exhausted “ Our Father,” seeks the hallowing of His name, a
more perfect and more living knowledge of it than is already
possessed. But at the same time, inasmuch as through the
Spirit in Christ every promise of God is already Yea and Amen,
the first invocation anticipates the last glorying of praise :—we
seal every prayer with a doxology reaching forth, in confident
and tranquil trust, toward the future eternity; and thus it is
already the same day in the light of which we ask and receive
the answer, we pray and receive.

When the Lord first spoke of praying in the name of Jesus,
ch. xiv., He attributed to Himself the hearing of the prayer,
when He should be with the Father, expressly saying twice—TI
will do it! 'The same is obviously presupposed here, and by
no means retracted. Similarly, it was then said concerning the
all comprehending, highest gift which could be prayed for from
the Father (Lu. xi. 13), the Holy Spirit, I will pray the Father
for Him on your behalf,—and with an épwryow which must
be rigorously distinguished from our aireiy. Can we suppose
this mediating intercession of the Son not to be here presupposed,
and that word concerning it to be retracted? This cannot be
thought of, and something else consistent with the former words

JOHN XVI. 26, 27. 401

must be meant by the saying, xai ob Aéyw bpiv, Ste eyo épwTijcw.
Still more! The abiding intercession and mediation of the
Lord, as it includes this in My name, is not only the constant
doctrine of Scripture (Rom. viii. 34; Heb. vii.25; 1 Jno. ii. 1)
—but we have here immediately afterwards His prayer, em-
phatically for His own, ‘Ey zrepi aitav épwrh! (Ch. xvii. 9.)
All this has very justly moved the expositors to modify the
negation of the €pwrdy epi var, and to explain it as only a
relative denial. But how are we to understand this? Many,
from the earliest times down to the present, have laid stress
upon the circumstance that it is not simply ov« épwrjce, but
merely od Aéyw dyiv rt, and this would mean, I will not once
more declare this, it is understood of itself. Similarly Grotius:
I pass by that, as less important than that which I would now
infer from it. Most plainly, however, the Hirsch. Bibel: “TI will
not repeat what I have already promised you for your encou-
ragement, that I, etc. It is spoken as when one scarcely touches,
but passes over a thing which is already certain enough, in order
to impress all the more vividly another equally important
principle and argument.” Kuinoel has put it most strongly,
ut taceam; and Seiler translates, I will not now say anything
about the fact that—I will. But this od Xéyw is manifestly no
mere ut taceam, taking for granted; the Lord does expressly
touch the subject, not simply to introduce another argument to
persuade them of their being heard, but the ydp actually gives
a reason for the earnestly meant ovx é€pwrjow, and conse-
quently there must be in it a positive, if also a relative, truth.
And the interpretation thus indicated says too litle, and does
not extend to the proper meaning of the words. On the other
hand, Bengel, forgetting for a moment the other words of Jesus
and writings of the Spirit, says far too much when he briefly
points to ov Aéyw, 1 Jno. v. 16, where non-dico is regarded as
simply standing for dico-non. How then are we to solve it, so
as to understand in what sense Jesus at once prays for the dis-
ciples, and prays for them not? The solution, the intimation
of the specific sense in which the negation is here to be under-
stood, is found partly in the airos 0 warnp pidet and partly in
the dire bas. When the Lord in ch. v. 45 testified by the
strong affirmation 2) doxeire that He would not accuse the un
VOL VI. 2C

402 THE FATHER HIMSELF LOVETH YOU.

believers to the Father, that was absolutely and literally meant;
when He on the other hand here denies a certain intercession
for those who already believe on Him, and already pray, it is
His design first to repel generally a false notion concerning the
Father, who requires first to be prayed unto, and then to dis-
tinguish between two kinds of intercession.

Autos yap 6 wat7p—that is, sud sponte, proprio motu, avzd-
patos, or as Nonnus has it, adtoxéXevtos. This word therefore
(oh that all preachers and theologians would understand it
well!) most decisively overturns that false notion concerning
the entire work of redemption which the writer will ever con-
tend against and exhibit as wnscriptural—that notion which
attributes to the Father a wrath which is to be extinguished,
and not also that reconciling love which from eternity needed
not first to be propitiated. See ch. iii. 16, and what was said
there. This great and gloomy misunderstanding pursues many
believers into their prayers, hangs upon the best too often, and
prevents them from entering into the full confidence and glad-
ness of praying to the Father in the name of Jesus. Theirs is
that frequent prayer, of which Krummacher says, “I regard
the Father as still strange, alienated, and far off, myself as
shielded thr ough Christ from His wrath. Lremain sind in fear
before the gate of God, and anwiously put forward my guarantee,
because I am still affrighted before Him. The feeling of my
guilt, and of the holiness of God, outweighs all in my soul, not
that of my justification before Him and His love.” Such is,
indeed, too often, but such should not be, the case! The Lord
Christ with His atoning sacrifice has not interposed “like a
screen or a lightning-conductor” between us and the wrathful
Father ; even those who come to Him in their first repentance
should not think so, much less believers and the redeemed.
Else would the Father be hidden and disguised by Christ,
instead of being revealed; His honour would be lowered and
placed beneath that of the loving Son, if He Himself, who sent
and gave the Son, made Him for us a (Aaoryptov, loved us not
and were not love itself! But the “righteous Father” (ch.
xvii. 25) does Himself love, and the world’s knowing Him not
consists most in this, that it is ignorant how entirely He is in

Christ a Father and full of love.

JOHN XVI. 26, 27. 403

Christians who believe, to whom Christ has revealed this in
all its clearness, cannot too often be reminded of this: “think
not too little of the love wherewith ye are loved!” Not merely
has the Father Himself already loved them as He loves all
the world and every creature, but He loves them with that
especial love which He bears to those in whom He finds
Christ’s word, and through faith in it Christ Himself, who
stand before Him clothed in the garment of the righteous-
ness of His Son. It was of this that ch. xiv. 21 spoke. We
may and we ought to approach confidently to the Father
Himself, and through the mediating work in which we stand
immediately pray; learning better and better to repeat after
our great Pattern in the flesh the Abba which He uttered
before the rending of the veil, which to Him was yet no
veil. The Father-heart, full of eternal Divine love, is open to
us ; how should ¢hat impel and allure us confidently and in the
fulness of assurance to pray; deriving from this saying all that
our hearts want even unto their perfect joy! But what then
are we to say of the intercession of Jesus, which is maintained
elsewhere, but here in some sense denied? We may say with
propriety (as our Lord Himself, in ch. xvii. 9, establishes the
distinction), that the first intercession of Jesus which paves the
way, opens the door, to those who come to Him from the world
and through Him to God (Heb. vii. 25), is something quite dif-
ferent, and that this’ is indeed no longer necessary to those who
have already come. V. Gerlach says well and clearly, “There
needed no constant renewal of the mediation of Christ in order
to the establishment of their relation te the Father; they had
become once for all children of God through faith.” Luther:
“This faith brings us to the Father, and then all goes on in
His name. Here, then, we are assured that Christ needs no
longer thus to pray for us, since He has prevailed in prayer for
us already ; we may, ourselves, through Christ, urge our way in
and pray. For we have no need of another Christ who shall
pray for our access; this one Christ is enough, who has pre-

1 According to Lampe: per quam adhuc viam ad Patrem sternere
discipulis necessum habebat— although he elsewhere understands this of
that humilis et supplex oratio which He once for all accomplished in the
flesh.

404 THE FATHER HIMSELF LOVETH YOU.

vailed already and brought us in.” Those who are now first
coming may, with a right feeling of the wrath of the righteous
Father, fly first to Christ and cry to Him—Pray Thou for us!
But when we have received grace and stand in it, we need do
that in the same manner no more. ‘This, then, would distin-
guish the twofold intercession before and after the wemotev-
xate. For of course there is an intercession for believers, such
as that which goes on through ch. xvii., and that expressly for
the reason that they belong to the Father through faith in
Christ, see ch. xvii. 8, 9. And it goes on to the end of time;
ch. xvi. is only the proleptical commencement of that which,
properly speaking, began first in heaven. Braune thinks incor-
rectly that only before the communication of the Spirit the Lord
thus prayed for His own—thus making Him the Intercessor
only for those who are not yet actually partakers of the Holy
Ghost. Forgetting altogether 1 Jno. ii. 1! Oh no, rather as
Rambach says in his song, “ He bears in the sanctuary the pre-
cious name of His people upon His breast as the true High
Priest, His prayer is supported by His almighty power, for His
glorified humanity sits in its perfect tabernacle.” What is the
object of His present prayer for His disciples? We hear it in
v. Gerlach: the ever renewed reinstatement of the filial relation
when it has been interrupted by sin (1 Jno. ii. 1, 2) makes the
intercession continually still necessary, since the free love of the
Father reigns only in the filial relation itself. This is in itself
true, but not enough; we find in ch. xvii. the end of His prayer
defined to be the disciples’ preservation, their growing holiness
and its consummation. Thus not simply, with Rambach, “ that
they may abide united to Thee”—but that they may become
more fully united.

The Lord is far from denying this continuous, ever neces-
sary intercession; He rather in the od Aéyw duty Sre limits
the ov« épwrjcw to the special meaning which He now assigns
it. That meaning, however, is no other than this, that He
repels every notion of intercession which would represent the
Father as not already loving; and further testifies to those
whom the Father specially loves as believers, that in their own
prayers themselves and as such, the first, original intercession
would not be needful. Thus there is no correction of ch.

JOHN XVI. 26, 27. 405

xiv. 16, but it is more definitely explained for our right appre-
hension of it.’

Finally, it is carefully to be noted that while the Saviour
Himself seemingly and in a certain sense retires and leaves us
to our unhindered fellowship with the Father, He does in reality
make Himself most prominent in that He alone is the cause,
announcer, and witness that the Father loveth us. Nitzsch:
“Tn order that every one may seek and obtain the Father's
love, we all have need of Him who makes that love credible to
us, who assures us that He Himself and the Father loveth us.
All have need of Him, whose image must be livingly formed
in us by faith, whom the Father must discern in us, if He
Himself is to Jove us” —that is, not only with the love of com-
passion but of complacency. Does the Lord then mean to say
that the Father also so loves the world, as to permit and to hear
all its prayer (alas, how often blind and perverted!)? Most
assuredly not. Luther: “One thing must be observed here
which is to be put by the side of the other, so that the text may
not be taken unfairly to pieces. For He also says, The Father
Himself loveth you, because ye have believed in Me. For He
will not do away with His own mediation, as if we might pray
without and independently of Him. But when we have this
Mediator in our hearts, etc.’ As in another place he explains,
Ye believe in Me, as—“the Father seeth My name upon and
in you.” Thus far has the free grace which first loved (ch. xv.
16), »rought us; hence J. v. Miiller in great simplicity cries,
“ Blessed Father! that which Thou givest Thou reckonest to
us as our merit to have received !”

The decisive testimony to their faith which the Lord here
gives, despite their weakness, is the same with which He most
solemnly presents them to the Father afterwards, in ch. xvii. 7,
8, 25. In the rebirjxatre kal temicrevcate we must not seek
to find a prospective futwre—Then when ye shall have attained
to a full and perfect faith! That the love takes precedence of

1 Miinchmeyer thinks this explanation not simple and plain enough. He
would amend it thus: ‘‘I say not that I will undertake to pray for you
Myself alone, and that ye will not need to pray to the Father.” Let the
reader choose! This mere juxtaposition of the prayers (I pray and ye too)
we cannot by any means admit.

406 I CAME FORTH FROM THE FATHER.

the faith is to be interpreted according to the relation between
believing and loving throughout these final discourses, as we
have abundantly illustrated it. The aediAjxate here follows
primarily upon the Ae? as a significant anaphora; for (to
speak after the manner of men) one loves me because I love
another whom he also loves—thus being one with him in this
love. Thus we are raised to the level of the Father, and are
one with Him, in loving Christ! “One of the first gifts which
is to us the assured foretaste of eternal blessedness, consists in
this, that we know ourselves to possess in the love of Christ
something which we have in common with God” (Schmieder).
And, with equal propriety, glancing forward to vers. 30, 31,
we may say with Hiller, “ In ‘putting love first the Lord design-
edly reserved faith to the last; and thus placed in the lips of
the disciples the We believe! which they presently uttered.”
When it is said that, in harmony with the phraseology of Scrip-
ture elsewhere, love is here referred to faith as its foundation,
this is exegetically as inappropriate as it would be, on the other
hand, to regard it as establishing love to be the foundation of
faith, because it precedes. Liicke’s declaration that “in the
exhibition of the relation between the disciples and Christ per-
sonal love precedes a full and perfect faith,” is true only when
understood according to the fundamental idea of these farewell
discourses—in which the personal decision of the heart in the
living beginning of faith is called Jove. For how can personal
dependence and devotion be possible without confidence in the
person of him who claims it? But this trust, in the case of
Jesus, has no other foundation than the acceptance of His testi-
mony —a testimony which is asserted throughout all His words
—' Eye rapt tod Oeod (another reading wapa Oeod or rapa Tob
matpos) €&jAOov.

Ver. 28. This is once more resumed and sealed anew: Your
faith is justified! Verily, I have come forth from the Father,
who Himself loveth you and in love hath sent Me into the
world! The entire clause, ver. 28, was already anticipated by
the Evangelist in ch. xiii. 3 (probably as taken from this pas-
sage); but it is here the preparation also for the following
prayer—see ch. xvii. 5. It is, once more, a retrospective sum-
mary, as of the whole testimony of Jesus concerning Himself

JOHN XVI. 28. 407

and the counsel of God in Him, so also of His whole history
from His birth to His ascension,' together with an intimation of
the two great supernatural mysteries which are connected with
these two limits of His earthly life.” "Ex tod matpos, adopted
by Lachmann instead of apd, is not to be rejected (with
Liicke) “because it has a too Trinitarian tone!” For, in truth,
these chapters from beginning to end have the Trinitarian
tone too evidently to allow us to lose it here at the close.
But the reading wapda is vindicated by its involving in its
meaning the transition to the coming into the world. We can-
not deny, on the other hand—weighing well ch. xvii. 5—that
this €&A Gov, as most of the fathers understood it, expresses the
eternal going forth of the Son from the Father (parallel with
the éxzopevec Gas of the Spirit, ch. xv. 26); on the other hand,
most of the ancient expositors were wrong in not admitting the
transition to the éd7AvOa which is already involved in it.2 In
any case, the Lord most clearly testifies that He was with the
Father, before He came or was born into the world (still more
expressly in ch. xvil.— before the world was)—and therefore His
pre-existence. In our familiar inexact way of speaking we may
say of men that they come into the world, when they are borr.
and have their beginning in it; but the éAée@y in their case
could never be asserted to be an é&-e@eiy from any zapd.*
Thus His Godhead as well as His humanity is here attested,
and with both are bound up His whole work upon earth (ch.
xvil. 4) as the reason of His condescending incarnation, and
the continuation and perfecting of this work in heaven. For to
what end did He come into the world, but to become the Saviour

1 As Fresenius preaches, ‘‘a brief epitome of the whole history of Christ.”
Bengel: Recapitulationem maximam habet hic versus.

? Many have even found here the plan of the entire Gospel. First part
—I! came forth from the Father (the Prologue and Baptist’s testimony)—
into the world (from ch. i. 35, particularly as life, as light, down to ch. xii.
46, 50). Part second—Again I leave the world, ch. xiiixy., and go to
the Father, ch. xvi., xvii. But with all this, compare our remarks at the
outset.

3 See the remarkable 22:7u4e already in Mark i. 38 and then Jno. viii. 42.

* We need not now refute the notion of a pre-existent humanity which
many of our pseudo-theosophists have derived from this saying ; its refuta-
tion was in the odpg éyévero of the Prologue.

408 AGAIN I GO TO THE FATHER.

f sinners? Again, to what end and in what way does He return
.o the Father, but that He may accomplish eternal redemption
through death, and diffuse from on high the fruits of His re-
deeming work? J leave the world is in itself a general expres-
sion, appropriate to the departure of all men by death; but the
aadtv which belongs especially to the wopevouat (I go back
again, ch. vi. 62), destroys the similarity between His death and
the death of all men, just as previously in the case of His birth.'
He came—He goeth again ; and the meaning is, Both through
His own power. (Lampe: The spontaneity and Divine opera-
tion of the Lord is seen alike in the way of His coming, and in
the way of His going again.) Similarly, He goes only in such
a manner that He still remains by His Spirit; even as His
coming into the world did not exclude His existing in heaven, in
God the Father. The doctrine of the bodily presence of Christ
in the earth is not (with Beza, Piscator, Ursinus, ete.) to be re-
futed by this passage, which says nothing at all about it; it does,
however, attribute the “ with the Father” to the humanity also
in an exalted sense. There are three births indicated here: the
eternal going forth, the birth or being begotten of the Father ;
the coming into the world or the birth into flesh ; and the re-
generation or full birth of the Son of God in humanity through
the glorification. Between the two mysteries, apa Tod matpos
—mpos Tov Tatépa, comes in His life; He asserts the fact, the
how remains unsolved, for true faith is not dependent upon the
perfect knowledge of that which indeed transcends all knowledge,

_1The miraculous conception through the Holy Ghost He passes over in
silence, never mentioning it in express word; and this of itself is an
argument against the zealots who would insert this clause formally in the
ordination formulary of the Prussian state-church! It is a truth which
faith must find, not as the first thing but as the last deep mystery, the
consciousness and confession of which it is well known came late to the
Apostles and first Christians. —It is quite true, nevertheless, as Hess remarks
that in these farewell discourses the idea of an earthly father is utterly and
infinitely distant. ‘‘ The disciples hearing these sayings could never have
entertained the thought of—a son of Joseph!” To give prominence to
those plain doctrines of salvation which are made prominent in apostolical
teaching ; and to hold in reserve what it held in reserve, and after the
_example of Jesus scarcely uttered, because it must be the necessary con-
sequence of a living faith, and only as such is of eternal importance—cannot
be altogether wrong for us in our time.

JOHN XVI. 28. 409

as we shall presently see in the case of the disciples. But if the
Socinians (as Bengel says) take this entire testimony, which
beamed on the disciples themselves with perfect clearness, as it-
self no other than a rapoumia—we, in opposition to the Socinians
of all times, understand it better, as the Spirit has sealed to us
its meaning.

Very touching in its simplicity is the last interruption or re-
joinder of the disciples ; so represented by St John because the
speaker, whoever he was, expressed the feeling of all. “ They
think now, we cannot tell why, that the mystery of His person
and His words is fully solved” (Nitzsch). But we do know the
reason in part: the so gracious assurance that the Father Himself
loved them has comforted their hearts, so that they take courage
to think that they understand; their hearts know with most
absolute confidence that they love Jesus, and when Jesus now
with equal confidence attributes to them faith—how should they
not be convinced by His testimony that they do believe? Their
mctevouev is by no means the error or the self-deception in
their words; they may very certainly say what they do, for they
only echo what He had said in their hearing and attributed to
them in ver. 27—<6rv azo Oeod é&RrOes.' But they do not dare
to commit themselves to the whole of ver. 28; although they
have just declared this saying to be plain they are far from
adding the further response—that Thou goest to the Father!
In their simple from God now as before they seize rightly the
fundamental truth—and this the Lord confirms and commends
with joy. But as it regards all the rest, the declaration which
they see fit to make before the confession of their faith, but
which they would have done better to omit, is such evidence of
the infirmity of their present understanding as justifies Augus-
tine’s remark—usque adeo non intelligunt, ut nec saltem se non
intelligere intelligant. They do not speak about these final
mapovmiats precisely in the same manner as they spoke about the
earlier wapaSorais in Matt. xiii. 51; for they admit that they ©
do not yet understand the wapoupias, though with the same self-

* Hence it is altogether wrong to regard them as understanding it merely
in the Jewish sense of chap. iii. 2: Whether (as Luthardt thinks) they
lower the meaning by putting éx¢ for ¢ depends upon the reading which
we have already considered. They certainly repeat 2€qr¢;.

410 NOW SPEAKEST THOU PLAINLY.

deception as on that occasion they think they understand the
last words. ‘The hour, to which the Lord had referred, appears
to them already come—notwithstanding that He had expressly
said that He still spoke for the present in parables. They thus
seem to correct in their innocence their Master’s word—O no,
Thou hast thought too slightly of us; see, we understand Thee
already! Lampe: “They are sorry because they are deemed
so unapt by their Master, who thinks that they understand not
His discourses but need another teacher. Hence they go so far
as to contradict Christ, and invert His plainest words, denying
that He had spoken in a mysterious manner.” This last is far
too much, since the disciples refer in their now expressly to the
last word, vers. 26-28, as spoken wrappyoia, plainly ; but the con-
tradiction must remain. Finally, and this is the strangest thing
in their words, they assign as the reason of their believing (which
unconsciously to themselves has a better reason!) by év tovr@
something entirely beside the purpose, something suggested by
their reflection at the moment, and which moreover itself rests
upon a misunderstanding. “ That Jesus in an unexpected
manner Himself expresses what they have long felt, that His
words were deeply mysterious for their understanding—this
circumstance they adduce as the confirmation (rather the new
and decisive reason) of their believing.” (Tholuck.) Just as if
one should joyfully say, I now understand thee, for thou hast
told me that I understand thee not! Is then their ignorance
itself the foundation of their faith? The confusion in which
they speak is so great that we cannot educe any clear idea from
their words ; but the sincere goodness of heart which holds fast
to something supposed to be understood, redeems them from their
folly. The Lord had spoken of a day in which they should ask
nothing : they think this day already come, and interpret the not
asking in a quite different way. We cannot see (with Liicke)
how this was “no misunderstanding of His word, but a subtle
application given to them;” especially when he admits that
the “ over-estimation of their great present privileges was their
only error”—an error, indeed, this which was very great, and
lying at the foundation of all! Now know we, that is, now we
understand Thee, and the meaning of Thy words: that Thou
knowest all things and needest not that any man should ask

JOHN XVI. 31. 411

Thee!! This is no more an express attribution of Divine omni-
science (as the systematic divines have derived from it), than
was Peter’s word afterwards, chap. xxi. 17. It is a deep pre-
sentiment, which became more and more clear during the
forty days, and finally found its full expression in Acts i. 24.
They mean, however, as much as this (Meyer), “that Thou
discernest thoughts and anticipatest questions” —thinking, doubt-
less, of ver. 19. All other teachers must be diligently ques-
tioned by their disciples, if they would enter into their condition
of mind and effectually teach them’—but He who came out
from God needed this not. As they thus invert the Lord’s
word in ver. 23—For He had spoken of their not needing any
longer to ask—they would in fact assert (by a very unwar-
-ranted anticipation) —Thou speakest now so plainly, tellest us
so clearly unasked what is in our hearts, that we also have no
need to ask Thee anything.

Ver. 31. The disentangling of all these mistakes and this con-
fusion would have then been a profitless task :—and the day of
the Spirit was coming, the revelation of which alone enabled
even St John so aptly to describe that former obscurity of their
understanding. The Lord passes it all by, and confines Him-
self to their rucrevoper, regarding that with the utmost gracious-
ness and even with joy as a genuine germ, and confirming it as
the result of His life and teaching. Or does He deny even
that? The damping tone of the following verse has misled
many into making this apts muotevere a question. So many
MSS., and Euthymius, and among the moderns Olshausen, who
concisely decides, “ Certainly it is more correct,” and B.-Crusius,
with equal confidence, “ A question, as in ch. i. 51”—which
passage, however, as our exposition shows, is no question at all.
Pfenninger was similarly misled, and myself in earlier life. De
Wette’s and Allioli’s translations make it a question, and the
Heb. New Testament unhappily has then interrogative. Liicke
was first inclined to this—adducing besides ‘ch. i. 51 the more

1 The construction of the /v« with the Indic. is not unfrequent, as we
know, in the New Testament.

2 Hence the proposition which Eichhorn suggested in vain, as to the
conduct of academical examinations, might be very useful if not absolutely

necessary !
3 Der Brief Jacobi, 8. 9.

412 YE DO NOW BELIEVE.

appropriate ch. xiii. 38—but he afterward corrected himself,

doubting whether “ Jesus would so lightly quench the smoking
flax.” "This reason against the question is a good one, but far
from being sufficiently strong or profound; Lampe’s assertion
that it comes to the same thing in the end is rash, for a deep
insight into the whole train of the connection must show the
interrogation to be altogether inadmissible. Tholuck lays much
stress upon the now, as proving the words to be affirmative; he
is much more justified in saying that “the disciples’ really
having faith cannot be doubted.” Does not the whole of ch.
xvii. most solemnly attribute this to them, and give testimony to
their believing? And could the same John who wrote ch. i. 11,
and recorded ch. vi. 69, now be supposed to declare that the
Lord at the close of all still doubted the faith of His eleven?
Can that be thought possible as the result of all His labour upon
them? Compare, moreover, Matt. xvi.17,18. It had been the
aim and object of the whole prophetic ministry of Jesus to make
some disciples (not the Apostles alone) susceptible for the coming
of the Spirit of truth and the benefits of His passion, laying in
them the foundation of faith in His own person ;—and was this
not attained at the end of all, was it even still a questionable
thing? After such an expression of doubt could He have
gone on to pray for them as in ch. xvii.?—Let all this be
well pondered, and the note of interrogation will a be
renounced as impossible! Nor is the most distant irony* to
be assumed in this earnest and frank Indicative; the arn@as
of ch. xvii. 18 decides against this. The Lord must be regarded
as uttering this muotevete with gladness; His joy beholding
prospectively the ultimate breaking forth of the surviving germ
of their faith, and therefore not disturbed by its present weak-
ness. It is only for the disciples’ sake that He adds ver. 32, in
order that His prediction of the heavy hour of pressure might
prepare them for it and help them through, humbling them now
that their faith might be purified and strengthened.” The now,’

* As many suppose, admitting the Indicative. There was one arrogant
prater who even represented the Lord as saying this “‘ with a smile of pi.y!”

* Rieger : To keep the smoking flax from being quenched in the darkness :
they would be able to say — He foretold us all this.

8 Bengel is far-fetched here— Your faith is eprios, perfect, apt.

JOHN XVI. 32. 413

consequently, when we think here at the close of the beginning
of the discourse, appears in its retrospective reference to indicate
an end attained, expressed with strong emphasis at this solemn
crisis ; it is “ the great issue of His labours upon them, expressed
in one definite word” (Lange). And not till then does it assume
a prospective reference, the end attained being regarded now as
no other than a weak beginning. To regard, with Luthardt, this
latter as the only sense (“for the present—but soon!’’), is to
us absolutely wrong, and altogether out of keeping with the so-
lemnity of this great crisis. The emphasis of dapvv, standing at
the beginning of the sense, points rather backward than for-
ward, though the latter must be regarded as necessarily involved.
So far we cannot exclude from the dptz the gentle blame that
the disciples in their confident mructevouev thought too little of
the testing future and the often predicted hour of trial. But,
for the rest, the aruatevere which the Lord simply repeats, with-
out any addition, would say—Yea, ye do now believe in God
and in Me; for this was essentially contained, ee unde-
veloped, in their azo Oeod é&HNOes.

. Ver. 32. Behold—the Lord has already before His eyes the
sight of His little circle of disciples severed as branches, scattered
as driven sheep! The Lord refers to the same prophecy of
Zechariah which He expressly cites in Matt. xxvi. 31; we shall
give the exposition of it in the next volume. Similarly in John
x. 13, it was said of the coming wolf, cxoprifer ta mpoPara.
This fleeing of the disciples when Jesus was taken was assuredly,
as the Lord in Matt. xxvi. 31 and here also regards it, an ex-
pression of their faith’s weakness, a cxavdariferOa, a leaving
Him, Matt. xxvi. 56 (as here agjre). One betrays, one denies,
all the others (€kacros) leave Him too by a kind of denial.
Hence eis 7a Yéva as corresponding with this must have an im-
tensive meaning; not merely being the obvious qualification of
scattered, but as it were the abandonment of their following
and the retracing of their steps. Mengel says well: els ta ida,
to the things which ye before left for My sake. We have not

? Vatablus . to the place where each might regard himself safe. Grotius:
each in his hiding-place, for i:0v is said also of the place- where any one re-
tires for a time. Lampe follows these, and compares 1 Mace. vi. 54, xaoros
sis Tov té%ov awbrov, so that the /:« here are consueta discipulorum, que

414 I AM NOT ALONE.

to ask, what and where these iéva externally were, whether in
Jerusalem or Galilee (comp. ch. xix. 27, or mpds éavtods, ch.
xx. 10)—but the external gives here its signification to the
internal; whosoever leaves the Lord, returns back into himself
and to his own things. This, however, is but one side; for on
the other hand this fleeing of the disciples was permitted to
them, since they availed not to succour Him who trode the
wine-press alone (Isa. Ixiii. 3); indeed it was, when the hour
came, indirectly commanded to them, Jno, xviil. 8. Their faith
by no means utterly ceased in this time of scattering; it ap-
proved itself as opposed to the world sufficiently strong to carry
them through their distress as sheep without a shepherd.

The Lord immediately passes from the terrifying povov adfre
into a tone of consolation. That which He had intimated to the
Jews, ch. viii. 29, He now openly declares to the disciples, with
reference especially to that heavy hour. Then was the Lord
alone, abandoned of all human consolation and help in the
midst of the bands of the wicked; and this abandonment was to
Him a grief, the scattering of His disciples was a deeply pene-
trating pang, one co-operating element in His lot to bear all
our sin and carry all our infirmity. But the Father, without
whom and independent of whom the Son cannot be without
losing Himself (ch. viii. 16)—left Him not alone, was and did
abide with Him. How this is to be reconciled with and modi-
fies the abandonment by God upon the cross, we shall see when
our exposition reaches that place. Let us here, in transition to
the following verse, mark how all this is a type for the entire
future of the church. Often is this scattering of the disciples
from His presence repeated, in various degrees and with various
manifestations, but He is not alone. And even if in this day
all men were to leave Him—which is of course only supposi-
tion—He abides what He is, and the Father is with Him!
His holy cause can never be forsaken or lost—as Nitzsch preaches.
Calvin thus remarks: Whosoever well ponders this will hold
firm his faith though the world shake, nor will the defection of

Hierosolymis habebant, hospitia. Hirsch. Bib.: “‘ to the place which each
could first find in his perplexity.” The Heb. N. T. has ©°7?—which does
not by any means exhaust the expression.

JOHN XVI. 33. 415

all others overturn his confidence; we do not render God His
full honour, unless He alone is felt to be sufficient to us.

Ver. 33. The Lord here finally, contemplating still the end
of all in His typical-perspective glance, comprehends in one the
immediate sequel (ver. 82, cai vdv édjAvGev is doubtless genuine)
and the entire future of His disciples while they are found in
the world. In these last words He “ condenses the sum of the
instruction which He had ministered to the disciples at the last
supper.”' In eipyvnv éyew He embraces the aim and the fruit
of His discourses in one,” and we may refer to what was said
upon this deep word at ch. xiv. 27; the antithesis with @AAfris
here, however, makes prominent the idea of confidence, assur-
ance, and joyfulness in a salvation which was already sure, and
which would afterward be complete. ‘There is for His own, as
for all the world, no other peace than that which is in Him.
This is to be understood in the full depth of meaning of the
vine-similitude, which has another echo here; not, however, in
the sense of a rigorous demand of perfect faith in Him and
union with Him. The weak and dispersed disciples who for-
sake Him retain so far their peace as they are not therefore
forsaken of Him, and they should find their peace again as soon
as they find Him again; rather, when He who does not leave
them comes to them again. If His words (ratra NekadrnKa
bpiv) abide in us, that of itself assures our abiding upon and in
Him (ch. xv. 7); we may say, generally, with Luther, that the
peace of faith springs from the word embraced and held fast,
depends upon it alone. “ My repose and peace stand in no-
thing but what my Lord Christ speaks, as in Ps. exix. 165,
Great peace have they who love Thy word!” ‘That is, with
-Luther’s qualification, “ provided that the word has its firm
place in the heart.” As long as we are in the world trials and
temptations not yet overcome are perfectly consistent with this
—and this, indeed, is the highest consolation, as seen in the
GX Oapocire, without which the concluding with év éwol
eipyvnv would have left us in only greater dismay. “ He
acknowledges that we in the world must have tribulation, but

2 Nitzsch, zweite Auswahl, S. 113.

* Pfenninger, generally so useful to the expositor, here strangely inter-
prets, ‘‘ that ye may be without anxiety concerning Me!”

416 IN THE WORLD TRIBULATION.

=
He encourages us at the same time by the assurance of peace
in Him. He is not alone, and leaveth not alone.’ (Nitzsch.)
Not even then when we have to cry after Him, “ Why hast
Thou forsaken me!”

Orapw éyetre we prefer with Griesbach, Scholz, Knapp,
Schott, Matthai, though Lachmann holds to the é€ere of the
Text. Rec.; Erasmus corrected the Vulg. habebitis into habetis.
The present indicates the continuous and abiding condition of
His disciples—Ye are in the world, therefore ye have tribula-
tion. But let it be carefully noted to what extent the in the
world is opposed to the in Me, in order that we may see clearly
that the words do not refer merely to external trial. (Neander:
of their living in eaternal contact with the world, which imposes
manifold affliction upon the external man.) Tribulation is cer-
tainly not alone “ the violence and enmity of the world, which
causes grief and anxiety to the disciples”—their dvéxew and
metpatew. For all this would not interrupt our peace, if the
persecution did not meet with and excite weakness of faith, and
the temptation sinful desire, in us. So much as the world has
still in us, and the éy €uoi is consequently not yet perfect, so
much is there lacking or inimical to our peace. We must call
to mind the OAs of the woman in childbirth, a tribulation
from within and of herself; and mark the opposites, eipyvy,
Gapceiv,—in order to perceive the inappropriateness of a merely
external interpretation of the word. The world not only per-
secutes, it tempts also, yea it leads us still to the oxoprigec@as
_and cxavdanrifecOau, to the partial and temporary abandonment
of our Lord; and thus it confounds us and thereby takes away
our courage. Again, the tribulation itself which the world and
sin cause to those who cannot any longer joy or even be con-
tented in the world and sin, is an encouraging effect of faith ;
the Lord could never say to His disciples—In the world ye
have peace! When that is the case, His word and consolation
have no more place in us. “ This tribulation in the world is
the sole evidence of our heterogeneity’”—writes Hamann, com-
forting himself, to Herder: instead of the exaggerated and
doubtful “ sole evidence,” we would rather say, the first and
the abiding evidence. And here holds good the Oapceire, the
final and highest expression of which, concentrating in itself all

JOHN XVI. 33. 417%

the previous and subsequent consolations of Scripture, is here
uttered by the lips of the Redeemer Himself, who for us sur-
rendered Himself to tribulation :—He who can lay hold of that
word, and make it a reality, has the second and complementary
evidence for his full assurance that he is in Christ and no longer
of the world. The two are united, the tribulation and the peace ;
yet so that the peace continually has the better, realising the
dapceiv, and the eipyvnv éyew holds its full force :—this is the
signature of the disciples in their present state. For—*“ the
Lord speaks of that which lies in the interim,” that is, between
the beginning and the consummation of their discipleship.

But He Himself, the author and finisher of faith, to whom
we look in order to run with patience the race of conflict which
still lies before us—has overcome! As the prince of this world
(according to ch. xiv. 80) has been baffled in Him, so conse-
quently and most assuredly is the world also with all its still
blustering adherence to the discomfited enemy, the judged
usurper.’ Christ has overcome in the same way of suffering,
and obedience, and even temptation; He indeed without sin,
but even that is imputed to us and appropriated by us in faith.
He anticipates here the vevicnxa before He has reached Geth-
semane and Golgotha—and how should this word stimulate us,
uttered now from above! So our faith in Him is the victory
which has already overcome the world. (1 Jno.v. 4.) “ The
conflict and suffering which we now have, is not the real war,
but only the celebration, a part of the glory, of this victory.”
(Luther.) Is the world still essentially the same—Christ also
is the same! ‘That is, as the Eternal One who contended and
won for us in our flesh—not as our modern folly perverts His
word, See how gloriously IJ, a firm child of humanity, overcome,
be bold also yourselves and do the like! But our @apceip
comes only from the é€v éwoi, from the éym vevixnxa; and
we utter boldly St John’s question still in the hearing of all

1 Bengel remarks on ch. xiv. 30: Hie principem inandi amolitur Jesus ;
altera colloquii hujus parte finiente, mundum, c. xvi. 33. Zinzendorf, too
much in the manner of those who attach edifying thoughts to the word
without true exposition, shows on ‘‘ the overcoming the world” how the
Saviour won the human race with love and good deeds, making the wicked
His friends!

VOL. VI. zZD

418 THE HIGH-PRIESTLY PRAYER.

— Who is he, where is there one, that overcometh the world,
except he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ?—Let
us close with the beautiful and profound word of Nitzsch, “ in
Him all overcome who rejoice to be the world overcome by
Him.” For assuredly, even in this sense, as we otherwise
know, He alone is the Overcomer.

THE HIGH-PRIESTLY PRAYER.
(Ch. xvii.)

Tadra édadnoev 0 “Incovs—the Evangelist plainly combines
in one historical whole all previous “ tadta NeAGAnKa” which he
has recorded ; and now begins with a new «ai eize, adding an-
other simple and sublime historical note—that Jesus then, thus
speaking, before his, the Evangelist’s eyes, lifted up His own
eyes to heaven. All that can be said for the historically certain
truth of the entire Gospel, and that applies to its ‘actual repro-
duction of our Lord’s sayings, so wonderfully yet so naturally
effected by the Holy Ghost ;—all that has been said in defence
of this a thousand times by orthodox expositors with more or
less confidence and wisdom, may be applied with all the greater
force to this Prayer, inasmuch as it is the climax and consum-
mation of all His discourses, pressing nearest to heaven and
most immediately breathing of its mysteries,—a triumphantly
and serenely bright Ji is finished before the darkness surrounded
Him upon the cross, so that that must be first rightly interpreted
by this! Words which none but the only begotten of the Father
could ever utter; and which could never have entered the heart
of man if they had not been actually spoken by Him! A final
testimony to Himself on the part of the Son, uttered before the
Father and to the Father Himself alone; a most sacred and
pleading expression of the inmost reality of that self-conscious-
ness in which He alone knew who Himself was, One with the
One above in heaven! A more awful and convincing attesta-_
tion to the listening disciples, and to all Christian men who hear
while they read, and read while they hear, than any ’Aynv ’Apnv
which could fall from His lips, than any oath which might

JOUN XVII. 419

attest His—I Jesus am He, the Christ, the Son of the Blessed!
—“ Father!’ This is the testimony of the Son, who in a
transcendent sense makes His own that distantly typical word
of a traduced sufferer (Job xvi. 17-19)—No injustice is in
Mine hands, My prayer also is pure—O earth, cover not thou
My blood !—behold, My witness is in heaven, and He who know-
eth Me is on high !—“ Father! Thou knowest Me! Thou un-
derstandest Me! Righteous Father! the world knoweth Thee
not, but I know Thee’ —thus testifies the Son. We who by His
grace believe on Him may leave to fools the folly of discussing
in, their hearts or in their books whether Jesus actually and
literally did thus pray! That which to their folly is “ conceiv-
able,” that some other might have afterwards invented, arranged,
or worked up—not merely with incredible audacity, but with
still more incredible correctness and insight—such a prayer as
this out of some pre-existent materials, is to us, in proportion
to the measure of our faith, more and more evidently the most
inconceivable of all impossibilities. “ Every one of these words
could have been spoken by Him alone, and by Him only at such
a conjuncture.” (Theremin.) Therefore “we cannot thankfully
enough wonder at and magnify the goodness of God, which hath
taken care that one of the prayers in which the Son of God
poured out His heart to the*Father should be so carefully
communicated to us.’ All sophistical questioning as to the
process of St John’s remembrance and the relation of his own
spirit in the matter, may be rebutted by the counter-question—
How could this disciple, paying his own homage to the Lord,
have presumed to place in His lips by an eézrev the words of
his own spirit? We make bold to obviate one offence of foolish-
ness by another, and say, If Jeremiah formerly could dictate
over again to Baruch his scribe the words of the roll which Je-
hoiakim burned—might not the Lord of glory have given to His
beloved disciple the pen of the Spirit, that he should faithfully
reproduce and record the prayers which He had offered up for
His church to the end of time? Alas, alas, we detect in most
even of our orthodox expositors, the simplicity of whose faith is
confused by the unbelief of the falsely learned, a tendency
scarcely concealed to assume even in this chapter the composi-
tion and arrangement of St John’s own mind. To Liicke “ the

420 THE HIGH-PRIESTLY PRAYER.

Tn d0En H eixov (ver. 5), flows from the gnosis of the Zvangelist” —
and attempting to solve a supposed contzadiction here, he says,
“ John distinguishes between the eternal and the temporal
80£a!” Treating of the order of thought, vers. 25, 26, he proceeds,
“ Who can imagine that John merely, etc.?”* Olshausen thinks
it enough to indicate “ that the author of the Gospel, as everywhere
so here, does not conceal his idea of the Divine nature of Christ.”
And much else like this might be quoted to be condemned. We,
for our own part—and this is our testimony and avowal im com-
mon with the Church, which sets its seal to this Gospel in ch.
xxi. 24, and seals it still—should feel ourselves reproved in the
utterance of such expressions by the Spirit of truth, as guilty
of the dwaptia of od motevew in the sense of ch. xvi. 9. We
say with Braune, and more decidedly than he, “ Does not Jesus
pray at the end in the language of John? I would almost
add—so Christly has become the language of this disciple of
His heart, so thoroughly has he imbibed his Lord’s spirit and
style of thought.’ Yes, verily, that which is now called Johan-
nean was first Christly—whence else could it have come? The
glorification-prayer did not spring from the gnosis of the pro-
logue; but this prologue, which gives us not the gnosis of man
but the witness of God, sprang from this prayer, from the self- ,
testimony of the Only-begotten: reaching its culmination in the
petitions which, in these words, He offered up in the flesh.

On the «ai eize Augustin writes: Poterat Dominus noster
unigenitus et cozeternus Patri in forma servi et ex forma servi,
si hoc opus esset, orare silentio: sed ita se Patri exhibere voluit
precatorem, wt meminisset, nostrum se esse doctorem. Proinde
eam, quam fecit, orationem pro nobis, notam fecit et nobis:
quoniam tanti magistri non solum apud ipsos sermocinatio, sed
etiam ipsius pro ipsis ad Patrem oratio discipulorum est edijicatio.
Et si illorum, qui hec dicta aderant audituri, profecto et nostra
qui fueramus conscripta lecturi.?, And Bengel’s briefer and more

1 “ This is eternal life, says John, that they might know Thee and Hin
whom Thou hast sent—!” Thus Schenkel. With all brotherly respect for a
man who has so much advanced in soundness and true zeal since 1839, I
cannot but refer to this striking example.

2 This last means, When He thus prayed He did not speak to the wind,
but provided for the permanence of His words for posterity.

JOHN XVII. 431

pointed expression of the same thing, is most obviously correct
—orat Patrem simulque discipulos docet. Which design of this
praying and speaking aloud is literally expressed in ver. 13. This
docet was not merely “ the natural result,” as Liicke maintains,
though in opposition to this verse, but at the same time the actual
design of our Lord; simul, as Bengel says, more discreetly than
Lampe, who goes too far‘when he interprets, Not so much for
His own sake as for theirs ; and applies this still more incorrectly
when he regards vers. 1-5 as spoken only for the disciples’ in-
struction. Most assuredly this was not the case, but He teaches
and edifies the disciples by admitting them to look into His pray-
ing heart ; consequently it is actually His heart which prays also
on His own account in the presence of the Father. Concerning
this blending of prayer for self with a regard to men who hear
—in its perfection possible only to the Son—we have already
spoken, when at the grave of Lazarus.’

Luther bids us, in order to a right understanding of these
simple yet inexhaustible words, to consider, “ Who the Man is
that thus prays, and Who is prayed unto, and how great a thing
is prayed for.” Melancthon declares, nec digniorem, nec sanc-
tiorem, nec fructuosiorem nec magis patheticam vocem in ccelo
ac terra unquam auditam fuisse, quam hanc ipsius Filii Dei pre-
cationem. Bengel testifies, hoc caput in tota scriptura est verbis
facillimum, sensibus profundissimum. Spener avows, “that the
true understanding of this prayer goes beyond the measure of
faith which the Lord is wont to impart to His disciples during
their pilgrimage.’ ‘Therefore when he drew near the end of
his own pilgrimage, he caused it to be read three times aloud to
him, but never ventured to preach upon it. We have, however,
expository preachers upon it in abundance; and many called
and uncalled have made their essays upon its interpretation.
May we not, nay, ought we not to add our attempt? Although
it goes beyond our understanding —like much else, indeed every-
thing, in Scripture—yet it is enshrined there that we may ponder
it, with the help of the same Spirit who gave to St John that

1 It is sufficiently plain from the tenor of both fact and narrative, that
the Lord did not go apart to pray, as His wont was, John alone being near
enough to hear His words.

422 THE HIGH-PRIESTLY PRAYER. .

deep insight with which he wrote it down, anl Who is promised
also to us.

The incomparable and crystalline simplicity of the words of
this prayer is a very great assistance to our understanding of its
meaning, alluring us to penetrate the deep things which they
so plainly utter. The Lord manifestly would be understood,
and therefore speaks of the highest wonders and mysteries with
such marvellous plainness of speech as is never found in the
gnostic or speculatist, and can never be attained even by His
servants praying through His Spirit in His name. So high is
its strain that none has ever approached it since; and yet the
words are so childlike that children find their instruction, and
edification, and comfort in them. To Strauss this wonderful
chapter presents itself, not as a prayer, but as a product of re-
flection, as a discourse concerning Jesus: but he knows not what
praying is, at least what the prayer of the Son of God is in that
glory and illumination, which He already anticipates while He
asks for it. “ Should it be wondered at that perfected feeling is

\ throughout most intense thought?” says Lange beautifully. Less
striking, but with equally sound meaning, is Braune’s remark,
“ Here is the inwardness of the East, the home of religion,
seized and expressed with the precision of the West, the home
of science.” We would make this more emphatic, and say, The
most glowing mystic and the most careful thinker finds each his
own language in these words, embracing both opposites in one!
We can form some slight conception of the intensity of emotion
with which the human heart of our Lord would at this crisis
vibrate to the truth, the essential reality of the things of which
He spoke—and hence the discourse which utters them bubbles
forth as a gushing stream. And again, what majestic repose,
what luminous transparency of the thoughts, one flowing from
the other in adjusted order, all forming one connected develop-
ment, and for the most part each one either the explanation of
what precedes it, or a further deduction of its consequences.

And may we presume to analyse such a prayer as this? Yes,
for being such it must have the most perfect and exact arrange-
ment and system, adjusted down to the minutest point—could
we but seize it aright! The more of spirit and life there is in
prayer, the more will there be of the living system of the Spirit

JOHN XVII. 423

in its organic development; but it is better to arrive at this
by an inward sympathy with the process of the prayer, praying
it after Him, than to impose upon it a system from without,
in derogation of its sanctity. We shall therefore content our-
selves with a very gereral preparatory analysis of the whole;
and when after that we erter upon detailed exposition, every
single word will itself guide us to the next. Thus much is at
once clear: The Lord, approaching the Father as His Son,
proceeds from Himself and His glorification now come, laying
claim on that account to eternal life for all given to Him;—
He then as Intercessor embraces all His disciples present and
future—beginning with the commencement of His work within
them, and continually enlarging the circle of His intercession
until it reaches eternity and the full consummation of all;—
and, finally, He carries back their glorification with becoming
dignity to the first words concerning His own—JT in them! This
prayer has been termed with perfect propriety the High-priestly
prayer: not merely vers. 9 and 19, but the entire strain approves
this. He prayed thus in testimony how He would henceforth in-
tercede for and represent them in heaven. The beginning of the
High Priest’s office is, in the living transition of the unity of all
the offices, the end also of the prophetic.

There is, indeed, as Schmieder* observes, a distinction, but it
is not, we think, an essential one, between this present interces-
ston and His future mediation. It is not by an “inexact” use
of the term that the church calls the Lord’s mediation now in
heaven an intercession; this language is justified as exhibiting
and bringing home to us heavenly things by earthly types. That
we do not now ask, Lord Jesus, pray for us! is partly untrue,
since many of our hymns. and prayers do use such language ;
but partly the result of an internal restraint of propriety.

The three main divisions are so simple and so plain, that this
trichotomy has been generally acknowledged from the earliest
times; their more detailed organisation will appear as we pro-
ceed. First is the supplication to the Father for the glorification
of the Son, as the ground and summary of the whole, —Ad£acov
He, ov watep! But with this is connected the instructive expla-

1 Tn his profound, but rather theosophically contemplative than exposi-
tory, treatise on the High-priestly prayer (Hamburg 1848) S. 123.

424 THE HIGH-PRIESTLY PRAYER.

nation, preparing for what follows, that from the knowledge of
God the Father in the Son glorifying and glorified by Him, the
eternal life of believers should proceed. This is embraced and
concluded in vers. 1-5. Secondly follows the specific interces-
ston for His own whom He leaves behind in the world, commenc-
ing with the revelation of the name and communication of the
word which had already been vouchsafed, and proceeding through
preservation unto holiness in the truth—embracing indeed with
these first disciples all future disciples too. (Vers. 6-19.) Here
we have, further, in vers. 6-13, a more general foundation with
its own definite conclusion ; ver. 14 beginning anew with a more
deeply penetrating development of the expression.’ Jn the third
place follows, from ver. 20 (“not for these alone” looks back-
ward also in its application) to the close, the widest comprehen-
sion of His whole church—all one in Him, as He in the Father,
partakers finally of His glory, as they were previously, and as
the foundation for that, of His love.

The arrangement of Olshausen and Liicke makes vers. 1-8
the first part, and certainly vers. 6-8 contain a general funda-
mental statement which flows immediately from the preceding ;
but as certainly the intercession for His own who have received
and held fast His word, is already begun in them. Lampe
would resolve it into an oratio bipartita, the division being be-
tween vers. 10 and 11—the former part laying the foundation,
and the latter being the detailed development. We are far from
contending about it, and leave to every one his own view; it is
manifest that in the fulness of this prayer many various organic
arrangements may be found interpenetrating each other.’ Very

1 Melancthon finds four essential things prayed for on behalf of His
church: the first and most prominent being the conservation of true doc-
trine, concord the second, then the full application of His sacrificial merit,
and lastly joy and eternal glory. We regard, however, the first as the
foundation presupposed in vers. 6-11. The cupeiv év 7g dvo~ars has obvi-
ously a wider meaning ; their preservation, as in ver. 15, is the proper centre
of the intercession (as Lampe rightly regards it), but this is effected only
in their sanctification.

2 Schmieder speaks at first of siz petitions, vers. 5, 11, 15, 17, 20, 24.
But he afterwards in his exposition adds to the one great supplication for
Himself which embraces all, three others for His disciples; more correctly
taking vers. 20-23 as one additional.

JOHN XVII. 1. 425

much more important than any arbitrary arrangement is it that
we should contemplate, feel, wonder at, adore, and in adoring
at the same time understand, the most sacred, sinless, and spot-
less allumination and repose with which the unspotted High
Priest, now near the anguish of Gethsemane, presents Himself
here before the Father. What a contrast is this, and what a
revelation does this light and glory shed upon that subsequent
obscuration !* No word of sin and guilt, with which, however,
every other son of man must appear before God in death. Not
even a word of infirmity, no Help Me! all is merged into the
one Glorify Thou Me! Nor is there even a thanksgiving at the
end of the accomplished work, only the testimony—I have
finished the work, Thou gavest it to Me! One great petition—
and that for things which, according to human thought and
worldly estimate, would be the most improbable of all on such
an occasion—and even this is scarcely a petition, for He who
humbles Himself to ask it places Himself, unlike every other
petitioner, by the side of the Father—We! (vers. 11, 22), and
speaks thus of the giving of eternal glory, Father, Iwill! ver. 24.
Again, for that which is from eternity His own He nevertheless
prays! Where else are such marvels found? Who can sound
‘the depths of all this ?

Ver. 1. We cannot admit the reading kcal érdpas,—eirre,
which Griesb., Lachmann, and Tisch. have accepted; Liicke
regards it as a mere correction of the style, but we set it down
as a correction which would exchange the emphatic simplicity
of the rigorously historical opening for a descriptive effect
which is quite inappropriate to St John. He does not even
lift up His hands toward heaven, like other earnest petitioners
who urge their suit: that would have been unsuitable to the
repose and majesty of this prayer, in which He exhibits Him
self as One with the Father, and as having at once that which
He asks. But He lifts up His eyes, in testimony where His
heart is, and whither He is going. Toward heaven, for although
the Father and heaven itself are at the same time within Him,
vet on the other hand the throne a glory is not the less there
on high. Many make this a reason for thinking that the prayer

1 Rupert’s notion is inconceivable, that this prayer was that offered in
Gethsemane !

426 FATHER, GLORIFY THY SON.

was offered up on the way, in the open road, but we have
already refuted this." The heaven toward which Jesus looked
is not so much the visible heaven (in which “the bright full
moon was shining”) as the invisible (Col. i. 16).? Nor did the
Lord praying within the chamber need any “open window” in
order to look towards heaven—as some have tamely imagined.
Liicke well exposes this, “To the praying eye heaven, the
throne of God, is everywhere visible, comp. Ps. cxxii. 1.” But
what Schmieder says here of the heaven within the praying
soul is only a meditation upon the words, and not an exposition
of them. The first word of the praying Lord is, Father—and
nothing more. Not our Father, which He could never say ;
not even My Father, for that would be here too much. In the
entire prayer there are six invocations ; twice with this word in
its bare simplicity, twice with od mdrép corresponding to the
adjoined J;.once matep dyve, and once finally wdrep Sixase.
The hour is come—so speaks the Son to the all-knowing Father
in the real address of person to person, presenting Himself in
this first word as ready in His voluntary will for this glorifica-
tion. Come is the howr—this connects itself closely with ch.
xii. 23, 28; as the glorifying which follows connects itself with
ch. xiii. 31, 32. Yet the thought of the glorification hastens
most distinctly over the hour of suffering, and forward to the
state of glory in heaven, ver. 5: it is throughout one and the
same glorification of which He speaks. The jirst petition is
the preliminary expression of the substance of the whole, out of
which all is unfolded, into which all returns back. Glorify—
Me! As the hour is specifically mentioned, Luther is right in

saying, “ He prays with such feeling and solemnity as if He

already hung upon the cross, as if He should cry,—I am now in
the very midst of shame and death, lying in deepest darkness,
the time is come that I should be lifted up, and set in honour.”
But it is just as true, and of as deep significance, that He thus
prays in the clear consciousness of the anticipated veviknxa, and

1 T can only marvel to find Schmieder saying, ‘‘ Thus went Jesus, in col-
loquy with the Father, through the silent streets of Jerusalem, etc.” My
thought can represent the High Priest ‘‘ standing before God,” neither as
going nor as sitting.

* Alford’s English excellently expresses it— Heaven is not the sky.

_

JOHN XVII. 1. 427

that He cannot therefore cry first cdcov pe. Here in the
Father’s presence He terms Himself not the Son of man,
although the glorification of the human nature is here con-
cerned, the Divine needing no glorification; for it is wpon the
ground and prerogative of the equal Godhead united to His
humanity, that He prays in this humanity. Throughout the
prayer we find the most complete communicatio idiomatum.
There has been already in the past an éd0€aca of the Father
(ch. xii. 28) ; but the full and perfect glorification is now first
to come. He begins by referring to Himself as objectively
presented to His own faith and contemplation— Thy Son; but
this is in vers. 4, 5, retracted into the subjective I and Me,
while the I and Thou then pave the way for the still more ex-
alted We, of ver. 11. That Thy Son also may glorify Thee:
—even in this juxtaposition and reciprocation there is decisive
testimony to the equal Divinity of the Son; for what creature
could presume to say before the throne and face of the Creator,
that it would glorify Him as He it. The xai, wanting in the
Vulg., and rejected by Lachm., is capable of vindication, and
of great significance as giving prominence to this meaning—
which, however, without it would be essentially the same.

The Son, further, desires His own glorification not egoisti-
cally, in any imaginable sense of this word as appertaining to
sin and separation from God; but solely to the end that He
again may glorify the Father, and give back to Him the might,
honour, and glory which Himself should receive, and here once
more we find that first petition after the invocation of the
Father in heaven, a petition which includes all others, —Hal-
lowed by Thy name!* How and to what end, then, may and
must the Father Himself (this absolute expression is here alone

1 The parallel drawn in Richter’s Hausbibel (on Lu. xi.), between the
entire Lord’s prayer and this prayer, will not hold good; for all the suc-
ceeding petitions are here merged in the first, and that only as far as the
sinless High Priest could make them His own. Nor can it be said, strictly
speaking, that the order is here reversed, this prayer beginning with glori-
fication and redemption, and ending with the manifestation of the Father’s
name. For, to the Redeemer regarded as now victorious and out of the
reach of all evil, the d¢Zacov does not include a casov, and the yrwpierv ro
évowe at the end is something different from the hallowing of our prayer.
What in that prayer, however, the Lord does use, has here its beginning.

498 THAT THY SON ALSO MAY GLORIFY THEE.

found) first be glorified? It is obvious, not to and in Himself ;
but as the holy and righteous Father in. men, who through si
have come short of His 60a. Thus He is first of all to be
glorified in the humanity of this God-man, who prepares and
presents Himself to that end; then, through Him in His dis-
ciples, so that in this first word concerning the mutual glorifica-
tion, that is already involved and included which follows in
vers. 10, 23, 26—éyw év avtois. The glorification of the
Father through the Son glorified by the Father is—“ the
restoration of the Divine image in humanity,” the issue of
which is expressed in 2 Thess. 1. 10.

Ver. 2. There now follows a more specific development and
explanation of the sense in which this glorification of the Father
to and in fallen humanity is intended. Kaéas, as a connecting
particle, has been variously regarded, the greater part of exposi-
tors perceiving the specific force of the word, but giving it a
restricted instead of a general meaning. Euthymius makes it
summarily a dre or 6:0, and Grotius, somewhat nearer the point,
rationem reddit precedentium, et valet siguidem; for which
Olshausen, too, adduces Rom. i. 28; 1 Cor. i. 6. In this sense
it has been expressed thus, That Thy Son may glorify Thee
according to His destiny: nor can it be doubted that such a
meaning is primarily included—Thou hast decreed and ordered
it that I should be the Saviour of all men. Rieger: “This
His first petition He supports by the consideration that the
mediatorial office which He had received required such a glori-
fication ; and that without it the good pleasure of the Lord
could not prosper in His hands.” Liicke, again, somewhat
varies this: “The reciprocal glorification corresponds with the
authority which the Father had given Him, etc. The causal
relation which xa@dés expresses is this, that the reciprocal glori-
fication, the end, must answer to the beginning, the sending, the
preparation, and the vocation of the Son.” All this is true,
but we must, however, hold fast (as Liicke seems to perceive)
that both the reason and the corresponding similarity are to-
gether meant, just as in Rom. i. 28. That is however still
true which B.-Crusius observes, “ xaOas defines the manner of
Gods glorification, through the union of all men (al/?) in a
blessed and sanctified fellowship.” So Lampe preferred to

JOHN XVII. 2. 429

accept the particle as cuyxpitixds seu éEnyntixds. All this
harmonises well: the rationem reddere unites both the reason
assigned and the object for which, in as far as, first, the éEovcla
is already attributed and given to the Son, and that, too, not
merely as a “commission,” but in the fulness of absolute power;
—but then only to this end, that He may give life and save.
Thus the xa@@s points not only to the main proposition édwxas,
but to its subordinate and further scope tva d@c7y. Such is
the full meaning of the transition “ according as.”

All flesh never means unconditionally as such all men, and
most certainly not here! Gen. vi. 3, 12, connected with it the
notion of a dying nature in its full sense as being the result of
sin, as well mortality as corruption; nay, rather, made that its
fundamental idea:—though sometimes, as in the case of the
flesh of the Logos, the idea of a weakness to be overcome is all
that is brought into view. See, in illustration, Lu. iii. 6; Isa.
xls Sie Moatisxary, 22; Actsii.17. His humiliation ee to
the flesh of sinners and the children of death, is contemplated
by Him who here prays in the weakness of His flesh but through
the power of the eternal Spirit, as itself an authority bestowed
upon Him :—in this very participation of human nature He has
become the Head and the Lord of all humanity. In its final
and perfect sense the power of which He speaks was not yet
given to Him (see Matt. xxvii. 18)—but we must not, never-
theless, reduce the éOwxas here to a mere designating, or ap-
pointing, or attributing, like the Heb. {0}. The full vindication
and practical evolution of this power remains for the approach-
ing glorification ; but on the ground of the Divinity, which dwelt
in and pervaded His humanity, He possessed from the begin-
ning of His incarnation all é£ovcia and ofa. This is the fun-
damental principle of the whole prayer, as it comes prominently
out in this preliminary xa@as. In this sense, according to Matt.
xi. 27, the Son had already power over all things ; for that ex-
pression, though it primarily referred to things to be revealed,
yet includes in its meaning the more general and deeper prin-
ciple of His power. It is the propriety of the Son in His
humiliation to have power over all spirits, over every creature,
and that power He might use when occasion required ; but now
that is made prominent which concerns the import of this me-

430 4£LL FLESH.

diatorial prayer, the specific power over all flesh. “That is the
foul matter with which Christ has to do. For all flesh is in a
miserable condition, so that it might appear to have been made
in vain,” unless such a Mediator interpose.” (Berl. Bibel.)
Authority over all flesh, obtained by His becoming a man in
the flesh and the Head of our race, the Son received with joy
from His Father—“ not as a burdensome commission, but as
an authority conferred.” (Rieger.)

In the word flesh there lies involved the “inclusive idea of
all tribulation and misery,” as Francke rightly preaches. But
we doubt very much whether, as Lange assentingly supple-
ments, “in the same expression there is also the inclusive idea
of all undeveloped human capabilities for the kingdom of God ;” .
for this scriptural phrase, which we have explained upon ch. iii.,
seems to forbid such a view. Most certainly this material, with
which Christ has to do, is not as “ flesh” a fund of undeveloped
capabilities, but an element of opposition, in a state of ruin and
corruption altogether needing renewal. All flesh (excepting
Him who even in the flesh has already the é£ovcia) lies in
death, has fallen under the power of eternal death: this contrast
and gloomy undertone is assuredly presupposed in the fact that
a giving of eternal life is spoken of as necessary. But even the
power of the Son, according to the counsel of the Father, cannot
bring to effect the eternal life of all flesh: the specific and
prominent iva distinguishes His saving power as it respects
those given to Him, from the universal authority over all men
(for this is the right resolution of the genitive here). The latter
embraces, as all His working to the end that the whole world if
willing may be saved, so also the condemnation which, alas,
must be the alternative in the case of the many who will not;
but this latter in the High-priestly prayer is merely grazed and
passed by, that the salvation of those who believe may be the
great theme, ver. 9. The Father giveth the power over all, but
among these all He giveth the elect themselves to the Son: for
here we have the opposition between the general and the par-
ticular. It must be understood that the Father hath given
those who suffer themselves to be drawn and given: as we have

1 The thought here reverts to Ps. Ixxxix. 48.

JOHN XVII. 2. 431

sufficiently shown upon ch. vi., and as ver. 8 in this chapter
fundamentally establishes.

To become such a possession of Jesus (2 Thess. it. 14)—is
ever the condition for the reception of eternal life. “ Know this
well, O man, that it is not given to thee to be thy own master:
thou must have another Lord, the choice is between God and
thine eternal enemy and His.” (Theremin.) The threefold
giving has a very significant internal relation, each one strictly
proceeding from that which precedes it: because Christ has
become the Head of humanity, believers may be given to
and incorporated with Him; but to those who become such
He can also fully and entirely communicate Himself. And
here it must be noted that in a certain sense the honour ulti-
mately rests with the Father alone, who hath given to the Son
to give; while, on the other hand, in the second giving the in-
dependent authority of the Son is maintained. Comp. ch. v.
26, according to which the Son hath Himself the life, and is the
life for us. Here then it is that real life which is eternal; that
fellowship with God which at once begins with living faith, and
is consummated only in the full blessedness of eternal glory :—
such must be its meaning here, as it is communicated to us by the
Spirit through the glorification of the Son. Men take needless
and foolish pains to take away from this passage all reference to
the present state, and eternal life this side the grave ; but the op-
posite error is equally and even more deplorable—that, namely,
of limiting it entirely to this state. He who truly hath life in the
Son knows also that it will be consummated to him in eternity.

The remarkable construction with wav at the beginning
(enallage both generis and nuwmeri—for the reading avdté, in-
stead of avrois, is evidently false), has been spoken of already
on ch. vi. 37 : all those who are given to the Son are regarded both
as individuals, which the avro?s maintains, and as one complete
and foreseen Whole. Thus not merely is wav to be expressed
by quotquot (with Erasmus), but it is to be regarded as corre-
sponding with the va @cw &, ver.11. And this refutes the
interpretation of the Berlenb. Bibel (as does also the parallel, ch.
vi.), —“ That He may give them all that which Thou hast given
Him, eternal life ;” although there is nothing in the expression
itself which would oppose this rendering. It evidently aims at

432 ETERNAL LIFE.

removing anything like an election of those given, and thereby
would pave the way for the general restoration of all flesh.

V. 3. Here we have both development and expansion of the
thought, by means of a more direct definition of eternal life.
The expression is in some sort parallel with ch. ii. 19, And this
is the condemnation—thus does it proceed. In that passage,
however, the ground and the way of condemnation are expressly
defined; but we must not on that account say that nothing
more is meant here than the way to eternal life— 'This is the

appointed way in which men attain to it. Forthe Lord here

_ | penetrates more deeply into the matter than He does there, where

it was not yet His purpose to reveal the essential character oF the
condemnation. Theé cor, belonging to the a YwoOrKoTL,' is to
be understood asin ch. xii. 50 (but not likewise ch. vi. 63, which
we have expounded otherwise). It is not needful that the Son
should tell the Father in what eternal life consists; hence Francke
is very positive that these words were spoken as instruction to
those who heard Him, “I have made mention of eternal life,
and will now tell you how ye may attain it.” This, however,
is too peremptory, and forgets that the ouordyners also is
part of true prayer—Father, I know Thee, Thou art the only
God, to know Thee is life! We have an apt parallel in Wisd.
xv. 3—so apt that we might almost suppose an allusion to it—
For to know Thee is perfect righteousness; yea, to know Thy

_power is the root of immortality. Even this apocryphal pas-

sage, —anticipating the New Testament, though the émiotac@au
and the pifa a@avacias reacly not the depth of the ywooxew
and the fa) alevios—goes beyond the superficial meaning
which many, with a good intention or in condescending apolo-
getics, derive from this utterance of our Lord. Erskine,’ to
wit: “The mystery of eternal life, holiness and blessedness, con-
sist in the knowledge of the moral attributes of God, as they
have been manifested in the work of Jesus Christ.” [Germ.
trans.| O no, it is not the attributes or perfections of God
which are here referred to merely, but the xpdros or essence of

1 A various reading has the indicative. Certainly ive is the explica=
tive éz:; not in order that, which by an inconceivable varepoy xperepov, the
eternal life would come before the knowledge of God and of Christ.

2 Essay on Faith, translated by Kriiger.

JOHN XVII. 3. 433

the eternal Power and Godhead itself, the most internal prin-
ciple of which is the power of communicating love as the root
of our eternal life. Schmieder unexpectedly explains at first,
that Jesus does not declare in what eternal life consists, but
what would make eternal life accessible to us, in what and
whereby we may attain eternal life; but he afterward corrects
himself, “ In this knowledge, however, we have Him and in Him
eternal life; for true knowledge is ever communication of in-
fluence, and leads to increasingly perfect fellowship.’* Yes,
in truth, this saying may serve to explain what knowledge means
in Scripture! 1 Cor. vii. 2, 3, xiii. 12; Gal. iv. 9. Not ap
prehension, imagination, thinking in cold speculation, or =
in the unillumined warmth of false mysticism ; nor is it belief
as mere admission and credence, but_a_ living, conscious _posses-
sion_of fellowship with Him. To know God—the highest thing
possible to the creature, or for which the creature was formed !
When that is perfect, the life is consummate. ‘The holy angels
are from their creation blessed in this, that they behold the face
of God; but we are to receive the knowledge of the only true
God (which not more than eternal life we derive from our-
selves), through Him whom He hath sent to us to that end.

God is 6 dAnOtvds Oeds, that is not, certainly, “who faith-
fully fulfils His promises”—but He alone is God in the only
true and absolutely real meaning of this incomprehensible name ;
a name which humanity never lost sight of even in its darkest
idolatry, as in 1 Thess. i. 9, Oeds Sav Kal adnOwos. There is
manifestly here a similar contrast with the “gods” falsely so
called: this is proved by the corroborative wovoes, as well as by
the juxtaposition of Jesus the Messiah, which gives a peculiar
character to this passage. The two opposites to the knowledge
of the true God here referred to, were in their historical mani-
festation at that time— Gentile idolatry, which knew not nor
acknowledged even the one true God; and the Jewish rejection
of His anointed in the person of Jesus, which nevertheless ac-
knowledged and professed to know the only God—see, how-
ever, ch. v. 87, 38, viii. 42, 43, 54,55. But in their internal

1 As Iren. adv. Har. iv. 20,°H drapZic ras Guns tx ris rov bod repiyi-
verous eToys’ meron O¢ Osov ors TO yivocxsiy Oeov xual &roravely TIS KonoTE-
TNTOS AUTO.

FOL: VE ZE

434 THE ONLY TRUE GOD.

and permanent principle, as the Lord here points to it for all
futurity, they are—Pantheistic_denial of the personal super
mundane Creator, and deification of the creature which is the
root of all heathenism; and Deistical rationalism, which needs
not and nd rejects _ Christ. We may regard dial juxtaposition
under various aspects, as history and experience furnish illustra-
tions of its meaning. On the one hand, Christ alone is the way
to the Father, and there is no pndwladie of the Father apart
\from and independently. of the Son whom He hath sent to us:
wee in this sense the xaé is a profound explication of what pre-
vedes. And this holds good with regard to all conscious and _
wilful rejection of the Christ who is come, in which alienation
from God and hatred to Him must infallibly manifest them-
selves... But, on the other hand, since the whole truth in man’s
relations to God comes out only step by step, since men can be
brought back to a knowledge of God only by degrees, the two
parts of our saying express this progression, as it corresponds
on a great scale to the relation between the Old and New
Testaments—Repentance toward God and faith in Jesus
Christ.? Assuredly, there have been and there are monotheist
Jews (as even Mohammedans and Gentile Philosophers), who
already possess some knowledge of the povos addnOuvos Beds, and
yet know not Christ; but this partial knowledge must neces-
sarily be connected with partial life. Among these must we
place, to speak in the mildest terms, such Rationalists as not
altogether without their own fault tarry long in the outer court,
who, as halfthinkers (like the Jews going not beyond their pre-
paratory half-knowledge of the Old Testament), hold a personal
God without Christ. In the case of some of them, those whose
hearts are sincere, the mystical Christ may be unconsciously
possessed as the long-suffering Angel of the Covenant; but in
the case of those who persist to the uttermost in conscious
opposition to the influence of Revelation, it comes at last to

"He who can hate God who is eternal love, absolutely knoweth Him
not.
2“*To take the Lord for our God is the natural part of the covenant ;
~{ the supernatural part is, to take Christ for our Redeemer. The former is

first necessary, and implied a in the latter.” Baxter’s Saint’s Rest, Fawcett’s
Abridgment, p. 81.

JOHN XVII. 3. 435

what is written—He that hath not the Son, hath not God!
Repentance itself is first made perfect and confirmed in faith
toward Christ; the full understanding of the monotheist
foundation, 812 N'WNI2, comes to the whole-thinker first in &v
apxi iv 6 Aoyos—which again the Spirit of the Son, who
became flesh and was then glorified, brought to light out of the
rubbish of inquiring philosophy.

Many, from the earliest times, not content with the simple
accusative of the persons after the emphatic ywaoxwat, have
therefore sought to introduce some abstraction as the object of
the knowledge. Hence even Luther’s paraphrase— That Thou
alone art the true God; although he is inconsistent with him-
self in the second clause, in which he does not similarly con-
tinue. A superficial exposition, however, has done so, and we
find Freilinghausen and Francke correcting Luther with all
confidence by adding—And Jesus as the Christ, that He is
Christ. So, e.g., Clericus, Wolle, Nésselt, Kuinoel, Meyer,
and Liicke, formerly. Kling, on the contrary, observes very
properly, “according to the sense this ‘ acknowledge as,’ may be
admitted (we would say rather, according to the primary sense) ;
but grammatically it can be resolved only thus, To know Thee,
who art the only true God, and Jesus who is the Messiah.”
(So also Lampe.) This, then, would interpret as if there were
an eivat in the passage. But the meaning is by no means thus
exhausted, and Tholuck says again, “Not to mention other
reasons against it, the article ought not to be wanting to
Xptcros, just as we find it in ch. xx. 31.” J. M. Faber assumed
such an eivat, but with another application in the second clause
—And Jesus Christ to be He whom Thou hast sent. Stolz
translates, “And as Thy Sent One.” Liicke afterward adopted
this, on the ground that "Inoods Xpuotos together is in St
John a proper name, the predicative term of dignity, Xpiaros
being not indeed altogether lost sight of, but sunk in the proper
name. ‘This view is the clearest to all the pseudo-friends of
light—as we see in the case of Stolz himself—because they

1 “Tn the soul of every unregenerate man the creature is both God and
Christ. As turning from the creature to God, and not by Christ, is no
true turning (that is, no whole turning)—so believing in Christ, while the .
creature hath our hearts, is no true believing.” Baxter, as before.

436 WHOM THOU HAST SENT.

would place in connection with the only true God no more than
a man sent. by Him.’ But we shall presently see that all this
does not penetrate to the kernel of this wonderful saying. It
does, indeed, permit such preliminary acceptations to the weak
and sincere, because the Lord’s wisdom and love does not lay
down such stiff and rigid symbola as His Church too often does,
but to all truly sincere seekers it approves on deeper investiga-
tion the equal Godhead of the Son.

The equal Godhead of Him who was sent? And here too,
where the God who sent Him is placed in conjunction with
Him as the only true God? This is the taunting question of
too many in our day, who triumphantly pervert this sacred word
of the prayer of Jesus into their own Rationalist symbol. But
let us look at it more closely! At the outset, it is by no means
established, as these people suppose, that jsoves stands here as
excluding and opposed to Him who was sent; it is, deed,
open to question whether this pdvos is to be construed into pre-
dicate or subject. Pater est unus verus Deus—FPater solus est
verus Deus, are two propositions wide as the heavens asunder.
Have we not already shown, by the significant antithesis to the
heathenish and pantheist multiplication of gods and deification
of all things, that the pdvos as strictly connected with adnOiwos
must be a predicate? Thus Clemens, ad Cor. Epist. i. under-
stood it, when he wrote, with allusion to this passage, Thus He
acted, in order to the glorification of the name of the true and
only God. And so does the Peschito expressly translate, N38
yaNe3 NWT Nripw. The sole, personal God, as opposed to all
the multiplicity of so-called DvION, as well as to all creaturely
nixay of heaven and earth :—this is the fundamental tryth of
Scripture; and it is not abolished, but rather unfolded, by the
doctrine of the Trinity, so that we no longer regard the povos
as an abstract and dead unity. Comp. the povos, Rom. xvi. 27;
1 Tim. i. 17; and even Matt. xix. 17, eis—etc. It was simple
infatuation, and nothing more, which led Crellius in the Tract.
de uno Deo Patre, p. 2, to declare Jno. xvii. 3 to be the first
testimony and argument of his opinion. But how are we to

1 Liicke, however, doses not make common cause with them, since he

adds the caution, ‘‘ But both predicate and subject are embraced as the one
object of the yivaoxed.”

JOHN XVII. 3. 437

understand the words, so as to retain in them the doctrine of
the equal Divinity of Jesus Christ, as it is contained in the
whole of Scripture, and in this entire prayer?

Many of the Fathers, as Augustine," Ambrose, and Hilary,
referred the predicate tov pdvov x.7.r. to both the Persons
named, and assumed Jesus Christ to be included therein, con-
necting the «ai and the cé closely together. Not otherwise
Chrys. and Euthymius, who expressly supplement an evaz, to
which the «aé would likewise belong. This was well-meaning
and conformable to the truth; but it scarcely needs to be shown
that it was an enforced and untenable exegesis, as Lampe clearly
perceived. Nevertheless, Christ is by no means excluded here
from the Godhead, but is positively united in one with the
Father. The grounds of this assertion are these :—

First : The counter-proof from the apparent meaning of the
words, even if the pdvos excludes only false Gods, avails not as
an argumentum a, silentio, since Christ here speaks primarily of
His human person and nature. It runs—Whom Thou hast
sent; not—Whom Thou hast begotten! And very appropri-
ately so: for this latter mystery is not to be known in the sense
in which the word here holds; nor does eternal life depend (as
the Athanasian Creed too boldly says) upon our accepting the
Trinitarian mysteries, with or without understanding. Rapp
and all his brother Rationalists are right in this. Christ does
actually pray here, consequently not as God to Himself.
Lampe: Nunquam magis fas erat, ut Pater, contra distincte
ad Filium, in hac oyéce Filio obversaretur, quam in presenti
occasione, cum coram throno Patris in humili ila forma tan-
quam servus obediens adstaret—cumque ita etiam impleret
prophetarum oracula, qui eum precando Patrem pro Deo suo
agnoscentem introduxerant. Berlenb. Bibel: “Two main
points are the keys to this whole prayer. 1. That Christ pre-
sents Himself in His official character before the Father in the
deepest humiliation, yet as a Person intimately near to the
Father. 2. That the economy of the Father and that of the
Son are exhibited in their perfect harmony.” Yes verily, in

1 De Spirit. et litera, cap. 22, where he speaks of vivere de Deo, apud

quem est fons vitee, and cites this passage thus: id est, te et quem misisti
Jesum Christum [cognoscant] unum verum Deum.

438 WHOM THOU HAST SENT.

the humiliation of one who prays He is yet a Person intimately
near; so near, that the prayer passes in the Z’how and in the
We into the colloquy of an equal—as we shall see. Is not this
of itself enough?

But secondly: How could the Son as a creature be the glori-
fier of the Father, the Mediator and Giver of life to all flesh ;
how could He as such place Himself by the side of the Father
by a strictly parallel accusative? Luther says forcibly and
truly, “He mixes and blends Himself in the same sole Divine
essence, authority, and power; for He will be acknowledged
equally with the Father as the giver of eternal life.” It is the
same juxtaposition as in ch. xiv. 1; concerning which—blas-
phemous for every creature, but appropriate to the Son—we
have already spoken enough on that passage. The babblers
who find here no more than a praying mortal, have but a very
slight perception of what the prerogative of God’s honour above
every praying creature demands. Was not Moses sent of God,
and many others like hin? But how would it run, Eternal life
and blessedness consists in this, to know God and Moses—or
God and Paul! But He who prays here thus absolutely speaks
Himself to God—To know Thee and Me! As neither the
Archangel Gabriel nor Michael could present himself before
the throne of his Creator with the words which precede and
which follow these—Glorify me, that I may glorify Thee! I
have glorified Thee, and now glorify Thou me!—no more
could he presume upon such a juxtaposition as is found here in
ver. 3.

Thirdly : We now cannot but see that that preliminary accep-
tation—To know Thee as God, Me as Christ or as sent of Thee
—does not by any means satisfy the meaning of the words.
For eternal life cannot be regarded as flowing from the know-
ledge of the office and work of a man, cannot consist immedi-
ately in that just as it does in the knowledge of the living God.
Therefore, in the second clause also, the yweoxew is certainly
spoken of the Person, not of His teaching or work. Luther
here misses the point, “‘ Hence the force lies in the little word
Thee, that they may know Thee. Whom? Thee, who hast
sent Jesus Christ!” For, it is not oé Tov amocteihavTd pe—
but, xal dv dméatetAas. This Person sent, however, is the same

JOHN XVII. 3. 439

who in ch. x. 30 said & éopev. Thus the inmost and true ob-
ject of the knowledge transcends the predicates Christ and
Sent, and can be found only in the subject of these predicates,
One with the only God. According to 1 John v. 20, where
odtos incontrovertibly refers to the Son, Jesus Christ, He aiso
is the true God and eternal life. Does this then render neces-
sary two dAnOwol Oeci, or does not the povos retain notwith-
standing its propriety? In St Jude’s Epistle, ver. 4, Christ is
termed 6 povos deororns Kal kipcos—in ver. 25 we have again
pov Ged. Does not all this consist well together, on the pre-
supposition of the Trinitarian unity? As in that most simple
Apostles’ Creed before the Apostles’ Creed, 1 Cor. viii. 6, we
may ask—JIs therefore the Father not also Lord? So here—
Is therefore the Son not also God ??

Fourthly, and finally: We have only to connect this verse,
instead of wresting it as an isolated saying, I say not with the
entire Scripture, nor with the whole of this Gospel from its pro-
logue downward, but with the whole of the prayer in which it
is found, in order to be constrained to admit the full force of
its testimony! Does the Lord here pray only as one sent unto
men, like other men, with an office and work to fulfil? At the
outset, in ver. 1, the eternal Son comes into the presence of the
Father boldly and as an equal—in ver. 5 He speaks of His
eternal existence with God, before the world was—conse-
quently, €&A@ov in ver. 8 is the profounder interpretation of
the dwéoretXas—then see ver. 10—and still rising higher,
nets, ver. 11, #utv ver. 21—in ver. 22, jpets ev écpwev—
and all in this one prayer, uttered before His death! There is
but one interpretation of ver. 3 which harmonises with all this,
and it is that which we have given. Olshausen had -no right
to say that “this verse cannot be used as a proof-passage (for
the Divinity of Cliist),” especially as he afterward in part
corrects himself, and speaks more to the point. It is a proof-
passage, and that not merely consequentially, as it is said, but
by the force of the most rigid exegesis. Liicke, too, speaks
inexactly, “The passage is neither Trinitarian nor anti-Trini-

' Quod si unus Deus pater Christo non adimit ut unus sit Dominus, ita

solus Deus Pater verus Christo Jesu non aufert, ut verus Deus sit. Hilar.
de Trin. lib. ix.

440 JESUS CHRIST.

tarian, because its standing-point is not the idea of the Logos,
but the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ.” This last is
partly true; but the passage is made only the more convinc-
ingly Trinitarian by the fact that this Jesus Christ does never-
theless in this way “mix and blend His own being with that
sole eternal Godhead.”

We have left to the last a tremendous difficulty which some
have found for themselves; a difficulty which many of our
readers, both simple and thoughtful, would hardly be able to
discover or even believe unless it were told them. The Lord,
in His Father's presence and speaking of Himself, mentions
‘His two names, that of His person and of His office—Jesus
| Christ! These people, and we do not envy or disturb them,
find in this incontrovertible evidence that the whole is nothing
more than a composition of the Evangelist John. Even Liicke,
however, who scarcely more than tolerated the third person in
the solemn style of prayer, as it has occurred previously, now
joins these opponents in regarding the "Incodv Xpicrov as “ in-
tolerable.” Ue does not scruple even to approve Bretschneider’s
lapsus est auctor, cum e suo ingenio scriberet! With all respect
for the learned Doctor, not Bretschneider but Liicke, we cannot
refrain from uttering our testimony that such an expression as
this, and the critical assumption of judgment upon the Apostle
and the Evangelist John from which it springs, is itself, to say
the least, intolerable. What possible notion, in God’s name, of
the relation of the Evangelist to the Holy Spirit, and of His
assistance in the preservation of this prayer for the Church,
must the man have who can reconcile with it such a lapsus as
would scarcely befall the most insignificant author, or to whom
such a lapsus would in itself be endurable? Did not the blessed
Evangelist take sufficient pains in revising his manuscript, and
thus suffer to go forth uncorrected to the wofld such an “ offence
against historical propriety” (as de Wette calls it)?—The
matter is simple enough, if we would take the pains to investi-
gate and pause before we pronounce our absolute decisions.
True it is that this Incodv Xpicrov in the lips of Jesus Him-
self is striking, indeed it stands here alone in its kind; but it
is on that account all the more impressive, and appropriately
in its place. After the Lord in vers. 1, 2 (before He comes to

JOHN XVII. 3. 44]

the Ey of ver. 4) had already most solemnly, with as much
lowliness as dignity, spoken of Himself, the Son, in the third
person, this sel/-objectivising—the lower analogies of which we
have in so many psalm-prayers of the servant, as of the king—
progresses in ver. 3 into a perfect self-designation, because here
the ywocoxew is to have its object exhibited in the Person of
Him who is elevated to equality with God, and as such is to be
from this time presented to the world, even as He now pre-
sents Himself as such to the Father. With him who-does not
feel this, we have no contention. This “Jesus Christ” is said
to have been derived, as an expression of John himself, from
his prologue, ch. i. 17 ;—-but why may we not reverse the pro-
position, ‘since the disciples must learn first of the Master, how
to speak of Him?

This is, indeed, the only time that the Lord Himself unites
thus simply and immediately His Christ-name with His Jesus-
name ;—but the occasion stands alone. He presents Himself,
in the presence of His listening disciples, before the Father in
the most sublime self-testimony; uttering that designation of
Himself which was thereby sanctified, instituted, and ordained
for all future testimony to His person. And we may say that
the apostolical custom of using Jesus Christ as one double ap-
pellative, making Xpvoros also a proper name, had its origin in
this word of our Lord. Speak of Him as He spoke of Himself
before God—this was the Spirit’s suggestion to their minds.
The Lord here confirms, unfolds, explains, and glorifies the
central word of the Old Testament, now fulfilled in Him;
avows in the most solemn manner before the Father that He,
Jesus, this Son of man and Son of God, sent and proceeding
from the Father, and who now advances to His death, is the
povos adnOwos Xpioros—the only true Messiah; but He there-
by also protests against and annihilates every false notion of the
Messiah, as in the former clause every false God. Still more:
He reveals and sets His conclusive seal to what was scarcely
recognised at all in Israel—that Xpictos and vids tod Oeod
really coincide and are synonymous. Is not this of itself enough
to justify the use of this language as most appropriate? In the
améotethas is thus latent the é&@ov mapa tod tatpos, in the
Xpictds we now see that vids tod Oeod is included—for, to

449 JESUS CHRIST.

repeat the question, how otherwise could the knowledge of this
Christ, alike with the knowledge of God, be eternal life? Let
it now be observed that, in 1 Jno. v. 1, for example, it is merely
said, whoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ; but this imme-
diately afterwards in ver. 5 alternates with He that believeth
that Jesus is the Son of God. And a locus classicus like this
of the highest dignity, which establishes and teaches us how to
understand the formula of the whole New Testament, is to be
explained as a marvellous lapsus auctoris, a reduction into its
original source of a formula which existed without any such
high and solemn reason! Finally, if it is the personal name
Jesus which is the really “ intolerable” thing, as being uttered
by Jesus Himself, we have only to remark that all which had
preceded gives ample justification of its use, as inseparably
belonging to that.formula of testimony to His own person in
which the Lord here prototypically presents Himself before the
Father and the world. For the rest, we would quote Lampe
once more, whose words must have their full weight: “ Not to
no purpose is it that the Lord does not simply say MMe, but
speaks of Himself in the third person ; commemorating Himself
His own proper name, in order that He may intimate the mystical
meaning which it involves.” Or is it a fortuitous and meaning-
less thing that the Son of Mary was called Jesus? This name
of salvation (Lu. ii. 21), first uttered by Gabriel, which com-
bines a name common among the people with the sole and in-
comparable truth of its signification, which was borne in the
Old Testament by typical persons, which in apostolical preach-
ing is expounded even as the angel of the Lord had expounded
it (Acts iv. 12, v. 31; Matt. i. 21)—is it not here, if anywhere,
fittingly used, where He who bears it presents Himself before
the Father in the full consciousness of its power and meaning ??

Vers. 4, 5. To have the authority and power to save, accord-
ing to the meaning of His name,’ to give eternal life in the

1 And was it not something affectingly belonging to the joy of His de-
parture, that the Spirit should impress upon Him in all its clearness and
blessedness the encouraging truth—Thou art called Jesus, for Thou shalt
save Thy people from their sins! Thus St Matthew’s record of the concep-
tion, and St John’s of the departure, coincide in the name of Jesus.

? Ecclus. xlvi. 1, és éyévero xara ro bvoma adrov méyas eal owrnplee éx-

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 443

living knowledge of Himself and through Him of the Father—
this is the joy and the crown of His Jesus-heart at the present
point of transition in His prayer, as He approaches the Father
with the name of Jesus, that this name also may be glorified
with and in Him. But eternal life is the fruit and consequence
of His glorification, which rests upon the fulfilment of His
redeeming mediatorial work :—He therefore proceeds to speak
of this, developing and establishing it more fully. They are
greatly in error, although there are many orthodox men among
them, who would understand by the work merely the teaching
office of Jesus. Albertini, e.g., says incorrectly in his sermon,
“To have happily finished His office of teaching was to Him a.
great thing—but He presently thinks of the mighty arrears of
His work, and prays that the Father would glorify Him again
through the suffering of death.” We saw so far back as ch.
iv. that the great seedtime and harvest were anticipated and
united proleptically in one—and can we suppose Him here to
have spoken less comprehensively? He expressly describes the
work wpon earth, as if He was already lifted up from the earth,
and looking back upon it from heaven; the spirit of prayer so
elevates Him that He can say in ver. 11—I am no more in the
world! ©’Evi tis yfjs is indeed the antithesis to 7apa ceavTa,
mapa col, that is, in Thy heaven. (Bengel: terra defecerat a
Deo.) Had He not already suffered upon earth, and were not
the sufferings of death the final consummation of His human
life in humility? Thus the éreXelwoa (TedelHoas is an un-
worthy substitution) is an anticipation, like the I have overcome
of ch. xvi. 33, which gives its predominant tone to the entire
prayer. In this finished, before the fulfilment upon the cross,*
consists the pre-eminent wonder of this prayer, which anticipates
the heavenly mediation and intercession. The great Remain-

Acxray avrov. Let not the Apocrypha be too much despised; it contains
many preludes and echoes of the Spirit of prophecy, and some remarkably ~
seeming to go beyond the limits of the canonical writings. Throughout the
praises of the Fathers in Ecclesiasticus, it is in the case of Abraham and
Solomon alone that the signification of the name is lightly touched —— Why
is it then that in the case of Joshua it is made so strikingly prominent ?
The Bible closes, Rev. xxii. 16-20, with the single name Jesus; ver. 21
being all that is added.

_ * See the Apostle’s fainter echo in 2 Tim. iv. 6-8.

444 I HAVE FINISHED THE WORK.

der, of which Albertini speaks, is not the suffering of death as
such, for that also is merged in the victory of eternal life, but
the glorification with the Father Himself in heaven, as it is
here simply expressed. And even that is not so. much in re-
serve, as now assigned and already His own, even while He
befittingly prays for it; for in ver. 10 we find a ded0facpas, in
vers. 22, 24 the dd&a which was already given to Him. We
observed before that there is not even a thanksgiving at the end
of the finished prayer, and that is true; for the avowal and
testimony before God—Thou gavest Me the power, Thou gavest
Me all to whom I give eternal life; and now again— Thou
gavest Me the work to do! is something different from and
more than thanksgiving in the sense of the children of men.
But previous to this honour assigned to the Father, comes the
equally valid honour and dignity of the Son—ZJ have finished
the work, and thereby glorified Thy name, and now glorify Me !
Once more, who might thus speak before the throne of the
peyarotperns Sd£a (2 Pet. i. 17)—except the eternal Son,
well-pleasing to the Father, and well-beloved of Him in His
humanity? More is expressed in this cai viy—indicating in
itself the hour which had come (Euthymius)—than merely,
“ the interchange of love,” as Olshausen thinks, needlessly
seeking to do away with any idea of compensating reward.
We dare not say that the praying Son regarded that as only a
reciprocation of love which in the presence of the holy and
righteous Father was really the crown set upon His worthiness.
Heb. ii. 9; Phil. ii. 9. But even the Son is in this éd0£aca
and éreXeiwoa perfectly conscious of His own worthiness and
merit..—“ He founds this petition upon His obedience,” as
Braune says, and as Theophylact, in this better than Euthy
mius, expounds it in almost the same words. We must receive
this as the most sacred earnestness of scriptural teaching, and
- take it as our own strong consolation ; not sentimentally robbing
it of all its meaning, as for instance Herder irreverently does,
to the scandal of the devout, when he writes concerning this
prayer, “ That which Christ regarded as the most precious
booty of His short earthly life, for which he thanked God as

1 See what has been already said, upon ch. xiii. 82.

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 445

His richest gain, is His wreath and recompence in that world, an
unfading heavenly flower of friendship!!” Here, if anywhere,
is such aesthetic sentimentality loathsome and out of place.

It is necessary to observe carefully that the object of this glo-
rify—pé—as it comes into close connection with the od wdtep,
is by no means merely the humanity,‘ any more than it is the
eternal Godhead of the Son in itself; but the entire Person of
the God-man as one. If He referred to Himself simply as man,
how could He say that He already had this glory before the
world was? If He referred simply to Himself as the Son of
God, what would be the giving again of a glory which had never
been essentially laid aside or given up? ‘To deduce from these
words, with Thomasius and others, the doctrine that even the
Divine nature was the subject of eximanitio, is—whatever value
such speculations may have in their place—to travel beyond the
simple meaning of our text, which knows nothing of any such
separation and distinction in the consciousness of Jesus. The
glorifying which He here arrogates is to be understood only as
the correlative of the xp¥yis and xévwors involved in the taking
flesh, and which had now come to an end in this viv. In the
glorify Me the humanity remains entire, yea, in the integrity
even of flesh and blood, as we saw in ch. vi.; it is not such a
return to the Father, such an assumption again by the Father, ©
as would involve the forsaking His flesh as well as the world.
For He prays, or rather desires, Take now this humanity, in
which I have accomplished the work, also into heaven with Thee
—thither, where My Divinity hath been from all eternity. The
two natures and persons of the éyw éreXe/woa and the eiyov are
inseparably united in dofacov we. Christ prayed that id, quod
tum filius hominis est, ad perfectum Dei filium, z.e. ad resumen-
dam indulgendamque corport eternitatis sue gloriam, per re-
surrectionis (et ascensionis!) potentiam gigneretur; quam gloriam
a Patre corporeus reposcebat. Non nova querit, non aliena
desiderat ; esse talis qualis fuerat, postulat, sed precatur: id se,
quod antea erat, esse, gigni scilicet ad id, quod suum fuit.?_ It

1 As most of the fathers have carelessly said, such as Hilary, Chrys.,
Theodor. Heracl., and Mopsu., Augustine, Theophylact, Euthymius.

? Hilar. Tract. in Ps. ii. c. 27. See in Dorner, Entwickelungsgeschichte,
S. 1063.

446 THE GLORY WHICH I HAD WITH THEE.

is as if in this wapa ceavt@ He had approached the Father with
the language of the Psalm—Set Me at Thy right hand! “The
incarnate Son now takes His part in glory, returns in a glorified
human form to God; the Son of God and the Son of man are
for ever united in Jesus, as the almighty and yet human Ruler
of the universe. It is the same pure J which had been from all
eternity in glory with God, and which became in time cognisable
in Jesus; this I, this personality, was once only in the Son of
God, but since the ascension it has existed in Divine majesty in
the God-man.” (Fikenscher.)

It may be hoped that this will help us to understand the e¢yov
concerning which Bengel says—hic non dicit accepi, He does
not say, which I received.” ‘The Socinians of old and recently
cease not to refer this to the Divine counsel and predetermina-
tion;’ B.-Crus., after Wetstein, Noésselt, Gabler, etc., reasserts the
old destinatum habere, as involved either in the éyew, or even (as
Eckermann will have it !) in the wapa cot—in Thy counsel and
mind! ‘To that humble and believing spirit which instinctively
recoils from all wresting of Scripture, it is an offence even to
refute such interpretations. It may be thought that even Augus-
tine bordered upon it?— but in his case it is only in appearance ;
he does no more than needlessly discriminate between the Lord’s
* Divinity and humanity. Indeed, he is so far right as the eternal
évew of the Divine nature must be regarded as having preedesti-
nando extended itself also to the human.

ITapa coi, finally, belongs per synchysin to the eZyov, as the
Syr. translates, Noy NI DIP jd qnid $ si. The intermediate
clause—before the world was—is by no means an accommodated
expression, describing an extra-temporal eternity in a popular
manner and according to human notions, —as some are contented
with thinking, who do not perceive the massive weight of all

1 Grotius: habebam—destinatione tua! Sic legem ante mundum aiunt
fuisse Hebreei! But even Episcopius, as Tholuck quotes him, saw that then
—Christ would have said nothing more of Himself than what any man
might say. '

* Intelligamus praedestinationem claritatis humane, quein illo est, nature,
ex mortali immortalis apud Patrem future, et hoc jam preedestinando factum
fuisse antequam mundus esset, quod in mundo etiam suo tempore fieret.
Tract. cv. 7.

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 447

such words as these.!_ Creation in time is by no means of itself
a mere human notion, but the Lord here confirms this first-
dogma of Scripture by the clearest utterance of His own con-
sciousness. In pd Tod TOv Kdcpor (that is, here, tHv «Ticw)
eivat everything creaturely is excluded, and upon this foundation
is then built the most emphatic mapa coi—With Thee in
eternity before the beginning of the world and of time. Ben-
gel: quia tum extra Deum nil erat. Even Hippolytus, con-
strained by this word, was obliged to say, “ For He was ever in
the excellent glory, coexisting with the Father of whom He was
begotten before the ages, before time, and before the foundation
of the world.” If there was nothing then extra Deum, the Son
was eds, but at the same time, however, as Son zpos Tov Gedy, -
in the bosom of the Father. This hypostatical distinction in the
unity of nature is expressed here also in the wapa. ‘Thus it is
not as the heretic Marcellus of Ancyra thought, “ Nothing else
was beside God alone, and the Adyos before the creation of the
world lay in the Father only duvdpe, as evépyeva Spactixi
mpaéews, thus being simply one with Him, as being no other
than a possibility in Himself.” For the Lord says rapa coi
with reference to the ov matep; He therefore carries back the
name Son, which the incarnation had made prominent, even to
His eternal pre-existence before the world was:—He thus
permits and obliges us to recognize the mystery of an eternal
Sonship in Him who was begotten before all worlds.

This wpo Tod Tov Kocpov eivas (comp. Ps. xc. 2) corresponds
with the apyy before the wavra éyévero. Here, not simply as
the Vulg. translates, priusquaam mundus jferet, but priusquam
esset. In ver. 24 afterwards we find instead mpd xataBonis Koo-
pov, a well-known and frequently occurring phrase, see Matt.
xili, 85, xxv. 384; Lu. xi.50; Eph.i.4; 1 Pet.i.20; Heb. iv.
3. If only on this account no one should undertake to say that
x0a 4405 here in ver. 5 is only the world of earth and men, as in
ver. 6 and subsequently.” But there is here the same transition

1 Hiller: As a child is taught that the little brook which it looks into is
derived from the ocean, and returns to it.

? Schmieder reckons the word ‘‘ world” nineteen times in the prayer, this
being the first ; "but he forgets to remark that this jirst time it has a pecu-
liar signification, which does not recur till ver. 24.

448 THE GLORY WHICH I HAD WITH THEE.

from the general to the particular as in the Prologue from all
things were made by Him to the world was made by Him. In
Heb. i. 2 and xi. 3 we find tods aidvas. KataBaddeo8ar means
to lay the foundation; to fix, establish, begin, with and without
Oenércov. (Heb. vi. 1.) Kara®ons is the foundation or esta-
blishment in being, which meaning is to be preferred even in
Heb. xi. 11 to that other—see Gen. iv. 25 (Sept.). Compare
Job xxxvili. 4; Ps. xxiv. 2, etc.’ And now let every one
submit to hear this most plain and irresistible expression of
the self-consciousness of Christ in the presence of His Father
(not merely “the Apostle’s self-consciousness”), in which He
testifies in prayer His own pre- and extra-temporal existence
with the Father before all efvas of any Kxoopos, any KTicts.”
This Divine eivas mpo may, for the rest, be termed (with Ebrard)
“an eternal, dynamic Prius in relation to the creation of the
temporal universe” —this all the more firmly establishes it that
this creation of time and the world is the beginning of that time.
Men may deal with all other passages of Scripture which teach
a creation in time as if they consisted of mere human represen-
tations, and dogmatical forms of teaching, beneath which deeper
principles lie, for the research of speculation—though not one
of them is so handled without injustice; but here we would
appeal to the inextinguishable feeling of truth in the mind of
every speculatist, and ask if in the consciousness of Christ this
apo did not express a real and literal truth.

Certain it is that to distinguish the eternal Son from the tem-
poral world created through Him, the mpwtotoKxos rdons
«ticews from the xticws (of which a false exposition of this
word would make him part !)— to apprehend how He is &ypovos
and yet not dvapyos (this heretical expression being rightly inter-
preted)—is a goal of our knowledge which is unattainable in
this state. All speculation which has striven to attain satisfac-
tion upon this point, in the present state, and by its own thinking,
has resulted in confusion, confounding for the most part the Son

1 Thus the mystico-theosophical interpretation of xeraZory as connected
with the Fall of the angels, which Feldhoff’s Paragraphen zur Geschichte
suggest is altogether contrary to the meaning of the word.

2 And that, if weadd ver. 24, as the eternal object of His love. Compare
the remarks upon this most weighty saying in Liebner’s Christologie i. 155.

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 449

and the universe. The 812 N's], as the first and last word of
Scripture, is embraced and held fast only by faith. In Heb.
xi. 3, it is wioTet voodmev, not yvdoe: érruyww@oKopev. Rothe’s
theological speculation—and this is the most recent example—
has not steered clear of the error of heathenish and natural
thinking, which knows of nothing but an eternal world which
must be blended in its”Ov with God; and into this error must all
speculation run which does not content itself with the yvaous év
wloret.. For ourselves, we would accept the challenge which he
throws out, and test the results of such speculation by the canon
of Seripture. We ask, can there be any such thing as a canoni-
cal Scripture, if “the difference between the popular presen-
tation of the matter which prevails in the Bible, and the more
rigorously scientific ideas which speculative theology demands,”
is to be accepted in such a sense as to make the word of God
reveal a beginning, when there could have been none, and the
Son of God speak of a “ before the world,” when any such before
is inconceivable and impossible. We ask whether the conscious-
ness of Jesus, uttering itself in this Highpriestly Prayer in ex
pressions so definite and plain, is to be represented as merely a
concession to the habit of uncultivated thought which requires
a “temporal priority of God before the world,” in order to the
maintenance of His “ priority as the First Cause.” To us the
answer is obvious. We would not in our thoughts and words
go beyond or differ from the thoughts and words of Christ
Himself; we would think, as the Spirit of God has taught
multitudes of thinkers baths before Christ and since, both of an
actual creation and an actual Creator. We maintain that the
Son, of God in humanity declares here a beginning of the world ;
and this one word—before the world was—-yea, the little word

1 His process of creation is simply the process by which God the Spirit
becomes the world; a process, too, which has no completion or limit. He
boldly maintains that “‘ the notion of a creation in time is altogether untenable,
nor should we shrink any longer from admitting the eternity and imperish-
ableness of creation.” He maintains that creating and being a Creator
essentially lie in the idea of God; that the transition from not creating to
creating would inevitably involve a change in God. ‘“‘ In the beginning —
the first moment of time”—in relation to Him (notwithstanding Gen. i. 1;
Jno. i. 1), is not conceivable! And matter as pure matter is like God
without beginning, etc. See his Ethik i. 8. 98 ff.

¥OL,: VE Qn

450 THE GLORY WHICH I HAD WITH THEE.

before itself, condemns all speculation which denies it ;—all
speculation, that is, which takes a ground independent of scrip-
tural revelation, and would evolve its so-called idea of God out
of its own creaturely consciousness of the eivas, or “ absolute pure
being.” The everlasting distinction between the eternal Creator
and the temporal creature, as it is established by the revealed
word concerning the only true God, is irremovably fixed to the
consciousness of faith ; and the philosophers should learn a lesson
from the fact that they can never make their notions intelligible
to those who cherish a simple and living faith.

This may be enough upon the little word before. But now
we must regard the verse under another point of view, and say
something in refutation of a certain doctrine which imagines
the Son of God, existing before His incarnation, to have become
an angel from the beginning of the creation.’ This hypothesis
assumes that what is here, Jno. xvii. 5 (and elsewhere) said
cannot be referred to the inalienable glory of the uncreated Logos
But we do not see why it cannot, provided we seize the twofold
relation in the ddfacov pe and the ezyov in its unity :—to have
a proper view of this is necessary for the right understanding
of all the attributes of the Divine and human person of Christ.
Why might not the God-man as man, consequently also as God-
man, be again glorified with the glory which He, the same God-
man, that is, the same J before the world was which has now
entered into humanity, had already as the eternal Son? If the
assumption of the nature of the first-created angel were in the
background of these words, the wpd Tod Tov Kd cpov eivas would
not retain its literal truth (since this mpwtotoKes, apyn Ths
xticews, Rev. iti. 14, so understood, belongs also to the xocpos),
nor would the eZyov in its absolute contrast hold good, the sense
of an accept being then necessarily substituted. If im the world,
Jno. i. 10, is declared to mean, As a part of the world, as a crea-
ture; and in the form, Phil. ii. 6, is expounded as best befitting

1 Brought forward anew in Dr Barth’s remarkable Sendscreiben an
Schelling: Der Engel des Bundes. Leipzig 1845. And it is hinted at in
Brandt’s Schullehrerbibel, which observes upon Jno. xvii. 5, “* This cannot
refer to His Divinity, of which He could not be emptied, and with which
He could not be glorified, but only to the glory which He had as the Angel
of the Covenant before ali other creatures were.”

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 451 |

the idea of a created being—it is by an exegesis which we re-
gard as both perilous and needless. If it is said that the Angel
of the Lord in the Old Testament, whose identity with Christ is
confessed, cannot be deemed to be an “ uncreated angel” with-
out a contradiction, we need only remember that N20 (used, as
is well known, also of men) is generally one sent or a messenger,
and that therefore there is no contradiction in His going forth
or being sent, who is, nevertheless, in His nature the Word and
Revealer of the hidden God. Barth himself admits that “ the
assumption of the Logos becoming an angel before His incar-
nation does not remove the difficulty, but rather increases it.”
Regard it as we may, it only throws it further back. We find
the solution of all these difficulties—riddles and problems much
harder than any which the simply-understood word of Scripture
presents to us—in the acceptation of that idea of the Living
Three-One God, which alone is conformable with Scripture. It
acknowledges in the living God Himself, in consistency with His
infinity, which is not a mere dead. abstraction, the principle of
all distinction and formation, that is, the original ground, the
true dpy7 of all «ricvs, and thus finds no difficulty in accepting
the opd7) Geot as before the creation of the world. Finally,
Heb. ii. 16 may be regarded as decisive against any union of
the Son with the nature of angels; not, indeed, according to the
direct meaning of the took not upon Him, as Luther’s translation
assumes—but in the connection of the whole Epistle, in itself,
and with the whole scriptural system, in which no trace of any
such relation of the angels to the Son is found, even when they
are professedly the subject of discourse.

Instead of all those vain and adventurous incursions into
things too high for us, let us adoringly enter into the eternal
counsel of our salvation, which was already, before the founda-
tion of the world, purposed in the Son, whose glorification even
as the Son of man was eternally contemplated by Him as pre-
destined. This is the practical bearing of the inexhaustible say-
ing which we now consider. We may quote Hermann’s hymn:
“ The foundation of the world was not laid, heaven was not yet
created, when God planned for my best interest ; His grace was
extended to me before I had my being. It was His counsel
that I should have life through His only begotten Son; Him

452 I IN THEM.

would He provide as a Mediator for me, Him did He set forth
as a propitiatory, that through His blood I should be sanctified
and saved.” Or the words of Hofacker’s simple and fervent
sermon on Jno. xvii.: “ Satan was not yet created, nor had he
fallen; Adam was not yet created, nor had he fale no sinner
walked upon the earth, the earth itself was not yet, nor was
there any sin, for there existed no creature which could sin;
death was not yet, for there was none to die;—when im the
eternal depths of the Godhead the plan of redemption was pro-
jected, the method appointed by which sin should be abolished,
and death slain, by which the Son should bruise the serpent’s
head, and obtain for Himself power over all flesh, that He might
give eternal life to all who should be given Him of the Father.”
We think, for ourselves, that it better becomes the creature,
and is more in harmony with our inmost consciousness of God,
is most safe to the mind, and blessed to the heart, adoringly to
contemplate (Matt. xxv. 34; Eph. i. 4,5; Jno. xvii. 24) the
eternal counsel of the Creator’s love in human redemption—
than, with Rothe, to speculate about the continuation of the
creating work in a moral process, the elevation and the trans-
formation of the iA into wvedua—in theories which regard
evil as necessarily and unavoidably growing out of blind
matter, yet yielding by slow degrees to the necessary process
of the development of God in the world; and which, finally,
instead of that consummation in the ca8Sarucpos which the
Scripture holds out, and man’s heart yearns for (the pit of
eternal fire, however, which glorifies the justice of God being
beneath), shadows out an eternal succession of processes such as
he endeavours to explain.

The prayer at its outset concerned His own person, as all true
prayer under human relations must, when it proceeds from
urgent internal impulse. But what a difference between this
“ Glortfy Me!” and every “ Help me! Give me!” of other
children of men! Ina sole and unapproachable sense the in-
carnate Son of God, the Saviour of all flesh, can and must first
and last speak only concerning Himself in bi Father’s presence.
The “ Help Me!” can find no expression here. Instead of
“ Give Me!” we hear His witness, as not before, but already
upon the throne, speaking in majesty on the right hand of

JOHN XVII. 4, 5. 453

majesty, “ Thou hast given to Me—that I may give!” and
now, at the highest point of this elevation, we hear the perfect
expression of that objectivity which, as it were, softens whatever
might seem discordant in such a style of praying from human
lips, by an inexpressible tone of lowliness mingled with dignity :
—“to know Thee and Jesus Christ is eternal life!” Upon
this follows the first J, which makes the Son of man who had
finished the work upon earth the same in person and conscious-
ness with Him who was with the Father before the foundation
of the world. Could it be otherwise than that this prayer, so
beginning, should at its conclusion lead all back again into His
own person? The foundation was laid in the high words,
Father—Thou and I—I with Thee from eternity——- We are
one! And the end of His intercession for His own can be no
other than—TJ in them!

In the second and middle section of the whole (vers. 6-19)
we see that this “ I in them” is the presupposed latent founda-
tion of all; but its final expression is prepared for by an exposi-
tion of the whole way and process which leads to the truth and
reality of this end :—-set forth in words which are most sublime,
and clear, and tranquil, and comprehensible, even to the
childish capacity. We find that this section falls naturally
into two parts. In vers. 6-13 the fundamental reason is brought
out, on which rests the J pray for them, and out of which is
developed the proper petition for their preservation and defence,
the concentration of all intercession. Then follows, vers. 14-19,
the process of this prayer itself, which leads back into the prin-
ciple and origin of all again—I for them !

From the accomplished work of the glorification of the
Father upon earth, the Lord descends first to the specific
prophetic office which was really fulfilled in this now; and to
this is then added, the beginning of the one being the end of
the other, the Highpriestly office, which is, as it were, introduced
in ver. 19. We must maintain, against Luthardt, that the .
“manifestation of the name” is not entirely the same as the —
glorification of the Father; although they may be made, by a
pregnant interpretation, equivalent one to the other. For here
vers. 6-8 speak especially of the preparation of an intelligent,
acknowledging faith in the reception of the word; and then

A454 I HAVE MANIFESTED THY NAME.

first ver. 17, etc., of their sanctification as it is to be consum-
mated, and which had been already contemplated in the great
anticipation of ver. 4. I have revealed Thy name to them,
given them Thy word in the words which Thou hast given Me
—and they have received it and kept it in acknowledging faith.
This is the foundation for the fellowship between the Lord and
His own, on the ground of which alone they are worthy and.
capable of partaking His special intercession (in contrast with
the world). Thus He presents them to the Father with their
present faith in Him, and that is the first point. Vers. 6-8.*
Hence He prays for them, that is, now and here, otherwise than
for the world: this, approaching still nearer to the prayer it-
self, is the second. Vers.9,10.’ Finally, the third is the direct
utterance of the prayer for their conservation and defence.
Vers. 11-13. All this prepared for the recognition of their
need, despite the beginnings of grace—They are yet in the
world ! |

The detail of the intercession itself, prepared for by the lay-
ing of this foundation, commences as before—I have given
them Thy word; and then goes on to pray, first for their pre-
servation, because, though no longer of the world, they are yet
in the world, in the ovnpov. Vers. 14-16. And then, since
the root of this evil is the sin which still adheres to them, it is
manifest, secondly, that this preservation to the end is not
otherwise possible than through their sanctification :—that it is
not in their case the keeping or guarding of something already
perfect in them, but a rnpeiy éx Tod trovnpod, a ayiatew. Vers.
17, 18.2 Thirdly, and finally, this sanctification of His own is
carried back to the original principle and ground of all, His
redeeming and atoning work.

Ver. 6. From the reassumed glory with the Father He looks

1 Argumentum (but not tertium, primum rather, according to our ar-
rangement) petitum est a qualitate personarum, pro quibus Jesus inter-
cedebat, in quibus initia gratiz conspiciebantur, que conservari fas erat.
Lampe.

2 Not merely with Olshausén: ‘‘ The positive side of the prayer is now
followed by the negative.”

§ Which is a preliminary reason for not understanding the evil as mas-
culine, and the sanctifying as a mere consecration.

JOHN XVII. 6. 455

back and looks down upon His children in this fallen world of
mankind, and presents them with Himself to the Father. We
might say, with Olshausen, “in evidence, as it were, that the
work was finished””—but this only connects it with what pre-
cedes: on the other hand, what precedes had been spoken only
to pave the way for what now comes, this presentation and
intercession. In thus coming to the Father, the Lord brings
with Him His own, who are still notwithstanding in the world
and amid its evil:—it is this which is the inmost meaning and
reason of His intercession. A. H. Franke finds here the first
evidence of a truth, to which he afterwards frequently reverts,
that not only all the Lord’s then existing disciples were in-
cluded with the eleven, but that all His future followers and
ourselves might appropriate His words—excluding, of course,
those specific references which (as in ver. 18) pomt to the
Apostles alone. But our exposition of the three preceding
chapters has already clearly established the representative
character of the first disciples to whom the Lord then spoke.
As to the developing connection between ver. 6 and ver. 5,
we may say generally, with Luther, “To glorify the Father
means to manifest His name; thus He had so proclaimed that
name, as to prove to their hearts that he was a gracious Father,
ete.” It is presently made clear, vers. 11, 12, that a living
knowledge of the Father’s name is intended, and in the kai
yvopicw, ver. 26, the expression is interpreted into its full
depth of meaning; -it is declared that that holy name is not
entirely made known until in the unity of perfection the whole
love of God in Christ, and nothing but this love, dwells, lives,
and is glorified also in the sanctified and saved. So far those
expositors are right who make the common formula the name of
God equivalent to the nature of God itself—throughout the
Scriptures, and also here. It must not, however, be overlooked,
that according to the principle and the origin of this phrase
the name signifies the nature as far as it is cognisable and
capable of name. From this the word here sets out :—the com-.
mencing davepodv is placed in contradiction to the previous
obscurity of the Old Testament; it is not yet the full yowpitew,
but is a beginning of it; and, as such, is shown by the sequel to
have been effected through the word given by Him and kept

456 I HAVE MANIFESTED THY NAME.

by the disciples. Christ first preached and testified concerning
the Father (ch. xvi. 25)—in His own person He brought down
and unfolded this great word, teaching man how he may and
why he should call God his Father. The question concerning
the name of God had been hitherto answered by the incon-
ceivable mm, which the awe of the far-off worshippers dared
not even pronounce, and which rather repelled, therefore, than
satisfied the inquiry: but now eternal being is plainly revealed
to be eternal love. When by the sending of the Son, the dis-
tinction which had existed from eternity in the living love of
the Divine nature itself was disclosed, and the mystery of the
Trinity which had found no expression in the unity of the name
Jehovah was brought to light—then appeared the kindness and
love toward man of God our Saviour,’ and then “a personal,
absolute principle of love became revealed as the distinguishing
idea of the Divine essence.’* This is assuredly the proper
meaning of the Father-name as disclosed by the Son also to men,
in which the life-giving knowledge of the only true God both
discloses itself and closes all revelation :—beyond this name
and its appropriate honour the creature has nothing further to
know, to confess, and to praise. Schmieder, although he sets
out with a profound but general interpretation of “name,” yet
says at the close—“ Thus understood and acknowledged the
Father-name is the perfect name of God simply.” In all other
apprehension of God, as Tholuck says, letters and syllables
only of His name are heard. We more.truly understand to
évoza thus, most certainly, than if we should dismiss it, with
B.-Crusius, by “the confession of Thee” —for the question here
is what and who God is to be known and confessed to be. The
Father-name brought to us by Christ “is the true name by
which man may know God, that is, see and feel His heart, His
will, and His work.” pe But in what way did Christ
te and alone nee) this name? Assuredly, by His word or

1 Hence Nonuus is not essentidlly wrong—oivoue odv xypva.

* The Jehovah-name is glorified in the Jesus-name, as the New Testa-
ment 6 xvpsog would indicate.

3 As Kling says—or Braune, somewhat differently : ‘‘ As the immeasur-
able principle of love, as the holy and good Father, who inclines to the
creatures dependent on Him, with unfathomable compassion.

JOHN XVII. 6. 457

words, as Himself says; but this does not mean through His
doctrine or teaching as such—as if nothing more was necessary
than to tell men, and help their reason to apprehend, as the
blind Rationalists say, that God is a loving and compassionate
Father. It is the most lying desecration of this all-holy name,
to detach the Son’s teaching concerning the good Father above
from all those other doctrines which He taught as the founda-
tion or qualification of that truth. For He did not first and at
once declare the Father to be the general Father of compassion
without any mediation; but He announced Him first to be His
own, the Son’s Father, and then ours, because He hath given
to us the Son. The word concerning the Father was at the
same time a word concerning the Son; a self-testimony to the
personality of this Jesus Christ. Thus, not properly speaking
by His doctrine, but in His person, from the time of His in-
carnation, to which the works and words bare witness, as the
sent One in whom is the name of God (Ex. xxiii. 21) as the
covenant-Angel come,—did He reveal the name of the Father
as eternal Love. Finally, and it must be carefully noted, in
this J have manifested there lies the same great prolepsis which
pervades the whole prayer; for the prophetic office was glori-
fied in the fruit of a clear and living knowledge by the Spirit,
commencing in preludes from the day of the resurrection itself.
The risen Lord, now first Himself justified and glorified as the
Son, announces in His first words to His brethren, Jno. xx. 17,
the name of His Father and their Father for the first time in
all its distinctness—as it was predicted in Ps. xxii. 23, comp.
Heb. ii. 11, 12. And all this is here anticipated and included.
The ‘Ey must have its emphasis, though not expressed, in the
épavépwca (as it stood prominently before the édofaca and
ereXetwoa), (Matt. xi. 27) ; for it must not be forgotten that the
word, work, and life of the Son of God upon earth, before He
returns to heaven, fulfils as one great collective self-testimony
of that Person who is the Son, the so-called prophetic office of
the Redeemer.

Unto the men—thus after ver. 5 the glorified Son of God
speaks as if from above; appropriates Himself and in Himself
the Father specifically to these children of men, whose brother
. He has become and will be for ever. Larape rightly says, cum

458 THINE THEY WERE.

exclusione angelorum ; for this is now the permanent pre-emi-
nence of the Adamic creature over all other “children of God,”
even the “morning stars” (Job xxxvili. 7), that they through
Christ have God as in the most direct and essential manner
their Father. In the xécpos of ver. 5 all creatures were in-
cluded and surveyed; but the Lord’s contemplation now de-
scends to the world of mankind to whom he belongs—and in
this restricted sense he says, éx tod xoopov. Even the Apostles,
who were first referred to, are no other than men given to Him
out of the world (which knoweth not the Father, ver. 25, and
to which they also by nature belonged). But this éciyeae
expression presently teaches us, that the Intercessor, standing
as it were on high, already regarded in them the representatives
of all men generally who dhould ever be given to Him. Whom
Thou hast given? Me out of the world—thus does ver. 2 look
back to and connect itself with ch. xv. 19. “ With what com-
placency and how often does Jesus mention in this prayer that
the Father had given Him al/! In the Father’s presence He
keeps perfect silence as to His own electing energy (ch. xv. 16),
by which He had made the disciples His own.” (Schmieder.)
But what is involved in this giving is plainly unfolded in the
following clause, which forms the point of transition between
the disciples’ having before been of the world and their now
being Christ’s.

Thine they were—it is idle to understand this as if it meant,
As Thy creatures, like the whole world; or even, with Richter,
“like all men, in the love of Thy compassion.” For é« tod xoo-
pod means not the world, in as far as it is God’s; nor does the
Father unconditionally give any man to His Son from the evil
world. Hezel’s nofe is very unworthy: “that which I would
give must be Mine—all these men were Thine, created by Thee
—Thou couldst thus give them unto Me!” and the predes-
tinarian turn which another writer gives it, is nothing less

1 “ He uses so general an expression concerning them, because He beheld
in them the first fruits of those who should in future be given to Him.”
(Rieger.)

2 Lachmann’s gdwxe¢ everywhere in vers. 6-8, instead of d2daxc¢ (only
in ver. 8, d¢daxce airois), may safely be preferred; as these better unfold
the aorist-historical procedure toward the final result.

JOHN XVII. 6. 459

than blasphemous, “ Thou couldst put them to any use Thou
wouldst!”* And yet we read in more than one exposition,
“They were Thine by eternal election.” We think that, as
chap. vi. 37, 44, 45, defined the: giving of the Father to be a
preparatory drawing to the Son, Thine they were can here mean
no other than this preparation and drawing over from the world
to the Son—which may be regarded as the economy of the
Father before the kingdom of the Son is set.up. Is, then, this
Thine they were in its widest sense equivalent to the being of
God, chap. viil. 47, or of the truth, as even a heathen, accord-
ing to chap. xvill. 37, might be? We regard the fundamental
principle as the same, but this cannot suffice for the meaning
in its reference to the Apostles (and those then included with
them); for the necessary complement in their case seems to be
—They were Thine as under the Old Testament! This work
of the Father preparing for and leading to Christ must find its
recognition somewhere in this prayer; for it was already inti-
mated in ver. 3. Indeed, all who were the children of Abra-
-ham according to the flesh, and united in the fellowship of the
covenant of law and promise, were so far God’s, and were to
be given to Him again in Christ. (Matt. xxii. 21.) But the
greater part were unwilling and unfit for this, because the truth
of their covenant relation had been annulled in them, and Israel
itself had become a xécpos. Consequently, the Old Testament
preparation is here regarded only as far as it was a reality ; the
disciples of Jesus had previously been genuine, sincere Israel-
ites, the escaped or reserved in Israel, Isa. iv. 2—the holy seed,
ch. vi. 18. So that we agree with Rieger in the issue, “they
were the Father’s, not only as His creatures and the heirs of
the covenant with the fathers, but also as good hearts yielding
to the discipline and drawing of God.”

1 The view of the Berlenb. Bibel is incorrect from another point, and is,
moreover, altogether alien to the context: ‘They were Thine, in Thine
eternal Fatherly counsel, from the creation,” it explains, and then farther
illustrates, thus: ‘‘ First, Thou hadst right in and claim upon them as
Creator, and they upon Thee—which a penitent may plead against original
sin. Secondly: They lay shut up under Thy Fatherly severity—they have
been delivered to Me by the hand of justice, that I might set them at one
with Thee again.” All this is either vague, or incorrect, or inappropriate
to the connexion.

460 THEY HAVE KEPT THY WORD.

This holds good in the fullest sense of the Apostles, whom
the Lord has here primarily in view, and then of the greater
part of His first disciples. He did not, as some seem to think,
translate even the Apostles by 2 sudden conversion out of the
midst of the publicans and sinners. And in the case of others,
where there might appear to be a sudden, instantaneous, and
immediate election out of the world, there had been in reality
an analogous work of transition, or preparatory drawing of the
Father :—it was not wanting even in the instance of Saul,
despite all appearances. And we may extend this further, and
seek the deeper principle which underlies even the Old-Testa-
ment preparation, as the Father’s giving to Christ. Thus
Meyer, “ Conversion to Jesus Christ is wont to be preceded by
an awakened sense for God and right, an old covenant, whence
follows the actual drawing of the Father to the Son.” Better
to say that this awakening is itself the drawing. For, as
Braune says, “ General piety, whether Jewish or Gentile, is a
thread which leads into the kingdom of Christ. He who feareth
God is accepted of Him. Scorn not, therefore, any piety or
fear of God, though it be not yet Christian.”

With the propter electionem, by which, of course, Lampe ex-
plains Thine they were, we need not trouble ourselves much ;
since even the concluding clause of the verse, and more par-
ticularly ver. 8, refers the decision to the men themselves, to
their receiving His word, their knowing, and believing. It
might appear, indeed, as if and they have kept Thy word indi-
cated the gradual progress of the disciples’ faith in Christ, and
even their perseverance in faith. This must be included, since
He is here presenting them to the Father as having continued
till now His own, the fruit of His mission; but we think, fur-
thermore, that this concluding clause looks back upon, and is
the summary of the whole past; bringing forward the human
decision of these men, as the other side not only of Thou gavest
them to Me, but also of the first Thine they were. It might
indeed be thought that tov Aoyov cov is parallel with To évoya
cov, and expounded again by the pyyara of ver. 8. But, re-
membering that Jesus uses, throughout these final discourses,
the formula tov Adyov wou rnpeiv (ch. xiv. 23, etc.), we are in-
clined to regard this emphatic and peculiar \éyov cov as includ-

JOHN XVII. 7, 8. 461

ig the Old-Testament, preparatory word of God, and rypeiy as
being, in a general sense, the acceptation, and observance, and
holding fast of that word.’ It is then the correlative of ch. v.
38; and at the same time an explanation of the giving of the
Father as being their learning of Him—similarly to ch. vi. 44,
45. This view seems best to accord with the general sense of
the words which describe these men, taken out of the world,
as having been believers and worthy from the beginning until
now. So Luther accepts it: “They were Thine, He says;
and it is as if He should say, Whosoever heareth the word,
openeth his ears and his heart, and lets God’s revelation pene-
trate his soul, belongs no longer to the world, but (in due
course) to Me!” And he further goes on to show how far we
may assure ourselves of being God’s, by the manner and sin-
cerity of our own hearing and keeping of His word.

Vers. 7, 8. This now makes prominent the New Testament
position shit the disciples had reached ; and here is the con-
nection which Liicke finds wanting. He also regards the de-
velopment of the thought as too loose, and cannot see for what
purpose “this evolution of the nature and origin of the
disciples’ faith” is introduced; finding, further, in all this,
evidence of the Evangelist’s composition. He is good enough,
however, to allow that this process of thought might not be
altogether alien to the praying spirit, and that “ the composi-
tion may be justified on that ground!” We earnestly beg this
excellent expositor to weigh these words well in a second edition,
and if possible remove them ; for they cannot but be offensive
to many readers of his commentary who think the composition
of St John above any human judgment, and further believe
that the Spirit of inspiration has actually reproduced the very
prayer of the Son of God in this chapter. For ourselves, we
find here in every word a most worthy meaning, thoughts the
unfolding of which is perfectly harmonious. Ver. 7 in con-
nection with ver. 6 rises again from the specific to the general
view of Christ’s work, returns to the revelation of the Father-

1 Including the O. T. word, not that alone. Alford supposes me to mean

*the latter, and objects that its place would have been, in that case, before

the 6édaxas. My meaning is that the Lord speaks comprehensively and in
a transitional way of both—as it were proleptically for vers. 7, 8.

462 THEY HAVE BELIEVED.

name, and explains it—Now know they Thee in Me, the
Father in the Son. In zdvra 6a the entire testimony of His
works to His person is summed up in one; but then, in the
sense which we have often expounded, the payata, as the basis
and test of the knowledge of faith, are brought forward into
prominence. According to ch. vii. 17, xu. 44—50 this is the
beginning of faith in Christ,—to acknowledge His word as
given Him of God, to accept and admit this testimony, to let it
abide and give it room in the heart, and thus to keep it. That
the knowing here precedes the believing is strictly consistent with
ver. 8; and shows decisively that the Lord in this intercession _.
for His disciples admits no other faith than that which is
based on knowledge.’ All the words given to Him of the
Father, He had given to them—just as in chap. xv. 15 and
elsewhere. We think that in this most solemn final testi-
mony the Lord makes direct allusion to that important passage,
Deut. xviii. 18, 19. He thereby refers, by tacit opposition,
to the opposing and doomed unbelief of all those who would
not hear and. receive the words which the Father had put
in His mouth, and which He had spoken in His name. But
He also thereby declares the work which He had already
accomplished to be that fulfilment and consummation of the
prophetic office which Moses there predicted. All the indi-
vidual words which He had spoken He sums up and seals, in
His Father’s presence, in these pyyata given by Him to be
received by man. .
When He now bears joyful witness before the Father to the
understanding faith of His beloved disciples, He quotes, as it
were, and confirms their own literal confession in chap. xvi.
30—yea, He dignifies their albeit weak miotevopev into an
éyvwoav. We doubt whether Fikenscher’s distinction of the
two parallel clauses is tenable: he says, “rightly is the relation
to Christ called a knowing, to the Father a believing.” For,
mapa cod é&fAGov and ov pe améoredas reciprocally explain
each other as perfect correlatives; the latter, however, less
profound in its expression, being added in order graciously
\"Eyvaxe is found in many MSS.—a strange error of the old copyists, *

followed even by the Syr. There can be no imaginable place found for
viv éyvaxe, as referred to our Lord, least of all in this prayer.

JOHN XVII. 9. 463

to include all commencing faith, that namely which might
apprehend His being sent but not yet His proceeding from the
Father—before He goes on to say, For these and all like them
I pray! Both, however, dre united in one—They believe on
Me—as it is said afterward in ver. 20. For His name alone,
as the name of the Son, avails to all men under heaven for the
knowledge of the name of the Father. The a7@0s which is
significantly added to they have known, and which is to be
referred also to they have believed, has a tone of gracious en-
couragement as proceeding from the lips of the Searcher of
hearts; but it seems also, as preceding “I pray for them” to -
contain a warning rejection of all self-imagined or hypocritical
believing and knowing. It may also be compared with the
noN2 of Ps. cxlv. 18. Well for us, if we do not merely utter
our own we have believed and we have known, but are also
acknowledged before the Father by the adn@as of His Son!
Ver. 9. That which He had promised in Matt. x. 32, He
begins now to fulfil; as well as what He had said in John xiv.
16—I will ask the Father for you; we therefore plainly per-
ceive that that denial of any intercession, which had intervened
in ch. xvi. 26, 27, has a sense by no means inconsistent with
this. As the High Priest, who has no sign of His own, yea,
whose own infirmity itself became the power of God in Him for
the world’s redemption, He has hitherto only presented His own
person and work in the Father’s presence, and the disciples only
as they are the fruit of that work which He brings with Him.
The twice-spoken glorify Me was less a petition than a claim,
resting upon éAjAvGev 7 dpa and Kai vov,—a confident expec-
tation, consistent with the testimony which He had uttered
concerning the whole relation between the Father and Himself.
But now, as the Representative of weak and sinful men, He
uses for the first time an express épwt'— this, however, being
dignified by the “Ey# which emphatically precedes. All that
we have heard, in the discourses which prepare for this prayer,
concerning the distinction, now made perfect, between believers
and the world, must be applied to our understanding of the

1 The critical distinction between which and «iz has been referred to on
chap. xiv. 16 and xvi. 26.

464 IT PRAY NOT FOR THE. WORLD.

sense in which Jesus here rigidly distinguishes His praying for
His own from His praying for the world. For that He does
not deny and renounce all prayer for the world, is as certain as
that He now offers that intercession for His own which never-
theless He had before relatively denied. The prayer for His
enemies upon the cross, the testimony of the Holy Spirit in
subsequent apostolical teaching (Heb. vii. 25), yea, the very
close itself of this prayer, vers. 20, 21, 23, all declare His
intercession for the world. Not indeed for the world which
continues because it will continue in its ungodly character,
which therefore receiveth not the Spirit of truth, and can never
“ come unto God through Him” (hence this limitation.in Heb.
vil. 25)—but still for all who should believe, and even for the
weighty testimony of believers in order that the world may
believe and know. Thus an unconditional exclusion of the
world from Christ’s intercession is contrary to the mind of
Christ and the entire Scripture: as certainly and as universally
as He died for all, He mediates for all; for His intercession
is the fruit, consequence, and power of His redeeming work.
Calvin and those who follow him find in this I pray not for the
world their decretum reprobationis pronounced upon the vasa
ire ; but what we have already said renders any further refu-
tation of this unnecessary. Lampe’s frightful conclusion is
perfectly perverse: “ When Jesus thus excludes them from His
intercession, He declares that He is not their High Priest, and
therefore that He was not about to die for them. For these are
the two inseparable offices of the High Priest, and they have
an equal extent of operation. And the rather is this true, as it
would have been a much less thing to pray for sinners than to
die for them. Hence we may argue here from the less to the
greater.” This is to place one single misunderstood word in
opposition to the simplest, clearest, most abundant testimonies
of Scripture. Luther at first seemed, alas, to assent to this (in
his exposition of Jno. xvii.): “ From this nothing can follow
but that they must be altogether lost, as those of whom Christ
will ‘know nothing.” But in another place he corrects himself :
“To pray for the world, and not to pray for the world, must
both be right in their place. For He afterwards says Himself,
ver. 20—/for them also which shall believe. But these must be

JOHN XVII. 9. 465

as yet of the world, and therefore He must pray for the world,
on account of those who should be brought out of it.” (See
the whole passage in Tholuck.) Since the believing and the
coming to Him rests finally in our own decision—that, however,
being possible only through the power which has been obtained
by Him and extended to us'—it cannot be but that the inter-
cession of Him who “ willeth not that any should perish, but
that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. iii. 9), should
actually apply to the whole world, in order that all may be able
to believe, if they will. During the great term of long’ for-
bearance before the final decision, He maketh intercession for
the transgressors (Isa. lui. 12), restraining judgment, demand-
ing faith and offering its blessings to man. If we say to the
believer, He prayeth for thee, that thy faith fail not—so may
we say to the unbeliever, He prayeth for thee, that thou mayest
believe! The conflict between the Divine will and the freedom
of man, which is solved by the prescience of the issue, but
without any reprobating predestination, enters deeply into the
High-priestly prayer, as we shall see upon ver. 12.

A well-meaning distinction ts generally introduced here—I
pray not now, in this place, for the world; but this is certainly
insufficient, and the correction is better which reads, I pray not
in this manner for the world. For in its connection with vers.
6—8, the word means, first—I pray not indeed for such as are
unworthy, but for such as have become Thine, who have already
believed ; but as such He could not present the world to the
Father, that He might regard them with complacency, defend
and love them like His own. It has been said, This is the Tes-
tament, and none but the heirs are spoken of; but we would
add more specifically, None but those who have already entered
into the inheritance. “The prayer of Christ for the world
takes quite a different form from that for the Church. The
former is to the effect that the world may cease to be what it is;
the latter, that the Church may be perfected in that which it

1 B.-Crusius does not understand this: ‘‘ The theological question as to
how this power could be prayed for, whereas man himself is appealed to as
having it in his own decision, concerns not the Spirit of the New Testament,
ete.” O no, all is actually prayed for and obtained by prayer ; but net
for the irresistible constraint of a free creature.

VOL. VI. 2G

466 ALL THINE ARE MINE.

has received into itself.” (Olshausen.) The prophetic word,
Ps. xvi. 3, 4, where certainly priestly intercession may be ad-
mitted, has the same sense as here, the exclusion of the world
from the specific complacency of approving intercession. As
the typical high priest prayed only for Israel, bore only the
twelve tribes on his breastplate, so there is a corresponding
prayer of the eternal High Priest only for the true people of
God—which, however, by no means excludes the calling of
the Gentiles to enter into the true Israel. It is altogether in
harmony with the Apostle’s word, 1 Tim. iv. 10, which has its
force for the prayers of the Church also—He is the Saviour
of all men, specially of them that believe. “Every one enters
into the precious privilege of this special intercession, so soon
as he opens his heart for the acceptance and observance of the
words of Christ as widely as the disciples did in their years of
pupilage.” (Rieger.) All others, as long as their unbelief and
hatred of God is not yet perfect, and they do not altogether
know what they do, their repentance unto remission being pos-
sible, partake in the “ Father, forgive them!” of the cross, and
the continuous energy of Gospel testimony which is the fruit of
His intercession—that the world may believe.

Concerning those who already believe, those already given
to Him, the Lord says once more to the Father—for they are
Thine! That does not mean merely, They were, they became
Thine, therefore Thou couldst give them to Me; but it refers
to their present condition, They are and continue Thine even
as given to Me; by Me they are to be fully given back to Thy-
self. This is established by what follows.

Ver. 10. This leads us back to ch. xvi. 15. But what a word
of majesty and Divine power to be found in prayer before God!
“Tt would not have been so much if He had said simply, All
that which is Mine, is Thine. For every one may say that all
he has is God’s. But He inverts the words, and says, All that
which is Thine, is Mine. No creature could thus speak before
God.” (Luther.) Yes, truly, this wavta—not mdvres—in-
cludes the eternal Divinity, and changes the prayer into a free,
rightful, and unrestricted taking from the fulness, power, and

1 Which we now fully admit, though it was denied in the Com. on
Psalms.

JOHN XVII. 11. 467

love of the Father—in whose presence He can say, We are
One! But the conclusion, And I am glorified in them, goes
yet further, And all that which is Thine and Mine’ belongs also
to them. So that every Christian may, in the joyful confidence
of faith, utter the same word to Christ, All that is Thine is
mine! (1 Cor. iii. 21-23.) It is obvious, again, that the Son
presents His disciples to the Father as those in whom He Him-
self already lived. Grotius: itaque in ipsorum persona mea
res vertitur. De Wette and Stolz very incorrectly translate, I
am glorified by them! This by them (which cannot be found
in the év) was yet entirely in the future; but the glorification
of the Lord in them had already its living commencement, so
that He could presuppose and build upon their future in antici-
pation. Certainly, there was much wanting to the full truth
and reality of this dedofacua:, as Schmieder says, “He knew
that the revelation of Himself in their minds was still exposed
to many obscurations, and that He was not yet fully glorified
in them’’—but the Lord confidently looks forward to its con-
summation. For He had declared in vers. 6-8 the foundation
to have been fully laid; but this is a wonderful prolepsis, as of
the justifying and sanctifying good pleasure of God toward us
in Christ, so also of our own apprehending faith,—the con-
summation being regarded in the beginning. We need not,
therefore, qualify the words, as Bengel himself does, Tales se
preebuerunt, in quibus glorificarer. The Lord contemplates the
end and issue, in its first principle, by anticipation.

Ver. 11. But now comes the development of the specific ob-
ject of His intercession, what He prays for on behalf of these
men who are His :—their being kept, that is, to the sure con-
summation of that glorification of Christ in them which had now
begun. They are as yet men in the world, although given to Him
out of the world, and “ the Saviour well knew what it was to be
in the world!” (Hofacker.) This last feeling is in the sym-
pathising heart of the High Priest, when He says first, antici-
pating already the victory—I am no more in the world. He

1 ‘Which is the more wonderful, the Lord’s consciousness of His fellow-
ship with the Father, or His glance into the future of these weak disciples?”
(Braune.) Who but He could have seen in these Eleven the teachers of
the world, the overturners of Heathenism, the foundations of the Church?

468 HOLY FATHER.

no more, but they still in the world—both to be understood
not so much concerning the place as the condition. The
thoughts which proceed so peacefully in their mutual qualifica-
tions, flow also from the mighty impulses of equally deep feel-
ing. And therefore the Lord, standing upon the threshold
and conscious of the way which He has yet to walk, limits by [
come} the Iam no more in the world. Although in some de-
gree still remaining in them, He yet leaves His beloved disciples
on going to the Father! And this thought touches His heart
with the feeling of all their future need. His personal presence
with them in the flesh was “a protecting might”—see ch. xvi.
4, But now was needed the power and protection of the
Father, through the Spirit to be obtained by Jesus for men.
His intercession is, therefore, properly, the promised prayer for
the sending of the Holy Ghost.

As He thus comes to the Father (wpos ce) and presents
Himself before Him, He uses in His invocation that all-holy
name (by the Pope so miserably desecrated!) which here alone
is found in the lips of Jesus—Holy Father! This is assuredly
something different from and more than the subsequent Righte-
ous Father! ver. 25. Both appellatives are added for the sake
of the disciples whom He prays for; for He never used any
such in addressing His Father on His own behalf. The holi-
ness of God, a word which pervades the whole Scripture,” is
but little understood and often very inadequately explained.
There is in it, indeed, something transcendent, which cannot be
reproduced in any other words ;? and even the classical expres-
sions which correspond to it have in the obscurity of their
etymology, and the amplitude of their application, something
of the same character as the dark and mysterious scriptural

1 For in ver. 13 we perceive that Jesus well knows Himself to be still in
the world. _His words go now backward, now forward. (Schmieder.)

2 Yet (as Achelis observes) this previously frequent attribute of God is
rare in the N. T. He is right, but says incorrectly that the only passages
are Jno. xvil. 11; 1 Pet. i. 16 (ver. 15 too); and Rey. iv. 8. He forgets
Lu. i. 49; 1 Jno. ii. 20; in the Revelation ch. vi. 10 (iii. 7), xv. 4, xvi. 5,
and also Heb. xii. 10.

3 As Harms in his well-known 36th Thesis boldly challenged: Let him
who can master by his reason the first letter of all religion, that is, the word
‘‘ holy,” come forward and declare it to me!

JOHN XVII. 11: 469

vinp. But the Bible, when the whole of it is appealed to, gives
us light enough for the’rejection of every false and insufficient
meaning. It is plain that not merely purity or separation from
all evil (justitia interna, dvayaptnoia Dei) is the idea of God’s
holiness ; for then would it be one with His righteousness. Nor
is it merely the incomparable, unapproachable onliness of God
which is meant (as it were the tremenda majestas) ; for it is the
joy of His worshippers to call Him Holy, and, still more, we also
are to be made holy as He is holy! Men exhaust themselves
in all kinds of indistinct imaginings about this dread mystery ;
and when they speak of “the majesty of grace,” come nearer
perhaps to a right feeling of its import. Liicke interprets it in
this place as “the power of God which preserves the good in
the world from being defiled and dissipated :” this appears to
be deduced from the context, but needs to be explained, and
eyen to be modified, since the Holy One condescends in His
sanctifying power even to sinners. B.-Crusius: “ dyvos is He
who is exalted above the world, saving out of wt.” This also is a
right feeling after the truth; but the great point is that which
mediates between these two clauses—it is the condescending love
itself which shows Him to be thus exalted.

We have on many passages already avowed that the primary
truth in Menken’s otherwise one-sided view must be regarded as
strictly scriptural—God is holy in His condescending, compas-
sionate, saving love. The two great words, God is holy—God
is love, are assuredly correlative. We cannot at the outset do
other than repeat what we said upon the Epistle to the Hebrews
(Th. i. S. 306), “ God is holy, that is, exalted in His ineffable
and incomparable praiseworthiness above all praise of the crea-
ture, while He in pure love condescends to the creature, even
to His fallen creatures, in order to re-establish in them this His
honour and glory, that He is love.” That He as absolute purity
cannot be hurt or touched by the evil of sin, but remains sub-
lime above the world, is certainly the first idea from which the
word proceeds, but is far from being the only thing which Reve-
lation discloses to us in this expression ; for the Lord presently
declares Himself to be holy in this and through this, that His
love is sanctified again even in the unholy, and He by this conde-
scension to us is raised still higher for our adoration. Conse-

470 HOLY FATHER.

quently, it is not so much in itself, in the circle of angelic intel-
ligences, and in the heavenly light of the pure creation, as in
and among men that His holiness is displayed :—where He draws
nigh to sinners, to bless and unite them to Himself, there is the
vip, in the temple as before in the holy orcad Ex. iii. 5.
Therefore the Seraphim call Him Holy in that sanctuary from
which His glory should go forth over all the earth. Isa. vi. The
devils and the damned reach not te the acknowledgment and
sense of His holiness; in hell they feel no more than that He is
almighty, omniscient, just! Where the praise of His love dwells,
there alone is heard Holy! That in Yi7P the idea of such
condescension is distinctive and essential, is taught by Isaiah’s
own vip, which would otherwise have no meaning ;—for-the
normal passage, among many, we may refer to Isa. xli. 14. See,
moreover, Ps. xxii. 4-7, Ixxxix. 16-19, cil. 1, but especially
the entire Ps. xcix. vers. 1-5 of which fore-announce a proper
exposition of the holiness of God, which is given vers. 6-9.
All these, and many similar passages, are not to be summarily
explained by that old first notion, which, strangely enough, that
enlightened inquirer, Meyer, retains—‘“ Separate from all that
is evil and impure, and unapproachable by it ; hence supremely
to be honoured, and above all possibility of being injured, inviol-
able in sanctity.” Nor are they to be satisfied by “ the most
perfect accordance between His will and His knowledge” —or
the like." Are passages desired which almost explicitly make
holy equivalent to merciful, redeeming, forgiving? Weigh well
the simple connection in Mary’s song of praise, Lu. i. 49, 50,
compared with Isa. lvii. 15, 16; Ps. cii. 20, 21. We would un-
ceasingly urge these latter passages upon all who cannot recon-
cile themselves to the incontrovertible scriptural interpretation
of this word. But most decisive appears to us, finally, Hos. xi.
8, 9, when rightly read, where we hear in express terms,—I
wil not execute the Fehon of Mine anger, I will not return
to destroy Ephraim : for 1am God and not man; the Holy One
in the midst of thee, and I will not come with with | 3

For instance, Kahnis says almost oracularly : ‘‘In the knowledge of Him-
self wise, in His own will holy, in His own love blessed.”

* Here is ‘‘ love the ground-tone of the word.” The holiness of God is
not opposed to a wrath ‘‘ which not so restrained would cease to be Divine”

JOHN XVII. 11. 471

Thus much then is certain, that in all these passages of Scrip-
ture the fundamental idea of the word is that of merciful, con-
descending, wrath-restraining Love. We cannot altogether,
however, agree with Menken that holy and merciful are synony-
mous; nor would we say with him that the word expresses only
the self-abasing love or lowliness of God! Most assuredly God
is holy also in His anger, in His judgments, in the unchangeable
truth of His nature, which permits Him not to forgive the sinners
to whom He is merciful without chastisement of their sin, the
taking away of their evil, and revelation of His own righteous-
ness :—and of this Ps. xcix. 8 might be taken as a normal passage
which gives its solution. Holy love, with all its compassion of
condescension, retains its enmity and opposition to the evil as
such ; though this concomitant consequence is by no means the
fundamental idea, as Schéberlein says, “ the essential self-pre-
serving attitude of God’s personality as opposed to the sin-
ner.”* For God is in Scripture termed holy, not in His opposi-
tion to the sinner, but as stooping to him—“ drawing nigh to
Israel,” as Achelis says. How otherwise could we ever become
holy ? 2 How could the application of the word pass, as it does in
the New Testament, from God to us, if its fundamental idea was
the self-defence of God against sin? Nitzsch comes nearest to
the truth, on this side of the question, when he says, “not saving
and ppudetbenitins love in itself is the idea of the Divine holiness,
but the correcting truth of love which in this condescension and
self-communication punishes the evil.” But we would substitute
—Not so much the former as the latter, not the former alone,
God is not merely holy in the unity of His love with His truth
and righteousness; but, inasmuch as love in Him (to speak
humanly) restrains the wrath of His punitive justice, and, as in
Hosea, overcomes it, He may be said not to leave man to His
judgment until all the methods of mercy are exhausted. Hence
(as Miinchmeyer says), but to the fierceness of a righteous wrath already
kindled.

1 Comp. in Schmieder, 8. 125, and 8. u. K. 1847. i., the whole tractate
of Achelis, who finally admits that ‘‘ Menken paved the way for a true
understanding of the word.” Sartorius falls back again upon the favourite
‘* self-preserving purity,” and adds (S. u. K. 1847. iv. 8. 1002), ‘‘ Redemp-

tion is not based upon the holiness of love, but upon compassion!” but this
can hardly be reconciled with Lu. i. 49, 50.

472 KEEP THEM IN THY NAME.

the acknowledgment of His holiness is the last and greatest
tribute in the glorification of His works,—after “ Righteous in
all His ways” comes “ Holy in all His works” (where, indeed,

we have TDM, most fitly instead of ¥i7?—making this mean-
ing most clear). Thus God, finally, as the Merciful One, who
is at the same time just and true in this communication of His
saving love, abides for ever the only God, worthy of all praise, to
be adored with the deepest reverence (hence sometimes the 873
is connected with the Yi7?)—but this holiness in its fullest and
profoundest sense has its New-Testament disclosure in the
equally sublime and condescending Futher-name. And thus the
formula which Christ here uses— Holy Father—condenses the
Old and New Testament expressions into one, uniting the
deepest word of the past revelation with the new name which
was now to be revealed, and both being one in their meaning.
Let us weigh attentively Heb.’ xii. 5-10, where the paternal
holiness of the Father of spirits, of which we are to be partakers,
is presented to us as the union of paternal love with the judicial
(and properly speaking equally paternal) severity against sin.
We would say, with Liebner ; “ Love is the positive essence of
holiness which only takes for granted the negative; in saying
summa in Deo puritas—what is denied and excluded? Essen-
tially all evil, that is, all selfishness, and therefore all negation of
love’ (Christologie i. 108). Once more, not “ the self-preserva-
tion of God, notwithstanding His condescension” (Schmieder),
but rather His condescension in conjunction with His self-pre-
servation, and even in order to it—for the securing of His
highest honour.

It is, consequently, as humbly praying in the name of the
sinners whose Representative He is, and at the same time as con-
fidently speaking in His own name, that Jesus appeals to the
holy Paternity, and paternal Holiness of God, for the preserva-
tion and defence, and (what is inseparable from it) for the pro-
gressive purification and sanctification of His dependents. Keep
them in Thy name—on which Francke says simply, “ which
name He had even now named,” and this precisely expresses the
sense. Itis certainly wrong to interpret here, through Thy name,"

1 In the English Bible we find in ver. 11 through Thine own name: and
Wesley both in ver. 11 and ver. 12, through Thy name.

JOHN XVII. 1l. 473

that is, by Thy power—through Thine aid, Chrys., Theophyl.,
Euthym. And equally incorrect that which Klee prefers—for
Thine own sake. For we must hold fast the connection with
ver. 6; and ver. 12 plainly expresses the meaning. The abid-
ing in the knowledge of the revealed name, the abiding with
and in God, is meant, and nothing else. Luther: “ This is to
be kept in the name of God, to keep His word pure and living
in our hearts. For this is God’s name, or honour, or praise,
that He should be thus known and acknowledged, etc.” Look-
ing still more intently upon it, we may say that Christ, who
bears in Himself and brings to the world the name of the
Father, prays as if He should say, Keep them in Me!

With this seems very well to agree the reading @ déwxds jot
which is generally preferred to ods—. It must be admitted that
ovs has for it the weakest authorities (only Cod: D., and there
as an emendation,.with some of the versions, Ba it might
have passed over from ver. 6), while @ was received generally
by the ancients." But internal criticism will not allow us to
regard the @ with many “as a reading which commends itself.”
For what could it mean here, that the Father had given His name
to Christ? Alford replies by saying, “ The name of God is that
which was to be in the Angel of the Covenant, Exod. xxiii. 21,
see also Isa. ix. 6; Jer. xxiii. 6.” But this Old Testament and
obscure expression could not be found interposed in the full
unfolded simplicity of this prayer, with any meaning ypiotompe-
aos. We would further ask, What could it mean here? here
where the Father-name is introduced? Such superficiality as
that of de Wette, “ which, that is, the revelation of which Thou
hast intrusted to Me,” and all kindred interpretations, condemn
themselves as opposed to that deep meaning of name which we
cannot but recognise here. Such an one is that of Hess—“ of
which Thou hast thought Me worthy (to be called Thy Son) !”
The Father did indeed give His word and His words to the Son,
for His work upon earth, in the flesh; but that He had given
-His name also to Him (Gra revealed to the Son, as then by the
Son to us?) is opposed alike to the essential unity and the essen-
tial distinction between the Son and the Father. Nor are we

1 Semler’s conjecture a; deserves no remark.

Cy) Tae THAT THEY MAY BE ONE.

helped by Schmieder’s— Keep them in Thy name, through which
Thou hast given them to Me! ‘The disciples being represented
in the same clause as 7m the name through which they were
given to Me!’ This reading, therefore, will admit of no kind
of consistent exposition. Nevertheless, we would not retain the
very slenderly supported reading ots; but agree with Bengel,
who gives the reading 6 the preference.? Not referring, how-
ever, this 6 to évowa, byt in the same sense of comprehensiveness
in the neuter as the wav 6 dédwxas connected with the avdrtols,
in ver. 2. This is strongly supported also, as Bengel observes,
by the €y which immediately follows; and in ver. 24 we have
the same reading recurring, 6 dédw«ds je, which plainly shows
that it was not referred to the dvoua by those who introduced it.
Thus the & is an allusion to the way of the earlier verse :—
Keep them in Thy name, (all) that which Thou hast given Me,
that this All may be One. This very unusual, but profound,
collocation of 6 with adrovds, has misled the copyists, though
ver. 2 might have assisted them to understand it. Hence the
various readings.°

That they may be One! Here at the commencement of the
interceding +7}p7aov—before the specific development of their
defence against evil, and sanctification in the truth, which follows
vers. 12-19—the prayer glances forward for a moment to the
great end of their preservation, as it is made prominent after-
ward in a new paragraph, vers. 21-23. It is obviously to be
understood, One among themselves, because one with Me and
Thee, with Us. But now the unity of believers is by an abso-
lute as placed in comparison with the unity of the Father and
the Son—this application being as bold as the exalted #ets, and
unless this equality be justified, too bold! How is this as to be
rightly understood? But the Father and the Son are in the
ou“oovcia one in an essentially different sense from that in which

1 Better than this would be Lange’s Jn which Thou hast given them to
Me! if only the 6 could be taken literally for év 6!

2 We do not regard this, with Liicke, to have originated from the 4;
but, conversely, the attraction was a grammatical correction which misun-
dorstond the meaning.

3 We cannot see how the plural dc:v opposes (as Luthardt thinks) the
application to the disciples ;. but refer again, and more expressly, to ver. 2.

JOHN XVII. 11. 475

we can be one with each other or one with God in Christ. Cer-
tainly, in ch. x. 30, where the & écyev laid the strong emphasis
upon the unity of power, and thus absolutely of the Divine
nature, such a juxtaposition could have no place; but here in
the as we are one the opuovora alone is prominent, and in that
sense our unity will admit of comparison, just as our serving,
loving, and dying for the brethren, may be compared with the
self-sacrifice of Christ. (See, e.g., that impressive passage, Eph.
v. 25-28.) This is the first explanation, but it by no means ex-
hausts the meaning of our Lord’s prayer that they may be one;
for He not only compares this union by the as with the union
of the Father and the Son, but unites it inseparably with the
latter, and makes that its foundation. (Ver. 21. And they m
us.— Ver. 22. Tin them.) By this the one is not reduced,‘ but
the other is exalted :—this is the often used expression which
just maintains the truth. Athanasius himself, in his zeal to
take this passage out of the hands of the heretics, reduced its
meaning too much—Quemadmodum Pater et filius sunt unum
essentia, ita nos aligua similitudine et rudi formula, dum in eum
respicimus, efficimur unum, una inter nos et mutua concordia
animi et Spiritus unitate. But this very Spiritus unitas points
to a profounder meaning. If we are in Christ and Christ in us
by the Spirit, this extends to a depth of reality in our union with
God, such as St Peter points to in his second Epistle (ch. i. 4)
—‘partakers of the divine nature,’—in connection with which,
however, the “ that ye may be made” retains the true distinc-
tion as it concerns us. Bengel remarks, “ Jesus does not ask
that He may be one with the Father; He asks that believers
may be. The former unity is by nature, the latter by grace ;”
but we may add “ tending to that of nature,” and point to the
TeTEANELMpLEVOL Els EV, Ver. 23. Augustine distinguishes still more
precisely, Non ait, ut nobiscum sint unum, aut simus unum ipsi
et nos, sicut unum sumus nos.—Finally, let it be observed that
as the Lord had never previously united Himself with men by
any We, in the presence of God and in relation to Him, so even
in this prayer, which finally embraces His disciples all in one,
and unites them most fully to Himself, He still utters no such

1 That Christ should be one with the Father, as the deniers of His Divinity

say, xara ry Oivauiy wal diabcoww Tas CuoPpovias.

476 THE SON OF PERDITION.

“We,” but on the contrary places Himself wita God in another
We which is distinguished from that. And this, too, in prayer,
which makes it still more emphatic than in ch. xiv. 23. But,
again, in this unity of nature there is still the distinction éya
Kal ov.

Ver. 12. SvrAdocew is manifestly more than rnpetv, inasmuch
as it makes prominent the more specific protection against present
danger which is included in the more general idea of preserva-

ion. It is true that afterwards, when no longer in the world
by visible, audible, human presence, the Son Himself keeps and
defends His own—see ch. x. 28-30. But there is yet a differ-
ence, so that He who is going presently to return and remain
can truly say, When I was with them—as we have found and
expounded this in the previous chapters. Again, this bold.
expression (as Cyril observed) in which the Lord makes His
own and the Father’s keeping one, must rest upon their equal
power and dignity.” To the Holy Father, Keep Thou—as a
Divine work; and now, I have hitherto kept! Who, leaving
the world, could thus speak to God but He who is One with
Him? Peter’s denial, the offence and forsaking of all, were
already in ver. 8 prophetically overlooked, as no real apostasy ;
it now comes out more strongly that the Eleven are, notwith-
standing, those who are kept and not lost. But the one miser-
able apostate—the good Shepherd thinks of him now, and it is
a drop of sorrow in the cup of His joy—now once more, and
-this once only, since the viv éd0£dcOn of ch. xiii. 31. Here lies
the deep mystery of evil, which continues even after redeeming
grace, yea, continues to strive against it. Did not Jesus desire,
as much as in Him lay, to preserve and save even Judas also ?
Does He say—Whom I have let go, given up! or anything
equivalent to that? God forbid! On the contrary He here

1 On which it was scarcely for Bengel to say, ‘‘ Nor is it befitting that
believers in praying to the Father and the Son should say Ye. Which
language, however, some practical divines use.” The living exercise of
prayer can address and invoke only the one God, whether in the Father, or
in the Son, or (as the Spirit has taught the Church) in the Holy Ghost.

2 “ What our Saviour here says could be said by no man, by no angel, -
of himself. It was impossible to every creature, God alone could keep His

own in His name.—TJ have kept them in Thy name is widely different from
whatever the most faithful servant of God could do.” A. H. Francke.

JOHN XVII. 12. 477
calls to witness what He had done for His disciples as a justifi-
cation of Himself against what might have the appearance of
neglect. It must be admitted that « uj elsewhere sometimes
stands merely for adAXd, without introducing any exception to
what precedes; but the simple reader must yield to the convic-
tion that the one is here excepted from the twelve. The broken
number of the Apostles is referred to throughout as one—with
them, I have kept them, and so, not one of them; and the thought
and feeling of the Lord in this prayer is precisely the same as
in the previous expression of His sorrow— One of you, ch. xiii.
21.1 This is the one, who was chosen and yet not chosen—
the former being as real as the latter. This one did not comply
with that condition which was already described in ver. 6 as the
decision of man’s freedom corresponding to His grace—the
keeping the word. Therefore he is lost, am@ero—which must
assuredly be taken in strict connection with the dé5axas. The
Lord bears this witness against him, while He mourns over him
before the Father, and appeals to His own fidelity—J have not
neglected him!’ Thus this word stands in the High-priestly
prayer, with all its profound, solemn, weighty significance of
warning :—lLet no man depend upon the keeping of the Father
and the Son, or upon the intercession of the High Priest, as
upon an zresistible grace which will render this being lost im-
possible.

Jesus names not the lost one, for several reasons: through
sorrow (as in ch. xii. 26)—because he is reprobate (Ps. xvi. 4)
—but, finally, because his person is regarded as the type of all
whom the Lord sees in the future as lost with him. This last
is assumed afterwards by the Holy Ghost, 2 Thess. ii. 3, where
the Antichrist who will close the series receives the condemning
name of his forerunner—son of perdition. This construction as
derived from the Hebrew {2 is plain enough; but it is too often
forgotten that it involves as its fundamental principle the neces-
sary attribution of personal guilt, the note of what is a man’s
own, and out of which springs his character and his fate. Thus
we have oysoa"}3, nya, mio"j2—in Isa. lvii. 4, yea Sept.

1 Glassius, incorrectly : Non excipitur ex Christo datorum numero Judas,

sed iis tantum opponitur per adversativam.
2 Nos sane Individuorum amissorum reddemus rationem. Bengel.

478 THE SON OF PERDITION.

Téxva amwnrelas, parallel with 17Y yu'—Ecclus. xvi. 9, e@vos
amwnelas—in the New Testament vids yeévvns, Matt. xxiii. 15,
viol Ths amevleias, Eph. ii. 2, but also vids efpnvns, Lu. x. 6,
réxva braKons, 1 Pet.i. 14. Thus in the vids is involved the
unsalvability of this lost one, and his own guilt, as in 2 Thess.
ii. 3, dvOpwiros THs awaptias precedes as the principle and reason
of the perdition. Further the dr@deva after the dm@nero is by
no means tautological—I have lost none but him who is lost !—
but as in the first place the being lost included the perdition, so
now the latter is made prominent by the dw@)ea ; and, pene-
trating more deeply into the root of the matter, the damnation
is viewed as one with the sin. "A7rodeva is at the same time YWB
as in Isa. lvii. This expression paves the way for the aovnpov,
ver. 15, and regards the sin and all its consequences as one, and
it is of great significance (for the right interpretation of ver. 15
afterwards) that the Lord does not descend in this prayer to
mention the author of sin, the father of perdition,’ but abides in
the abstraction, albeit an abstraction very concrete.

Having come to that dark boundary where sin and its result-
ing perdition contends even against His grace, the Lord finds
His solace, now as ever, in the foreseeing counsel of the Father,
which, while it never could will sin, nevertheless victoriously
takes it up into its purposes of grace to the saved. I have fore-
told thee of this—such consolation in such experience needed
even the Son as man. The quotation of Scripture as referring
to Judas* has the same force here as in ch. xiii. 18; but here
there is a broader view of all those passages of Scripture gene-
rally which prophesy of this Judas personally, and of that which
was illustrated in him—the being loved in vain and lost. The
word does indeed primarily refer to specific prophecy concerning

1 To which passage there may be direct allusion here. But not, as Lange
thinks, that the Scripture here said to be fulfilled is to be found in this
chapter (where the plurals gradually pass into the singular), especially
vers. 12, 13. There are other and plainer Scriptures which point to Judas’
person !

* Braune, therefore, contradicts the text, when he says—‘‘ He calls him
son, and that is His love; but lost, that is His holiness.”

3 As Nonnus inaptly interjects <i 7 dasuovlov Pbsogvopos vids creépov.

* Concerning which Bahrdt said, Who can mistake the marginal gloss
here?!

JOHN XVII. 13. 479

this son of perdition: we must not forget this, and think with
Junius that “ Jesus regarded the universal truth of the law of
Moses and the Prophetical Scriptures, and their unanimous con-
sent in this, that not all to whom the word of God was preached
should be saved.” Again, what Braune says remains true, “ Jesus
caused it not, still less the Scripture, least of all God”—but
Judas himself, although a child of Satan, is at the same time
the author and father of his own sin and his own perdition, as
aTroAAvpevos and amoAwAas the son and heir of his self-willed
ruin.

Ver. 13. I come to Thee—see on ver. 11. We have already
admitted that our Lord, as He here plainly says, prayed aloud
in the hearing of His disciples for their instruction and com-
fort :—the XaXo' with iva makes it here undeniable. Jn the
world; that is, He utters this prayer now finally before His
coming to the Father, pre-eminently for His own in the world.”
And this shows, as Liicke observes, the difference between the
intercession in this world and that continued in the other. For
the Son will above speak to the Father, and before Him, other-
wise than here below in the flesh: there is an antithesis which
nevertheless rests upon their essential unity ; for these things are
the same which He here would begin to say, and will there con-
tinue to say. Concerning the fulfilment of Christ’s joy in His
disciples, see upon chap, xv. 11 and xvi. 24. Here there is a
direct anticipation of this glorious end of all. “This High-
priestly intercession is the object and the ground of never-failing
joy.’ Who can, indeed, apprehend himself by faith to be in-
cluded in it, without an increase of joy in the faith which anti-
cipates victory and eternal glory, just as it was anticipated in
‘this prayer uttered then in the world? Jesus did not even now
think only of His first disciples :—we hear St John, 1 Johni. 4,
appropriating to all believers the promise of a joy which is full,
and yet ever increasing; and in his private Epistle hoping that
his own spoken words may, through the grace of his Lord, con-

? To which Nonnus adds very improperly a cof: zal rade ool 2vuravra
6¢gjiov—All this have I said to Thee, O Father !

? What other mysteries in yet higher words, or in silence, might He have
spoken of to His Father, if His aim had not been to speak all for us, that we
also might know his intercessory prayer! Comp. Schmieder, S. 148.

480 THEY ARE NOT OF THE WORLD.

tribute to the fulness of the disciple’s joy, 2 John 12. That
which the intercession of Jesus prayed and assured to His own,
is made in the hands of the Spirit a blessing distributed in ever-
increasing measure to all. Whosoever speaks and writes under
the benediction of this discourse of Jesus increases and fulfils
the joy of those who hear and read. And especially whosoever
can pray after this pattern of all liturgical service and prayer!

Vers. 14-16. The goal of perfect joy, of that peace the prin-
ciple of which through their union with Christ by faith is already
given to them, and which will increase more and more, has now
been expressed. But the great danger of the way has had a
fearful exhibition in that One among the Twelve! We know
already how the Lord had applied this example to the humili-
ation and warning of the rest. Hence the intercession now first
begins with definite precision, entering more deeply and plainly
into the necessity of their condition:—Keep them—from the
evil! First stands the repetition of the foundation, vers. 6-8, on
which His petition rests—I have, on My part, given them Thy
word! Indeed, this is enough, enough for the foundation of
their defence, in this one treasure lies all—that is, with the Spirit
(as is more plainly expressed in ver. 17), who is regarded by anti-
cipation as being already in the word. Nevertheless, there is
connected with this beneficium an incommodum inde natum (as
Lampe says)——Therefore the world hateth them! Let all that
was said upon ch. xv. 19, 20 be called to mind; and especially
that the hatred for the word’s sake falls upon the persons, be-
cause of the difference in character of which those who hold it
bear witness. The hatred of the world is the always resulting
consequence, in the degree in which the word has been given to
us :——-hence éuioncer parallel with dédaxa. But now comes the
disclosure of the reason— For they are not of the world. As
there was in eh. xv. 19, the emphatically repeated designation
of this relation, so now we have the same before and after, in
ver. 14 and ver. 16, as the reason of the petition coming between
in ver. 15. As J—on this comparison and reason we have spoken
already upon ch. xv. After the creation of the new man, which
is now their proper person, after their union with Christ through
the regeneration by the word, they are no longer of the world.
_ He Himself, otherwise than we, was originally not of it: “ Dur

JOHN XVII. 14-16. 481

ing the whole time of His being in the world, He had not been,
for one moment, of the world—but had been elevated above it
in kingly majesty.” (Albertini.) But in the case of the disciples,
the same world which hateth them hath still something of its own
in their hearts. This is the inmost reason why they must remain
in the world; they must pursue the conflict into victory.

«I pray not that Thou shouldst take them (now at once, with
Me) out of the world! This also He speaks, most assuredly,
for the instruction of the hearers of His prayer. He thus
admits that it might be reasonable to ask this: on the one hand,
it must appear to the disciples a good and desirable thing, while,
on the other hand, He by declining such a prayer intimates that
it would be the reverse. He gives them to understand that
they should yet remain a long time in the world, even after He
had gone to the Father. Not, therefore, as that premature
wish, ch. xiii. 37, desired ; not as their somewhat clearer appre-
hension might now earnestly prefer, “ How good for us if He
would remove us with Himself” (Francke). So, also, contrary
to the deep desire which all His future disciples would feel ;—
a desire which is not to be compared, however, with that of
Elijah, oppressed by despondency (1 Kings xix. 4), nor to be
regarded as the desire of lethargy and idleness, but such as the
Apostle expressed in Phil. 1. 23. In their first conversion and
joy almost all more or less feel a desire to be at once with Him
above, as Albertini’s hymn sings, “I have seen Thy throne,
Lord, from afar, and would fain be with Thee; gladly would
I commit to Thee, Creator of Spirits, my weary life”’ And
often we think concerning others, Well for them now to die,
for then they would be safe in heaven! But the Lord knows
better, and we should learn a better lesson from His words on
this occasion. He asks not for this; then ask it not thyself,
either for thyself or for others! Reply with the Apostle to
thine own desire to depart, Nevertheless it is better, for it is
more needful, to remain in the flesh and in the world. Content
thyself with praying for thy preservation, until thou hast ful-
filled all thy work, and art thyself made perfect.

And this gives us the two reasons, which pass into each
other, for which it was better that they should remain. First,
believers are to continue the witness and work of the Lord in.

VOL. VI. 2H

482 KEEP THEM FROM THE EVIL.

the world, like Paul they must have fruit of their labours.
Luther makes this the prominent reason, “The question must
not be of their going out of the world with Me; for I have
much to do by their means, My kingdom to spread, and My
little flock to be increased.” But with this must be connected
the other; only in the struggle to accomplish this are we our-
selves perfected and sanctified; thus only do we bring forth
fruit unto our own ripe fitness for heaven. As the same hymn
of Albertini proceeds: “ But I am sinful, still stooping to the
earth, and this His Holy Spirit hath taught me most convinc-
ingly; I must abide in this world yet longer that I may be
wholly sanctified by His Spirit, my mind must learn to enter
more deeply into His, my feet must learn to stand immovably!”
For a believer to accomplish his final salvation, and reach the
haven without making shipwreck of faith, is no light thing,
but possible only through the power of the intercession of the
Mediator, and the strength of God obtained through Him.
“Men wonder when a believer falls; but they should much
more wonder to see him stand fast to the end, and finish his
course with joy.’ (Hofacker.) But the great prize, the full
fruit, of our discipline is this, to be able to say throughout the
conflict and at the end— But in all these we are more than con-
guerors! Rom. vi. 37.

All this is sufficiently grounded and explained in the petition
—But that Thou wouldst keep them from the evil. Is the evil
masculine or neuter? Many from the earliest times have as-
sumed the former, regarding the Lord as pointing to the great
enemy from whom the disciples are to be defended; Bengel is
among them, as was also Nonnus before him.’ Wesley cor-
rects the Eng. trans. from the evil into from the evil one. But
our opinion is different, and we hold to Luther’s translation.
There are passages, such as 2 Thess. iii. 8, which speak of the
evil one; but the sense and connection are not the same in
them. In 1 John v. 19 (which is generally adduced as de-
cisive), the evil one is not referred to, for he had been men-
tioned in the previous verse ; there is the same connection there
as here between the zovnpov and the xécpos, and what is meant

1° AAW ive pov BASQcposory dnorenrosos QUAMENS Oalwovos epxexcenoro duoav-
TyTWY aro beomay.

JOHN XVII. 14-16. 483

is the evel which that evil one had brought into the world, and
into which he had brought the world, so that it now lies fast in
it. Rosenmiiller well says, It is the neuter, with allusion to the
masculine which precedes. It would be a strange thing to read
there—lieth in the wicked one. The év in this passage perfectly
corresponds with the é« in ours; and this opposes the reference
to Satan, since elsewhere we find only rnpety awo—excepting
in. Rey. iii. 10 where é« tis @pas of temptation has the same
meaning as here, something being indicated in which they are
found who are to be saved out of it by preservation.

We gave our reasons in Vol. 1. for not understanding the
evil one to be mentioned in the last petition of the Lord’s
Prayer, referring to the important parallel, 2 Tim. iv. 17, 18;
and had previously exhibited upon Matt. v. 39 the fundamental
idea of vrovnpov as used by our Lord. ‘The repugnance which
we there expressed to the introduction of the conquered enemy,
is strengthened when he is regarded as entering into this final
prayer of victory and glorification. Luthardt may utter his
protest, and declare it to be most appropriate that both in the
Lord’s Prayer and in this the devil should be alluded to—de
gustibus non est disputandum. We regard it as a very import-
ant argument for our view, that the Lord is here dealing with
the simply impersonal neutral, and general fundamental ele-
ments both of evil and good. First, we have the two designa-
tions in strict parallel, é« tod xoopou—éx Tod Trovnpod. As far
as the disciples are still in the world (ver. 11), they are also in
the evil, but they are to be sanctified in the truth, ver. 17.
These are all plain correlatives; and moreover we have seen
that in ver. 12 the neuter perdition is used, the name of the
author, the destroyer, being however avoided. Olshausen thinks
the éx, as parallel with é Tov KocpOV, decisive against explaining
it of the devil: “If the Lord had intended to bring a personality
into the parallel, He would have been more pointed in desig-
nating him, for instance, by prince of this world.” And cer-
tainly this name was near enough at hand! So B.-Crusius
thinks the é« more appropriate to the neuter. Throughout the
whole New Testament we have the rypetv, with such a qualifi-
cation, only in Jas. i. 27, besides this passage and Rey. i. 10;
there it is with dd, which generally accompanies guAdccew,

484 SANCTIFY THEM.

and dzré would stand kere also, if Luther’s simple view “against
the evil” were quite correct. It is certain that é«, in the un-
usual pregnant construction of this passage, has a corresponding
év to be supplied, which could refer only to zovnpov.t Even
Lampe, unlike the Reformed, prefers here and in the Lord’s
Prayer, the neuter.”

The evil is really the same comprehensive term here as there:
—sin, the “malitia mundana” (though not with Grotius’ ex-
ternal application, who explains é« by ab) is the ground, as we
find evil world in Gal. i. 4: but it includes all the miserable
fruits and consequences of sin, from the equally tempting as pro-
fitable xaxia of every day (Matt. vi. 34), up to the tremendous
ama@nea of eternity. In Joseph’s word, Gen. xxxix. 9, 7390
noman is the first prelude of this sense ; for even there his mean-
ing was that to sin against God must bring upon him greater
ruin and evil than his refusal to do it. Only by taking His
disciples fully out of the elemental evil of sin, can Jesus make
them perfectly happy; but this is not attained by the taking
away of the unsanctified prematurely out of the world. The
Tnpev €k—is a pregnant construction of great significance, by
which the immediately following dyd%ew is prepared for. A.
H. Francke says in explanation, “That Thou wouldst keep
them, as they are fast in the midst of the evil; and keep them
in such a manner that they may come out of the evil finally un-
harmed and unsullied” —but “in the midst” is too strong, the
meaning is their being helped entirely out of it: the saving pre-
servation is only the continuation and completion of their first
deliverance, and election out of the world. “ ‘The preservation in
the name of God is their preservation in that which sanctifies the
disciples ; their defence against the evil is their defence against
that which would defile them’”—says Schmieder; but it must not
be forgotten that the progressive sanctification itself presupposes
in them the unholiness which has yet to be entirely taken away.

When ver. 16 follows again upon this, the design is to obvi-
ate the error of putting too strong a construction upon the
fellowship of the disciples with the evil; and, further, the

} Briickner admits that the 2x would be more appropriate to the neuter.
* Evil as well physical as moral—he says, inexactly indeed; for the
latter is not the root of the former, and in the perdition both are one.

JOHN XVII. 17. 485

Master would in this teaching prayer say for all futurity—All
ye for whom I pray must be right in this respect above all!
Apply to yourselves this test! Similarly, we may say that
what in ver. 14 is the ground of the world’s hatred, is here
made the reason for His prayer being heard. But the former
explanation goes more deeply into the matter.

Ver. 17. The connection with what precedes, the development
of this prayer from the previous, is to be sought in this important
consideration :—There is still something of the world in them ;
they are still in the evil, as not only afflicted and tempted from
without, but also from within; they are not yet altogether re-
leased from this element of the world (go back to chap. xvi. 33,
and mark the deep meaning of in the world there). Therefore
they need to be sanctified: first, for their own sake and in them-
selves; then also, as ver. 18 shows, for the sake of the world,
and for their mission to it. In fact, this sanctify them in con-
nection with J sanctify Myself, ver. 19, is the proper centre of
the whole prayer; nor must we let that be taken away by any
superficial interpretation of this word. Assuredly, dyidew as
corresponding to the O. T. Mp and YPN, means primarily —
To separate for God, to consecrate; and so far is used with re-
ference to impersonal things in the region of rites and types, as
we find it also used by our Lord, Matt. xxii. 17,19. But in
the New-Testament fulfilment this typical phraseology discloses
all its meaning; and is no longer used with lower application,
except by way of transition, as in the holy city, the holy covenant,
holy place, 76 Gyiov, Matt. vii. 6. Thenceforward, it is used in
what we call its moral meaning, consecration to God through
separation from sin. Even in 1 Cor. vu. 14, and Rom. xi. 16,
it has this meaning in part. And can we suppose that here,
where the Lord is speaking out of the very centre of New-Tes-
tament truth and fulfilment, a typical and external idea was all
that He attached to the word? It is in vain that B.-Crusius
decrees, “ We cannot think, with Grotius, of a moral sanctifi-
cation :”—nothing else can possibly satisfy the Lord’s meaning.
If we understand— Separate them, and the question arises, from
what? the answer is at hand—from the evil. If we read first,
in the Old-Testament sense (which indeed has its truth), Con-
secrate them, and then ask to what? the connection with the jol-

486 BY THY TRUTH.

lowing verse is not enough; we must carefully observe all that
precedes, and that will lead us to the full preservation and sal-
vation from sin for the holy Father. It may be said (with Ham-
mond, Semler, Kuinoel): They were to be consecrated and
separated to their vocation of teaching, their mission to the
world*—but in the mouth of Christ that very consecration can
be no other than what the entire New Testament terms sancti-
fiéation. A reference to ver. 19 may oblige us to admit a priestly
consecration of those who were to be sent, as Lampe, following
Theophyl. and Ammon, maintained; but, as he allows, the New-
Testament priests are now sanctified truly and in the truth. The
same word applies to us all; but how shall the priests of God
bring for themselves or for others spiritual sacrifices excepting
as sanctified from their sins? Finally, let it be weighed well
that the Lord has already acknowledged much and great things
in regard to His disciples—They are Thine, O Father,—no
more of the world,—They are given to Me,—I am glorified in
them; but He never says concerning them—They are already
sanctified. But, after all that, would a consecration have been
wanting, understood, that is, as a mere external separation and
setting apart? If taken out of the world, if they had been given
to God and to Christ, that must have already taken place? In
fact, so far as they are already pure through the word given
unto them (ch, xv. 3), and Christ lives in them through the
commencement of their world-renouncing faith, they are already
sanctified in the sense of 1 Cor. vi. 11—but that is not enough
for the ayiacov yet in reserve, which must be explained accord-
ing to 2 Cor. vii. 1; Acts xxvi. 18, xx. 32.

The great means of this sanctification, by which also the in-
ternal, moral meaning of the expression is established, is the
truth, that is, the word of truth, just as in Acts xx. 32. Doubt-
less, as we have hinted before, in the truth here means, primarily
and in transition, truly, really, in opposition to the prophetic
type; but to go no further than this? is wrong, on the other

1 And Chrysostom: ‘‘ Separate them to the word and preaching.” But
he adds, ‘‘ their own sanctification seems to be something different from
that.” Theophylact says plainly, ‘‘ Make them holy” _

-? This is all Luther expresses, but its meaning is right: ‘‘ May they be
soundly sanctified by Theo”—referring to Eph. iv. 24 also. .

JOHN XVII. 17. 487

hand, being inconsistent with the added Thy truth. Lachmann’s
text, indeed (and the Vulg.), omits this important cov; but the
omission is to be accounted for by a wish to conform this verse
to ver. 19: as transitional, however, to the explanatory “ Thy
word is truth,” it could not be wanting here. (Even if spurious
it must be supplied in the thought.) Such supertficialities as
taking év for 5, ergo veritati, ¢.e., ministerio ejus, and Meyer's
in the service of the truth, condemn themselves, when we only
consider the depth of meaning which év has:in the New Testa-
ment and in St John, and which certainly it retains to the full
in this chapter. Nor is this év the per of Erasmus, as Liicke
thinks, “ by means of’”’—turn to ch. iv. 23 and ch. vii. 31, 32
again! The truth, or the revealed, communicated reality of
the knowledge of God is the element or medium of sanctifi-
cation; the word which contains this truth, yea, is identical
with it, becomes then the means or medium in another sense.
The truth of God is pre-eminently all that which Christ hath
said, see vers. 6, 8, 14, ch. viii. 40, xviii. 37. But- Christ in-
cluded, too, the ancient word of God, confirmimg and fulfilling
it; and therefore “ Thy truth” and “ Thy word” embrace even
here every Old-Testament word also, concerning which Ps.
exix. 160 gloried—Thy word is true from the beginning, or—
The sum, the essential substance of Thy word, is Truth! But
the former interpretation of this last passage declares that
even the beginning of the word of God, of Scripture, is pure
revealed truth, the witness of God against all delusion and
error. |

But now it is obvious that “if the word of God is thus con-
secrated as a sanctifying medium,” it receives this consecration as
a living word, not regarded therefore as without and independent
of the Spirit. For every word without the Spirit is a he; but
-God’s word to men was never from the beginning without the
‘Spirit in it and with it (even the law was Adyia COvTa, Acts vii. 38).
Even the believing and waiting keeping of the word which pre-
cedes the outpouring of the Spirit—who gives life to us as well
as to the word—is not possible without a preliminary participa-
tion of the Spirit of the word. Not as a letter, but by its spirit,
the Old-Testament word imperfectly sanctified all who were,
and as far as they were, sanctified ; on the other hand, the hold-

488 THY WORD IS TRUTH.

ing fast and perverting the letter without sincerity of heart, and
without entering into the truth of the word—was turned into the
most fearful lie (1 Jno. i. 4), and crucified the incarnate Word
Himself. Thus we understand how far the Lord attributes to
the previous word the beginning of a sanctification, while He
prays for that fulfilment of it which the Old Testament was not
capable of producing :—prays anticipatingly that the Father,
when the Spirit shall have been sent with the perfect words which
the Son had spoken, would sanctify His own more and more,
even unto perfection, in this full living reality of the word.
Though the Holy Ghost is not named throughout this prayer—
remarkable enough after the previous discourses !—because the
Lord prays altogether in the Spirit, yet it must not be forgotten
that in all the influences and energies of grace which are prayed
for, from the first giving of life to the final union and glorifica-
tion, nothing else is meant and prayed for but the selfsame Hely
Spirit. The entire prayer prays in the Spirit for the Spirit ;
and in this centre of it the truth, which is regarded as one with
the word, can have no other meaning than that we found in the
Spit and truth, of ch. iv. 23. Did not the Lord, in the great
promise which preceded the prayer, expressly term the Para-
clete the Spirit of the truth! If there in the beginning this
referred especially, yea almost exclusively, to a revelation to
knowledge, to true teaching, so we see now at the end that the
word deepens its meaning, and that Spirit of the truth becomes
actually a most profound and all-embracing name. The truth
and reality of the self-communication of God to man, which
quickens and sanctifies by means of the word offered to his
knowledge, is now the Spirit (1 Jno. v. 6)—and is at the same
time the glorified word, as lifegiving as it is living.’ This last.
© Novos oO cos should be pondered by all who talk about the
Lord’s intercession for a Spirit and a truth independent of the-
canonical word which is here strictly bound up with it, as given
by God through the prophets and finally by His Son.

But the prayed-for sanctification, although it proceeds through-
out the whole life of believers, cannot be made in the fullest
sense perfect before death; for death remains as the final test

* Which may be supplementarily added to what was already said upon
ch. xiv. 17.

JOHN XVII. 18. 489

of.faith and its perseverance, and this full consummation em-
braces really the reception of the inheritance—just as is signi-
fied by among those who are sanctified in Acts xxvi. 18, and
according to the comprehensive sense of they who are sanctified,
Heb. ii. 11. It is the Son who sanctifies us in Himself; it is
the Father who sanctifieth us through the Son in the Spirit ;
specifically and conclusively it is thus the Spirit, as the living
truth of God, who produces this sanctification. But, on the other
hand, as before the defence, so now the sanctification, of be-
lievers is not without their own faith and fidelity, their obedience
to the truth. (1 Pet. i. 15, 16, 22.) Hence the Spirit Himself
exhorts, as in St John’s first Epistle, “ He that hath this hope in
Him—purijieth himself,’ ch. iii. 3. (In this ayvigeww mark, at
the same time, the true meaning of dydfew!) And in ch. v.
18, 19 of that Epistle this sanctifieth himself is connected with
keeping himself, as not sinning, as the entire deliverance from
the evil in which the world lieth—so that we have at the close
of the companion Epistle, as it were, a specific quotation and
exposition of the very words with which the Gospel here closes.

Ver. 18. Now first, after having referred to the necessity of a
sanctification for the disciples themselves, in order to their being
fully delivered from every weddos, the Lord directs His view to
their official vocation, as strictly bound up with their personal
advancement in faith. (Acts xx.24; 2'Tim.iv.7.) The Lord
here anticipates the word which was afterwards spoken, ch. xx. 21
(which directly and fully could not be spoken to them until after
the Resurrection) ; and in this word their calling, their appoint-
ment, their need, advance to a higher meaning. He does not
merely eave them in the world, He sends them to it and into it!
He appoints them not merely to keep there the word itself, to
receive it fully in its truth to the sanctification of their own per-
sons, but to carry about this word as a testimony (Acts vill. 15) ;
to continue their testimony to the truth, as He Himself in ch.
xviii. 37. But the personal and official calling are ever one in
their several spheres; and most certainly so in the Apostles, as
their name testifies. It is only in the world, while we live and
contend in it as not of it, and keep oursélves in the word of truth,
that our full sanctification is possible. As He Himself in the
flesh overcame through conflict, and by true obedience sowed the

490 I SANCTIFY MYSELF.

seed which was now to produce the full harvest of His glory—
so also is it with us. He here condescends to equality with us,
in respect to His mission in His humanity ; afterwards in ver.
19 His own specific I sanctify Myself follows, in which we must
recognise the great distinction which subsists in this equality.
To bear fruit in ourselves and also in others, is but one and the
same ; even as He, while He was Himself perfected, at the same
time perfected all. (Heb. v.9; x. 14.) This we have already
seen in the parable of the vine.’ Assuredly, this mission to the
world applies, according to his ability, to the most private indi-
vidual, who goes most quietly through life, working out his own
salvation—for how can any one be a light in the world without
diffusing his light ; how can he have the graces of Christ with-
out making them known; how can he be sanctified in the truth,
without bearing witness for the truth? Again, who can be
sanctified without the discipline of this conflict with the unholy
world? Thus we have here the strongest reason why He will
not take His own out of the world; why we should not wish to
forsake the society of men, and be at rest before the time; why
we should rather persevere in our mission, as He did! (1 Jno.
iv. 17.) The distinction in this similarity between Him and us
is already denoted in this, that now the Son sendeth His own,
even as the Father had sent Him. Thus through us, as the
Father’s subdelegates, so to speak, the work upon earth proceeds,
so far as it has yet to be accomplished.— Nevertheless, with all
this co-reference of the word to future disciples, the Lord’s view _
rests in ver. 18 upon these first, specific Apostles ;? on which
account in ver. 20 its express extension is resumed— ot for
these only.

Ver. 19. But before this there is one solitary, but all-compre-
hensive word in the middle of the prayer—the High-priestly
umép avtav which lays the foundation for the wep) adrayv, as a
conclusive testimony to His redeeming work, His redeeming death.
Let us now seek rightly to understand this I sanctify Myself !

1 Compare Rothe’s Ethik. iii. 57.

* Luther: He hereby appoints His Apostles to be doctors and preachers,
and binds us all to their words, whether we be learned or unlearned ; so
that, however wise we may be, we must humble ourselves to let these poor
paiemen teach us and guide us, hearing them as we would Christ Himself.

JOHN XVII. 19. 491

According to ch. x. 36 the Father had already sanctified Him,
in sending Him into the world; from His birth He had been
the Holy One of God in the unholy world. This J sanctify
Myself in the present tense cannot, therefore, refer generally to
His vocation and mission generally, to His whole life of teach-
ing and action." A sanctification from sin He needed not like
us! Luther says to the simple, or to the perverse, “ Thou must
not understand this word as if He was to become holy in a sense
in which He was not so before ; for He was holy in His mother’s
womb, Lu. i. 35.” This is sufficiently obvious; but how is the
same word used of Him, which had just been used of us? It is
plain at the outset, that He in a certain sense condescends to
fellowship with them; and we must, first of all, and before a
deeper meaning is established, content ourselves with Grotius’
explanation— He repeats the word sanctify in a sense somewhat
changed.

But what is that sense? Here recurs the same fundamental
idea of the MP and WIPN derived from the O. T., and which’
we showed to be the first meaning of the word; that meaning
is now brought to its full fulfilment in the sanctification of the
Priest and the sacrifice, the éuavrév showing that Christ is both
in one. I consecrate, devote Myself as the Lamb of God to
sacred, sacrificial service :—such is the main meaning, as the
Apostles might and must have understood it. Chrys., I bring
before Thee an offering. KEuthym., I voluntarily sacrifice My-
self. And thus have most orthodox expositors understood it
down to our own day; and rightly so, for consecration to God,
and offering to God, is really the common fundamental idea in

1 As Liicke rightly remarks, against the Socinians and Rationalists—He
had not in this sense sanctified and sent Himself, but the Father had
sanctified and sent Him. Thus the interpretation is false, which Heumann,
Semler, Kuinoel, and De Wette advocate—‘‘I have consecrated Myself to
Thee, to Thy ministry ; I have undertaken for their sake the office of Thy
ambassador.” Semler’s ‘‘I have altogether devoted and consecrated Myself
in their place and for their sake,” may bear a good meaning, though he is
wrong in making that all. Hezel has given a lamentable interpretation :
‘* For their sake I have exhibited Myself in extraordinary ways, by a life
of virtue and the greatest miracles, by the strange vicissitudes of My lot : —
for their sake, that they may know My doctrine to be Divine, worthy of their
acceptation, and of the many sacrifices in which it may involve them.”

492 I SANCTIFY MYSELF.

vers. 17 and 19. But this by no means exhausts the reason of
the use of the same word in both cases. Olshausen says too
much: “ But the respective position of Christ and His disciples
requires us to assume that dyidfew as used concerning Him
means only to ‘consecrate ;’ while as used of the disciples it
must have the subordinate idea of a preparatory sanctification
of nature.” For making holy is the essential, irremovable idea
of dyiafewv, it is not a subordinate idea which may be removed
from it; the connection between His ayiafew and ours is once
more brought most impressively forward in this same verse, in
the too-often-overlooked but most emphatic iva cal avtoi—.
Consequently, there must be even in Him something correspond-
tng to our purification and deliverance from sin; something
which is the fundamental, essential grownd of the latter. The
common theory of atonement, which does not penetrate into
the living oneness of the true humanity of Christ with the fallen
children of Adam, will never be able to understand this memor-
able saying ; for it leaves Jesus apart in His holiness, just where
He nevertheless, descending to and penetrating our humanity,
sanctifies Himself for us; —with all its words about the mediation
and substitution of Christ, it has no true notion of His actually
taking our place. Christ’s standing in our stead necessarily in-
volves this, that the doing away and overcoming of sin must be’
the fundamental idea even in His own dyidfew. . Does He only
so bear and atone for the sin of the world, does He only so per-
fect the purging of our sins (Heb. i. 3), that the duapria by
imputation alone (then an impossible thing!) lies only upon
Him? Is it not rather, according to all Scripture, in His flesh,
the same flesh of sin in the oywofwpua of which He was sent and
was born ; so that in ¢his flesh, this human nature and human
person of the zncarnate Son, sin was condemned and done away ?
(Rom. viii. 3.) Hence Schmieder says unhesitatingly: “The
self-sanctification of Jesus was, in this relation, subjected to the
same conditions under which the sanctification of His disciples
stands; it was necessary that He should offer up the human in
Him as that which was contrary to God.” This points us to
the truth of that which is generally known as Menken’s theory
—to the truth which, rightly understood, is found in connection
with much that is false. The author’s theory (which must not

JOHN XVII. 19. | 493

be confounded with Menken’s!) is in some degree known, and
cannot here be fully unfolded anew.’ Thus much is certain, that
we must, :f we would do justice to this word, Jno. xvii. 19,
admit, whether we understand it or not, a certain sanctification,
renovation, or restoration of human nature even in the very per-
son of Christ, as the root or germ of our sanctification :—by
means of which He Himself was released from a certain real
connection with our sin, and thus became the First-born of all
the brethren sanctified in and through Himself. Rothe (in his
Ethik ii. 307) approaches the truth of the matter, when he con-
nects with the atonement for our sin by the “ second Adam”
the personal and perfected sanctification of the Redeemer
Himself’*—who thus through His absolute unity on the one
side with God, and on the other side with mankind, becomes
the sufficient principle or cause of sanctification to the sinful
world of humanity. (Thus Rothe expounds, too, our present
verse.) We must, however, protest against the strange, un-
scriptural notion which he blends with it as it regards the
connection of the Holy Ghost with the true body of Christ ;
and, further, must add that He by means of His flesh bore in
and upon Himself the power of sin which was to be overcome,
the power of sin in humanity as fallen in Adam, a member of
which humanity He must become in order to be its Head.
Not indeed as positive, actual sin, but still in a real connection
with that resisting power in it which gives occasion to the war-
fare and the suffering issuing in the victory of obedience. True,
indeed, it is that He had never prayed to the Father, and does
not now so pray—Sanctify Thou Me! but. He could, and it was
needful that He should, simply as the Holy One in the Spirit,
from the beginning sanctify Himself in the flesh? This self-
sanctification, however, reached its proper perfection first in the
sufferings of death (so that these are spoken of as His being

1 T refer particularly, in connection with the Essay in the Andeutungen
ii. §. 24, to my exposition of the Hebrews, where my first views have re-
ceived much extension and modification. Lange also, rightly understood,
will be found to be in accordance with them.

? Which Petersen (von der Kirche, i. 337) calls the discipline or as-
ceticism of Christ, perfected in solitude.

* See the extract from Athanasius in Dorner 8. 951, and Lampe also,
who says almost the same.

494 THAT THEY MAY BE SANCTIFIED.

perfected)—that passion of death in which the willing spirit
subdues the weak flesh in sharp conflict of the soul coming
between them, constraining it to the great offering and merit of
an obedience which was learned and persevered in, Heb. y. 7, 8,
x. 9, 10,14. The Pres. dyidfw speaks of this impending sacri-
fice in death as of such a sanctification, analogous with our own ;
the d7ép in addition points back manifestly to the last Supper.
(2 Cor. v. 15; Tit. ii. 14.) Thus only out of the death of
Christ comes our new life, for the oyotwpya of His’ death
becomes efficient in us as our actual “ dying to sin”— Rom. vi.
3-11;' 1 Pet. i. 24. Thus we see the great truth of the
words—T sanctify Myself in order that they may be sanctified ;
and it is only through this in order to that we reach our
sanctification. I sanctify Myself for them—is not merely more
than, I pray for them! ‘That alone is the ground and strength
of His intercession, which is here placed upon its true founda-
tion for a testimony before us and before the Father. Before
the Father—Lo J come, let My offering be well-pleasing to
Thee! ‘Thus was it prophetically and comprehensively said,
when He came into the world (Heb. x. 5)—but now, when He
is leaving the world and coming to the Father with the merit
of His obedience, the blood of His sacrifice, the purging of
our sins obtained by Himself, it becomes a full and decisive
truth.

In proportion as sin becomes to us, through the fellowship of
His holy and willing Spirit, a bitterness, we also are sanctified
in the truth, essentially in truth. This is assuredly, first, and
without the article still more evidently, a\n6as, truly’—that
is not, however, sufficient, but the word looks back to ver. 17.
The truth of God is the objective element and goal of actual,
essential sanctification. Still less does it suffice to understand
this of the sincere faith with which we on our part lay hold
of and appropriate the sacrifice of our Lord—this subjective

1 Tf the death of our sin did not lie essentially and energetically in His
death, how could it proceed therefrom as stated here, and elsewhere in the
apostolical teaching ?

* Mich. Weber: vere, 2.e., non typice, non symbolice. Bengel: In truth,
although it may not externally appear. This is opposed to ceremonial
holiness.

JOHN XVII. 19. 495

condition is only silently presupposed. Luther exhibits here
a want of doctrinal clearness, arising from his anxiety to
deduce everything connected with justification from faith
“alone;” he speaks, indeed, properly enough of the fruits and
works of faith, but he is lacking upon the scriptural teaching »
concerning sanctijication.' He tells us on this passage, that
we must preach here about nothing but Christ's sanctification
(although Christ preaches of ours /)—“ that we must simply
hang on His word, and creep into Christ’s sanctification.” He
most incorrectly imposes this meaning upon our passage, and
goes on, “ therefore it was that He so diligently repeated the
words in truth, laying that down in opposition to all the world,
and all human holiness. My sanctijication, He saith, maketh
them truly holy.’ True, but would this reckoning ourselves
(Rom. vi. 11) in apprehending faith be a truth, a true sanctifi-
cation, if believers did not furthermore make that their end
and object, which Rom. vi. 12-22 goes on in such amplitude
to set forth? In 1 Cor. i. 30 there is a distinction between
Scxaiocvvn and dyvacwos, which must be carefully noted ; but
the Lord speaks distinctively of the latter, of the great design
to be perfectly accomplished in and by the justified. Euthy-
mius is right in referring it to the idea of sacrifice—“in order
that they also may be sacrificed in a true offering ’’—but this
must be understood in the sense of Rom. xii. 1, 2; Eph. v.
1,2. Sanctijied are we first in the perfection of our obedience,
likewise, when nothing but the holy will of Divine love dwells
and lives in us, just as in Christ. Not forgiveness of sins and
justification, which is only the ground and beginning, but
sanctification unto entire unblamableness of our nature, is the
goal, the end contemplated in the redeeming death of our
Lord, Eph. 1. 4, v. 25-27; Col. i. 22. But this design may
be rendered abortive, even in the case of the justified, through,
their unfaithfulness; hence the urgent exhortations of the
Paraclete in the word and in our hearts, and the intercessions

1] may assure Miinchmeyer, who naturally enough takes offence at this,
that I also with Luther understand sanctification to be no other than the
fruit of faith; but I cannot find in Luther a sufficiently full development
of all that the Scripture says concerning our own diligence and zeal, and
their fruit and reward.

496 NOT FOR THESE ONLY.

of the Paraclete above. Lampe maintains, according to the
hard abstract logic of his theory of predestination, that “ it
follows from this connection that no sanctification is to be ex-
pected but through the merit of the sacrifice of Christ; and
Jesus would lose the fruit of His death if. any one, for whom
He died, should not actually be sanctified ; there is a necessary
bond of connection between the death of Christ and the
sanctification of the elect, which the Lord’s train of thought
takes for granted ;”—but all this shows that he did not rightly
read the iva, for the sense of which we point to Jno. i. 7, iii. 17,
and even Rom. xi. 32. As if the branches had not been
spoken of which abide not in Him, and, just before, a Judas
given to Him, watched over, and yet lost! As if the Scripture,
Rom. xiv. 15; 2 Pet. ii. 11, and elsewhere, did not testify
literally concerning the lost for whom nevertheless Christ died,
and whom He had bought!' Consequently, Christ merely
sanctifies Himself for all, to the end that all may be capable of
sanctification. It is true that He now prays only for His own,
whose faith and perseverance He contemplates in anticipation ;
but while His thought here penetrates into the depth of this
fundamental work of salvation, He is impelled to enlarge the
range of His intercession, as widely as the testimony itself in
ver. 21— That the world may believe.

Thus we have now the widest comprehension of all future
believers, brought to faith by the continued mediation of the
word, down to the end. Not only so, we have at the same
time the prosecution of the previous intercession up to its
ultimate end in glory. The glorious conclusion of the prayer,
as it stretches forward into eternity, can only in eternity be
fully understood. As, to the Lord Himself, His closely im-
pending sufferings were merged in His glorification, so now—

1 It is quite consistent with this quotation, that, defending the doctrine
of final perseverance against the Lutherans, Lampe appends to ver. 15 the
strange and melancholy restriction, that the Lord did not pray against
their foreseen, permitted, and thus appointed sin—pbut only against their
veccata graviora! Such a system is in practice altogether untenable,
misapprehends St John’s that ye sin not, and takes away all force from
the law, Sin not! Compare what Thiersch (Kathol. u. Protest. i.
Aufl. ii. 141 ff.) says upon these dangerous extravagances of Reformed
teaching.

JOHN XVII. 20. 497

after the intimations of vers. 14-19, in which their sufferings
and struggles appear as their sanctification—He says nothing
more of their afflictions in the world, of their entering through
much tribulation the kingdom of God. After ver. 17 it
only remained to pray for the glorification of His own in
Him, the consummation and manifestation of that which was
spoken of in ver. 10: but He takes as the way. to this
(what was hinted at in ver. 11) their being united in one,
from which their glorification, not properly to be first prayed
for, follows as His own and His Father’s will. Hence we
may say that He first prays for the unity of all who should
believe in Him and the Father (vers. 20, 21), and then He
immediately gives, promises, appoints the glory of these thus
united in one (that glory being in vers. 22, 23, regarded as
already internally present in them, and as beaming forth upon
the world in their unity, while in ver. 24 it is regarded as to
be revealed in the future); thus passing altogether from pray-
ing (now become a @éA@, J will) into the final promise of vers.
25, 26, which, again, connects itself with the present of these
first disciples, excluding once more the unbelieving world.

Ver. 20. All these things is obviously to be supplied after the
I pray ; so that the extension of His view to His future disciples
appropriates to them also all that He had just said, as on the
other hand the continuation of His prayer refers also to His
first disciples. Through their word ascribes to all future disciples
the same basis for our Lord’s intercession which in vers. 6-8
had. been assigned as the reason of His intercession for the
Apostles ; and in ver. 21 the first disciples themselves are again
merged in the all. Could there be a permanent and essential
distinction among those who believe in Him unto holiness and
salvation ?—It is to make this prominent,—the equal validity
of His prayer for all,—and not merely as bringing the future
into the present, that the mvctevovtwy is used ;—for the zi0-
tevoovtov of the Text. Rec. appears to be an unsupported cor-
rection.) As in Matt. xxviii. 20 and Mark xvi. 17 all that was
commanded and forbidden to the Apostles is imposed at the

- Two isolated Codd. read zexierevxérwy, which is error again—for

the disciples of that time are not referred to, as distinguished from the
Apostles. :

VOL. bi 21

498 FAITH THROUGH THE WORD.

close upon all future believers, so is it here with all things that
are prayed for. That which was intimated by their being sent
into the world, ver. 18, is now expressly stated—that many dis-
ciples would from age to age be won from the world. And
these many are presently referred to with the strongest em-
phasis as all! And who can at any time reckon up their number,
the multitudes of those who are concealed from the world and
their fellow-disciples, and all down to the last whom faith shall
save? In this intercessory prayer, the beginning and pledge
of that intercession which still prevails on high, every one who
believeth has his place. “If He thought of us when we were
among the people who were yet to be formed for Him, how can
He forget us now, when He sees us in the midst of the world,
and beholds the struggle of our faith?” (Rieger.) If the first
heirs of faith are sympathising witnesses —surely He, the Author
and Finisher of the faith, to whom we look, looks down upon
us as more than a mere witness, (Heb. xii. 1, 2.)

Faith itself is not prayed for or given; here as in ver. 8 it is
the condition of the validity and effect of the intercession. The
preachers who in their well-meaning zeal lay so much stress
upon the grace of calling, election, and perseverance, should
ponder well the language of Scripture itself, and beware of
placing too absolutely in the hand, and gift, and purpose of
God, the first decision also by which man becomes a believer !*

1 A. H. Francke, whose challenge of faith, and exhortation to it, is so
good, yet says, ‘‘ Thus did He pray to the Father for that faith which I
now have!” Again, ‘‘I have to thank that same prayer that I have re-
ceived His word, that I can now quicken and strengthen my faith through
His word!” This is wrong even as it regards believers in distinction from
the world ; for a petition concerning believing occurs only in ver. 21, with
a ive for the whole world, which might believe if they would. The Apostle
says in 2 Tim. iv. 7, not—The Lord gave me faith: comp. 1 Tim. i. 16.
colo [Lote 0D dsovis not xioris, but Cai axidvios, the cwrnpia—and that
cavtl 7 wiotevovrs. Thus my position is incontrovertible, however much
offence it may give, that faith itself, that is, our own decisive acceptance of
the Divine influence and gift, is not in its subjective principle to be prayed
for and given, but is demanded of us. Lange asks how this may be recon-
ciled with Mark ix. 24; Lu. xvii. 5; and the answer is obvious. The for-
mer passage exhibits the zioreva of the man, elsewhere found wanting by
our Lord, as a willingness on his own part: and in the other passage the
Tord answers the xpéodes of the Apostles by only si <ixeze.

JOHN XVII. 21. 499

All faith in all ages comes through the word. This, on the
one hand, maintains the doctrine of prevenient grace, the grace
of Him who calls, as universal for the world and as special for
the individual, without which faith could not be spoken of at
all: while, on the other hand, it recognises the freedom of our
own decision, for through the word “ means the free way of light
and conviction.” (As Braune well remarks, holding the right
mean.) See Jno. xx. 31; Acts i. 40, 41; Rom.x. 16, 17, and
the entire Scripture. The word of the Father and of the Son
before, is now their word :—the avtay depends immediately on
the tovrwy, and as in ver. 18 declares the Apostles to be the first
medium of the word of God for all futurity, giving at the same
time the reason why the Lord prayed specifically first for them,
and in their persons for all. No man in after times should ever
believe in Christ without the mediation of the testimony of
these first witnesses; even Paul, to whom the Lord Himself
appeared, was in secret prepared for his obedience to the heavenly
vision, and was strengthened in his faith by the apostolical church
which was in Christ before him. Nevertheless, true as this is
—and too much emphasis cannot be laid upon it, against those
who despise the apostolical doctrine under pretext of going
straight back to the Lord Himself —it is also promised to every
believer that others through his word should be brought to faith.
“ Thus the instrumental agencies, by which salvation is carried
on, are sanctified. The word tradition is a good word in itself,
when not perverted.” (Berlenb. Bibel.)

Ver. 21. In the former passage the first unity of all, the future
as well as the present disciples, was expressed as their equal
faith, the sole distinguishing condition. It is this unity which
must in its increase approve itself, and become a mighty tesé-
mony for believers who are to be won continually from the
world. The threefold iva exhibits a development in their con-
nection :—even the second brings by iz us the deeper conse-
quence and fruit from the first unity in the received word,
while the third plainly points to the end and fruit still contem-
plated. Four years before Lampe wrote, Vocula enim iva non
tam argumentum quam scopum precum indigitat, Francke had
preached in Halle, “If it indicated the further matter of His
prayer, it would have run thus: I pray—also for those—that

500 UNITY.

Thou wouldst give them, that they all may be one. But He is
expressing the final object which He had in view in thus pray-
ing for His Apostles still—that He might bring all His own
together in one.” He then supplements His words thus: “ But
this does not exclude our regarding this as also the subject of
our Lord’s prayer. We may safely put the two together—
both the scopus precum and the argumentum precum.” With
regard, however, to the third iva, Lampe’s “ not so much—as”
- is of great importance; for in regard to the whole world, it is
only the design, the aim that all who believe not might believe,
which the iva expresses.

What diversities are found among the members of the great
body the church, in external relation to the world, as well as in
vocation gifts, knowledge—and yet all are one! These two
words most significantly meet here. This casts down the wall
of partition between Israel (in this Prayer having no longer a
distinctive place) and the Gentiles (Jno. xi. 52) ; as also all such
distinctions as the ancient world recognised, according to Gal.
il. 28; Rom.i.14. Similarly, by anticipation, all the distinc-
tions which the modern world, and, alas, the Christian world
itself, has set up. Here is the inmost principle of the union
which seeks to find its external expression. The faith of the
lowest and least is an equally precious faith with that of the
Apostles, with that of Peter (2 Pet. i. 1)—there is a xowovia
THs wiotews, Phil. 6. The heartfelt faith of one who is theolo-
gically unformed and untaught, who knows nothing of dogmatic
theology, must be recognised in its validity as iootipos by the
most orthodox guides of faith. Distinctions and gradations
there are, but unity may be secured and even illustrated in
these. An enforced, external, deceptive unity is far from being
the thing spoken of here; but the one word on which faith
rests, the one end of the one way in the imitation of the one
Lord and Shepherd, the one Spirit by whom all have access to
one Father, make the essential unity of all who believe, and
according to the proportion of their faith, know and live in be-
lieving. Not only among those who live near each other, and
know themselves and their unity; but also among those who
are distant from each other and unknown to each other, in all
countries and through all times. The first fulfilment is found

JOHN XVII. 21. 501

in Acts iv. 82, as the prototype expression of the great end.
For, as this iva itself indicates, and the tereAevwpévoe in ver.
23, yet more strongly, “the unity is then first consummate
when the sanctification becomes complete.” (As Fikenscher
excellently says, in words of comfort as well as exhortation.)
First, always the one heart and one soul—then, on this founda-
tion, and flowing from this, the exhortation to speak the same
thing, in the same mind and the same judgment (1 Cor. i. 10), the
growing up in the unity of love into the unity of faith and of the
‘knowledge of the Son of God, Eph. iv. 13. Oh that our eccle-
siastical bodies would hear and understand this!

“Tn their glasses men are brethren—when those are empty
the union breaks up.” (Braune.) ‘This holds good of the in-
toxicating cup of vanity and delusion, over which men imagine.
a brotherhood of mankind independent of Christ—Pantheism,
Communism, and the like. But where those believers in Me
are, of whom Christ speaks, there is already unity, on the
ground of which a further and more perfect unity will follow.
This deepening advancement in the meaning is expressed by
the in us,' introduced through the mediating clause as Thou,
etc. Such interpretations as that of Grotius, Sicut nos con-
junctis operis evangelium promovemus, and afterwards, év 7uiv,
i.e., nobis obediendo! we will leave to the acceptance of the
friends of false light. “The being one of believers is not only
a being one after the similitude of the Father and the Son, but
it is bound up with their being one; it is at the same time a
being one with Father and Son, since God through Christ and
His Spirit essentially dwells in them.? 1 Jno.i.3.” The in us,
not merely with us, is now a deepening of the as we, ver. 11,
and is to be understood according to Col. ui. 3. But not again
‘(to quote Glassius), pro e&, quam somniant Weigeliani et
Stiefeliani, credentium dwo8céce Kai ypictovcia; or in the

1 The & once more added, though sometimes wanting in the MSS., is
essential. The xai wirof refers to the ~aéas, as Liicke remarks. But the
second fyx is not, on that account, a mere resumption of the former.

2So Meyer, Bl. fiir hah. W. vii. 161. The Restitution consequently
brings us abundantly more than man’s original prerogative at the creation;
although Mallet said well in his sermon, ‘‘ Who can hear this petition from

the heart and voice of Jesus—that they may be one, as we are—without
thinking of the word, Let us make man, an image of Ourgelves.”

502 THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE.

sense of the Pantheist all-God and humanity-Christ of our
modern dreamers. “The infinite remains infinite; and the
finite is still finite, even though it be wnzted with the infinite
nature of God”’—this position of A. H. Francke we are
taught by the word, from which the unity of faith proceeds, to
apprehend; and our adoration in the blessedness of glory will
one day seal to us its truth. But the word alone, which we
receive, does not accomplish this; that does not in itself effect
that union which here begins and there will be consummated,
but the power and the Spirit of God in the word. |
The third fa must not be immediately connected with the
épwT@;' but the world is, nevertheless, in some sense the object
of intercession—that they may believe; so that Wesley may
say concisely, “ Here Christ prays for the world!” He, how-
ever, proceeds with less exactness: “‘ Observe the sum of His
whole prayer, 1. Receive Me into Thy own and My glory; 2.
Let My Apostles share therein; 3. And all other believers; 4.
And let all the world believe!’’ For, as we have seen, we can-
not suppose our Lord to pray directly (and with such a general
“Let” as so often occurs in our prayers) for the faith of His
disciples; any such I pray that they may believe, is, strictly
speaking, quite inappropriate to our Lord’s thought and the
teaching of Scripture—if we take the wa as the matter and
argument of the prayer. Yet Wesley is perfectly right in the®
placing “the world” so strikingly after and over and above
“all believers.” But in this there seems to be a self-contradic-
tion, which has not been much noticed, but which guides us to
the solution of the mystery; for ¢f in the previous mtcrevovtes
all who were to believe are already included, there can remain
only the permanently unbelieving world, according to the
ordinary phrase. Thus it is not as Lampe says: “ First, the’
Apostles; then the first Christians, the first-fruits of their word,
the Apostolical Church; then the residue of the company to be
brought from the Jews and Gentiles into the Church, down to
the end of time.” For these saved out of the world (as Came-

‘This would mean, I pray for them, that they all may be one in faith—
yea, that this whole world may believe. But against this view, that all who
were to be one and the world believing are the same subject, Lampe justly
protests. ie

JOHN XVII. 21. 503

rarius explains the world here) were already included under the
all of the second tva, but there is still remaining, over and
above, the world, ver. 25. Still less admissible is Calvin’s view
(which even Lampe opposes): “ that the world may believe in
the third clause refers only to historical faith.’ For the Lord
could not thus reduce the meaning of this great word, so sacred
throughout the prayer; He never gives this meaning to
believing ; and certainly the miserable deception of an unsaving
‘historical faith could not stand here as the object of Christ’s
desire. And is then “that the world may know” ver. 23 to be
interpreted (@S it has been) of an enforced acknowledgment,
which is only the ground of condemnation? Oh no, the Lord
could not thus either speak or pray; and in the apparent paral-
lel, Rev. iii. 9 (according to Isa. xlv. 14, xlix. 23) they are a
remnant, saved out-of Satan’s synagogue, who are to come and
worship and see the love of the Lord to His Church. Nor is
what Rieger says enough: “The world is regarded under the
most favourable light, as the region out of which the future
believers are received and collected into one.” The petition
would then be—I pray for all who shall believe on Me, that
they may be one, in order that—those thus won from the world
might believe! The bare repetition of believing, and of world,
instead of those who should be saved out of the world, cannot
@ possibly be received. Nothing therefore remains but the com-
parison with that the worid might be saved, chap. 1. 17, and
that all might believe, chap. i. 7. The intercession reaches its
limit, where it recoils from unbelief and can find no fulfilment ;
for while we do find was believed on in the world (1 Tim. ii. 16),
we never find the world hath believed. And this, nevertheless,
is the simple meaning of the word; the Lord testifies now at
‘the end His own desire and will that all the world might believe!
Still more: He suggests this aim of universal, all-seeking
grace to His Church; and would teach His people to regard this
as the goal, however unattainable in itself, of all the efforts of
their united love—iva 6 xdopos mictevon. As St Paul, Rom.
xi. 13, 14, contemplates a certain number gained from his own
hardened Israel, as the last and most blessed fruit of his whole
mission to the Gentiles—so should the entire believing Church
never cease, when regarding the unbelieving world in its op-

504 THE GLORY GIVEN.

position, to imitate the Apostle’s spirit—Jf by any means I may
provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save
some of them. And this is perfectly appropriate éo us, since we
draw no distinction between some of them and the world: this
is what the Lord teaches us in the prayer which He permits us
to listen to, wherein He includes in His petition even that which
will not be fulfilled, just according to the will of the Divine
counsel that all men might be saved, though all men are not.
Thus “the Church should become an external Church” (as v.
Gerlach says), that is, should exhibit the unity of its faith and
of its love before the world and for. the world, as an attracting
and urgent witness; it should never cease, even in the strictest
confederation of its living unity, to send forth the light and
power of a universal mission, through that externality* of aim
which is only the revelation of its internal truth and glory.
That unity which alone gives power to its missions, and those.
missions which rest solely upon unity, are in their union the end
of the Church. And this is also an intimation from above,
that the greatest obstacle to the world’s believing is the want of
manifest unity in faith and love on the part of the imperfect
Church. What condemnation, what admonition in these words
of our Lord! Alas, alas, unbelief still hardens itself against
the clearest testimony, ridicules the wonderful unity of love,
and puts still its blasphemous construction upon the glory of
Christ, beaming forth from His disciples; we however should
not share its guilt, but always remember that our Lord Himself -
has put a strict connection between that the world may believe
- and our being one.

Vers. 22, 23. This might seem to be in part a repetition,
but it is not so: for the unity now appears as the glory already
given, and even already shining before the world; the esta-
blishment of this unity is placed forward as the end of perfec-
tion which we must reach to; and, finally, there is here a know-
ledge predicated of the world, corresponding to their believing
before. Kat éyé, standing at the beginning, depends on the
previous that thou hast sent Me :—for the Saviour living in the .
Church, was to be contemplated in it as the Saviour of all men,

' Not, indeed, externalisation—see Petersen von der Kirche i. 85.

JOHN XVII. 22, 23. 505

and especially of these only because they believed. Thus the
kal éy@ is an explanatory etenim. And even because vers. 22,
23 are parallel with ver. 21, and an immediate development of
it, those many tame interpretations of 60£a which have been
devised are proved to be wholly out of the question.‘ Chrys.
and Theophyl. took a step in advance; for they added to the
working of miracles, and the wonderful teaching, the unity of
love also, and the greater 5o£a ris owovoias, thus embracing the
whole furnishing of the Apostles. But, as the Apostles are no
longer especially spoken of here, we regard the miraculous
endowments and gifts of teaching as not taken into the account
at all;—the being one is itself and alone the glory. ‘This is
already given, that is, not merely appointed to them,” not merely
reserved and laid up (as the crown, 2 Tim. iv. 8), but as actually
in its principle one and the same with that glory which was to
be beheld in the future, and then fully enjoyed, ver. 24. That
following verse is not to be distinguished from these, as con-
taining a contrast; for throughout this prayer the Lord uses
great words and ideas, fundamentally the same in meaning
throughout; there is no more a twofold glory than a twofold
believing. But their developments and aspects are different.
Here, the glory which Thou hast given Me is that same glory of
grace and truth, of love, of unity with the Father, which, ac-
-cording to Jno. i. 14, beamed forth to faith from the humanity
of Jesus; and this He had truly given to His disciples upon
earth already, because and so far as He is in them. Just as
this 60a of our Lord, given to His humanity, was distinguished
in ver. 5, from that which He had eternally in the Godhead,
but yet this distinction appeared only when it was to be abolished,
and all is merged into one 60£a—even so must the unity and
the distinction be understood here. Even the slightest glim-
mering of heavenly light which begins to shine out of the
countenance of a justified publican, is an outbeaming of his
future glorification; and so is the still brighter angel-face of
the crowned martyr at his trial. Those who are risen again

1 Grotius (like Ammonius and Zuinglius): The power of working
miracles! For which he compares ch. ii. 11 and ch. xi. 40.

2 B.-Crusius, incorrectly : ‘‘To give is here decidedly no other than to
appoint.” Gabler makes it at once ‘‘ to promise.”

506 MADE PERFECT IN ONE.

with Christ in faith are already sitting with Him é rofs
érroupaviows. (Eph.ii.6.) Those whom God hath justified He
hath already glorified. (Rom. vil. 30.) Bengel’s well-meant
note is insufficient “already, albeit hiddenly,’ for the subject
here is the outbeaming of this inwardly commencing, and already
present glory, before the eyes of the world (however wilfully
shut). And the Preacher has here a practical exposition of our
Lord’s word, which he should use without ceasing—Regard
each other, at least, O believers, with respect! Learn, ye
children of God, to stand in awe of your own dignity, that ye
defile not yourselves with sin! Let your thanksgivings for what
hath been already given invigorate your prayer and effort after
holiness and perfection! (Col. i.12; Eph. i. 18.) |

And all this through faith! “ A drop of faith is far more
noble than a whole sea of mere science, though it be the histo-
rical science of the Divine word.” (Francke.) “ Every Chris-
tian must thus deeply sink himself into Christ by believing—
this is everything. This decides his faith, this decides his works,
his life, his graces. All this is in the words—J in them and Thou
in Me!” (Gossner.) Again, as Rieger says of this heavenly
ladder, standing upon earth but reaching to the throne of God,
“We must not begin at the top, but look well that we seize
rightly the first steps.” First in the faith of the heart to love
Jesus; in the Holy Ghost, under whose discipline we stand
obedient, to be one with the whole living church; and of the
unity of knowledge, and of its expression in symbol and dogma, it
may then be said—“ It will follow!” That is, always taking it
for granted that the first unity of faith in the word of truth is pre-
sent. For, where the foundation of Christ’s prayer, ver. 6-8,
is not laid, there can be no love, no unity, no glory resulting, but
odium hereticorum, schism between Zion here and Zion there,
the old envy between Ephraim and Judah, stumbling-blocks and
scorn. All through faith—thus, still further back, all through
the word, in which we believe! This, indeed, being the honest
acknowledgment of its authority, but nothing beside being the
visible centre of the unity of the church. )

Vers. 22, 23 contain the same threefold fva which is found in
ver. 21, in the same relation and progression; hence the and
before the third of them may well be struck out. But it is here.

JOHN XVII. 22, 23. 507

more clearly developed and prominent, that the union with the
Father and the Son, and thereby with one another, which had
been given from the early beginning of faith as a glory—is,
nevertheless, a glory which unfolds, progresses, and increases.
This is plainly contained in that they may be perfected into one,
the eis being as important as the teXevodcPar; comp. 1 Jno. iv.
18. Concerning the individual it is made perfect in love, but here
made perfect into one through love.

Our exposition of ver. 21 will have shown that these words
cannot refer to an effectual knowledge of the love of God in
Christ, to which the world is brought—even though it should be
at the end of the Gospel kingdom, when the company of believers
shall shine forth before the world holy and glorious. Otherwise
it might follow that it would be necessary only to show the New
Jerusalem at last to the damned, in order to attract them to the
then acknowledged eternal love of God. We reject at once all
those explanations of the relations of believing and knowing, which
assume the world to be those to be saved out of the world.’ It is,
assuredly, the Lord’s purpose to say, with additional emphasis,
that the world (if as world it would and subjectively could) might
not merely believe, convinced by the lustre of grace which does
now and which will at last most fully, shine forth in the Church
—but actually altogether like the believers (vers. 7, 8) intelligently
and experimentally believe.’ The revelation of love leads to know-

1 Among them is Bengel, who says with his usual penetration: ‘* With
the world the first principles of faith precede the ulterior and fuller know-
ledge: with believers themselves—a full faith follows upon a solid know-
ledge.”

2 After all, we are thus constrained to differ in our interpretation from
those who think the praying for something not granted, or the attestation
of an intention to save the whole world, inconsistent in this prayer, and
therefore lower the plain words to signify something which has taken place,
is taking place, or will take place. So Schmieder, ‘* they must in spite of
themselves at last confess”—but is that believing and knowing in the full
sense of those words? And Luthardt similarly concludes that the portion
of mankind outside the church will be at last constrained to acknowledge
the church, and be brought to obedience toward Christ and His cause. But
where is this written ? Does not all Scripture predict the contrary? Tak-
ing the world, that is, according to its meaning throughout this prayer, and
the whole Gospel. This goes beyond a final generation of .humanity into a
final victorious kingdom upon earth.

308 I WILL.

ledye, as we already observed in connection with the first that the
world may know, ch. xiv. 31, anticipating its application to the
Church. And the present word of our Lord points back directly
to ch. xiii. 35, and is to be interpreted by it. The world might
have, and should have seen and heard what the glorified Christ
poured out for the glorification of His followers. (Acts ii. 33.)
But it seeth and heareth not—it seeth not the Holy Ghost,
neither knoweth Him! (Ch. xiv. 17.) It will not learn and
understand what the love of God in believers is!

The reading #yda7naa is not suitable to the connection, which
leads everything back to the Father, from ver. 21 downward ;
and the «ai, without a new étz or éy#, shows plainly that Thou
hast loved hangs immediately on Thou hast sent. Finally, to
refer avtovs to the world, is altogether out of the question ;
for the special love of the Father to His own, in whom He seeth
Christ, is something very different from the universal love of
compassion toward the world: but here the former is evidently
spoken of. This will be manifested to the world (in vain), for
its knowledge, therein to take knowledge of the love which sent
the Son for all.

Ver. 24. Hitherto it has been the already given internal glory
of believers, beaming forth in ever fuller light and radiance—
but now the final glance forward to’ the goal demands its revela-
tion, through the perfect fellowship with Christ, in all its eternal
glorification both of body and soul. They alone shall be par-
takers of this full glory, who have been previously (this side the
grave or the other) rereXevmpévos eis Ev :—but these shall most
assuredly! The Lord, when he reaches this point, elevates
His tone, changes His petition into an authorised demand, and
sets it before the hearers of His Prayer in the form of a strong
promise. It is perfectly in vain to attempt to degrade this
solitary and sublime @é)o by all kinds of observations upon it :?

1 Where we find éréoresas, it always indicates universal grace.

? Thus Grotius compares the supplicating béaw and dérouev, Mark vi. 25,
x. 35—yea, even the commanding one, Matt. x. 38 —without observing that
in the case of Herod’s daughter and the sons of Zebedee there is involved a
certain challenge of prerogative and claim. So alas Bengel, ‘‘ I desire,”—
though the Gnomon improves upon this. So Tholuck took 6a for éxiuga.
B.-Crusius of course decrees, ‘‘ © has no special emphasis, but is simply
the expression of a wish.” Certain it is that it does so occur, and Jno. xii.

JOHN XVII. 24. 509

the immediate feeling which the Holy Ghost, the true Exposi-
tor, puts into our hearts as its best interpretation, will be always
its best defence. It is no other than a testamentary word of the
Son, who in the unity of the Father is appointing what He
wills, at that second limit of His prayer where its petitions
cease. (Comp. J appoint, Lu. xxii. 29.) At the first limit,
when confronting the unbelieving world, His petition sounds
out in a iva, the non-fulfilment of which He knows beforehand ;
but at the second limit, when His kept and perfected believers
are in view, the petition take$ the higher tone of a serene, ma-
jestic 1 will! (In the Heb. N. T. very properly 755 in contra-
distinction from Oni.)

Whom Thou hast given to Me—is not (as Bengel thinks) a
restriction to the Apostles once more, for this follows first in
ver. 25 with these; all believers are referred to, as in ver. 20,
and the dédwxas is an anticipation, equally with the éexas as
spoken of the glory. Assuredly, he who in his joyful faith
knows himself to be given of the Father to Christ, can and will
have in Christ through the Holy Spirit, or rather Christ in him
will have, such an anticipating assurance of salvation and glory.
Notwithstanding, since this springs from the will of Christ alone,
and our will needs, down to the final probation of death, to urge
its humble prayer, we would counsel no man to echo Christ’s
words—Father in Christ, J will to behold one day the glory of
Thy Son!* On the where Iam see already ch. xii. 26. Our
love teacheth us that to be with Christ would be in itself fully
sufficient for blessedness; love desires, even in heaven, nothing
beside Him for its unutterable joy :’ but faith knoweth at the
21; 1 Cor. vii. 7, are better examples ; but it is equally certain that there
is strong emphasis in the word elsewhere (in the Lord’s, Be it unto thee
even as thou wilt /—and e.g. Jno. xv. 17)—and if anywhere thus emphatic,
certainly it is here.

1 Francke carries this too far. The child-like and simple “ Father, I
will,” is something very different, but even that would be used by no ex-
perienced Christian even in his highest devotion. Even Luther’s boldness
of faith did not take the word so rigorously, ‘‘ Touching all spiritual
things we might even pray confidently, like Christ, Father, J will!” But
could he use this ‘‘ J will” in his own prayers constantly, and without re-
pugnance?

2 As the same love (in Francke’s better words) here also speaks in Christ :
—‘‘ T will and must have all My children with Me!”

510 I WILL.

same time that His crowned love will endow His own with an
equal crown, and therefore scorns not the crown, the highest
gift of the Highest Giver. ‘This is the resolution of the contest
between disinterested love and the regard to reward. With the
supremest majesty Christ here speaks of His own glory and the
beholding it, as the highest blessedness of His glorified ones;
comp. Ex. xxxiii. 18. In “ which Thou hast given” there does
not lie, as Liicke says, “ that relation of subordination, which
can never be disengaged from the Johannzan doctrine of the
Logos.”* If we embrace the Divinity and the humanity in one
Person, speaking after both relations, everything becomes con-
sistent. The humanity says édwxds ou concerning the same
glory which the Divinity at the same time calls tiv gujy; just
as in ver. 5 the glorify Me and the which I had are werk’
related.

He does not, however, say “ My glory” otherwise than as He
appoints it to be shared by us. Behold is an experiencing and
tasting (as ch. vu. 51), for according to ver. 22 the Lord had
gwen to us already His glory. When we see Him as He is (it
cannot be otherwise, hence the Apostle derives from this his
expression, 1 Jno. iil. 2) then shall we behold ourselves also as
His co-heirs, receive the manifestation of that which we are and
have become, and that without obscuration through a body of
humiliation, or the tribulation of the world. Then, not till then,
shall we perfectly understand and enter into the fruition of this
prayer. But that all who believe on Christ shall attain to this,
to be co-heirs of the glory of Christ, was fore-arranged and
fixed in the eternal counsel of love between the Father and the
Son. or Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world!
Thus does the Lord, after ver. 5, speak a second time, and takes
His own with Him into the same love, and consequently into
the same glory,—by this I will corresponding to the will of the
Father. Here we have a'‘better answer to the question, “ what
was God doing before He created the world?” than that well-
known one which Luther gave—“ Preparing rods for those who |
should ask Him such questions!” ‘The answer to the inquiry
of faith, as humble as it is bold, is here given—He loved the

1 It might have been thought that the Word was God would bie been
Eusiciont, at the very beginning of his gospel.

JOHN XVII. 25. 518

Son, and, beholding them by anticipation:in the Son, He loved
His people redeemed from among sinners, redeemed through
the glorious accomplishment of the ways of God in the creature.

Ver. 25. And now before the close—we might say, in an
accommodated sense, “ that all righteousness might be fulfilled”
—comes the other side of the question, the complementary refe-
rence to the world, and how the matter goes with 7. Not,
however, the other part of the world, that which will remain in
unbelief, after those who had come to knowledge and salvation
are gathered out; this we have amply refuted already, and once
more refute it by observing that now in ver. 25 the world
remains, as in chap. xii. 47, 48, xvi. 33, xviil. 36, comp. 1 John
v.19. But now follows an explanation of the meaning and
significance which alone such expressions as that the world may
be saved, may believe, may know, can have as used by the Lord in
solemn earnestness of truth and under the inmost pressure of
all-embracing love. He thus also distinguishes once more at the
conclusion of His prayer between the world and His own; and
it certainly refers to the final decision, penetrating into eternity
just as does the glorification of His own. He cannot close with
“and I in all,” or even “ and I in the world”—only “ in them.”

Having reached this point He appeals appropriately to the
“ righteous Father:” this being the only instance, even as the
“ holy Father” was before! ‘They are by no means identical ;
for the assertion that ayvos and dtxasos are one and the same in
St John springs only from a misunderstanding of the true
meaning of the former.’ First, it is plain that the Lord testifies,
acknowledges, addresses the rightecusness also of the Father,
because that essentially belongs—though not as a punitive
justice so much as righteousness to be acknowledged, as effec-
tually condemning and abolishing sin—to the work of redemp-
tion and atonement.@ And this expression of the Redeemer, now
going to His death, remains a firm dictum probans, pointing to
the reason why thus and thus only He must sanctify Himself
for those who are to be sanctified.” Let him who would take

1 As Neander understands and translates it.

2 Lange speaks of Christ’s presentiment that He must now experience
the full severity of the righteousness of God, even as He knew it in His
Spirit.

512 RIGHTEOUS FATHER.

away from the offering for sin all reference to the Father's
righteousness, that a vainly imagined love alone might remain,
humble his ignorance to hear this word of the Son Himself —
Righteous Father, I know Thee! And in Thy righteousness!
That righteousness which spareth not Me! But this is not
enough ; nor is it the fundamental sense of the word, as preced-
ing the subsequent words—it is rather something included and
presupposed. or the consecration of Christ to death for the
sanctification of sinners, the Sixavos was already involved and
merged in the ayvos; and ch. xvi. 10 taught that the commu-
nication of the righteousness of Christ to believers was at the
same time itself righteousness before God. Thus the further
and especial reference of the righteous Father lies in the separa-
tion between believers and the world, in the judgment which will
follow even after a universal redemption. “ He appeals, finally,
to the holy righteousness of the Father, in regard to the issue
of the great hour of conflict impending between Himself and
the world which knew not God.” So says Liicke, feeling after
but not quite finding the truth; for this concluding part of
the prayer does not merely refer to the coming hour of conflict,
nor merely to the decision between Him and the world ;—for
His disciples stand with Him in opposition to it. C. H. Rieger
writes better, though rather hinting than unfolding the truth,
concerning this “ final testimony” (as Schmieder terms it):
“These final words contain no longer any express petitions ;
they rather seal with an Amen all that precedes. The beloved
Son of God gives over all things, which He had contemplated on
His own behalf, on behalf of His disciples, and all other be-
lievers (we would add,—on behalf of the world’s believing), to
the righteousness of His heavenly Father, and thus testifies His
confidence that the Righteous Father will do all things well with
regard to all these.” It is the unfolding which is wanted here:
He will do all things justly and well—in regard to His Son’s
sufferings, the condemnation of the unbelieving world, the bless-
edness of believers—in regard to these three, for His righteous-
ness’ sake! This last testimony is a confession, an acknowledg-
ment before God, a ouodoyia and ouoroynats before the Father,
just like that preliminary and prophetic one, Matt. xi.25, Luther
makes one aspect of it prominent in words which are too rough

JOHN XVII. 25. 513

for the gentle love of Christ, but true enough in themselves:
“ Thou doest right in letting them (who know not Thee and Me)
go in their obdurate blindness to their father the devil; so that
they must not behold anything of My glory either in the word
and knowledge of faith, or in future direct contemplation.”
Christ cannot say, or ask, or will—Righteous Father, let also
the unsanctified behold My glory, let sinners in their sin come
to the bliss of heaven! Let those who have not known Thee
and Me have, notwithstanding, eternal life!! (Mark the
glance back to ver. 3 in this cé od« éyvw.) The other aspect
is thus expressed by Grotius: “inasmuch as it becomes the
Father’s equity, that those should be rewarded who have re-
nounced the world, and worshipped Him.” And it is true
that the Scripture admits from the beginning such a benign
HPI toward the just, acknowledging, saving, and blessing them,
in contradistinction to the evil; although P™¥ is never of itself
and as such benevolent, yet benevolence itself is strictly con-
nected with relative righteousness. God is not unrighteous,
that He should not respond to the faith and love of those who
apprehend His grace. (Heb. vi. 10.) For “it would be to
His holy grace an unrighteousness, if He did not respond with
all His faithfulness both as God and Creator, to every approach
of His creatures” —as we have said elsewhere upon this passage.
But it would be onesided, to regard this alone as signified here.
Olshausen combines both, holding fast the connection of this
righteous Father even with ver. 24 (out of which it immediately
arose!): “ For the Son appeals, for the granting of this prayer,
to the righteousness of the Father,’ who both excludes the God-
estranged world from beholding His glory, and brings all be-
lievers filled with God to that great consummation.” See 2
Thess. i. 4-10, according to which it is a righteous thing with
God to recompense tribulation to some, rest to others—vengeance
on those who know not God, but glory to His holy believers.
Compare, once more, the éxdixnats of Lu. xviii. 7.2 God re-
mains righteous even in the redemption which justifies sinners,
and makes them holy: partly, inasmuch as He has set forth the

1 Still better, Grounds His 6/aw upon this, that He himself knoweth and
beareth in Himself the eternal counsel of the righteous Father. |
2 And what we said upon it, Vol. iv.

VOL. VI. 2 &

514 THE WORLD HATH NOT KNOWN THEE.

ixaornpvov for faith, in the blood of Jesus (Rom. iii. 26); and
partly, because He disciplines even believers, in the fellowship
of the Din 1D%9, with the sanctifying correction of grace, cleans-
ing them from their sins that they may become worthy of His
kingdom, 2 Thess. i. 5. “ Nothing is more wholesome and re-
freshing for every one of us, nothing more effectually secures
the peace of the soul, than to say after the Saviour— Righteous
Father! that is, when he can accept all—the death of his flesh,
the life of his spirit, the destruction of his sin, the service of
the living God, the loss of his portion in this life, with the
corresponding heirship of God, and co-heirship with Christ--
as grounded in the righteousness of the Father.’ So Rieger
once more; and we would only add— When he can also, like
Christ in this last word of solace, accept it as right that its part
in the tree of life and the holy city should be taken away from
the world.

But how is the immediately following xai’ to be construed
and understood? Lampe regarded it as although, Tholuck
similarly for xaérovye (though this does not hold good of ch. ui.
13); but Winer protests, connecting it thus with what precedes :
“ Righteous Father, and (yet), although Thow hast been so com-
passionate toward men, the world knoweth Thee not!* Thus,
nevertheless, after all I must now say—!” This might be ac-
cepted, as Grotius puts it, Cohzret sententia cum precedentibus
ore HyaTnoas—itaque non est interdisstinquendum complete post
xoopov. But when we punctuate it thus (as Lachm. does) the
inappropriateness of such a connection with what precedes be-
comes manifest. Certainly, the pregnant invocation Righteous
Father cannot possibly be a mere parenthesis ; this new and most
impressive epithet indicates an altogether new topic, and the cat
must be construed with what follows. There is a contrast in the
twofold «at (the subsequent dé being put for xaz), here as often
elsewhere ; and the entire clause runs just as if the words were

1 Which, though wanting in many Codd. and in the Vulg., we regard
with Liicke as genuine, even on account of its difficulty.

2 Better, at least, than Meyer’s strange reference to the xaraGory xdapmov
previously (which is an entirely different idea) :— Even this world knoweth
thee not. In the Lord’s own language, é@peior/ (Jno. xx. 16) it is probable
the two ideas would be distinguished by two different words.

JOHN XVII. 25. 515

6 Te KOopos—éyw dé. Then comes out distinctly the distinction
and separation to which the Righteous emphatically refers.

In the form hath not known Thee instead of knoweth Thee not,
the Lord thinks of the then present world (as of the then present
disciples), of the world to which, equally with the disciples, He had
preached and borne His witness ; and to whose persistent hatred
of God He was now in act to surrender Himself a victim. The
world will, before the righteous Father, persist in its unrighteous-
ness and sin, will rush to its destruction! The not knowing is
its own proper guilt, on account of which God can manifest
Himself to it as only just; nor must we invert the sense, after
the predestinarian manner of Augustin: Propterea itaque mun-
dus te non cognovit, guia justus es et meritis ejus, ut non cog-
nosceret, tribuistt. For although this were established by Matt.
x1. 25, 26, to be a possible interpretation, yet here after that
the world may know in ver. 23, such cannot be the meaning.
The mournful fact alone is here stated, and, given up to its
righteous punishment— The world hath not known Thee, comp.
ch. xv. 21, xvi. 3. But this first fact, which the Lord must
bring with His atoning sacrifice before the righteous Father,
continues from age to age, as the farewell discourses predict.
Hence it is not— But one day this world must and will acknow-
ledge Thee ; nor—The time is coming when there will be no
“ world left,” but Jin all; or anything similar. Ah no, the
fruitless iva of compassionate love which looked for a faith and
acknowledgment on the part of the world, is followed now by
the protest— But the world will still remain the world! That
the positive, actual hath not known is not turned into an express
future, is to be explained by the sorrow of compassion which,
here as in ver. 12, is not wanting to this prayer of joy; and,
further, by the considerate love which would utter no word that
might be perverted into a fore-dooming of the world to ruin.
This High-priestly prayer reveals to us only the intercession of
Him who still beareth the sin of men, leaving them space of
repentance and opportunity of ‘being blessed ; and not yet the
first and final curse of the Kingly Judge—though the curse
which hovers over the head of the unbelieving is warningly
announced from afar.

The world, even the Christian world knoweth not the right-

516 BUT THESE HAVE KNOWN THEE.

eous Father, even to this day, knoweth not the Son who revealeth
Him—although naming and calling upon both, like the Jews
with their God and their Messiah. The Lord looks out upon
not merely the Jewish world, but also upon the darkness of the
Gentiles upon earth, when He opposes to this the sublime word
— But Iknow Thee! We have not a single word to add to its
sublimity; but would humbly observe in what sense the Lord
graciously unites with Himself His own. And these—refers
now, returning to the present, especially to the Apostles who
surround Him. The substance even of their knowledge is em-
braced inthe same That Thou hast sent Me, which in ver. 23
was spoken concerning the knowledge of the world ;—and this
is a supplementary proof that it was not an enforced acknow-
ledgment merely that was there intended, and similarly proves,
that in ver. 3 the knowledge of Him who was sent is just itself
the knowledge of God. ‘They knew Me as sent of Thee and
as Thy Son (as Christ, the Son of the living God), and thus
through Me and in Me Thyself also as My Father, holy and
righteous—and this they know with Me, in opposition to the world
from which they are saved, mundo relicto, as Grotius said. All
this lies in the simple expression, so that ver. 26, with its J have
declared to them, connects itself with this, and is its continuation.

Ver. 26. Righteous—and yet Father, in Himself eternal love
before the foundation of the world, and then in the fulness of
time revealed as redeeming love through the sending of the Son
into the world— Thus have the disciples known Him! Thus the
righteous Father is in His righteousness holy, as in His holiness
righteous; as the righteous Father He loveth through Christ all
penitent believing, and thus sanctified, sinners. Yea, as He
loveth Christ He loveth us, for He giveth Him up for us all.
Therefore now, after all that has been said, the éyv@pica To
dvopd cov, is stronger than éfavépwoa, ver. 6—compare the
yvopitey mavra, ch. xv. 15. In the name known, in the dis-
closed nature of the Father consists the truth, which had been
spoken of before ;' and because the disciples were not yet fully
sanctified in this truth, it follows now—And will declare tt

1 We may well call it the perfection of all knowledge of God, to be able
to utter, to pray, to confess before God, with full understanding, these two
words in their unity, ‘‘ Righteous—Father !”

JOHN XVII. 26. 517

yet more fully. This is the last great promise, in which at the
same time the Son attributes to Himself what He had prayed
for before as from the Father; for it is as much as if He had
said—I will sanctify them in Thy truth. That which is pro-
mised in Ps. xxii. 23 proceeds in its accomplishment, until the
brethren of the First-begotten are all made perfect. Assur-
edly, it is included here that this declaring of the name should
be vouchsafed to all who were to be called in the future ;! there-
fore there is no to them following J will declare, but rather in
the last in them the latter and the former are merged into one,
as vers. 20-24. Grotius remarks on J will declare—* still
more in colloquies after the resurrection ;’ Bengel refers to
Jno. xx. 17; but all this is far from enough. This making
known as resulting in a true, growing, and perfect knowledge,
takes place through the Holy Ghost, according to ch. xvi. 13-
15; and goes on in the Church. (Ps. xxii. 23, 99 72, in the
midst of the Church, comp. Heb. ii. 12.) And it is to be
noted that, through the Spirit, the Church of Christ is truly
led to the knowledge of the Father.

But, finally, all knowledge through the word in the Spirit is
living knowledge, the living in the love of God; this therefore
must now follow with a final a. The Accus. fy is stronger
than 7 would be, points to that love with which the Father
hath loved the Son from all eternity as being love absolutely,
without measure; nevertheless, this same love of God is pre-
sently shared with believers, as implanted in them, for the Son
loveth His own with the same love with which the Father loveth
Him, and grounds upon that His evangelical precept—Con-
tinue ye in My (and the Father’s) love, ch. xv. 9,10. As it
was there, so it is here, intended: Love is in them—as the love
of God to them, their love to God, and their mutual love among
themselves. To omit either of these three references is to
qualify the full meaning of the passage. Love (not faith, not
eternal life, not glory)—only love is the last word here: let
every one ponder this and feel it! “ With this end of creation,
redemption, and sanctification, the Redeemer closes His High-
priestly prayer. Love created the world, love took compassion

1 B.-Crusius: I have declared and will declare, thus the Present and the
Future.

518 I IN THEM.

upon the sinful world, love will unite in one the sanctified.
Love is the eternal essence of God, and the principle of all His
dealings.” (Hikenscher.) The indwelling of His love is not
simply “the practical end” of the knowledge of the name and
nature of God, as it is very generally distinguished ; but the
love being in them is itself the living, consummate knowledge,
even as it is the glorifying unity and glory. (Gal. iv. 9; 1 Cor.
vil. 8; Eph. i. 18, 19; 1 John iv. 7-16.) But the love of
the Father dwelleth in us only through the mediation of the
Son ; we know and we have the Father only as the Father of
Christ, nor shall we possess Him throughout eternity otherwise :
—thus the last word of all after the last is, 1 iv THEM! Let this
conclusion, also, be well pondered and felt! The Lord does
not conclude by saying—And Thou in them!? Let ver. 23
be carefully compared. Finally, Christ in us, the love of the
Father in us—is no other in its truth and power than the com-
munion of the Holy Ghost, who bringeth through the grace of
Christ the love of God to man :—this therefore approves itself
as the final aim and end of this petition.

Such a conclusion is a more sublime seal than any Doxology,
than any Amen of other supplication—which indeed could find
no place here. That all things which He prays for and pro-
mises may be Yea and Amen,—the Lord of glory went, after
these words, over the brook Cedron, to the woe of Gethsemane,
to the death of the Cross, and, through the death endured for
our sins, to His holy and righteous Father. This death is the
centre of all that grace and truth of which the word bears
witness to faith; out of this death cometh life, and love, and
sanctification, aut unity, and eternal glory.

1 As if that should be fulfilled even in eternity which Fichte referred to
the present time: ‘‘ When Christ hath brought men to God, He Himself,
in His person and name, as the way and the guide, will be forgotten!”
Not only His name, but His person as mediating, abideth; the mysterious
word of 1 Cor. xv. 24 is certainly not to be understood as if the power of
Christ, the Abolisher, was to be abolished.

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