itself ever afresh in steady personal self-surrender to Him from whom the believer has received his new life. Hence Jesus exhorts to abide in Him (xv. 4). Whoever does not abide in Him will not always afresh receive life from Him alone, he has burst the bond which bound him to Christ, the new life expires, and he falls under condemnation (ver. 6).1o The continuing in Him is not faith, but it presupposes faith, as the being in Him presupposes the having become believing. It is the personal surrender to Him in whom the new relation to Christ, which faith has brought about, is steadily afresh with conscious self-determination perfected, and it can therefore, according to § 141, d, be designated also as love to Christ (xiv. 15, 21, 23, 24; comp. xvi. 27, xxi. 15-17). Only when the believer, by such a loving self-surrender, is willing to receive from Christ, and from Him alone, can the life continue, which he receives in the knowledge mediated by Him.

(d) If the believer abides in Christ, then Christ promises to abide in him (xv. 4); Christ's being in him is the correlative idea of the believer's being in Christ (xiv. 20), as God is in Christ, because Christ is in Him (§ 143, c). Even on that account, abiding in Him is the condition of the continuance of eternal life, because only on this condition abides He in us, and gives us ever afresh the life of the true knowledge of God." We have received Himself as the perfected revelation

10 But as true discipleship, the result of which is to be in Christ, arises and is maintained only in this way, that we receive and keep the words of Christ (xii. 47), so neither can we abide in Him, if His words (xv. 7), or the gospel preaching, which imparts it yet more fully (I. ii. 24), abide not in us, since the knowledge of the revelation of God in Christ is communicated by means of them, -the knowledge which works everlasting life. In this sense Jesus declares, viii. 31, the abiding in His words, which is but the correlative idea to the abiding of His word in us, to be the sign of a real, i.e. a true, stedfast discipleship; only it is clear here yet more directly, that, with the abiding in His words, of which He is Himself the chief object, we abide in Him. And as eternal life, with which the being in Christ is given, can be thought to spring up only by believing appropriation of the life of Christ given in death (vi. 54), then this continuing in Him, according to ver. 56, depends on the ever renewed appropriation. In all this we have only the Johannean expression for true stedfastness in the bonds of discipleship, which Christ demands even in the synoptical Gospels (§ 30, b).

11 The sense of the expression, vi. 57, is, according to the connection with ver. 56, expressly explained in this way: Whoever eats me, and so abides in me, shall live, because I abide in him, and communicate constantly to him my life. If the abiding in Him was always connected with His words abiding in VOL. II.

2 A

of God in Him, and just because this highest object of intuitive knowledge is, at the same time, a living person, Christ becomes the spiritual centre of life in us, who determines all life, even the moral, by His effectual power. He only who abides in Christ can bring forth fruit by a new moral living activity (xv. 4), because He, without whom we can do nothing, then abides in us and works this fruit (ver. 5). And so he sins not (I. iii. 6) who abides in Him, the sinless One (ver. 5); and to sin is the sign that one has not seen Him, and by intuitive knowledge has received Him into his innermost life, because He must be the living power in us determining our whole life, excluding all sin (ver. 6). Thus John, while he puts Christ's being in us side by side with our being in Christ, introduces by a general Christian form of expression (§ 62, c, footnote 4) his mystical method of view (§ 141, d), according to which that surrender to the revelation of God in Christ, coming from the centre of the whole personal life, is looked on as a relation of person to person, and he gives it in that way quite a new significance.12 us (xv. 7; comp. footnote 10), then, indeed, He Himself, who reveals Himself in His words, abides in us in them. If we have by these words known Him, and therewith the revelation of God given in Him, then is the truth in us (I. ii. 4); if He has made known to believers the love of God revealed in His mission (xvii. 25, 26), then is He in them (vv. 23, 26).

12 Even in Paul, Christ's being in us appears side by side with our being in Christ (§ 84, b); but while with him the latter is brought about by the former, with John, on the other hand, abiding in Christ is the condition of His being in us. It is, however, connected with this, that there the living fellowship with Christ is thought of as brought about by the communication of His Spirit, and the mystical directness of the Johannean idea is so thoroughly awanting to it. This intervention of the Pauline idea has, without more ado, often enough been imported into the Johannean idea (comp. too, Biedermann, p. 262), but incorrectly. Not the possession of the Spirit, but instruction by the Spirit, in so far as that instruction teaches us ever better to know Christ as what He is, namely, as the complete revelation of God, brings about the abiding (not in Christ, but) in God, according to I. ii. 27. It is connected with this, that, by Paul, we are never exhorted, as here, to abide in Christ, because the being in Christ, brought about by the communication of His Spirit, must ever be realized on all sides, but, according to the nature of the case, can be only conditioned by the conduct of the believer, but not wrought by it. Only in John has it come to be a mystical union with Christ, to a oneness of person with Him. Hence it happens that the Johannean doctrine goes quite beyond the Pauline in this respect, that it advances from a being in Christ to a being in God (§ 150).

§ 150. Fellowship with God and Sons of God.

In fellowship with the Son we have, at the same time, a fellowship with the Father, according to which we are and abide in Him (a). The continuance of this fellowship is shown in this way, that God abides in us by His Spirit, and enables us really to hold fast to our confession (b). From the other side, the working of the revelation of God received in Christ, which determines the whole moral life, is represented as a birth of God, in consequence of which we are in Him (c). The result of this is sonship of God, or moral likeness to God (d).

(a) As Christ is, and will be nothing else than the revelation of God, and therefore is constantly in the Father, and the Father in Him, we may be at the same time in both (xvii. 21 : καθὼς σὺ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν σοὶ ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ èv μîv wow). What we see in coming to Christ, and the perfect appropriation of the revelation given in Him (§ 149, b), is yet, at the same time, the living God Himself, the seeing of whom is eternal life. In whomsoever the gospel proclamation, held fast by faith, abides, a proclamation which convinces us that we have the Father at the same time in the Son (I. ii. 23; comp. II. 9), he abides not only in the Son, but at the same time in the Father (ver. 24), as also, vv. 5, 6, the abiding in the Father is the interchangeable idea of the abiding effective knowledge of God (èyvókaμev: vv. 3, 4); he merges himself in Him with his whole spiritual life, as he sees Him in Christ; he wishes but to live in this seeing of God, and that already involves love to God, as the ever new personal surrender to Christ is love to Him (§ 149, c). Thus abiding in God is, to be sure, especially the simple result of this, that we abide in the Son; but as this constantly demands a free surrender afresh to Christ, so can we be exhorted to this, too, on the supposition that the Spirit constantly teaches us to know the full revelation of God in Christ (vv. 27, 28). But since this abiding in God is a continual sinking of oneself in the highest object of knowledge, it brings with it directly, continuously, the enjoyment of eternal life. It is therefore said, I. ii. 25, that to abide in the Son and in the Father is the promise which He has given us,

when He has promised us eternal life.1 But doubtless this fellowship with the Father2 is not thought of as a oneness so immediately personal as the mystical living fellowship with Christ, inasmuch as it is constantly brought about by the latter, and by the revelation of God given in it. Therefore the truth of the assertion, that we have fellowship with God can be measured only in this way, whether a man walks in the light of the full revelation of God that has appeared in Christ (I. i. 5), or yet walks in darkness (vv. 6, 7).

(6) But fellowship with God has yet another side. If the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in believers, then the consummation of their unity aimed at thereby (xvii. 23) consists in this, that with the Son the Father, too, is in them, wherefore it can be inferred from this, I. iv. 4, that He who works in them is stronger than he who rules in the world (the devil). But the abiding of God in us is throughout the result of our abiding in God (I. iii. 24, iv. 13). It is now said, to be sure, I. iv. 12, that in this abiding of God in us His love is perfected in us, because no higher evidence of it can be given, than if the living God Himself makes His abode in us. But yet, on this side, fellowship with God is not thought of as one so directly personal as that with Christ; for, according to ver. 13, we know that He abides in us by this, that He has given us His Spirit (comp. also

1 If we would not break all connection, aurn must be referred to what precedes (comp. Haupt in loc.), so that it is defined, in general, by the predicate following. But thus is explained the attraction of apposition to rayysaía, which appears in the accusative, after this idea has come to be the object in the relative sentence, while it is unbearably harsh if ÷ (wǹ ǹ alános were the predicate of the sentence, prepared for by aurn, and thereby the special main idea to which the words tend.

2 What, xvii. 21, is designated as a being in Christ and God is called, I. i. 3, fellowship (xovavía) with the Father and the Son; and as it was the object of the gospel, according to xx. 31, to bring about this eternal life by faith in Christ (as the full revelation of God), so, according to I. i. 3, is it the object of the apostolic preaching to bring about fellowship with those who already have fellowship with the Father and the Son, in order that they may be in them (xvii. 21). According to this, therefore, this fellowship, too, brings the enjoyment of eternal life with it immediately.

3 This is the case also, iv. 15, where the relation is only apparently inverted, because by keeping fast hold of the confession of Christ, which is but made possible to us by the abiding working of God in us, it is reasoned à posteriori first to the cause, and then to the presupposition of that cause, which is given by our abiding in Christ.

I. iii. 24). God abides, therefore, not immediately in us, but by His Spirit; and because this Spirit teaches us ever more to know Christ as the full revelation of God (I. ii. 27; comp. iv. 1-3, where the rule of the Spirit of God is known in the right confession of Christ), this dwelling of God in us, which is brought about by His Spirit, can keep us firm against antichristian false doctrine (I. iv. 4), and can preserve us in the right confession (ver. 15). That abiding of God in us, which corresponds to our abiding in Him, is shown even in this way, that our moral life is moulded according to His will (I. iii. 24). But for the specific form of expression for this working of the revelation of God appropriated by faith, John has coined another form of expression.

(c) That our whole moral life may be formed according to the will of God, there is required a divinely-constituted beginning of it, which gives to it its specific character as a life born of God, just as the bodily birth gives character to the bodily life (comp. John iii. 6). Only he who, with his whole spiritual life, merges Himself in God as revealed in Christ, can be ruled by God in the ultimate grounds of his life, or be of God (I. iv. 6).5 Thus to be of God (I. v. 19) means only that we are determined in the deepest principles of our life by the nature of the true God (ver. 20), a nature which has become known to us on the ground of our being in Christ, in Him that is true. As God is righteous, so every one who is born of God does righteousness; righteousness (I. ii. 29; comp. iii. 10), like love, constitutes the nature of

As the correlative idea of the continual loving sinking oneself in God (note a) designates the abiding of God in us, nay, even the living presence of the highest object of knowledge in the centre of our whole spiritual life; and as all true knowledge of God is a knowledge determinative of the entire moral life (§ 146, c), inasmuch as the being of God seen in Christ is necessarily normative for us (§ 147), so must the knowledge of the full revelation of God in Christ, opened up to us ever more richly and deeply by the existence of the Spirit in us, become a living power in us in the practical territory.

5 Wherefore the apostle, I. ii. 28, 29, from a man's abiding in God, directly draws the conclusion that he has been born of God, as the latter is the necessary conclusion from the former; and, I. iv. 7, from the fact that a man has been born of God, he concludes à posteriori that he knows God; and that knowledge is steady, lasting, only to him who abides in God. The seeing of God, III. 11, also, which has continued since its first beginning in the past (notice the perf. paxs), and the being in God which is the result of this new birth, are interchangeable ideas.