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whom He had chosen, and appointed to be His messengers, that they may carry forward the work begun by Him to wider issues (b). He promises to see them again after His resurrection, to make them sure of their indissoluble union with Him, the Living One, and of His abiding gracious presence (c). But that they may be able to perform their work, they receive the promise that their prayers will be heard for everything they ask in His name, and they get also the power to forgive sins (d).

(a) Those in whom the preparatory revelation of God has achieved its object, and who on that account really belong to God (§ 152, d), God gives to Christ (xvii. 6, 9), that He may give them eternal life, and keep them from destruction (xvii. 2, x. 28, 29; comp. vi. 39). The evangelist describes in the apparently accidental finding of the first disciples, how God leads receptive souls to Christ (i. 42, 44, 46); for what God gives Him, comes to Him (vi. 37), sees the Son and believes on Him (ver. 40; comp. with ver. 39). But this is not so to be regarded as though God begot faith in them by an irresistible inner impulse, since, ver. 40, their faith is regarded as expressly brought about psychologically by their seeing. No one, it is true, can come to Him, if the Father does not draw him (ver. 44); but this drawing, according to § 149, b, takes place by the effectual testimony necessary for the production of faith, which the Father gives to the Son in the Scriptures and in the works, and by the fact that He teaches men to know Christ as what He is.1 In this divine giving there is therefore no divine predestination meant, in virtue of which God leads individuals irresistibly and irrevocably to salvation,

1 Such a teaching is expressively characterized as the drawing of the Father (vi. 45). But whether in conformity with the prophecy (Isa. liv. 13) He equally teaches all, and so those only who on the ground of the receptivity (xvii. 6, 9, x. 27) wrought in them, according to § 152, c, hear such teaching and learn, are really drawn to Christ and come to Him (vi. 45). But as God leads souls to Christ, so He unloosens the bonds of their outward fellowship with Him, when the evident want of an effective result from the revelation of God given in Him shows that they inwardly do not really belong to Him, or that they do not abide in Him (xv. 2; comp. vv. 5, 6). There comes a time when those even outwardly depart from Him (vi. 66), of whom Jesus had from the beginning known that they did not belong to Him in truth, although they seemed alike to believe on Him (vi. 64), and even this separation is traced back to a divine destination (I. ii. 19: "va pavipwtwosv).

when He works in them receptivity to believe (comp. Köstlin, p. 156), for the whole world is indeed appointed to salvation. It refers only to this, that every result is given to Jesus by God (iii. 27; comp. xix. 11), because He depends on the working of God, a working, however, which does not exclude human receptivity, but presupposes it (comp. § 29, d).2 Jesus therefore comforts Himself in the absence of any result by this, that it is not given to every one to come to Him (vi. 65); but not with a view to deliver from guilt those that fall away, but, according to the context, to establish the fact, that it does not depend on Him and His words, if they believe that they are made to stumble by that word (ver. 60).

(b) Those whom the Father has given to the Son are His own true possession (xiii. 1: oi idiot), as Israel was originally the peculiar people of the Logos (i. 11). As was the latter, so are they chosen (vi. 70, xiii. 18, xv. 16), and thereby taken out of the whole world of men, to which they too had once belonged (xvii. 6), so that they no longer now belong to it (xv. 19; comp. xvii. 14, 16). No doubt all believers are given by God to Christ, and that also is true specially of all μalŋτaí in the wider sense (§ 149, b, footnote 6). But in our Gospel the Twelve are at the same time the representatives of believers generally (comp. vi. 67); what is special to them consists only in this, that they are the first circle of the disciples; that by them the salvation brought by Christ is to be historically realized more widely in the world. They are to carry forward His work on the earth; Jesus therefore

To be sure, we are not to say, with Frommann, p. 242, that John has satisfactorily solved the problem of the apparent contradiction between man's freedom and his dependence on God. It is rather that, as Reuss, ii. p. 507 [E. T. ii. 453], has properly remarked, that question has not in any way been presented to his consciousness. His conception of salvation as the perfect revelation of God involves even in all its stages of development an act of God, as it likewise demands a reception on the side of the individual.

3 That this choosing, too, like that divine giving (note a), is not irrevocable, vi. 70, xiii. 18 show, according to which even Judas was a chosen one, one given to Jesus by God (xvii. 12; comp. § 135, c), which Schenkel, p. 390, denies without reason. This giving by God seems in itself to exclude any free selection on the part of Jesus. But, by the unity of the Son with the Father in the sense of § 143, c, the former will choose none other than him, whom the Father brings to Him, as He casts none away whom the Father brings to Him (vi. 37).

Jesus has therefore led them on by degrees from servants with no will of their own, who have to follow their Lord without knowing why He commands

sends them out into the world as the Father has sent Him (xvii. 18, xx. 21). By their word the world is to be brought to believe (xvii. 20), while their testimony comes in the place of His testimony, since they have been with Him from the beginning (xv. 27; comp. § 149, b, footnote 5).5 But their activity will be much more comprehensive than was His own during His earthly life. They will reap what He has sown (iv. 37, 38), they will do greater works than He has done (xiv. 12). His earthly activity was confined to Israel. Only when death had loosed these restraints, will He, like the seedcorn which perishes, bear much fruit (xii. 24), and extend His activity to all (ver. 32); only after His death can the gathering together of the scattered children of God begin (xi. 52). Both can naturally after His death take place only by His disciples, but the speeches of Christ in our Gospel as little contain a direct commission for missionary work among the heathen as does the oldest tradition (§ 31, a, footnote 2).

(c) To enable the disciples to fulfil the task appointed for them, Jesus promises them that, after the short painful separation by death, they would see Him alive again, and He them (xvi. 16, xxii. 14, xviii. 19). This second appearance

them, to be His friends, to whom He has entrusted the whole purpose of the Father, that had been made known to Him (xv. 15), that they may not cease to be doua, but that they may begin to be His árórroλa (xiii. 16). For this end Jesus, by the word of God, which He has declared to them, has made known to them God's name, i.e. His whole nature (xvii. 6, 14); and as He has kept them during His earthly life in this name, i.e. in the full knowledge of His nature (ver. 12), so will God do Himself henceforth (ver. 11). He will thereby keep them not only from the devil (xvii. 15), but will also consecrate them to their calling, as He has consecrated the Son (x. 36), in the power of His word, the contents of which is indeed the full revelation of God, ¿λńé...æ (xvii. 17), since Jesus by His sacrifice has taken care that they, because cleansed from sin, may be put into the position of real consecration to God (ver. 19, and therewith § 148, b).

5 That they may be able to certify this testimony of theirs (comp. § 40, a), Jesus has given (xvii. 22) them the glory of miracle-working, which was given to Him, in order to make Him known to the world (§ 145, a); and as He has glorified the Father by His work on earth, which was nothing else than giving the perfect knowledge of God (xii. 28, xiii. 31, xvii. 4), so will He do the same also by the advancement of His work by means of the disciples (xv. 8; comp. xiv. 13, xvii. 1).

6 The current perversion of these passages to a coming of Christ in the Spirit has as a consequence Baur's idea, according to which the Gospel of John generally knows of no appearances of the Risen One, but only of a return of Christ in the VOL. II. 2 c

of His, which will be given only to the believing disciples, but not to the world (xiv. 19; comp. Acts x. 41), and will certify to them that His life has come back from death, will also quicken in them a new life (comp. 1 Pet. i. 3), in that they only now quite know that He is in the Father and the Father in Him, because their new life is rooted in Him (xiv. 19, 20; comp. § 143, c, footnote 8; 149, c, footnote 8). This promise was fulfilled after His resurrection, when Jesus, in virtue of the authority resting on the divine command, had taken again His bodily life (x. 17, 18), that had been given up in death (§ 148, c), and now appeared bodily to the disciples, in order to assure them of this corporeity of His. The joy on this account, once kindled (xx. 20), could no more be taken from them (xvi. 22). They could now no more feel orphaned (xiv. 18), because the union with Him who, as the Risen One, was exalted above the limits of finiteness, was subject to no change nor to any more separation. Now would the hour come when He ascended again and returned to the Father (vi. 62). Then was He taken away from remaining on the earth; but when they now kept fast hold of the newly established fellowship with Him in love to Him (§ 149, c), then must He ever again make Himself known to them, though in another way than heretofore (xiv. 21). The promise

Spirit (pp. 382-384); or the idea of Schenkel's, by which the Spirit is nothing else than the continued activity of the glorified Christ (p. 395). Comp. on the other hand my joh. Lehrb. pp. 273, 279.

The passage x. 17 f. does not exclude an actual resurrection, since Jesus on the divine command resumes His body, as even ii. 22, xxi. 14 show, passages which on that account Scholten, p. 170, declares to be not genuine. To be sure, He had not any more a concrete body, since the body of those raised, according to New Testament teaching generally, and His own too, was no longer bound by the conditions of earthly matter (xx. 19, 26; comp. ver. 17). But these concrete manifestations were onμsia (ver. 30), which was to make them sure of this, that He had risen to a real life (to which, according to the New Testament idea, even a body belonged), as it must have been, according to the Scriptures, if He was really the Son sent by God, i.e. the Messiah (ver. 9). The passage ver. 17 does not affirm that He ascended on the day of the resurrection (Köstlin, p. 190; Baur, p. 381), as even Scholten, p. 174, acknowledges; but that He, so long as He yet appeared bodily on the earth, was yet ready to ascend. His appearances are here therefore not appearances of the exalted Christ (as § 138, b), but of the Risen One (ver. 14), who is ready to ascend, but yet lingers on the earth, in order by these appearances to complete His work in the disciples. Only when He no longer appears in this sense, is He taken away, and His earthly activity quite concluded.

must be fulfilled which Jesus, even according to the oldest tradition, had left to His Church (Matt. xviii. 20; comp. § 31, d; xxviii. 20), that He, and in Him God Himself, would make abode with them (xiv. 23; comp. Rev. iii. 20).8

(d) The appearance of the Risen One was not to restore any more their earlier intercourse with Jesus, in which the disciples with all their cares came pleading to Him, and He gave to them, or by intercession with the Father got for them, what they required. On that day they will no more ask anything of Him, but they will turn directly to the Father, who will give to them in His stead (xvi. 23). But what they will have to ask after His departure, that is the result of the work entrusted to them, a work which, as with Jesus Himself (note a), is a gift of God, and hence must be got by prayer (xv. 7, 8). But in order that they may obtain only what Jesus, so long as He was upon the earth, obtained for Himself (§ 143, c, footnote 7), and what He, in that He commissioned them with the carrying forward of His work, will for the future have obtained, they will ask henceforth in His name, ie. in His mission, in His stead (xv. 16, xiv. 13, 14). But this asking in His name can naturally only begin when His earthly work is ended (xvi. 24). If Jesus now promises always a complete hearing to this praying, whether it be that God hears them directly (xv. 16), or whether it be that He mediates it for them (xiv. 13, 14), it is naturally thereby declared that they ask only in the mission and in the stead of Him, who was always sure that His prayers were directly heard (xi. 42). It is this prayer which is the specific prayer of the disciples, with which fruit-bearing has to do in the advancement of the work of Christ." For

8 By this perfect inward fellowship of believers with Christ, there appears to be no need of this promise of His gracious presence and help. We have even here a true reminiscence of Jesus' words, which are somewhat strange in the specifically Johannean circle of thought (§ 140, d), if it is not even irreconcilable with it. Jesus also, in spite of His complete oneness of being with the Father, so long as He as the Son of man is in the world, needed the divine help (§ 144, c).

9 In this sense this promise reminds one of the promise in the oldest tradition, of the hearing of the Church's prayer when assembled for the confession of His name (§ 31, d). If, then, a hearing in general is promised to the prayer of faith (§ 20, b), i.e. to the confident trust in God, then the Church has even with John this confidence towards God (I. iii. 21). If it here seems to be connected with

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