that the death of Christ is but the climax of the revelation of the love of God (in the sense of § 147, c), whether one now regard it as the necessary consequence of the gift of the onlybegotten Son for the salvation of the world, as that deliverance could be achieved only in that way, or as the fulfilment of the divine loving will (x. 17, 18), which gave Him this cup (xviii. 11). Just so is it the climax of this revelation of love, in so far as it is seen in the love of the Son, which shows itself in the sacrificial death in the most striking way (xv. 13; I. iii. 16). In this sense the death of Christ is connected with His self-manifestation, which brings about the new revelation of God, as without it full salvation (eternal life) would not be objectively procured, and therefore the love of God would not be perfectly revealed; so thus without its subjective appropriation the revelation of God cannot be perfectly known, and therefore eternal life cannot in this life. be perfectly obtained. From this point of view His death is the highest glorifying of God (xii. 28; comp. xvii. 4, xiii. 31, 32), as it is the highest glorifying of Christ Himself.

which is the true life, strictly excludes sins (§ 146, c); where these nevertheless enter, life can be restored only through the victory over them. Similarly, iii. 36, to continue under the wrath of God is regarded as the contrast to eternal life, because unbelief, which excludes life, is there regarded as disobedience to the divine demand of faith (I. iii. 23). It creates no difficulty, finally, if, according to x. 9, 10, he who has been delivered by Jesus from destruction finds pastures which afford him true nourishment in the positive sense. Thus the reason of this double sense of wń lies in this, that John has taken the one from the current apostolic doctrinal of speech, but has coined the other independently (comp. § 141, a); so little reason can there be in this, accordingly, to speak of "unclear thinking" or of "uttering himself," since it is throughout clearly intelligible of what life he speaks.

8 Only one must not, with Baur, pp. 379-381, find the latter indicated in a twofold signification of yourla (iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32), or in the sense of dokáļsobas (xii. 23, xiii. 31), since the former points to His exaltation to heaven, which was brought about by His death; but the latter to His acknowledgment on the earth (comp. xi. 4, xvii. 10, and therewith § 145, a),—an acknowledgment, to be sure, which, if it is to be general, presupposes His death (comp. footnote 5), but is not occasioned by it.

CHAPTER III

THE APPROPRIATION OF SALVATION.

§ 149. Faith and Fellowship with Christ.

Faith, which forms the condition for the appropriation of salvation, because it alone perfects knowledge, is the confident conviction that Jesus is the Son of God (a). To reach faith. there is needed a testimony of the object of faith, and this testimony must be willingly accepted, and therefore assumes a longing receptiveness (b). While the believer by the knowledge of God through Christ receives a life rooted in Christ alone, he becomes conscious of being in Christ, and the important thing now is to continue in Christ (c). Then Christ abides in him, and becomes in him ever anew the spring of the blissful knowledge of God and of the new moral life (d).

(a) The subjective condition on which the obtainment of eternal life (iii. 15, vi. 47, xx. 31), as also deliverance from death depend (viii. 24), is most commonly designated as faith simply. The idea occurs much more frequently in Jesus' mouth than in the synoptical speeches; but as there, it is used almost entirely (comp. Mark xi. 31, xiii. 21) of the confidence with which the word of another is accepted as true.1 He is believed, as Moses was (v. 46; comp. vi. 30,

1 Thus God is believed (v. 24) when we accept the testimony as true which He gives (I. v. 10); the Scriptures are believed (ii. 22), or the message (xii. 38, according to Isa. liii. 1), or the spirit of a prophet (I. iv. 1). Comp. § 40, c; 139, b, footnote 2. It seldom stands for trust in God generally (xi. 40, xiv. 1), as it does so often in the earlier evangelists (§ 29, c); and even, xiv. 1, the parallel TÚT 's iuí is at once changed in what follows into trust in the infallibility of His word, inasmuch as, according to ver. 2, Jesus would not have said what He had just said had it not been true. Nor, xiv. 29, is it trustful confidence in Christ that is spoken of, as it there refers to faith in Him in the ordinary sense, in whom they might have been mistaken by His going away, had He not told them beforehand. Moreover, Tú stands, iii. 14, 15, in the sense of trust in reference to the parallel, Num. xxi. 9, since the tert. compar., as John gives it, and expressly emphasizes it by the anteposition of wo, lies simply in the salvation bringing inva (against Huther, p. 25 f.). The assertion that the moment of trust in the love of God is the ruling idea in the Johannean faith (Frommann, p. 557), wants any sort of

viii. 31), when His words are believed (v. 47, x. 25; comp. v. 44); He is believed when what He says is regarded as true (iii. 12, iv. 21, v. 38, viii. 45, 46, x. 37, 38, xiv. 11). If this faith refers to the facts which His word announces, then it is the confident persuasion of the truth of those facts (iii. 12, xi. 26; comp. ix. 18, xx. 8). Thus Jesus demands. faith in His divine mission (xi. 42, xvii. 8, 21), in His coming from the Father (xvi. 27; comp. ver. 30), in His origin from above (viii. 24; comp. ver. 23), in His oneness with the Father (xiv. 10, 11), in His Messiahship (xiii. 19; comp. vi. 69, xi. 27, xx. 31, I. v. 1, 5); and the apostles confess faith in the love of God (I. iv. 16), which is revealed in His mission (ver. 9). But as the object of faith is here more exactly defined by the contents of Jesus' self-testimony, so the speeches of Christ in our Gospel go beyond those of the Synoptists in this way, that faith is joined directly with Jesus' person. Faith, then, is the persuasion of this, that He is who He will be, and its result, the confession that He is the Christ (ix. 22, xii. 42), or the Son of God (I. iv. 15, ii. 23; comp. I. iv. 2, 3; II. 7). The reason why, with John, the element in the idea of faith, which, with Paul (§ 82, d), and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (§ 125, a), forms but one side of it, as it has come into exclusive use only in the Apocalypse (§ 135, 6) and in James (§ 52, c), evidently lies in this, that

exegetical basis. In the passage ii. 24, it is said, Tú iuró,: to trust oneself to any one.

2 Πιστεύειν εἰς ἐμέ (vi. 35) occurs nine times, and πιστεύειν εἰς αὐτόν (ii. 11) twelve times. Yet it is quite wrong when Neander, p. 893; Frommann, p. 560; Messner, p. 350, assert that in this way the element of the mystical union with Christ is introduced by the idea of faith. Faith in the Son of God (iii. 16; xviii. 36, vi. 40; comp. I. v. 10) is, according to the connection of ix. 35–38, nothing else than the confident persuasion that Jesus is the Son of God (comp. vi. 29), on which account faith, in the name of the Son of God, is interchanged with it (iii. 18; comp. i. 12, ii. 23, I. v. 13). Since this formula can but say that we firmly believe of Jesus, what the name of the Son of God expresses of Jesus, it is then clear from this, that in the union with is, c. acc., there is indicated no other fundamental meaning of the word, pointing to a personal relation to Christ. In the passage xii. 44, faith in the sender just as faith in the sent is included, as v. 24: mirtióuiv tê xiμYavrı (comp. footnote 1). Πιστεύειν τῷ Θεῷ is, according to I. v. 10, a πιστεύειν εἰς τὴν μαρτυρίαν αὐτοῦ, and πιστεύειν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα, I. iii. 23, is exchanged, as synonymous with πιστεύειν τῷ ivópar (comp. viii. 31 with ver. 30). In the formula Tsúsiv sis rò pãs (xii. 36), it is at any rate clear that it can but refer to a being persuaded of the quality of Jesus, expressed by rò qãs.

to him the life of the true knowledge of God is the highest good (§ 146). Knowledge, that is to say, is only perfect if there comes confident persuasion of the truth of what is known, so that everything which (§ 147, b) seems to be the object of knowledge must, from the above, be also the object of faith. A knowledge won by reflection or in a syllogistic way is, to be sure, ever evident of itself; it carries in itself the evidence for its truth, and therewith its confident certainty. It is not so with intuitive knowledge, of which the apostle speaks, whose object is the revelation of God seen in Christ. This knowledge is immediate, and may therefore rest on a delusion; and this possibility has to be excluded for the consciousness, while confident persuasion comes if the knowledge is to be perfect (xvii. 8; I. iv. 16). Only by faith can it be so perfectly appropriated, that it really becomes an element in our spiritual life, nay, according to § 146, c, the special fundamental power, the living principle of it.3

(b) That we may reach a persuasion of the truth of the fact of salvation, sure, excluding any thought of deception, we need a witness for it (i. 7). Only if other plainly trustworthy witnesses confirm the fact, that they have seen what each individual believes, that he has seen intuitively, can he himself be confidently sure of the truth of this knowledge. In this

3 Now knowledge is an advancing process, it penetrates step by step, deeper and ever deeper, into the secret of the revelation of God in Christ, although at each stage knowledge (§ 141, c). It can but advance, if it is to become at each stage a real knowledge, i.e. a knowledge joined to faith. In this sense each advance of knowledge is again conditioned by faith (vi. 69, x. 38). But along with knowledge, faith too must advance, inasmuch as it appropriates the deeper knowledge, and makes believers confidently certain of their possession. There are then stages in faith as in knowledge, although it is called, likewise, faith at every stage. The disciples already believed (i. 42, 46, 51), yet they reach a higher stage of faith, ii. 11. Peter confesses their faith (vi. 69), and yet Jesus seeks to lead them to faith, xi. 15, xiv. 10, 11 (comp. xiii. 19, xiv. 29). They finally protest that they have attained to faith (xvi. 30), and come only later to full faith (xx. 8; comp. ii. 22, xx. 29). The nobleman believes in one way iv. 47, in another sense iv. 50, and in yet another ver. 53; the people of Jerusalem believe (ii. 23), yet they do not believe in a higher sense (iii. 12). There are disciples who, as such, believe, but, according to Jesus' judgment, do not believe (vi. 60, 64); one is the foundation-laying faith of Christians (I. iii. 23), another is the world-conquering (I. v. 1, 4). Nevertheless, at each stage faith works directly eternal life (ὁ πιστεύων ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον), because at each stage it makes knowledge to be truly living, in which eternal life consists.

Elsewhere, too, μaprupu designates such a testimony from one's own expe

sense has the Baptist, who was sent of God (i. 6, 33, iii. 28), and is hence trustworthy, given witness to the truth (v. 33), or to Jesus (iii. 26), because, through the onμeîov given him at His baptism (i. 32-34), he was fitted for such μaptvpía (i. 7, 8, 15; comp. iii. 11). In this sense Jesus witnesses to the truth (xviii. 37), because He testifies only what He has seen with the Father (iii. 11, 32), and His testimony is true (viii. 14), as every one may know from His unselfishness and sinlessness (vii. 18, viii. 45, 46). Finally, the Father Himself witnesses for Him, partly in the Holy Scriptures (v. 37; comp. ver. 39), and partly by the works which He gives Him to do (viii. 18; comp. v. 36, x. 25, vi. 27). Such a testimony can work faith, but it works it by no means by any constraining necessity. Generally, those only who are driven by an inner necessity (vii. 37; comp. Matt. v. 6) to come to Jesus, or continuously to follow Him, first hear His word; while the unreceptive are never once in a position to hear Him (viii. 43-47); and this hearing can lead but to faith and rience (ii. 25, iii. 28, iv. 39, 44, vii. 7, xii. 17, xviii. 23, xix. 35, xxi. 24, iii. 3, 6, 12). Only, in spite of Gess' denial, p. 519, the testimony of the water and the blood, I. v. 7, 8, is spoken of figuratively, inasmuch as the former testifies by the miracle at His baptism, of which the Baptist testifies (i. 32-34), and to the latter by the correspondence between Jesus' death and the prophecies relating to it, as testified by the apostles (xix. 35-37). But fundamentally both these are testimonies by God (I. v. 9), who gave the vision to the Baptist, and by the other occurrences has shown forth Jesus as the promised Messiah. In the early apostolic preaching, too, the testimony of what they had experienced with and in Jesus was the special task of the apostles (§ 42, a; 1 Pet. v. 1; 2 Pet. i. 16). But it is only in the Apocalypse that testimony comes to be so full of significance as here, in that Christ is the witness of future things, and revelation is called His testimony (§ 135, d). Comp. Rev. ii. 13, xi. 3, xvii. 6; oi μáprupes 'Inooù (comp. i. 2, xxii. 18).

6

5 Jesus is to be believed for the sake of His own word (iv. 41), and we will believe Him, if we are not to render ourselves guilty of an unpardonable sin (xii. 48, xv. 22). But, because His testimony is essentially about His own Being, and the significance of His own person, if any one will apply to Him the maxim, which is true in human things at any rate, that one ought not to bear witness of himself (v. 31, viii. 13), then Jesus can appeal to this witness, whose testimony is unconditionally true (v. 32), and who can witness of Him because He knows Him (x. 15). Later His disciples bear witness of Him, for they have seen His revelation of Himself (xv. 27; I. i. 2, iv. 14; comp. i. 14, xix. 35 ; I. i. 1, iii. 5, v. 7, 8) and the Paraclete (xv. 26; I. v. 6), who likewise is fitted for this by direct observation (xvi. 13). Finally, every believer has God's testimony in himself, inasmuch as he has experienced that God has given to him the true life by faith in His Son (I. v. 10, 11).

In addition to the fact that those who felt in any way drawn by Jesus came