love (v. 24); but it by no means leads to this necessarily. To many, even among His pa@nraí, His word is too hard, too offensive (vi. 60); they cannot receive His word, or they will not keep it as their possession (xii. 47). Only where there is the capacity and the willingness to hear Him or His word (ảкovel Tηs pwvîs avтoû: v. 25, x. 3, 16, 27, xviii. 37; Rev. iii. 20; comp. vi. 60, x. 20; I. iv. 6) is His word or His testimony received (iii. 32; comp. Mark iv. 20), and now come faith and knowledge (xvii. 8, iii. 11, 12). But as the rejection of His word, which essentially testifies of Himself, is a rejection of His person (xii. 48), so the acceptance of the same is an acceptance of His person (v. 43, xiii. 20; comp. § 29, b), and that, according to xvi. 27, directly involves love to Him, and this acceptance is the presupposition of faith (i. 12), without which there is no knowledge (vv. 10, 11). The confident persuasion of the truth of intuitive knowledge can be forced on no one, it comes to pass only on the ground of the longing receptivity, by the free act of personal appropriation of what is heard and seen.7

(c) Because the contents of that knowledge that blesses is the revelation of God in the person of Christ, there arises, by the personal appropriation of it by faith, a relation of person to person; and here begins the peculiar mysticism of the Johannean view of doctrine. As Jesus is conscious within to Him (i. 48, iii. 2, 26, iv. 30, 40, vi. 5, x. 41), that coming to Him is the expression for that longing susceptibility which is the first predisposition for faith, lying (iii. 20, 21, v. 40) in the free self-determination (vi. 35, 37, 44, 45, 65). When their longing is satisfied, then that coming is perpetuated; it leads to a following of Him (vi. 2, viii. 12, x. 27), the token of abiding discipleship (μanraí: vi. 66, vii. 3; comp. § 29, a).

" And therefore this is figuratively set forth as a drinking of the living water (iv. 10, 14, vii. 37), i.e. as a reception of the word of Jesus (comp. § 146, d), or as an eating of the bread of life (vi. 50, 51, 57, 58), i.e. as a reception of His person as the organ of the revelation of God (comp. § 146, c), or as an eating of His flesh and a drinking of His blood (vi. 53-56), i.e. as an appropriation of His life given up in the sacrificial death as the means of our salvation (comp. § 148, d). Just because believing knowledge comes to pass only by such an act of living, personal laying hold of the salvation given in Christ, can it be a living power even for the whole personal life, nay, eternal life itself. It is clear from this that faith, at any rate in the Johannean sense, cannot be without a "turning of the heart" to Christ and to God (the revelation of whom He brings); but in the first place this turning is not trust, and in the second place it is not involved even in the idea of faith, but is the preliminary condition of it (against Huther, p. 28 f.).

Himself that He is in the Father, because His life is rooted in Him (§ 143, c), so the believer in Christ, because he is conscious that he has received his true life from Him in the believing susceptibility to receive His testimony of Himself. In contrast to the world, believers are in the Son of God, who, because He is Himself true, has given them the power to know Him that is true, and thus He has become the author of eternal life to us (I. v. 20).8 With the springing up of this knowledge in believers is this new relation to Christ given them of itself; the believer is in Christ, as the branch is rooted in the vine-stock (xv. 1, 5). But as faith comes into existence only by a free personal act of acceptance (note b), being in Christ can abide only in so far as, like Christ's being in God, a conscious and willing act, it realizes

Not merely does the linguistic harshness (§ 145, b, footnote 5) of the current interpretation force us to take ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ as in apposition to ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, but also the course of thought. Then, indeed, the being in God is really the result of the true knowledge of God (I. ii. 3–5), but it was not formerly said that we know God, but only that the Son of God has come and given us the power to do this. But the reason of our opposition to the world lies not in that (v. 19), since Jesus has come to the whole xóopos, but in this, that we have received Him in faith, and now are in Him, while the world is and continues to be iv T xovnpy. The point of the passage lies even in this, that Christ has communicated to us that capacity of knowledge (diάvasav), not by any one doctrine, but by His person, which as to its nature is identical with the λnéivós, as the concluding sentence expressly explains. And even on that account is He the author of life for us, because only by His person does He communicate to us the blessed knowledge of God (comp. § 146, c, footnote 5). Comp. xiv. 20, according to which the disciples, when they have come to the full knowledge of the relation of Christ to the Father, know that they are in Him, inasmuch as they have the life given in that knowledge from Him alone (ver. 19).

9 The truth results from this, as does the mistake from the current idea, according to which faith in the Johannean sense involves mystical living fellowship with Christ (comp. footnote 2). Every believer is in Christ; but faith in Christ and being in Christ are as different as belief in the light (xii. 36) and being in the light (I. ii. 9). With as good right might we assert that the idea of knowledge involves that living fellowship, since, according to xiv. 20, I. v. 20, the latter is given directly with the knowledge which brings life with it. Faith is the subjective condition of being in Christ, but that comes only when the blessed results of faith come, even the eternal life which Christ communicates to the believer. The analogous expression, which expresses the oneness of the Son with the Father, designates also what is involved in the relation of the Son to the Father, only that there that relation is at the same time thought of as something known and desired by Him, because the Son always willingly and joyfully acknowledges and holds it fast; with Him, therefore, there can be no distinction between being and abiding in Him (comp. § 143, c).

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).10 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."1 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 (1. 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 ňμîv 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 (ẻyvókaμev : 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,