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 anμua (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

this advancement of His work it is important not only that new believers be won (xvii. 20), but that they be kept in faith. Since fresh sins are ever occurring, even in believers, which threaten to destroy their possession of salvation, there is no higher object for prayer than the conversion and forgiveness of the sinning brother, by which life is gotten for him (I. v. 16; comp. Jas. v. 15). Thus it is important to know whether such a prayer is yet permissible, or whether the deadly sin has been committed, which leaves no more room for any hope of forgiveness (I. v. 16; comp. § 151, c). For this end has the risen Christ given (xx. 22) to the apostles His Holy Spirit (comp. § 145, d), that they may be able to distinguish between sins of weakness and deadly sins, and that they may be able to announce forgiveness, or refuse it accordingly (ver. 23).10

obedience to the commands of God (ver. 22; comp. ix. 31), then it is clear from the connection with ver. 19 that this comes into notice but as a token that they are of the truth, and therefore stand in the place of disciples (comp. Ritschl, ii. p. 373), as even in the Synoptists only the members of the kingdom (i.e. the real disciples) receive that promise. In the passage I. v. 14, 15, this confidence appears connected with this, that we ask according to the will of God, which amounts again to the prayer of the members of the kingdom, inasmuch as their whole efforts are directed to the realization of the divine will (§ 26). But neither is acceptable prayer generally, nor is prayer in the name of Jesus, regarded as conditioned by the gift of the Spirit; for even xvi. 26, 27 is not prayer in the name of Jesus as such, but its directness and confidence connected with the consciousness of the divine love, which is the result of the believing reception of Christ, and this consciousness, if we refer xvi. 25 to the gift of the Spirit, is only in so far brought about by this gift of the Spirit, as it carries forward and perfects the revelation of God given in Christ (comp. § 155).

10 If, according to the oldest tradition, Jesus gave to the community of the disciples in the wider sense the power of absolution (§ 31, c), the exercise of this is here connected with the apostles (Matt. xvi. 19, as also specially with Peter) sent out by Him (ver. 21) plainly in the sense, that their decision as to the distinction between sins of infirmity and deadly sins, may remain for that regulative.

CHAPTER V

THE CONSUMMATION OF SALVATION.

§ 155. The Paraclete.

When Christ had finished His work, the Father sends the Holy Spirit as His substitute to believers, to carry forward His work in them (a). As the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit is represented as a person in the speeches of Christ in the Gospel, without this idea being assimilated with the Johannean system of doctrine (b). This task is, to keep to believers the revelation of God given in Christ, and evermore to appropriate it (c). He can testify of the truth to the world only by the instrumentality of believers, and in that way lead it from the sin of its unbelief (d).

(a) On His going to the Father (xvi. 7), and the heavenly glorification thereby given Him (vii. 39), the apostle makes the sending of the Spirit depend, as Jesus Himself does, and this, to be sure, not because during the earthly life of Jesus the independent activity of the disciples was repressed (Neander, p. 891; Immer, p. 523), nor because the Spirit was as yet connected with His human personality (Frommann, pp. 465, 466; Baur, pp. 384, 385), but because His earthly work was completed only by His final departure to the Father (comp. § 154, c, footnote 7), and room was thereby made for the new epoch of the history of salvation, which commences with the sending of the Spirit. It is clear from this, that the promised sending of the Spirit cannot be intended by the breathing on the apostles of the Risen One, when He appeared to them (xx. 22). For as long as Jesus was seen on earth,

1 This breathing on them cannot, therefore, be strictly the gift of the Spirit (Köstlin, p. 206, and even Kübel, p. 294), or the beginning of it (Schmidt, i. p. 201), because the disciples received it, not as the representatives of believers generally, but as His messengers in particular (ver. 21), while the gift of the Spirit seems to be connected not with one particular calling, but only with faith (vii. 39) and the confirmation of discipleship (xiv. 15, 16; I. iii. 24, iv. 13), and hence it is not given simply to the apostles, as is clear from xv. 26, 27. Even the want of the article shows that it was not the Spirit in the solemn sense that was given to the apostles, but of the Holy Spirit of

He had not yet gone home to His Father (xx. 17); moreover, He nowhere promises that He will give the Spirit directly, but that He will send Him (xvi. 7) from the Father (xv. 26), which, according to xiv. 26, can only be so understood that the Father will send Him at His request (ver. 16); wherefore even in the Epistle the Holy One, from whom Christians have the anointing (I. ii. 20, 27), is God Himself (§ 147, b, footnote 5). Quite as little, to be sure, is the gift of the Spirit, as elsewhere in the apostolic preaching (§ 41, a; 84, a), expressly connected with baptism, of which iii. 5 does not speak. Regard is only had to the fact, that after Christ's departure the Father sends the Spirit in His stead (xiv. 26). The Spirit is to carry forward the work begun by Christ during His earthly life on believers, as His substitute, who needs to be replaced no more by a new one, as He abides for ever in the disciples (xiv. 16, 17; comp. I. ii. 27). The final epoch of the history of salvation begins with the sending of the Spirit.

(b) As Christ's substitute, the Spirit is throughout represented as a person in the speeches of Christ in the Gospel, as Christ Himself is. He is the other advocate and patron (πаρáкληтоs, advocatus), whom God after Christ's departure (who is Himself, I. ii. 1, called Tаpákλnтos) gives to παράκλητος) believers as their abiding help (xiv. 16), or sends (ver. 26), as He has given and sent the Son into the world (iii. 16, 17). He proceeds from the Father (xv. 26), and comes to them (xvi. 7, 13), as does the Son (xvi. 28); He is received (xiv. 17), as Christ is (xiii. 20), and is in them (xiv. 17) as Christ is in them. He proclaims (xvi. 13-15), testifies (xv. 26), and teaches (xiv. 26), like the Son, nay, His teaching depends on a hearing and receiving (xvi. 13, 14), as do the words of Christ. Jesus speaks of Him throughout, as of Him who carries forward His work in believers, and who stands in a position of complete equality with Him.2 But there is nothing therewith said of an eternal existence of Christ, and that, according to § 154, d, for a quite special object. Yet it must be admitted that this special equipment of the Spirit is as little expressly brought about by the circle of the other Johannean ideas, as is the descent of the Spirit on Christ Himself at His baptism (§ 145, d), and it therefore belongs all the more certainly to the real reminiscences of the evangelist (comp. § 140, d).

Hence, also, He stands throughout in equal dependence on the Father, as