speeches of Christ in the Gospel, the church of believers is the vine-stock which God has planted (xv. 1), as the Old Testament theocracy was once the vine-stock (Ezek. xix. 10; Jer. ii. 21; Ps. lxxx. 9), and God's flock, whose shepherd is Messiah (x. 1-15; comp. § 45, a); but even here the perfecting of it lies in this, that there is one flock and one shepherd (ver. 16). In this fellowship, which is in this way the perfected theocracy, just as in Revelation (§ 130, c), believers possess the Messianic blessing of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ (I. i. 7; comp. § 148, b, footnote 4). The giving of this by means of baptism or the Lord's Supper is nowhere expressly thought of, only we are not to venture to conclude from this, with Messner, p. 357, any abolition of these two external means of participation in salvation. These retain their full significance, even if the tendency of the apostle to look at the innermost centre of the spiritual life (§ 141, d) allows him but to inquire after the process of the appropriation of salvation there being completed.

(b) In the fellowship of believers, in virtue of fellowship with God there abiding in their unity, is realized the nature he has been converted again to love to Christ after his deep fall, without any chief leadership of the Church being implied in the expression, such as was believed to be given him, § 41, d, footnote 4. It is only, in the first place, implied by the figure, as x. 9, 10 shows, that he feeds the Church with the word of life (comp. § 106, a, footnote 4). As Peter calls himself the ovμmpioßúripes of the elders (1 Pet. v. 1), so John calls himself simply the pioßúrspos (II. 1 ; III. 1), and upholds his authority against ambitious strivings (III. 9, 10). The way in which, I. ii. 27 (comp. ver. 21), every special office of teaching seems to be excluded, reminds one very much of Matt. xxiii. 8–10 (§ 31, c), and of the prophecy Jer. xxxi. 34 (comp. Heb. viii. 11, and therewith § 124, d).

The Gospel speaks of the continuation of John's baptism by Jesus, or rather by His disciples (iii. 22, iv. 2); but the expression, iii. 5, applies neither to John's nor to Christian baptism, but with an allusion to Old Testament promises (Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27) demands a complete renewal, by the purification from former sins, a purification of which water is the symbol (xiii. 10), and by the Messianic baptism of the Spirit (i. 33). The Gospel as little has any express command of Jesus to believers to perform this rite of baptism as the oldest tradition has (§ 31, b, footnote 4). It does not record even the institution of the Lord's Supper. To refer the words vi. 53-56 to the Supper is simply forbidden by the fact, that the words refer not to the wa, but to the rap of Jesus, and eating and drinking the flesh and blood is enforced as necessary for begetting the new life (ver. 53), a life which in the Gospel throughout comes immediately with faith (comp. § 146, a). In the passage I. v. 6 (comp. § 145, c, footnote 11), one must not think of the two sacraments at all.

of sonship to God, or of moral similarity of nature to God, whose nature is known in the perfect revelation of God as love (§ 147, c). But the love which Jesus demands from His disciples on the ground of this revelation, is, after His own example, self-sacrificing love towards one another (xiii. 34, 35, xv. 12, 17: άyaжâтe åλλýλovs), and the command of Christ is likewise characterized by the apostle as love to one another (I. iii. 11, 23, iv. 7, 11, 12; II. 5). Believers, that is to say, are brethren to each other (I. iii. 13; III. 3, 5, 10; comp. xx. 17, xxi. 23); and the demand of brotherly love (I. ii. 9, iii. 10, 14-17, iv. 20, 21) is expressly based on this, that their being born of God works necessarily, with love to God who begets, love also to those who are begotten (v. 1, 2). To be sure, love is also spoken of simply as the fruit of God's revelation of love (I. iv. 16, 19; comp. ver. 8); and since God has revealed His love even to the rooμos (John iii. 16), then love in its nature is not to be confined, as by Köstlin, pp. 233, 234; Reuss, ii. p. 543 [E. T. ii. 486], to brotherly love, as then, too, the hater of a brother incurs punishment not only as a killer of the brother, but even as a killer of men generally (I. iii. 15).* But the exhortation is doubtless confined to brotherly love as such, because in it the full nature of love can be unrestrainedly realized (comp. note c). If in the New Testament throughout love is the cardinal Christian virtue, yet in the apostle of love (§ 141, d) it appears in quite a special way as the especial substance of Christian morality (§ 151, a), and that as active love (I. iii. 8).

(c) The world, or humanity remaining in unbelief (§ 153, d), stands in sharpest opposition to the fellowship of the children of God, who are only so in the world (I. iv. 17), that they,

There is really no narrowing of love implied in the passage xvii. 9, referred to by both, where Jesus says that He prays not for the world in general, but only that the reason of His prayer for the disciples is this, that they do not belong to the world (vv. 14, 16), but are God's own possession given to Him, and for whom He can therefore claim God's special care (comp. also ver. 25, and therewith § 147, b, footnote 5). But that, I. iii. 15, after Jesus' example (Matt. v. 22), hatred is made equivalent to murder (comp. Jas. iv. 2), corresponds quite with the peculiarity of the apostle explained § 141, c, according to which every lack of love is identical with hatred (I. ii. 9-11, iv. 20; comp. John iii. 20, xii. 25).

like Christ Himself, no longer in truth belong to the world (xvii. 14, 16). Because believers no more belong to it, those whose very nature is self-love cannot love them (xv. 19; comp. vii. 7), and, according to the contrast in principle, in which the world, as ruled by the devil, stands to the Church of the children of God, they must hate them; for there is no third thing for John (footnote 4).5 But the world threatens believers not only with its enmity, but ever more with its temptation (I. ii. 26, iii. 7; II. 7). Believers, too, must be warned to shun the idols the world worships (I. v. 21; comp. § 131, b), and they are warned against love to the world (I. ii. 15, and therewith § 153, a, footnote 1), because love in that way very easily gets associated with the sinful lusts which are common in the world (ver. 16). But now even antichristian false prophecy also belongs to the world (comp. § 131, b), which in apostolic times threatened the Church (II. 7; I. iv. 1), and which found the world's approbation (ver. 5 : ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου εἰσίν . . . καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτῶν ἀκούει). These had no doubt gone out from the Church; but in their fall by a divine law, it had to be made manifest that its organs had never really belonged to the Church (I. ii. 19). In them it is shown that the devil, who was a murderer and a liar from the beginning, threatens the Church not only with the deadly enmity of the world, but also with its soul-destroying lies (ver. 22); yet the Church possesses in its faith the power to overcome the world (I. iv. 4, 5, v. 4, 5). But here, too, it is clear how in the nature of the world love finds its limits. We cannot show brotherly love to false teachers, without running the risk of making ourselves partakers in their sins (II. 10, 11).

As they had hated Christ (xv. 18, 25), so must they, according to the prediction of Jesus (xv. 19, 20, xvii. 14), hate and persecute His servants (xv. 20) for His name's sake (ver. 21) even to blood (xvi. 2). The apostle stands in the middle of this experience of the world's hatred of believers (I. iii. 13), the terrible outbreak of which forms the dark background of the Apocalypse (§ 113, a).

6 If, therefore, it is not permissible to the nature of love to exclude the persons of individual unbelievers from love (note b), yet love cannot unrestrainedly develop itself towards the world as the fellowship hostile to God, without being exposed to the danger, that godlike love to the world, as that which has to be delivered, may become an ungodlike love of the world, i.e. a love for the world in its position as opposing God.

(d) In spite of this sharp contrast between the world and the Church, the Spirit is ever seeking by means of believers as His organs to lead the world from its sin of unbelief, and to testify to it of Christ. Likewise by the self-sacrifice of the Church in her perfected unity is kept in view that final winning of the world (xvii. 21, 23; comp. Rev. iii. 9: iva yvŵσw ŐTι éyì nyáπŋσá σe, and especially § 132, a), which is to realize the universal saving purpose of God. But as even Christ's eyes in the world remained in whole and in part without result (iii. 19, 20), so when, in consequence of the exaltation of the Son of man, from which even Jesus looked for the principal result (viii. 28), there was won from the world for the Church all that was yet receptive in it, the apostle sees little more to hope for for the world. The selfsacrifice of the Church it does not understand, because it cannot know the children of God as such without the knowledge of God (I. iii. 1). It hears not the Spirit of Truth, because it hears the false prophecy of the false teachers, who are essentially allied to it (I. iv. 5, 6). Like the author of the Apocalypse (§ 130, c, footnote 5), the apostle seems to have no more expected any great result from missionary work. It was involved in his nature, which was not fitted for any outwardly influential work (§ 141, b), that to his view the Church was presented rather as a circle essentially complete in itself over against the world. It was implied also in his historical position, that the closer the end approached, the more was the gathering together of the children of God scattered throughout the world (xi. 52) regarded as concluded, and the world, in so far as it remained the world, appeared as a fellowship setting itself, on the whole, hostile to salvation." This of itself leads on to the eschatology of the apostle.

7 The apostle has certainly not taken any apocatastasis in view. In the passage xii. 32 it is only said that Christ extends His activity to all; but as little as the axuu of the Father (vi. 44) does His iazu attain its end in all. But the conquering of Satan in the end (§ 153, d) nowhere involves in the New Testament a conversion of all men, but only of such as will let themselves be converted, as even in Paul (§ 99, c). Moreover, even in the oldest tradition of Jesus' speeches the world as such remains unbelieving, and proportionably but a few from it will be saved (§ 33, c, footnote 5). It is also yet but a few, x. 16, whom Jesus calls even now His own in the Gentile world, if, even according to $ 153, c, footnote 6, many who are now the children of the devil may be won from it.

§ 157. The Last Day.

According to John's Gospel, Jesus has also promised His near return, and the apostle thinks of it as immediately at hand (a). He recognises the approach of the last hour by the appearance of the pseudo-prophecy of the false teachers, in whom antichrist has already appeared (b). The day of the second coming, as the last day, brings the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of the world, which finally decides the fate of men (c). Believers then enter into the heavenly life, when through the perfect vision of God they are made perfectly like God (d).

(a) If Jesus promises after He has gone to His Father's abode (ie. to heaven; comp. Ps. xxxiii. 13, 14; Isa. Ixiii. 15), in order there to prepare a place for His own, that He will come again to take them home (xiv. 2, 3), that can but be understood of His second coming promised throughout in the New Testament, and of the gathering together of the elect in Christ resulting from it, according to § 33, c.1 As in the oldest tradition (§ 33, a), Jesus speaks here, too, on the supposition that the disciples will survive to this second coming, and only the explicit addition, which He is said to have made to the beloved disciple in this connection (xxi. 22), after He had predicted a martyr's death for Peter (vv. 18, 19), is in the appendix to the Gospel, and that is established not by any change on the epxouai, but by a reference to their hypothetical conception (èàv . . . Oéλw) against a contingent coming of an apparent non-fulfilment (ver. 23). On the contrary, the apostle himself even in his old age hopes with his contemporaries to survive till the Parousia, and he exhorts them to abide in Christ, that none may recoil being ashamed at His coming (I. ii. 28), because he will not belong to those who will go home with Him. It is clear that in this way

1 The modern idea of a taking each individual soul home immediately after death (Köstlin, p. 280; Reuss, ii. p. 557 [E. T. ii. 499]), is excluded by the idea of a resurrection at an appointed day (note c), which is here held firm. The idea that in John's Gospel the visible second coming of Christ is changed into His second coming in the spirit (comp. yet Schenkel, p. 393), is supported by the current false interpretation of the promises of His second coming after death, and of His abiding gracious presence (§ 154, c).