Each of the ways of regarding the verses in question yields a view of the relationship of the believer and Christ to one another which seems to be true in fact, and to harmonize with the general Johannine conception of that relationship. To have Christ's words abiding in us is a phrase which, in view of the importance assigned in this Gospel to the word, may well represent what is meant by abiding in Christ. It is in the word that Christ reveals Himself, and that only is the true relation- ship to His Person wMiich involves trustful accept- ance of, and obedience to. His word (8^' U^*- ^'). On the other hand, just because of the import- ance thus assigned to the word as that through wliich Christ reveals Himself, tlie phrase may likewise denote tlie manner in which Christ abides in the believer. The sanctifying power of tlie word has already been referred to in the passage (v.^). The words which Christ speaks, they are spirit
and they are life (6''^), and to have them abiding in us is already to have everlasting life (S^'*). In like manner, to abide in Christ's love is a phrase which may equally well describe either our abiding in Him or His abiding in us. Our abiding in Christ may in v.* be the condition upon which the pro- mise of Christ's abiding in us is given. But in the spiritual life it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between conditions and consequences. The conditions upon which promises of blessing are fulfilled become an integral part of the blessed- ness bestowed. To abide in Christ's love is at once the condition and the constituent of spiritual blessedness. It is at once our abiding in Christ and Christ's abiding in us. These two abidings seem to be the same relation regarded from dif- ferent sides. On the one side we have the subjective aspect of the relation presented, on the other the objective (Weiss, Die johan. Grundbegriffe, p. 71) ; on the one side the attitude of faith towards the Saviour, on the other the response of the Saviour to the faith which unites the believer to Him. See also art. Abiding.
3. Can we accept the allegory as authentic in its present form ? It has been felt by some that that form is far from satisfactory. Hlustration and interpretation are mixed together throughout. No clear and connected picture, of which the details are in due course interpreted, is brought before the mind ; but the figure of the vine is used as the foundation upon which is based a series of meta- phors, loosely strung together, describing the rela- tion of Christ and the believer to one another. When we compare it with the parables and simili- tudes of the Synoptic Gospels, we realize at once what a vast difference there is between them. It has been suggested that the allegory of the vine may have been originally a parable which John has worked up into its present form. B. Weiss believes he can find the original elements in vv.^- *■ •', and thinks that it had taught that, as the husband- man does all in his power to make the vine pro- ductive, but if his efforts are in vain casts forth the worthless branches and burns them up, so God's purpose in the planting of the Kingdom of God in Israel had been to increase the fruitfulness of its members, and if that purpose is not fulfilled the only result will be the exclusion of Israel from the Kingdom. The main point in the parable could not have been that the increasing fruitfulness of the branches depended upon their abiding in the vine, but that this abiding might be forfeited by con- tinued unfruitfulness. But the Evangelist, who ever puts the personal relation to Christ in the foreground, made this abiding in Christ as the condition of fruitfulness in the religious life the central thought, though in vv.^-e the original tendency of the parable is still apparent (in Meyer's Komynentar, 1893, ad loc, and Leben Jesu ii. 334 ff".). Julicher thinks that Weiss is influ- enced by a desire to make John approach as closely as possible to the Synoptists ; and while he does not believe the allegory as preserved by John to be genuine, confesses himself unable to conjecture Avhat its original form was, supposing it to be based upon authentic reminiscences (Die Gleich- nisreden Jesu, 1888, pp. 120, 196).
i. Is the present place of the allegory in the Gospel the correct one? Sanday (Fourth Gospel, p. 231) thinks that it belongs to an earlier and more didactic period in the life of Christ, and that it is out of place in the present speech, of which the object is to comfort the disciples in view of their Lord's departure. De Wette and B. Weiss bring forward the same objection. The latter thinks that the allegory in its original parabolic form, of which the main point was a warning against un- fruitfulness, belongs to the period of crisis in the
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life of Christ, when the multitudes who had been attracted to Him fell away, and He foresaw that even one of the Twelve was to jirove unfaithful. The Evangelist has brought together in these fare- well speeches all that seemed to deal with the self- revelation of Christ to believers ; and as the inter- pretation which he put upon the allegory, by making the central point of it an exhortation to abide in Christ, led him to include it in this category, he has inserted it here (Lcben Jesu, ii. 334). Bruce meets the objection that the allegory is out of place in the farewell discourse, by showing that Christ's object in that discourse is not merely to comfort the disciples in view of His departure, but to pre- pare them for the continuance of His work. When we realize that this is the purpose of the speech in which it occurs, the aptness of the allegory cannot, he thinks, be questioned (Training of the Twelve, p. 401).