Herein also the Apocalypse well agrees with the Gospel and Epistles of John. Christ is represented as the victor of the devil. [841] He is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, but also the suffering Lamb slain for us. The figure of the lamb, whether it be referred to the paschal lamb, or to the lamb in the Messianic passage of Isaiah 53:7, expresses the idea of atoning sacrifice which is fully realized in the death of Christ. He "washed" (or, according to another reading, he "loosed") "us from our sins by his blood;" he redeemed men "of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and made them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests." The countless multitude of the redeemed "washed their robes and made them white (bright and shining) in the blood of the Lamb." This implies both purification and sanctification; white garments being the symbols of holiness. [842] Love was the motive which prompted him to give his life for his people. [843] Great stress is laid on the resurrection, as in the Gospel, where he is called the Resurrection and the Life. The exalted Logos-Messiah has the keys of death and Hades. [844] He is a sharer in the universal government of God; he is the mediatorial ruler of the world, "the Prince of the kings of the earth" "King of kings and Lord of lords." [845] The apocalyptic seer likewise brings in the idea of life in its highest sense as a reward of faith in Christ to those who overcome and are faithful unto death, Christ will give "a crown of life," and a seat on his throne. He "shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life; and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." [846]
IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology). This is most fully set forth in the farewell discourser, of our Lord, which are reported by John exclusively. The Spirit whom Christ promised to send after his return to the Father, is called the Paraclete, i.e., the Advocate or Counsellor, Helper, who pleads the cause of the believers, directs, supports, and comforts them. [847] He is "another Advocate" (allos parakletos), Christ himself being the first Advocate who intercedes for believers at the throne of the Father, as their eternal High priest. The Spirit proceeds (eternally) from the Father, and was sent by the Father and the Son on the day of Pentecost. [848] He reveals Christ to the heart and glorifies him (eme doxasei); he bears witness to him (marturesei peri emou); he calls to remembrance and explains his teaching (humas didaxei panta kai hupomnesei humas panta ha heipon humin ego); he leads the disciples into the whole truth (hodegesei humas eis ten aletheian pasan); he takes out of the fulness of Christ and shows it to them (ek tou emou lambanei kai anangelei humin). The Holy Spirit is the Mediator and Intercessor between Christ and the believer, as Christ is the Mediator between God and the world. He is the Spirit of truth and of holiness. He convicts (elenchei) the world, that is all men who come under his influnce, in respect of sin (peri hamartias), of righteousness, (dikaiosunes), and of judgment (kriseos); and this conviction will result either in the conversion, or in the impenitence of the sinner. The operation of the Spirit accompanies the preaching of the word, and always internal in the sphere of the heart and conscience. He is one of the three witnesses and gives efficacy to the other two witnesses of Christ on earth, the baptism (to hudor), and the atoning death (to haima) of Christ. [849]
V. Christian Life. It begins with a new birth from above or from the Holy Spirit. Believers are children of God who are "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." [850] It is a "new" birth compared with the old, a birth "from God," as compared with that from man, a birth from the Holy "Spirit," in distinction from carnal birth, a birth "from heaven," as opposed to earthly birth. The life of the believer does not descend through the channels of fallen nature, but requires a creative act of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. The life of the regenerate is free from the principle and power of sin. "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God." [851] Over him the devil has no power. [852]
The new life is the life of Christ in the soul. It is eternal intrinsically and as to duration. Eternal life in man consists in the knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ--a knowledge which implies full sympathy and communion of love. [853] It begins here in faith; hence the oft-repeated declaration that he who believes in Christ has (echei) eternal life. [854] But it will not appear in its full development till the time of his glorious manifestation, when we shall be like him and see him even as he is. [855] Faith is the medium of communication, the bond of union with Christ. Faith is the victory over the world, already here in principle. [856]
John's idea of life eternal takes the place of Paul's idea of righteousness, but both agree in the high conception of faith as the one indispensable condition of securing it by uniting us to Christ, who is both righteousness and life eternal. [857]
The life of the Christian, moreover, is a communion with Christ and with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Our Lord prayed before his passion that the believers of that and all future ages might be one with him, even as he is one with the Father, and that they may enjoy his glory. John writes his first Epistle for the purpose that his readers may have "fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ, and that thus their joy may be made full." [858] This fellowship is only another word for love, and love to God is inseparable from love to the brethren. "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth in him." Love to the brethren is the true test of practical Christianity. [859] This brotherly fellowship is the true essence of the Church, which is nowhere even mentioned in John's Gospel and First Epistle. [860]
Love to God and to the brethren is no mere sentiment, but an active power, and manifests itself in the keeping of God's commandments. [861]
Here again John and Paul meet in the idea of love, as the highest of the Christian graces which abides forever when faith shall have passed into sight, and hope into fruition. [862]
Notes.
The incarnation is expressed by John briefly and tersely in the phrase "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14).
I. The meaning of sarx. Apollinaris confined "flesh" to the body, including the animal soul, and taught that the Logos occupied the place of the rational soul or spirit (nous, pneuma) in Christ; that consequently he was not a full man, but a sort of middle being between God and man, half divine and haIf human, not wholly divine and wholly human. This view was condemned as heretical by the Nicene church, but renewed substantially by the Tübingen school, as being the doctrine of John. According to Baur (l.c., p. 363) sarx egenetois not equivalent to (anthropos egeneto, but means that the Logos assumed a human body and continued otherwise the same. The incarnation was only an incidental phenomenon in the unchanging personality of the Logos. Moreover the flesh of Christ was not like that of other men, but almost immaterial, so at; to be able to walk on the lake (John 6:16; Comp. 7:10, 15; 8:59 10:39). To this exegesis we object:
1. John expressly ascribes to Christ a soul, John 10:11, 15, 17; 12:27 (he psuche mou tetaraktai), and a spirit, 11:33 (enebrimesato to pneumati); 13:21 (etarachthe to pneumati); 19:30 (paredoken to pneuma). It may be said that pneu'ma is here nothing more than the animal soul, because the same affection is attributed to both, and because it was surrendered in death. But Christ calls himself in John frequently "the Son of man" 1:51, etc.), and once "a man" (anthropos,8:40), which certainly must include the more important intellectual and spiritual part as well as the body.
2. "Flesh" is often used in the Old and New Testament for the whole man, as in the phrase "all flesh" (pasa sarx, every mortal man), or mia sar'x(John 17:2; Rom. 3:20; 1 Cor. 1:29; Gal. 2:16). In this passage it suited John's idea better than anthropos,because it more strongly expresses the condescension of the Logos to the human nature in its present condition, with its weakness, trials, temptations, and sufferings. He completely identified himself with our earthly lot, and became homogeneous with us, even to the likeness, though not the essence, of sin (Rom. 8:3; comp. Heb. 2:14; 5:8, 9). "Flesh" then, when ascribed to Christ, has the same comprehensive meaning in John as it has in Paul (comp. also 1 Tim. 3:16). It is animated flesh, and the soul of that flesh contains the spiritual as well as the physical life.
II. Another difficulty is presented by the verb egeneto. The champions of the modern Kenosis theory (Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, Godet, etc.), while differing from the Apollinarian substitution of the Logos for a rational human soul in Christ, assert that the Logos himself because a human soul by voluntary transformation; and so they explain ejgevneto and the famous Pauline phrase heauton ekenosen, morphen doulou labon(Phil. 2:7). As the water was changed into wine at Cana (John 2:9: To hudor hoinon gegenemenon), so the Logos in infinite self-denial changed his divine being into a human being during the state of his humiliation, and thus led a single life, not a double life (as the Chalcedonian theory of two complete natures simultaneously coexisting in the same person from the manger to the cross seems to imply). But
1. The verb egenetomust be understood in agreement with the parallel passages:, "he came in the flesh," 1 John 4:2 (en sarki eleluthota); 2 John 7 (erchomenon en sarki), with this difference, that "became" indicates the realness of Christ's manhood, "came" the continuance of his godhood. Compare also Paul's expression, ephanerothe en sarki, 1 Tim. 3:16.
2. Whatever may be the objections to the Chalcedonian dyophysitism, they cannot be removed by running the Kenosis to the extent of a self-suspension of the Logos or an actual surrender of his essential attributes; for this is a metaphysical impossibility, and inconsistent with the unchangeableness of God and the intertrinitarian process. The Logos did not cease to be God when he entered into the human state of existence, nor did he cease to be man when he returned to the state of divine glory which he had with the Father before the foundation of the world.
III. Beyschlag (Die Christologie des N. T, p. 168) denies the identity of the Logos with Christ, and resolves the Logos into a divine principle, instead of a person. "Der Logos ist nicht die Person Christi ... sondern er ist das gottheitliche Princip dieser menschlichen Persönlichkeit." He assumes a gradual unfolding of the Logos principle in the human person of Christ. But the personality of the Logos is taught in John 1:1-3, and egenetodenotes a completed act. We must remember, however, that personality in the trinity and personality of the Logos are different from personality of man. Human speech is inadequate to express the distinction.
[815] John 1:17.
[816] Herein Baur agrees with Neander and Schmid. He says of the Johannean type (l.c., p. 351): In ihm erreicht die neuteitamentliche Theologie ihre höchste Stufe und ihre vollendetste Form." This admission makes it all the more impossible to attribute the fourth Gospel to a literary forger of the second century. See also some excellent remarks of Weiss, pp. 605 sqq., and the concluding chapter of Reuss on Paul and John.