historical probability. We must rather hold it as evident that the presence of this consciousness of Jesus is indissolubly connected with the assurance of His Messiahship, and that if, according to the indications given in themselves, we relegate, to the closing period of the earthly ministry of Jesus, the sayings derived from the Johannine sources, the repeated expression of this consciousness of His Messianic task and significance is thoroughly intelligible historically.

7. It is but the result or the reverse side of this consciousness of Jesus of His unique mediatorial significance, that He also claims for Himself several times the office of executing judgment on the earth. "The Father," He says, "judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son" (v. 22, 27); "For judgment am I come into the world, that they who see not may see, and those who see may become blind" (ix. 39). For since He knows Himself to be the sole mediator of true life for men, He can also declare that all those who will not partake through Him of this blissful life, just therein experience judgment, whereby they sink into death. As His

preaching of Divine truth is the means of bestowing salvation, so it is also the means whereby He executes judgment; for through the fact that this preaching shows men the true way to attain salvation, it also directly, without any need of a special judicial sentence, establishes the guilt of those who through unbelief will not take this path which He points out. In this sense Jesus says: "If any man hear my sayings, and keep them not, I judge him not: he that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath

one that judgeth him : the word that I spake, the same shall judge him" (xii. 47).' But inasmuch as Jesus knows that this unbelieving rejection of His word, which leads to judicial death, is not occasioned by Himself, who, on the contrary, is ready to give salvation to all, but only by the guilt of unbelievers themselves, He can also say that it is not He on His part who executes judgment, but that the unbelieving condemn themselves through unbelief. "God has not sent His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him should be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and that men have loved darkness rather than light" (iii. 17-19). "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment; but hath passed from death unto life" (v. 24). The reference, contained in this saying, of the idea of the Messianic judgment to the inward event, accomplished even during the earthly present, of exclusion from true salvation, is peculiar to the Johannine discourses, and stands in clear analogy to the similarly specific Johannine stamp of the idea of eternal life, to the blissful condition in which believers will already share even in the present life. But even

2

1 That ver. 476 (=iii. 17) and the concluding words of ver. 48 (iv tỷ toxάry μipa) appear not to belong to the original form of this part of the discourse, but are interpolations of the redacting evangelist, vid. L. J. i. p. 278 f.

2 Cf. vol. i. p. 242.

though this application of the idea of judgment does not occur in the synoptical discourses of Jesus, yet the thought is by no means foreign to them, that Jesus in His preaching brings doom to the unbelieving and further exclusion from salvation (cf. Mark iv. 11 f.; Luke x. 21); and we see still later that Jesus' idea, attested in the synoptical Gospels, of His future coming again to judgment, has its proper foundation in the assurance of Jesus, that just in accordance with men's present attitude to Him as the Messiah would their final sentence to weal or woe be pronounced.

2

8. Very significant is the fact that also in the fourth Gospel the marvellous works of Jesus are not represented as the weighty and decisive proofs of His Messianic work. In this relation the mode of view expressed in the fourth Gospel is in principle distinct from that prevailing in the passages which form the historical framework of the discourses, where the proof for the Messiahship of Jesus is primarily founded in His miracles. Whoever is able to read the great discourses of the fourth Gospel without the preconceived idea that its contents are as a matter of course to be interpreted according to the mode of view given in the historical portions of the Gospel, must perceive that these discourses are not only wholly dominated by the positive view that in the truth-manifesting preaching of Jesus consists His saving Messianic work, and in it lies the proof of His Messianic significance, but also that those discourses by no means ascribe an independent significance to 1 Cf. above, p. 79. 2 Cf. L. J. i. p. 238 ff.

the miracles alongside of that of the teaching. Jesus indeed appeals to His "works," which were given Him by the Father, and which present the testimony to His Divine mission and the justness of His Messianic claim (v. 36; x. 25, 32, 37 f.; xiv. 10 f.; xv. 24). But this general notion of the "works" is by no means synonymous with the special notion of the miraculous "signs;" it rather receives its precise definition in the Johannine discourses from the fact that the appeal to the "words" is interchanged with the appeal to the "works," and, indeed, so interchanged that Jesus sometimes represents His "words" quite alone, as well as in other places, His "works," as the evidence for His Divine mission and Messianic significance (vi. 63; cf. ver. 68; xvii. 7 f.), and sometimes brings in the one idea instead of the other which has just been used: "The words that I speak to you, I speak not of myself: but the Father, who dwelleth in me, doeth His works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake" (xiv. 10 f.; cf. viii. 28). The "works," to which Jesus appeals, are the works of His vocation quite in general; therefore, instead of the plural expression, the singular form, "the work," sometimes occurs (iv. 34; xvii. 4). This vocation-work of Jesus, however, is specially a work of preaching; therefore that interchange of the notion of the works with that of the words can take place. Certainly under the "works" can also undoubtedly be understood Jesus' loving acts of healing the sick, which have such blissful results (cf. v. 17; vii. 21). But the important thing is that significance is not

ascribed to these works of healing because they have a miraculous character, but because they resemble in kind the loving, life-giving works of God (v. 17 ff.), aim at the welfare of men (vii. 23), and as such good works from the Father" (x. 32) are subordinate to the general work of Jesus' preaching, which has reference to the revelation of God's character and will. Therefore the same significance as belonged to these works of healing, was also given to other forms of His work of preaching which bore no miraculous character. The desire of those who would make the recognition of Jesus' Divine mission and of His saving significance dependent on seeing outward "signs," was just as much rejected, according to the Johannine as according to our other sources. The sign which, after the temple-cleansing, He promised to the chief priests, viz. if they destroyed that temple, He would raise it up in three days (ii. 19), and the sign which He declared as given, after the analogy of the miracle of the manna in the desert, viz. that He Himself was come as the true life-ministering bread from heaven (vi. 30 ff.), are signs of quite a different kind from what the sign-seekers meant. Here occurs the same meaning of the notion "signs" as in the Logia-sayings, in which Jesus, to those seeking a sign, only promised the sign of the prophet Jonas (Luke xi. 29); instead of the externally-miraculous signs after which the Jews in their perverse mind aspired (cf. 1 Cor. i. 22), Jesus put such signs as were not miraculous in appearance, but were certainly true evidences and tokens of His Divine calling and authority.

9. The blissful mission of Jesus had reference,