just judgment of God with reference to participation in the perfect heavenly welfare of the kingdom of God. Therefore He did not view this thought of His return to judgment as standing at all in contradiction to the thought of which He gave the freest expression in other places, namely, that God already in the present time decides in regard to men's future attainment of bliss, in accordance with the state of their hearts as He perceives it. He declared that the names of His disciples are already inscribed in heaven, that is, their future participation in the heavenly life is already certainly determined (Luke x. 20), that they already possess a reward, laid up for them in heaven with the Father, for their individual acts done in true righteousness (Matt. vi. 1-6, 16-18, 19 f.), and that to grant seats on the right hand and the left in His glory lay not with Him, the Messiah, but that the highest rank alongside of the Messiah in the kingdom of glory would be shared in by those for whom it is prepared, that is, for whom it is decreed by God (of course not in an arbitrary way, but in accordance with His Divine knowledge of their worthiness) (Mark x. 37-40). But also, on the other hand, when, on saying farewell to the twelve, He transferred to them His Messianic authority (Luke xxii. 29), that is, His call to preach and establish the kingdom of God, He did not hesitate to promise that they should in future sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (ver. 30). For inasmuch as He regarded them as the continuers of His Messianic work, He required also to recognise in their case, also as in His own, a similarly decisive significance

for the final salvation of those to whom they preached the gospel.

4. In the discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel, we meet, in the first place, clear parallels to those synoptical utterances, in which Jesus expresses the certainty of His awakening from death to the heavenly life with God. He knows that He is giving up His life that He may receive it again (x. 17 f.; xii. 25), and that this life which He receives is better than the

one which He gives up. Therefore He says, before His departure from His disciples, that if they loved Him they would rejoice that He was going to the Father, because the Father was greater than He, and could give Him unapproachable power and glory (xiv. 28). Therefore He also speaks of His death not directly employing this idea of death itself, but with such equivalent expressions as to bring plainly out the significance which earthly death would have for Him in bringing Him to the heavenly life with God He refers to His death as His departure to the Father who had sent Him (vii. 33; xiv. 12, 28; xvi. 5, 10, 28; xvii. 11, 13), as the hour of His being glorified (xii. 23), as His being lifted up from the earth (xii. 32).1 On the one hand, He regards His death, inasmuch as it was the highest act of His ministry as a whole, whereby He glorified God on the earth (xvii. 4), as also a specific glorifying of the

1 This idea of being lifted up should not here be interpreted according to the gloss of the redacting evangelist, ver. 33, of the lifting up in crucifixion, but according to the wording and connection only of the heavenly glorifying indicated in ver. 23 (cf. Isa. lii. 13). Cf. L. J. i. p. 254.

2

name of God (xii. 28a),' and as a being glorified in Himself, the Son of man, through this glorifying of God in Him (xiii. 31 f.); on the other hand, He expected that this glorifying of God accomplished in His word and definitively in His death would now be followed by a heavenly glorifying of Himself, which would be received from the Father as the reward decreed and kept for Him from eternity (xiii. 32; xvii. 5, 24).3

A real difference between these Johannine references of Jesus to His approaching transition from the earthly to the heavenly life, and the synoptical utterances of Jesus regarding His resurrection after three days, could only be found in the point that these Johannine utterances lack such an intimation of the descent into Sheol after death, as is indirectly given in that designation of the interval "after three days." But yet this thought of the descent of Jesus into the realm of death before His awakening to the heavenly life, does not at all form a point of independent significance in the synoptical sayings of Jesus. It was no concern of Jesus to lay stress upon the point that He would certainly arrive in Sheol, but only on the point that He would certainly be delivered out of it, and that at the shortest delay. Just on that

1 Cf. above, p. 259.

2 On the meaning of the aorist form doon at this place, cf. L. J. i. p. 302.

3 On xvii. 5 and 24 cf. above, p. 168 ff.

That the saying of Jesus in regard to His building again of the temple in three days, ii. 19, cannot have been according to its original sense a reference of Jesus to His resurrection on the third day, as the redacting evangelist says in ver. 21 f., cf. L. J. i. p. 251, and vol. i. p. 323.

account, however, when He sought impressively to indicate the certainty of reaching the heavenly life through earthly death, He could leave quite unregarded the idea of the previous sojourn in Sheol after death. He could only bring into prominence the essential point for His view and instruction, without, however, thereby excluding the idea of the descent into Sheol which, in accordance with the Jewish mode of view, He and His disciples regarded as belonging to the idea of earthly death.

5. The thought of Jesus, however, that in spite of His death He would remain in relation and fellowship with His disciples, finds significant and manifold expression in the discourses of the fourth Gospel. Whilst seeking in the farewell discourse to prepare and strengthen His disciples for the approaching separation, whose significance they certainly did not yet suspect, He finds the true consolation in the assurance that His return to His Father would turn out for the welfare, not only of Himself, but also of His disciples (xvi. 7), inasmuch as, in spite of His outward separation from them, He would yet remain helpful and united to them. He promises them that, by His intercession with God for them in the heavenly life, He would contribute to the bestowal of all blessing upon them. So He exhorts them thenceforth to pray to the Father, or to Himself in His name, as they had not done hitherto, that is, to pray with reference to their being His disciples (xiv. 13 f.; xvi. 24);1 and He promises them full granting of all such prayers, since He Himself will accomplish the fulfilment of the 1 Cf. vol. i. p. 250.

VOL. II.

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petitions (xiv. 13 f.); and in His name, that is, with reference to Him because they are His disciples, the Father will grant them whatever they shall ask (xvi. 23). This He says, not as if the Father needs such mediating intercession in order to grant good things to His disciples; rather, when He refers the disciples to the full knowledge of the fatherly character of God, He will not speak of His own intercession for them, since the Father Himself loveth the disciples, and therefore gives them all blessing of His own free impulse (xvi. 26). Nor does He seek to suggest the thought

1 It is to be noticed that Jesus says of Himself, that He will bring about (≈orńow, xiv. 13f.) what they ask, but of God, that He will give them what they ask (xv. 16; xvi. 23). We need not, however, explain the accomplishment by Jesus of what is prayed for, in the sense of His continuing on earth His ministry through His disciples (B. Weiss in Meyer's Commentary at this passage), since it is not justifiable to limit the prayers of the disciples in the name of Jesus, as to which a quite general promise was given, xiv. 13 f., to their prayers with reference to their ministry; their prayers for blessings quite in general, which they are to obtain in the name of Jesus, in accordance with the revelation received by Him, must rather be meant. As Jesus immediately connects the promise, that He would bring about the answer, with the declaration that He is going to the Father (ver. 12), and as, in the words directly following, He promises to His disciples His intercession with the Father for the sending of the Holy Spirit (ver. 16); so the bringing about of the answer, which Jesus declares to be of Himself, must be explained as meaning that He will be helpful to His disciples through His intercession with the Father for the bestowal of the blessings prayed for from the Father.

2 The apparent contradiction between the saying, xvi. 26, "I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father on your behalf," and the earlier declarations, xiv. 13 f. and 16, in which Jesus has directly set forth His influence with the Father for the fulfilment of the prayers of the disciples, and His intercession with the Father for the sending of the Spirit, cannot be solved by the explanation that the intercession promised in chap. xiv. refers to the period before the sending of the Spirit, but that in the passage xvi. 26 th period after the sending of the Spirit is spoken of, when the disciples, on account of the possession of the Spirit, will not need the intercession of Jesus. For the declaration xvi. 26 is not founded, in ver. 27, upon the reference to this future possession of the Spirit by the disciples, but on a reference to such a state of things as is expressly