Comments on Chapter 17
INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
THE GOSPEL FROM AN EAGLE'S EYE
Many Christians consider the Gospel of John to be the most precious book of the New Testament. With this book they feed their minds and hearts most of all, and it calms their souls. The authors of the Gospels are very often depicted symbolically in stained glass windows and other works as the four beasts that the author of Revelation saw around the throne (Rev. 4:7). In different places a different symbol is attributed to each evangelist, but in most cases it is generally accepted that Human - this is the symbol of the evangelist Brand, whose Gospel can be called the most uncomplicated, the simplest and the most humane; a lion - evangelist symbol Matthew, because he, like no one else, saw in Jesus the Messiah and the lion of the tribe of Judah; Taurus(ox) - symbol of the evangelist Luke, because this animal was used both for service and for sacrifice, and he saw in Jesus the great servant of people and the universal sacrifice for all mankind; eagle - evangelist symbol Joanna, because of all living creatures only the eagle can look, without being blinded, directly into the sun and penetrate into the eternal secrets, eternal truths and into the very thoughts of God. John has the most penetrating insight of any New Testament writer. Many people believe that they are closest to God and to Jesus Christ when they read the Gospel of John rather than any other book.A GOSPEL THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS
One only has to quickly read the fourth Gospel to see that it is different from the other three: it does not contain many events that are included in the other three. The fourth Gospel says nothing about the birth of Jesus, about His baptism, about His temptations, it says nothing about the Last Supper, about the Garden of Gethsemane and about the Ascension. It does not talk about healing people who are demon-possessed and evil spirits, and, most surprisingly, it does not contain a single parable of Jesus, which are an invaluable part of the other three Gospels. Throughout the three Gospels, Jesus constantly speaks in these wonderful parables and in easy-to-remember, short, expressive sentences. And in the fourth Gospel, Jesus' speeches sometimes take up an entire chapter and often present complex, evidence-rich statements that are completely different from those concise, memorable sayings in the other three Gospels. What is even more surprising is that the facts about the life and ministry of Jesus given in the fourth Gospel are different from those given in the other Gospels. 1. The Gospel of John tells it differently Start ministry of Jesus. The other three Gospels make it quite clear that Jesus began preaching only after John the Baptist was imprisoned. "After John was betrayed, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.(Mark 1:14; Luke 3:18.20; Matt. 4:12). According to the Gospel of John, it turns out that there was a rather long period when the preaching of Jesus coincided with the activities of John the Baptist(John 3:22-30; 4:1.2). 2. The Gospel of John presents it differently region, where Jesus preached. In the other three Gospels, the main area of preaching was Galilee and Jesus did not visit Jerusalem until the last week of his life. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus mostly preached in Jerusalem and Judea and only occasionally visited Galilee(John 2:1-13; 4:35-51; 6:1-7:14). According to John, Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover, which coincided with the cleansing of the Temple(John 2:13); during an unnamed holiday(John 5:1); during the Feast of Tabernacles(John 7:2.10). He was there in winter, during the Festival of Renewal(John 10:22). According to the fourth Gospel, after this holiday Jesus never left Jerusalem at all; after chapter 10 He was in Jerusalem all the time. This means that Jesus remained there for many months, from the winter festival of Renewal until the spring, until Easter, during which he was crucified. It must be said that this fact was correctly reflected in the Gospel of John. The other Gospels show Jesus lamenting the fate of Jerusalem as the last week arrived. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a bird gathers its chicks under its wings, and you did not want to!” It is obvious that Jesus could not have said such a thing unless He had visited Jerusalem several times and addressed its inhabitants on several occasions. From His first visit He could not have said this. It was this difference that allowed the “father of Church history” Eusebius (263-340), bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and author of the ancient history of the Church from the birth of Christ to 324, to offer one of the first explanations for the difference between the fourth Gospel and the other three. Eusebius stated that in his time (around 300), many theologians held this view: Matthew was the first to preach to the Jews, but the time came when he had to go preach to other nations; before setting out, he wrote down everything he knew about the life of Christ in Hebrew and "thus eased the loss of those whom he had to leave behind." After Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels, John was still preaching the story of Jesus' life orally. "Finally he began to describe it and this is why. When the three Gospels mentioned above became available to everyone and reached him too, they say that he approved them and confirmed their truth, but added that they lacked an account of the acts performed by Jesus at the very beginning of His ministry... And therefore, they say, John described in his Gospel a period omitted by the early evangelists, i.e. acts committed by the Savior in the period before the imprisonment of John the Baptist..., and the other three evangelists describe the events that took place after this time. The Gospel of John is the story of first the deeds of Christ, while others tell of later His life" (Eusebius, "History of the Church" 5:24). Therefore, according to Eusebius, there is no contradiction at all between the fourth and the other three Gospels; the whole difference is explained by the fact that in the fourth Gospel, at least in the first chapters, tells about the service in Jerusalem, which preceded the preaching in Galilee and took place while John the Baptist was still free. It is possible that this explanation of Eusebius, at least in part, is correct. 3. According to John and. duration Jesus' ministry was different. From the other three Gospels it follows that it lasted only one year. There is only one Easter during the entire service. In the Gospel of John three Passover: one coincides with the cleansing of the Temple According to John, Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover, which coincided with the cleansing of the Temple the other somewhere coincides with the time of saturation of five thousand (John 6.4); and finally the last Passover, when Jesus was crucified. According to John, the ministry of Christ should last about three years so that all these events can be arranged in time. And again, John is undoubtedly right: it turns out that this is also evident from a careful reading of the other three Gospels. When the disciples plucked the ears of corn (Mark 2:23) it must have been spring. When the five thousand were fed, they sat down on green grass (Mark 6:39), consequently, it was spring again, and a year must have passed between these two events. This is followed by a journey through Tire and Sidon and the Transfiguration. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter wanted to build three tabernacles and stay there. it is quite natural to assume that this was during the Feast of the Presentation of Tabernacles, which is why Peter suggested doing this (Mark 9:5) that is, at the beginning of October. This is followed by the period until the last Easter in April. Thus, from what is stated in the three Gospels, it can be concluded that the ministry of Jesus lasted for the same three years, as it is presented in John. 4. But John also has significant differences from the other three Gospels. Here are two notable examples. First, John refers to the cleansing of the Temple as the beginning ministry of Jesus(John 2:13-22), while other evangelists place him in the end (Mark 11:15-17; Matt. 21:12.13; Luke 19:45.46).Secondly, John places the Crucifixion of Christ on the day preceding Easter, while other evangelists place it on the day of Easter itself. We should not at all close our eyes to the differences that exist between the Gospel of John, on the one hand, and the rest of the Gospels, on the other.
SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF JOHN (2,1-11); It is clear that if the Gospel of John differs from the other gospels, it is not due to ignorance or lack of information. While he doesn't mention much of what others give, he does give a lot that they don't. Only John talks about the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee (3,1-17); about Jesus' visit to Nicodemus (4); about the Samaritan woman (11); about the resurrection of Lazarus (13,1-17); about how Jesus washed the feet of His disciples (14-17). about His wonderful teaching about the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, scattered in the chapters (11,16; 14,5; 20,24-29), Only in John's narrative do many of Jesus' disciples really come to life before our eyes and we hear the speech of Thomas (1,40.41; 6,8.9; 12,22). and Andrey becomes a real person (6,5-7; 14,8.9); Only from John do we learn something about the character of Philip (12,4.5). And it should be noted that, oddly enough, these small touches reveal amazing things to us. The portraits of Thomas, Andrew, and Philip in the Gospel of John are like little cameos or vignettes in which the character of each of them is memorably sketched. Further, in the Evangelist John we again and again encounter small additional details that read like eyewitness accounts: the boy brought Jesus not just bread, but barley breads (6,9); When Jesus came to the disciples who were crossing a lake in a storm, they had sailed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs (6,19); There were six stone water pots at Cana of Galilee (2,6). Only John speaks of four soldiers casting lots for Jesus's woven robe. (19,23); only he knows how much mixture of myrrh and scarlet was used to anoint the body of Jesus (19,39); only he remembers how, during the anointing of Jesus in Bethany, the house was filled with a fragrance (12,3). Much of this seems at first glance to be insignificant details and they would remain incomprehensible if they were not the memories of an eyewitness. No matter how different the Gospel of John is from the other Gospels, this difference must be explained not by ignorance, but precisely by the fact that John had more knowledge, or he had better sources, or a better memory than others. Another proof that the author of the fourth Gospel had special information is that he knew Palestine and Jerusalem very well. He knows how long it took to build the Jerusalem Temple (2,20); that Jews and Samaritans were constantly in conflict (4,9); that the Jews had a low opinion of women (4,9); How did the Jews view the Sabbath? (5,10; 7,21-23; 9,14). He knows Palestine well: he knows two Bethany, one of which was beyond the Jordan (1,28; 12,1); he knows that some of the disciples were from Bethsaida (1,44; 12,21); that Cana is in Galilee (2,1; 4,46; 21,2); that the city of Sychar is located near Shechem (4,5). He, as they say, knew every street in Jerusalem. He knows the sheep gate and the pool near it (5,2); he knows the pool of Siloam (9,7); Solomon's porch (9,23); Stream Kidron (18,1); Lifostroton, which in Hebrew is Gavvafa (9,13); Golgotha, similar to a skull (place of Execution, 19,17). We must remember that in 70, Jerusalem was destroyed, and John began to write his Gospel no earlier than 100, and, nevertheless, he remembered everything in Jerusalem.THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH JOHN WRITE
We have already seen that there is a great difference between the fourth Gospel and the other three Gospels, and we have seen that the reason for this could not possibly be the ignorance of John, and therefore we must ask ourselves: “What was his purpose when he wrote his Gospel?” If we understand this, we will find out why he selected these particular facts and why he showed them this way. The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus around the year 100. By this time in Christian Church Two features emerged. Firstly, Christianity came to the pagan world. By that time, the Christian Church had ceased to have a mainly Jewish character: most of the members who came to it came not from the Jewish, but from the Hellenistic culture, and therefore The Church had to declare itself in a new way. This does not mean that Christian truths had to be changed; they just needed to be expressed in a new way. Let's take at least this example. Suppose a Greek began to read the Gospel of Matthew, but as soon as he opened it, he came across a long genealogy. Genealogies were understandable to the Jews, but were completely incomprehensible to the Greeks. Reading, the Greek sees that Jesus was the son of David - a king whom the Greeks had never heard of, who, moreover, was a symbol of the racial and nationalistic aspirations of the Jews, which did not worry this Greek at all. This Greek is faced with a concept called "Messiah", and again he has never heard this word before. Is it necessary for a Greek who decides to become a Christian to completely rebuild his way of thinking and get used to Jewish categories? Must he, before he can become a Christian, learn a good portion of Jewish history and Jewish apocalyptic literature, which tells of the coming of the Messiah. As the English theologian Goodspeed put it: “Couldn’t he have become directly acquainted with the treasures of Christian salvation without being mired forever in Judaism? Did he need to part with his intellectual heritage and begin to think exclusively in Jewish categories and Jewish concepts?” John approaches this issue honestly and directly: he has found one of the greatest solutions that has ever occurred to anyone. We will look at John's decision much more fully later in the commentary, but for now we will just dwell on it briefly. The Greeks had two great philosophical concepts. a) Firstly, they had a concept Logos. In Greek it has two meanings: word(speech) and meaning(concept, reason). The Jews knew well about the all-powerful word of God. “And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.” (Gen. 1:3). And the Greeks were well aware of the idea of cause. The Greeks looked at the world and saw in it an amazing and reliable order: night and day invariably change in a strict order; seasons invariably follow each other, stars and planets move in unchanging orbits - nature has its own unchanging laws. Where does this order come from, who created it? The Greeks responded confidently to this: Logos, Divine intelligence created this magnificent world order. “What gives a person the ability to think, reason and know?” - the Greeks asked themselves further. And again they confidently answered: Logos, The divine mind abiding in a person makes him a thinker. The Gospel of John seems to say: “All your life your imagination has been struck by this great, guiding and restraining Divine mind. The Divine mind came to earth in Christ, in human form. Look at Him and you will see what it is - the Divine mind and the Divine will ". The Gospel of John provided a new concept in which the Greeks could think about Jesus, in which Jesus was presented as God appearing in human form. b) The Greeks had a theory of two worlds. One world is the one in which we live. It was, in their opinion, a beautiful world in a sense, but it was a world of shadows and copies, not real world. The other was the real world, in which eternally great realities reside, of which the earthly world is only a pale and poor copy. The invisible world was the real world for the Greeks, and the visible world was only a shadow and unreality. The Greek philosopher Plato systematized this idea in his doctrine of forms or ideas. He believed that in the invisible world there are perfect incorporeal prototypes of all things, and all things and objects of this world are only shadows and copies of these eternal prototypes. Simply put, Plato believed that somewhere there was a prototype, the idea of a table, and all the tables on earth were only imperfect copies of this prototype of the table. And the greatest reality, the highest idea, the prototype of all prototypes and the form of all forms is God. It remained, however, to resolve the question of how to get into this real world, how to get away from our shadows to eternal truths. And John declares that this is precisely the opportunity that Jesus Christ gives us. He Himself is the reality that came to us on earth. IN Greek to convey the concept real in this sense the word is used alefeinos, which is very closely related to the word alephes, What means true, genuine And alethea, What means true. Greek in the Bible aletheinos translated as true, but it would be correct to also translate it as real. Jesus - real light (1,9). Jesus - real bread (6,32); Jesus - real vine (15,1); judgment of Christ - is real (8,16). Jesus alone is real in our world of shadows and imperfections. Some conclusions follow from this. Every act of Jesus was not only an action in time, but also represents a window through which we can see reality. This is exactly what the Evangelist John means when he speaks of the miracles performed by Jesus as signs (semeya). The miraculous works of Jesus are not only miraculous, they are windows into the reality that is God. This explains the fact that the Gospel of John conveys completely differently than the other three evangelists the stories of the miracles performed by Jesus. a) In the fourth Gospel there is not that shade of compassion that is present in the stories of miracles in all the other Gospels. In other Gospels, Jesus had mercy on the leper (Mark 1:41); sympathizes with Jairus (Mark 5:22) and the father of a boy suffering from epilepsy (Mark 9:19). Luke, when Jesus raised the son of a widow from the city of Nain, adds with infinite tenderness, “and Jesus gave him to his mother.” (Luke 7:15). And in the Gospel of John, Jesus' miracles are not so much acts of compassion as they are demonstrations of the glory of Christ. This is how John comments after the miracle performed in Cana of Galilee: “Thus Jesus began the miracles in Cana of Galilee and showed His glory" (2:11). The resurrection of Lazarus occurred "to the glory of God" (11,4). The blindness of the man born blind existed "so that the works of God might be revealed in him" (9,3). John does not want to say that there was no love and compassion in the miracles of Jesus, but he first of all saw in every miracle of Christ the glory of the Divine reality breaking into time and into human affairs. b) In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus' miracles are often accompanied by lengthy discussions. Following the description of the feeding of the five thousand is a long discussion about the bread of life. (chapter 6); The healing of the man born blind is preceded by Jesus' statement that He is the light of the world (chapter 9); The resurrection of Lazarus is preceded by Jesus' phrase that He is the resurrection and the life (chapter 11). In John's eyes, Jesus' miracles are not just isolated acts in time, they are an opportunity to see what God always does, and an opportunity to see how Jesus always acts: they are windows into Divine reality. Jesus did not just feed five thousand one day - it was an illustration of the fact that He is the eternal real bread of life; Jesus didn't just open the eyes of a blind man one day: He is the light of the world forever. Jesus didn't just raise Lazarus from the dead one day - He is the resurrection and life of all forever. A miracle never appeared to John as an isolated act - it was always for him a window into the reality of who Jesus always was and is, what He has always done and is doing. Based on this, the great scientist Clement of Alexandria (about 230) made one of the most famous conclusions about the origin of the fourth Gospel and the purpose of its writing. He believed that first the Gospels were written in which genealogies were given, that is, the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, after which Mark wrote his Gospel at the request of many who heard Peter’s sermons, and included in it the materials that Peter used in his sermons . And only after this, “the very last, John, seeing that everything connected with the material aspects of the preaching and teaching of Jesus had received its due reflection, and, prompted by his friends and inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote spiritual gospel(Eusebius, "History of the Church", 6.14). Clement of Alexandria thereby wants to say that John was interested not so much in facts as in their meaning and significance, that he was looking not for facts, but for the truth. John saw in the actions of Jesus more than just events occurring in time; he saw in them windows to eternity, and emphasized spiritual meaning words and deeds of Jesus, which none of the other evangelists even attempted to do. This conclusion about the fourth Gospel remains one of the most correct to this day. John wrote not a historical, but a spiritual Gospel. Thus, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is presented as the incarnate Divine Mind who came to earth and as the only one who has reality and is able to lead people from the world of shadows to the real world that Plato and the great Greeks dreamed of. Christianity, once dressed in Jewish categories, acquired the greatness of the Greek worldview.THE ARISE OF HERESIES
At the time when the fourth Gospel was written, the Church was faced with one important problem - emergence of heresy. Seventy years have passed since Jesus Christ was crucified. During this time, the Church turned into a coherent organization; Theological theories and creeds of faith were developed and established, human thoughts inevitably wandered and strayed from the true path, and heresies arose. And heresy is rarely a complete lie. It usually arises as a result of special emphasis on one aspect of the truth. We see at least two heresies which the author of the fourth Gospel sought to refute. a) There were Christians, at least among the Jews, who placed John the Baptist too highly. There was something about him that greatly attracted the Jews. He was the last of the prophets and he spoke with the voice of a prophet; we know that in later times there was an officially recognized sect of followers of John the Baptist in Orthodox Judaism. IN Acts 19.1-7 we meet a small group of twelve people, whose members belonged to the Christian Church, but were baptized only by the baptism of John. The author of the fourth Gospel again and again calmly but firmly puts John the Baptist in his proper place. John the Baptist himself repeatedly asserted that he did not claim the highest place and had no right to it, but unconditionally conceded this place to Jesus. We have already seen that in the other Gospels the ministry and preaching of Jesus began only after John the Baptist was imprisoned, but the fourth Gospel speaks of the time when the ministry of Jesus coincided with the preaching of John the Baptist. It is quite possible that the author of the fourth Gospel quite deliberately used this argument to show that Jesus and John did meet and that John used these meetings to recognize and encourage others to recognize the superiority of Jesus. The author of the fourth Gospel emphasizes that John the Baptist "was not light" (18) and he himself most definitely denied that he had any claim to be the Messiah (1.20 et seq.; Z.28; 4.1; 10.41) and what not to do even admit that he bore more important evidence (5,36). There is no criticism of John the Baptist in the fourth Gospel; it is a rebuke to those who give him the place that belongs to Jesus and Him alone.b) In addition, during the era of the writing of the fourth Gospel, the heresy known under the general name Gnosticism. If we do not understand it in detail, we will miss a good deal of the greatness of the Evangelist John and miss a certain aspect of the task before him. At the heart of Gnosticism was the doctrine that matter is essentially vicious and destructive, and spirit is essentially good. The Gnostics therefore concluded that God Himself could not touch matter and, therefore, He did not create the world. He, in their opinion, emitted a series of emanations (radiations), each of which was further and further from Him, until finally one of these radiations was so far from Him that it could come into contact with matter. It was this emanation (radiation) that was the creator of the world.
This idea, in itself quite vicious, was further corrupted by one addition: each of these emanations, according to the Gnostics, knew less and less about God, until one day a moment came when these emanations not only completely lost the knowledge of God, but they also became completely hostile to Him. And so the Gnostics finally concluded that the creator god was not only completely different from the real God, but also completely alien to him and hostile to him. One of the Gnostic leaders, Cerinthius, said that “the world was created not by God, but by some power very far from Him and from the Power that rules the entire universe, and alien to God, Who stands above everything.”
The Gnostics therefore believed that God had nothing to do with the creation of the world at all. That is why John begins his Gospel with a resounding statement: “All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that was made.” (1,3). This is why John insists that “God so loved peace" (3.16). In the face of Gnosticism, which so alienated God and turned Him into a being who could have nothing to do with the world at all, John presented the Christian concept of a God who created the world and whose presence fills the world that He created.
The Gnostic theory also influenced their idea of Jesus.
a) Some Gnostics believed that Jesus was one of these emanations that God emanated. They believed that He had nothing to do with Divinity, that He was a kind of demigod removed from the true real God, that He was just one of the beings standing between God and the world.
b) Other Gnostics believed that Jesus did not have a real body: the body is flesh, and God cannot, in their opinion, touch matter, and therefore Jesus was a kind of ghost, without a real body and real blood. They believed, for example, that when Jesus walked the earth, He left no footprints because His body had neither weight nor substance. They could never say, "And the Word became flesh" (1:14). Outstanding Father western church Aurelius Augustine (354-430), bishop of Gipon (northern Africa), says that he read a lot of contemporary philosophers and found that much of them was very similar to what was written in the New Testament, but, he says: “I did not find in them such a phrase: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is why John, in his first letter, insisted that Jesus came itself, and declared that anyone who denies this is motivated by the spirit of Antichrist (1 John 4:3). This heresy is known as Docetism. This word comes from the Greek dokain, What means seem, and the heresy is so called because its followers believed that it only seemed to people that Jesus was a man.
c) Some Gnostics adhered to a variation of this heresy: they believed that Jesus was a man upon whom the Holy Spirit descended at his baptism. This Spirit abided in Him throughout His life until the end, but since the Spirit of God cannot suffer or die, He left Jesus before He was crucified. They conveyed the loud cry of Jesus on the cross like this: “My strength, my strength! why have you forsaken me?” And in their books these heretics talked about people talking on the Mount of Olives with an image very similar to Him, although the man Jesus was dying on the cross.
Thus, the heresies of the Gnostics resulted in two types of beliefs: some did not believe in the Divinity of Jesus and considered Him to be one of the emanations that God emanated, while others did not believe in the human essence of Jesus and considered Him to be a human-like ghost. The Gnostic beliefs destroyed both the true divinity and the true humanity of Jesus.
THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS
John responds to these theories of the Gnostics and this explains the strange paradox of the double emphases that he places in his Gospel. No other Gospel emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus as clearly as the Gospel of John. Jesus was extremely outraged by what people were buying and selling in the Temple (2,15); Jesus was physically tired of long journey sitting by the well at Sychar in Samaria (4,6); the disciples offered Him food just as they would offer it to any hungry person (4,3); Jesus sympathized with those who were hungry and those who felt afraid (6,5.20); He felt sad and even cried, as anyone who has suffered a loss would do. (11,33.35 -38); When Jesus was dying on the cross, His parched lips whispered, “I thirst.” (19,28). In the fourth Gospel we see Jesus as a man, and not a shadow or a ghost, in Him we see a man who knew the weariness of a weary body and the wounds of a suffering soul and a suffering mind. In the Fourth Gospel we have a truly human Jesus.
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS
On the other hand, no other Gospel shows the divinity of Jesus so clearly.
a) John emphasizes pre-eternity Jesus. “Before Abraham was,” said Jesus, “I am.” (8,58). In John, Jesus speaks of the glory that He had with the Father before the world was (17,5). He talks over and over again about how he came down from heaven (6,33-38). John saw in Jesus the One who always existed, even before the world was.
b) The Fourth Gospel emphasizes, like no other, omniscience Jesus. John believes that Jesus most definitely had supernatural knowledge of the Samaritan woman's past (4,16.17); it is quite obvious that He knew how long the man who lay in the pool of Bethesda had been sick, although no one tells Him about it (5,6); Even before asking Philip a question, He already knew what answer he would receive (6,6); He knew that Judas would betray Him (6,61-64); He knew about the death of Lazarus even before he was told about it (11,14). John saw Jesus as One who had special supernatural knowledge, independent of what anyone could tell Him; He did not need to ask questions because He knew all the answers.
c) The Fourth Gospel also emphasizes the fact that Jesus always acted completely independently, without any influence on Him from anyone. He performed the miracle in Cana of Galilee on his own initiative, and not at the request of His Mother (2,4); the motives of His brothers had nothing to do with His visit to Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles (7,10); none of the people took His life, none of the people could do this. He gave His life completely voluntarily (10,18; 19,11). In John's eyes, Jesus possessed divine independence from all human influence. He was completely independent in his actions.
By refuting the Gnostics and their strange beliefs, John irrefutably demonstrates both the humanity of Jesus and His divinity.
AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
We see that the author of the fourth Gospel set as his goal to show the Christian faith in such a way that it would become interesting for the Greeks, to whom Christianity had now come, and, at the same time, to speak out against heresies and errors that arose within the Church. We keep asking ourselves: who was its author? Traditions unanimously say that the author was the Apostle John. We will see that beyond any doubt the authority of John really stands behind this Gospel, although it is quite possible that it was not he who wrote it down and gave it its form. Let's collect everything we know about John.
He was the youngest of the sons of Zebedee, who had a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee and was rich enough to hire hired laborers. (Mark 1:19.20). John's mother was named Salome and it is quite possible that she was the sister of Mary, the Mother of Jesus (Matt. 27:56; Mark 16:1). John and his brother James followed Jesus at the call of Jesus. (Mark 1:20).
It seems that James and John were fishing with Peter (Luke 5:7-10). AND John belonged to the closest disciples of Jesus, because the list of disciples always begins with the names of Peter, James and John, and at some great events only these three were present (Mark 3:17; 5:37; 9:2; 14:33).
By character, John was quite obviously a restless and ambitious man. Jesus gave John and his brother the name Voanerges, What means sons of Thunder. John and his brother James were impatient and opposed any self-will on the part of others (Mark 9:38; Luke 9:49). Their temperament was so unbridled that they were ready to wipe out a Samaritan village because they were not given hospitality there when they were on their way to Jerusalem (Luke 9:54). Either they themselves, or their mother Salome, cherished ambitious plans. They asked Jesus that when He received His Kingdom, He would seat them on the right and on the left in His glory (Mark 10:35; Matt 20:20). In the Synoptic Gospels, John is presented as the leader of all the disciples, a member of Jesus' intimate circle, and yet extremely ambitious and impatient.
In the book of Acts of the Holy Apostles, John always speaks with Peter, but does not speak himself. His name is among the first three on the list of apostles (Acts 1:13). John was with Peter when they healed the lame man near the Red Gate of the Temple (Acts 3:1 et seq.). Together with Peter, he was brought and placed before the Sanhedrin and the leaders of the Jews; At the trial, both behaved amazingly bravely (Acts 4:1-13). John went with Peter to Samaria to check what Philip had done there (Acts 8:14).
In Paul's letters the name John is mentioned only once. IN Gal. 2.9 he is called a pillar of the Church along with Peter and James, who approved of Paul's actions. John was a complex man: on the one hand, he was one of the leaders among the apostles, a member of the intimate circle of Jesus - His closest friends; on the other hand, he was a willful, ambitious, impatient and at the same time courageous man.
We can look at what was told about John in the era of the young Church. Eusebius says that he was exiled to the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (Eusebius, Church History, 3.23). There Eusebius tells a characteristic story about John, borrowed from Clement of Alexandria. He became a kind of bishop of Asia Minor and once visited one of church communities near Ephesus. Among the parishioners he noticed a slender and very handsome young man. John turned to the elder of the community and said: “I transfer this young man under your responsibility and care, and I call the parishioners to witness this.”
The presbyter took the young man into his home, cared for him and instructed him, and the day came when the young man was baptized and accepted into the community. But soon after that, he made friends with bad friends and committed so many crimes that he eventually became the leader of a gang of murderers and thieves. When, after some time, John visited this community again, he turned to the elder: “Restore the trust that I and the Lord have placed in you and the church that you lead.” At first the presbyter did not understand at all what John was talking about. “I mean that you give an account of the soul of the young man whom I have entrusted to you,” said John. “Alas,” answered the presbyter, “he died.” "Dead?" - asked John. “He is lost to God,” answered the presbyter, “he fell from grace and was forced to flee the city for his crimes, and now he is a robber in the mountains.” And John went straight to the mountains, deliberately allowing himself to be captured by bandits, who led him to the young man, who was now the leader of the gang. Tormented by shame, the young man tried to run away from him, but John ran after him. “My son!” he shouted, “you are running away from your father. I am weak and old, have pity on me, my son; do not be afraid, there is still hope for your salvation. I will defend you before the Lord Jesus Christ. If necessary, I will I will gladly die for you, as He died for me. Stop, wait, believe! It was Christ who sent me to you.” Such a call broke the young man’s heart; he stopped, threw away his weapon and began to sob. Together with John, he descended from the mountain and returned to the Church and the Christian path. Here we see John's love and courage.
Eusebius (3,28) tells another story about John, which he found in Irenaeus (140-202), a student of Polycarp of Smyrna. As we have already noted, Cerinthius was one of the leading Gnostics. “The Apostle John once came to the bathhouse, but when he learned that Cerinthius was there, he jumped up from his seat and rushed out, because he could not stay under the same roof with him, and advised his companions to do the same. “Let’s leave so that the bathhouse does not collapse , he said, “because Cerinthius, the enemy of truth, is inside there.” Here is another touch on John’s temperament: Boanerges has not yet died within him.
John Cassion (360-430), who made a significant contribution to the development of the doctrine of grace and to the development of Western European monasticism, gives another story about John. One day he was found playing with a tamed partridge. The more severe brother reproached him for wasting his time, to which John replied: “If the bow is always kept drawn, it will soon cease to shoot straight.”
Jerome of Dalmatia (330-419) has a story about the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him what his last words would be to them. “My children,” he said, “love one another,” and then he repeated it again. "And it's all?" asked him. “This is sufficient,” said John, “for this is the covenant of the Lord.”
FAVORITE STUDENT
If we have carefully followed what has been said here about the Apostle John, we should have noticed one thing: we took all our information from the first three Gospels. It is surprising that the name of the Apostle John is never mentioned in the fourth Gospel. But two other people are mentioned.
Firstly, it talks about the disciple whom Jesus loved. He is mentioned four times. He reclined at Jesus' chest during the Last Supper (John 13:23-25); Jesus left His Mother in his care when he died on the cross (19,25-27); he and Peter were greeted by Mary Magdalene upon their return from the empty tomb on the first morning of Easter (20,2), and he was present at the last appearance of the resurrected Jesus to his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (21,20).
Secondly, in the fourth Gospel there is a character whom we would call witness, eyewitness. When the fourth Gospel speaks of how a soldier struck Jesus in the side with a spear, after which blood and water immediately flowed out, it is followed by the comment: “And he who saw it bore witness, and his testimony is true; he knoweth that he speaketh the truth, that ye may believe.” (19,35). At the end of the Gospel it is again said that this beloved disciple bears witness to all this, “and we know that his testimony is true” (21,24).
Here we have quite strange thing. In the fourth Gospel, John is never mentioned, but the beloved disciple is mentioned, and, in addition, there is a special witness, an eyewitness to the whole story. According to tradition, there was never any doubt that the beloved disciple was John. Only a few tried to see Lazarus in him, for it is said that Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:3.5), or rich young man about whom it is said that Jesus, looking at him, loved him (Mark 10:21). But although the Gospel never speaks of this in such detail, according to tradition the beloved disciple has always been identified with John and there is no need to question this.
But one very real problem arises - assuming that John actually wrote the Gospels himself, would he really talk about himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he want to distinguish himself in this way and, as it were, declare: “I was His favorite, He loved me most of all?” It may seem unlikely that John would have given himself such a title. If it is given by others, it is a very pleasant title, but if a person assigns it to himself, it borders on almost incredible vanity.
Maybe then this Gospel was the testimony of John, but was written down by someone else?
WORK OF THE CHURCH
In our search for truth, we began by noting the outstanding and exceptional points of the fourth Gospel. The most notable aspect is the long speeches of Jesus, sometimes taking up entire chapters, and are completely different from how Jesus is presented with his speeches in the other three Gospels. The Fourth Gospel was written around the year 100, that is, approximately seventy years after the crucifixion of Christ. Can what was written seventy years later be considered a literal rendering of what Jesus said? Or is it a retelling of them with the addition of what has become clearer over time? Let's remember this and take into account the following.
Among the works of the young Church, a whole series of reports has come down to us, and some of them relate to the writing of the fourth Gospel. The oldest of them belongs to Irenaeus, who was a student of Polycarp of Smyrna, who, in turn, was a student of John. Thus, there was a direct connection between Irenaeus and John. Irenaeus writes: “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on His chest, himself published The Gospel in Ephesus while he lived in Asia."
The word in this phrase of Irenaeus suggests that John is not just wrote Gospel; he says that John published (Exedoke) him in Ephesus. The word that Irenaeus used suggests that this was not just a private publication, but the promulgation of some kind of official document.
Another account belongs to Clement of Alexandria, who in 230 was the leader of the great Alexandrian school. He wrote: "The most last John, having seen that everything connected with the material and corporeal was properly reflected in the Gospels, encouraged by his friends, wrote a spiritual gospel."
The expression here is of great importance being encouraged by their friends. It becomes clear that the fourth Gospel is more than the personal work of one person, and that behind it stands a group, a community, a church. In the same spirit we read of the fourth Gospel in a tenth-century copy called the Codex Toletanus, in which each of the books of the New Testament is prefaced by a short summary. Concerning the fourth Gospel it says the following:
"The Apostle John, whom the Lord Jesus loved most, was the last to write his Gospel at the request of the bishops of Assia against Cerinthius and other heretics."
Here again is the idea that behind the fourth Gospel is the authority of the group and the Church.
Now let us turn to a very important document known as the Muratorian Canon - it is named after the scientist Muratori who discovered it. This is the first list of books of the New Testament ever published by the Church, compiled in Rome in the year 170. It not only lists the books of the New Testament, but gives short accounts of the origin, nature and content of each of them. Of great interest is the account of how the fourth Gospel was written:
“At the request of his fellow disciples and his bishops, John, one of the disciples, said: “Fast with me for three days from this, and whatever is revealed to each of us, whether in favor of my Gospel or not, let us tell it to each other ". That same night it was revealed to Andrei that John had to tell everything, and he must be helped by everyone else, who then check everything written.”
We cannot agree that the Apostle Andrew was in Ephesus in the year 100 (apparently it was another disciple), but it is quite clear here that although the fourth Gospel stands behind the authority, intelligence and memory of the Apostle John, it is the work of not one person, but a group.
Now we can try to imagine what happened. Around the year 100, there was a group of people in Ephesus around the Apostle John. These people revered John as a saint and loved him like a father: he must have been about a hundred years old at that time. They wisely reasoned that it would be very good if the aged apostle wrote down his memories of those years when he was with Jesus.
But in the end they did a lot more. We can imagine them sitting and reliving the past. They must have said to each other, “Remember when Jesus said...?” And John must have responded, “Yes, and now we understand what Jesus meant by that...” In other words, these men were not only writing down what said Jesus - this would only be a victory for memory, they also wrote down that Jesus meant by this. They were guided in this by the Holy Spirit Himself. John thought through every word Jesus once said, and he did it under the guiding guidance of the Holy Spirit, so real in him.
There is one sermon entitled “What Jesus Becomes to the Man Who Knows Him Long.” This title is an excellent definition of Jesus as we know Him from the Fourth Gospel. All this was excellently outlined by the English theologian A. G. N. Green-Armitage in the book “John Who Saw It.” The Gospel of Mark, he says, with its clear presentation of the facts of the life of Jesus, is very convenient for missionary; The Gospel of Matthew, with its systematic presentation of the teachings of Jesus, is very convenient for mentor; The Gospel of Luke, with its deep sympathy for the image of Jesus as the friend of all people, is very convenient for parish priest or a preacher and the Gospel of John is the Gospel for contemplative mind.
Greene-Armitage goes on to talk about the obvious difference between the Gospels of Mark and John: “Both of these Gospels are in some sense the same. But where Mark sees things flatly, directly, literally, John sees them subtly, insightfully, spiritually. One might say, that John illuminates the lines of the Gospel of Mark with a lamp."
This is an excellent characteristic of the fourth gospel. This is why the Gospel of John is the greatest of all Gospels. His goal was not to convey the words of Jesus, as in a newspaper report, but to convey the meaning contained in them. The Risen Christ speaks in it. Gospel of John - it is rather the Gospel of the Holy Spirit. It was not written by John of Ephesus, it was written by the Holy Spirit through John.
WHO WRITTEN THE GOSPEL
We need to answer one more question. We are confident that behind the fourth Gospel are the mind and memory of the Apostle John, but we saw that behind it there is also a witness who wrote it, that is, literally put it on paper. Can we find out who it was? From what early Christian writers have left us, we know that there were two Johns in Ephesus at that time: John the Apostle and John, known as John the Elder, John the Elder.
Papias (70-145), Bishop of Hierapolis, who loved to collect everything related to the history of the New Testament and the life of Jesus, left us very interesting information. He was a contemporary of John. Papias writes about himself that he tried to find out “what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, Thomas or James, or John, or Matthew or any of the disciples of the Lord, or what Aristion and Presbyter John - disciples of the Lord." In Ephesus there were apostle John and presbyter John; and presbyter(elder) John was so beloved by all that he was, in fact, known as elder presbyter, It is clear that he occupied a special place in the Church. Eusebius (263-340) and Dionysius the Great report that even in their time there were two famous graves in Ephesus: one of John the Apostle, the other of John the Presbyter.
Now let's turn to two short messages - the Second and Third Epistles of the Apostle John. These messages were written by the same hand as the Gospel, but how do they begin? The second message begins with the words: “The Elder to the chosen lady and her children.” (2 John 1). The third message begins with the words: “The Elder to the beloved Gaius” (3 John 1). This is our decision. In fact, the messages were written by John the Presbyter; they reflected the thoughts and memory of the elderly Apostle John, whom John the Presbyter always characterizes with the words “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
DEAR GOSPEL TO US
The more we learn about the fourth gospel, the more dear it becomes to us. For seventy years John thought about Jesus. Day after day the Holy Spirit revealed to him the meaning of what Jesus said. And so, when John already had a whole century behind him and his days were approaching the end, he and his friends sat down and began to remember. Presbyter John held a pen in his hand to record the words of his mentor and leader, the Apostle John. And the last of the apostles wrote down not only what he heard from Jesus, but also what he now understood Jesus to mean. He remembered Jesus saying, “I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:12.13).
John did not understand much then, seventy years ago; The Spirit of truth revealed many things to him during these seventy years. And John wrote all this down, although for him the dawn of eternal glory was already dawning. When reading this Gospel, we must remember that it told us through the mind and memory of the Apostle John and through John the Presbyter the true thoughts of Jesus. Behind this Gospel stands the entire church of Ephesus, all the saints, the last of the apostles, the Holy Spirit and the Risen Christ Himself.
THE GLORY OF THE CROSS (John 17:1-5)
The culmination of Jesus' life was the Cross. For Him, the Cross was the glory of His life and the glory of eternity. He said, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." (John 12:23). What did Jesus mean when He spoke of the Cross as His glory? There are several answers to this question.
1. History has repeatedly confirmed the fact that many great people found their glory in death. Their deaths and the way they died helped people see who they were. They may have been misunderstood, underestimated, condemned as criminals in life, but their deaths revealed their true place in history.
Abraham Lincoln had enemies during his lifetime, but even those who criticized him saw his greatness after the assassin's bullet felled him and said, "He is immortal now." Secretary of War Stanton always considered Lincoln simple and uncouth, and never hid his contempt for him, but looking at his dead body with tears in his eyes, he said: “Here lies the greatest leader this world has ever seen.”
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a witch and heretic. There was one Englishman in the crowd who swore that he would add an armful of brushwood to the fire. “May my soul go,” he said, “where the soul of this woman goes.” When Montrose was executed, he was led through the streets of Edinburgh to the Mercate Cross. His enemies encouraged the crowd to abuse him and even provided them with ammunition to throw at him, but not a single voice was raised in curse and not a single hand was raised against him. He was in his festive clothes with ties on his shoes and thin white gloves on his hands. An eyewitness, one James Fraser, said: “He walked down the street solemnly, and his face expressed so much beauty, majesty and importance that everyone was surprised to look at him, and many enemies recognized him as the bravest man in the world and saw in him courage, which enveloped the entire crowd." Notary John Nichol saw him more like a groom than a criminal. An English official in the crowd wrote to his superiors: “It is absolutely true that he has defeated more enemies in Scotland by his death than if he had remained alive. I confess that I have never seen more magnificent bearing in men in all my life.”
Time and again the greatness of the martyr was revealed in his death. So it was with Jesus, and therefore the centurion at His Cross exclaimed: “Truly He was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27.54). The cross was the glory of Christ because He never looked more majestic than in His death. The cross was His glory because its magnetism drew people to Him in a way that even His life could not, and that power is still alive today.
THE GLORY OF THE CROSS (John 17:1-5 continued)
2. Further, the Cross was the glory of Jesus because it was the consummation of His ministry. “I have finished the work that You gave Me to do,” He says in this passage. If Jesus had not gone to the Cross, He would not have completed His work. Why is this so? Because Jesus came into the world to tell people about the love of God and show it to them. If He had not gone to the Cross, it would have turned out that God's love reaches a certain limit and no further. By going to the Cross, Jesus showed that there is nothing that God would not do to save people, and that God's love has no boundaries.
One famous painting from the First World War shows a signalman repairing a field telephone. He had just finished repairing the line to important message could have been transferred where it should be, how he was killed by a shot. The painting depicts him at the moment of death, and below there is only one word: “Succeeded.” He gave his life so that an important message could travel along the line to its destination. This is exactly what Christ did. He accomplished His work, brought God's love to people. To Him it meant the Cross, but the Cross was His glory because He finished the work that God gave Him to do. He convinced people forever of God's love.
3. But there is one more question: how did the Cross glorify God? God can only be glorified by obeying Him. A child honors his parents by being obedient to them. A citizen of a country honors his country by obedience to its laws. A student salutes the teacher when he obeys his instructions. Jesus brought glory and honor to the Father by His complete obedience to Him. The Gospel narrative makes it very clear that Jesus could have avoided the Cross. Humanly speaking, He could have turned back and not gone to Jerusalem at all. But looking at Jesus in His last days, I just want to say: “Look how He loved God the Father! Look to what extent His obedience went!” He glorified God on the Cross by giving Him complete obedience and complete love.
4. But that's not all. Jesus prayed to God to glorify Himself and Him. The cross was not the end. The Resurrection followed. And this was the restoration of Jesus, proof that people can do the most terrible evil, but Jesus will still triumph. It turned out as if God pointed with one hand to the Cross and said: “This is the opinion that people have of My Son,” and with the other to the Resurrection and said: “This is the opinion I hold.” The worst thing that people could do to Jesus was revealed on the Cross, but even this worst thing could not overcome Him. The glory of the Resurrection revealed the meaning of the Cross.
5. For Jesus, the Cross was a means of returning to the Father. “Glorify Me,” He prayed, “with the glory that I had with You before the world was.” He was like a knight who left the king's court to do a dangerous, terrible deed, and who, having completed it, returned home victorious to enjoy the glory of victory. Jesus came from God and returned to Him. The feat in between was the Cross. Therefore, for Him the Cross was the gateway to glory, and if He had refused to pass through this gate, there would have been no glory for Him to enter into. For Jesus, the Cross was a return to God.
ETERNAL LIFE (John 17:1-5 (continued))
There is another important idea in this passage. It contains the definition of eternal life. Eternal life is the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Let us remind ourselves what the word eternal means. In Greek this word sounds aionis and refers not so much to the length of life, because an endless life is undesirable for some, but to quality life. There is only one Person to whom this word applies, and that Person is God. Eternal life, therefore, is something other than the life of God. To find it, to enter into it, means already now to manifest something of its splendor, greatness and joy, peace and holiness, which characterize the life of God.
Knowing God- this is a typical thought Old Testament. “Wisdom is the tree of life for those who acquire it, and blessed are those who guard it.” (Proverbs 3:18). "The righteous are saved by insight" (Proverbs 11:9). Habakkuk dreamed of a Golden Age and said: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters fill the sea” - (Hab. 2:14). Hosea hears the voice of God, which tells him: “My people will be destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Os. 4.6). The rabbinical commentary asks on what small portion of Scripture the entire essence of the law rests, and answers: “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.” (Proverbs 3:6). And another rabbinic interpretation says that Amos reduced the many commandments of the law to one: “Seek Me and you will live.” (Am. 5.4), because seeking God is necessary for true life. But what does it mean to know God?
1. There is undoubtedly an element of intellectual knowledge in this. This means knowing the character of God and knowing this makes a significant difference in a person's life. Let's give two examples. Pagans in undeveloped countries believe in many gods. Every tree, stream, hill, mountain, river, stone contains for them a god with his spirit. All these spirits are hostile to man, and savages live in fear of these gods, always afraid of offending them in some way. Missionaries say it is almost impossible to comprehend the wave of relief that comes over these people when they learn that there is only one God. This new knowledge changes everything for them. And what changes everything even more is the knowledge that this God is not strict and cruel, but that He is love.
We know this now, but we would never have known it if Jesus had not come and told us about it. We enter into a new life and share in a certain way the life of God Himself through what Jesus did: we come to know God, that is, we know what His character is.
2. But there is something else. The Old Testament also applies the word “to know” to sexual life. "And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived..." (Gen. 4.1). A husband and wife's knowledge of each other is the most intimate of all knowledge. Husband and wife are not two, but one flesh. The sexual act itself is not as important as the intimacy of the mind, soul and heart, which in true love precedes sexual intercourse. Consequently, to know God means not only to comprehend Him with one’s head, but it means to be in a personal, closest relationship with Him, similar to the closest and dearest union on earth. And here it is again without Jesus close relationship would be neither imaginable nor possible. Only Jesus revealed to people that God is not a distant, unattainable Being, but a Father whose name and whose nature is love.
To know God is to know what He is like and to be in the most intimate, personal relationship with Him. But neither one nor the other is possible without Jesus Christ.
THE WORK OF JESUS (John 17:6-8)
Jesus gives us a definition of the work He did. He says to the Father: "I have revealed the name Yours to people"There are two great ideas here that should be clear to us.
1. The first idea is typical and integral to the Old Testament. This is an idea name. In the Old Testament the name is used in a special way. It reflects not only the name by which a person is called, but his entire character, as far as it is possible to know it. The Psalmist says: “And they that know Thy name will trust in Thee.” (Ps. 9:11). This does not mean that everyone who knows the name of the Lord, that is, what His name is, will certainly trust in Him, but it does mean that those who know what is God like, know His character and nature, and will be glad to trust Him.
In another place the psalmist says: “Some in chariots, some in horses, but we glory in the name of the Lord our God.” (Ps. 19:8). It goes on to say: “I will proclaim Your name to my brothers, in the midst of the congregation I will praise You.” (Ps. 21:23). The Jews said about this psalm that it prophesies about the Messiah and the work that He will do, and that this work will consist in the fact that the Messiah will reveal to people the name of God and the character of God. “Your people will know your name,” says the prophet Isaiah about the new age (Isa. 52.6). This means that in the Golden Age people will truly know what God is like.
So when Jesus says, “I have made Your name known to men,” He means, “I have made men able to see what the nature of God really is.” In fact, this is the same as what is said elsewhere: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9). The greatest significance of Jesus is that in Him people see the mind, character, and heart of God.
2. The second idea is as follows. In later times, when the Jews spoke of the name of God, they had in mind the sacred four-letter symbol, the so-called Tetragrammaton, expressed approximately by the following letters - IHVH. This name was considered so sacred that it was never spoken. Only the High Priest, entering the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, could recite it. These four letters symbolize the name Yahweh. We usually use the word Jehovah, but this change in vowels comes from the fact that the vowels in the word Jehovah are the same as in the word Adonai, which means Lord. The Hebrew alphabet had no vowels at all, and later they were added in the form of small signs above and below the consonants. Since the letters IHVH were sacred, the vowels of Adonai were placed under them, so that when the reader approached them, he could read not Yahweh, but Adonai - the Lord. This means that during the life of Jesus on earth, the name of God was so sacred that ordinary people should not have known, much less pronounced it. God was a distant, invisible King whose name was not supposed to be spoken by the common people, but Jesus said: “I have revealed to you the name of God, and that name which was so sacred that you did not dare to pronounce it can now be pronounced because I accomplished. I brought the distant, invisible God so close that even the simplest person can talk to Him and pronounce His name out loud."
Jesus claims that He revealed to men the true nature and character of God, and brought Him closer to Him so that even the humblest Christian can speak His previously unspoken name.
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLESHIP (John 17:6-8 continued)
This passage also sheds light on the meaning and meaning of discipleship.
1. Discipleship is based on the knowledge that Jesus came from God. A disciple is one who has realized that Jesus Christ is the Messenger of God, and that His speech is the voice of God, and His deeds are the deeds of God. A disciple is one who sees God in Christ and understands that no one in the entire universe can be what Jesus is.
2. Discipleship is demonstrated by obedience. A disciple is one who fulfills the word of God by receiving it from the mouth of Jesus. This is the one who accepted the ministry of Jesus. As long as we are willing to do as we please, we cannot be disciples, because discipleship means obedience.
3. Apprenticeship is given for the intended purpose. Jesus' disciples were given to Him by God. They were meant to be disciples in God's plan. This does not mean that God appoints some people to be disciples and deprives others of this calling. This does not at all mean a predestination to discipleship. A parent, for example, dreams of greatness for his son, but the son may abandon his father's plan and take a different path. Likewise, a teacher may choose a huge task for his student to glorify God, but a lazy and selfish student may refuse.
If we love someone, we dream of a great future for such a person, but such a dream may remain unfulfilled. The Pharisees believed in fate, but at the same time they believed in free will. They insisted that everything was decreed by God, except the fear of God. And God has a destiny for every person, and our greatest responsibility is that we can accept destiny from God or refuse it, but we are still not in the hands of fate, but in the hands of God. Someone noted that fate is essentially a force that forces action, and fate is the action that God intended for us. No one can avoid what they are forced to do, but everyone can avoid the work ordained by God.
In this passage, as in the whole chapter, there is Jesus' confidence in the future. When he was with the disciples whom God had given Him, He thanked God for them, having no doubt that they would do the work assigned to them. Let us just remember who Jesus’ disciples were. One commentator once remarked about Jesus' disciples: "Eleven fishermen of Galilee after three years of labor. But this is enough for Jesus, for they are the guarantee of the continuation of God's work in the world." When Jesus left the world, there seemed to be no reason for Him to have much hope. He seemed to achieve little and win over few followers to his side. The Orthodox religious Jews hated Him. But Jesus had divine trust in people. He was not afraid of humble beginnings. He looked optimistically into the future and seemed to say: “I have only eleven simple men, and with them I will rebuild the world.”
Jesus believed in God and trusted man. Knowing that Jesus has confidence in us is a great spiritual support for us, for we are easily discouraged. And we should not be afraid of human weakness and humble beginnings in work. We, too, should be strengthened by Christ's faith in God and trust in man. Only in this case we will not be discouraged, because this double faith opens up unlimited possibilities for us.
JESUS' PRAYER FOR THE DISCIPLES (John 17:9-19)
This passage is filled with such great truths that we can only comprehend the smallest parts of them. This speaks of the disciples of Christ.
1. Disciples were given to Jesus by God. What does it mean? This means that the Holy Spirit motivates a person to respond to the call of Jesus.
2. Jesus was glorified through the disciples. How? In the same way that a recovered patient glorifies his healer-doctor, or a successful student glorifies his diligent teacher. The bad man who became good through Jesus is the honor and glory of Jesus.
3. A disciple is a person authorized to serve. Just as God sent Jesus with a specific task, so Jesus sends the disciples with a specific task. Here the mystery of the meaning of the word peace is explained. Jesus begins by saying that He is praying for them, not for the whole world, but we already know that He came into the world because “He so loved the world.” From this Gospel we learned that the world means that society of people that organizes its life without God. It is into this society that Jesus sends His disciples, in order through them to return this society to God, to awaken its consciousness and memory of God. He prays for his disciples that they will be able to convert the world to Christ.
1. First, His complete joy. Everything He told them then should have brought them joy.
2. Secondly, He gives them a warning. He tells them that they are different from the world, and that they have nothing to expect from the world except enmity and hatred. Their moral views and standards are not consistent with those of the world, but they will find joy in conquering storms and fighting the waves. In facing the hatred of the world, we find true Christian joy.
Next, in this passage, Jesus makes one of His most powerful statements. In prayer to God He says: “All that is mine is yours and yours is mine.” The first part of this phrase is natural and easy to understand, because everything belongs to God and Jesus has already repeated this many times. But the second part of this phrase is amazing in its boldness: “And all are Yours are Mine.” Luther said this about this phrase: “No creature can say this about God.” Never before had Jesus expressed His oneness with God so clearly. He is one with God and manifests His power and right.
JESUS' PRAYER FOR THE DISCIPLES (John 17:9-19 (continued))
The most interesting thing about this passage is what Jesus asked the Father for His disciples.
1. We must emphasize that Jesus did not ask God to take them out of the world. He did not pray that they might find deliverance for themselves, but he prayed for their victory. The kind of Christianity that hides in monasteries would not be Christianity at all in the eyes of Jesus. That kind of Christianity, the essence of which some see in prayer, meditation and isolation from the world, would seem to Him a greatly reduced version of the faith for which He came to die. He argued that it was in the very hustle and bustle of life that a person should manifest his Christianity.
Of course, we also need prayer, and meditation and solitude with God, but they do not represent the goal of a Christian, but only a means to achieve this goal. The goal is to manifest Christianity in the everyday dullness of this world. Christianity was never meant to separate a person from life, but its purpose is to provide a person with the strength to fight and apply him to life in any conditions. It does not offer us deliverance from everyday problems, but it gives us the key to resolving them. It does not offer peace, but victory in the struggle; not the kind of life in which all tasks can be bypassed and all troubles avoided, but one in which difficulties are faced head-on and overcome. However, just as it is true that a Christian must be not of the world, it is equally true that he must live in the world as a Christian, that is, “live in the world, but be not of the world.” We should have no desire to leave the world, but only a desire to gain it for Christ.
2. Jesus prayed for the unity of the disciples. Where there is division and rivalry between churches, there the cause of Christ suffers, and Jesus’ prayer for unity also suffers damage. The gospel cannot be preached where there is no unity among the brothers. It is impossible to evangelize the world among divided, competing churches. Jesus prayed that the disciples would be as one as He was with His Father. But there is no prayer that is more prevented from being fulfilled than this one. Its implementation is hindered by individual believers and entire churches.
3. Jesus prayed that God would protect His disciples from the attacks of the evil one. The Bible is not a speculative book and does not go into the origin of evil, but it confidently speaks about the existence of evil in the world, and about evil forces that are hostile to God. It is a great encouragement for us that God, like a sentry, stands over us and protects us from evil, encourages and delights us. We often fall because we try to live on our own and forget about the help that God, who protects us, offers us.
4. Jesus prayed that His disciples would be sanctified by the truth. The word is sanctified - hageasein comes from the adjective hagios, which is translated as holy or set apart, different. This word contains two ideas.
a) It means to set apart for special service. When God called Jeremiah, He said to him: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you; I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1.5). Even before his birth, God placed Jeremiah in a special ministry. When God established the priesthood in Israel, He told Moses to anoint the sons of Aaron and ordain them as priests.
b) But the word hagiazein means not only a department for special work or service, but also equipping a person with those qualities of mind, heart and character that will be needed for this service. In order for a person to serve God, he needs certain divine qualities, something from God’s goodness and wisdom. He who thinks to serve a holy God must himself be holy. God not only chooses a person for a special ministry and separates him from others, but also provides him with all the necessary qualities to fulfill the ministry entrusted to him.
We must always remember that God has chosen us and dedicated us to a special ministry. It is that we love Him and obey Him and bring others to Him. But God did not leave us to ourselves and our insignificant strength in the performance of His service, but in His goodness and mercy fits us for service if we surrender ourselves into His hands.
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE (John 17:20.21)
Gradually, Jesus' prayer reached all the ends of the earth. First He prayed for Himself, since the Cross stood before Him, then He passed on to His disciples, asking God for help and protection for them, and now His prayer covers the distant future and He prays for those who in distant countries in future centuries will also accept the Christian faith .
Two character traits Jesus is clearly expressed here. First, we saw His complete faith and bright confidence. Despite the fact that He had few followers and the Cross awaited Him ahead, His confidence was unshakable and He prayed for those who would believe in Him in the future. This passage should be especially dear to us, for it is Jesus' prayer for us. Secondly, we saw His confidence in His disciples. He saw that they did not understand everything; He knew that they would all soon leave Him in His greatest need and trouble, but it was to them that He spoke with complete confidence so that they would spread His name throughout the world. Jesus never for a moment lost His faith in God or His trust in people.
How He prayed for future Church? He asked that all its members be as united with each other as He is one with His Father. What kind of unity did He have in mind? This is not administrative or organizational unity, or unity based on agreement, but the unity of personal communication. We have already seen that the unity between Jesus and His Father was expressed in love and obedience. Jesus prayed for a unity of love, a unity where people love each other because they love God, a unity based solely on the relationship of heart to heart.
Christians will never organize their churches the same way, and they will never worship God in the same way, they will never even believe in exactly the same way, but Christian unity transcends all these differences and binds people together in love. Christian unity in our day, as throughout history, has suffered and been hindered because people loved their own church organizations, their own rules, their own rituals more than they loved each other. If we truly loved Jesus Christ and each other, no church would exclude Christ's disciples. Only the love implanted by God in the human heart can overcome the barriers that people have erected between individuals and their churches.
Further, in praying for unity, Jesus asked that it be a unity that would convince the world of the truth and the position that Jesus Christ occupies. It is much more natural for people to be divided than to be united. People tend to scatter in different directions rather than merge together. True unity among Christians would be “a supernatural fact in need of a supernatural explanation.” It is a sad fact that the Church has never shown true unity before the world.
Looking at the division of Christians, the world cannot see the high value Christian faith. It is the duty of each of us to show unity of love with our brothers, which would be the answer to the prayer of Christ. Ordinary believers, members of churches can and are obliged to do what the “leaders” of the Church refuse to do officially.
THE GIFT AND PROMISE OF GLORY (John 17:22-26)
The famous commentator Bengel, reading this passage, exclaimed: “Oh, how great is the glory of the Christian!” And indeed it is so.
First, Jesus says that He gave His disciples the glory that the Father had given Him. We need to fully understand what this means. What was Jesus' glory? He Himself spoke about it in three ways.
a) The cross was His glory. Jesus did not say that he would be crucified, but that he would be glorified. This means that first of all and most importantly, the glory of a Christian should be the cross that he is supposed to bear. Suffering for the sake of Christ is the honor of a Christian. We do not dare to think of our cross as a punishment, but only as our glory. The more difficult the task given to the knight, the greater his glory seemed to him. The more difficult the task given to a student or an artist or a surgeon, the more honor they receive. And therefore, when it is difficult for us to be Christians, let us consider this the glory given to us by God.
b) Jesus' complete submission to the will of God was His glory. And we find our glory not in self-will, but in doing the will of God. When we do as we please, which many of us do, we find only sorrow and disaster for ourselves and for others. The true glory of life can only be found in complete obedience to the will of God. The stronger and more complete the obedience, the brighter and greater the glory.
c) The glory of Jesus was that His relationship with God could be judged by His life. People recognized in His behavior signs of a special relationship with God. They understood that no one could live the way He lived unless God were with Him. And our glory, like the glory of Jesus, should be that people see God in us, recognize by our behavior that we are in close relationship with Him.
Second, Jesus expresses his desire for the disciples to see His heavenly glory. Believers in Christ are confident that they will be partakers of the glory of Christ in heaven. If a believer shares His Cross with Christ, he will share His glory with Ninus. “This is a true saying: if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, then we will reign with Him; if we deny, then He will also deny us.” (2 Tim. 2.11.12). “Now we see through a glass darkly, darkly, but then face to face.” (1 Cor. 13:12). The joy that we feel here is only a foretaste of the future joy that still awaits us. Christ promised that if we share His glory and His suffering on earth, we will share with Him His triumph when earthly life comes to an end. Can anything surpass such a promise?
After this prayer, Jesus went to face betrayal, judgment and the cross. He no longer had to talk to the students. How pleasant it is to see, and how dear to our memory to remember, that before the terrible hours that lay ahead of Him, the last words of Jesus were not words of despair, but words of glory.
Commentary (introduction) to the entire book of John
Comments on Chapter 17
The depth of this book has no equal in the world. A. T. Robertson
Introduction
I. SPECIAL POSITION IN THE CANON
According to John himself, his book was written specifically for unbelievers - “so that you may believe” (20:31).
The Church once followed the call of the apostles: in the nineteenth century, millions of copies of the pocket Gospels of John were distributed.
The Gospel of John is also one of the most beloved books of the Bible - if not most beloved - for many mature and zealous Christians.
John does not simply list some facts from the life of our Lord; in his book we find many reasonings, reflections of the apostle, who stayed with Christ from the days of his youth in Galilee to his very advanced years in Asia. In his Gospel we find that famous verse that Martin Luther called “Good News in miniature” - John 3:16.
If the Gospel of John were the only book in the NT, it would contain enough material for anyone to study and ponder for the rest of their lives.
The question of the authorship of the fourth Gospel has been discussed very widely and actively over the past 150 years. The reason for this increased interest lies, undoubtedly, in the confidence with which the evangelist testifies to the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Attempts have been made to prove that this Gospel did not come from the pen of an eyewitness, but is the work of an unknown but brilliant theologian who lived fifty or a hundred years after the events he describes. Therefore, it reflects the later teaching of the Church about Christ, not who Jesus really was, what He really said, and what He really did.
Clement of Alexandria wrote about how John's close friends, having found him in Ephesus, suggested that he write his own Gospel in addition to the existing synoptic ones. And so, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle created his spiritual Gospel. This does not mean that the rest of the Gospels unspiritual. It is simply that the special emphasis that John places on the words of Christ and on the deeper meaning of those miraculous signs that He revealed gives us the right to distinguish this Gospel as “spiritual.”
External evidence
The first written evidence that the author of the Gospel in question is John is found in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch (c. 170 AD). However, there are other, earlier, implicit mentions and references to the fourth Gospel in Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tatian, in the Muratori canon and in the heretics Basilid and Valentinus.
Irenaeus closes the chain of disciples going from Jesus Christ Himself to John, from John to Polycarp and from Polycarp to Irenaeus. This covers the period from the birth of Christianity to the end of the second century. Irenaeus often quotes this Gospel, considering it the work of John and perceiving it as recognized by the Church. Beginning with Irenaeus, this Gospel received universal recognition, including Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian.
It has been suggested that the very end of the twenty-first chapter was added by the elders of the Ephesian church at the end of the first century to encourage believers to accept the Gospel of John. Verse 24 turns us back to the “disciple whom Jesus loved” mentioned in verse 20 and also in chapter 13. These references have always been taken to refer to the apostle John.
Liberals argued that the fourth Gospel was written in end second century. But in 1920, a fragment of the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of John was discovered in Egypt (Papyrus 52, dated using objective methods first half of the second century, approximately 125 AD. e.). The fact that it was found in a provincial town (and not in Alexandria for example) confirms that the traditionally accepted date of writing - the end of the first century - is correct, since it took some time for the manuscripts from Ephesus to spread to the borders of southern Egypt. A similar fragment from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, Papyrus Egerton 2, which also dates back to the beginning of the second century, further strengthens the assumption that this Gospel was written during the life of the Apostle John.
Internal evidence
At the end of the nineteenth century, the famous Anglican theologian, Bishop Westcott, made a very convincing case for the authorship of John. The sequence of his reasoning is as follows: 1) the author is undoubtedly Jewish- writing style, vocabulary, knowledge of Jewish customs and cultural characteristics, as well as the Old Testament subtext appearing in the Gospel - all this confirms this assumption; 2) this Jew living in Palestine(1.28; 2:1.11; 4.46; 11:18.54; 21.1-2). He knows Jerusalem and the temple well (5:2; 9:7; 18:1; 19:13,17,20,41; see also 2:14-16; 8:20; 10:22); 3) he is eyewitness of what it tells: in the text there are many small details about the place of action, persons, time and customs (4.46; 5.14; 6.59; 12.21; 13.1; 14:5.8; 18, 6; 19.31); 4) this one of the apostles: he shows knowledge inner life in the circle of disciples and the life of the Lord Himself (6:19,60-61; 12,16; 13:22,28; 16,19); 5) since the author names other students, but never mentions himself, this gives us the right to assume that the nameless student is from 13.23; 19.26; 20.2; 21:7,20 - apostle John. Three more important places confirming that the author of the Gospel is an eyewitness to the events described: 1.14; 19.35 and 21.24.
III. WRITING TIME
Irenaeus confidently asserts that John wrote his Gospel in Ephesus. If he is correct, then the earliest possible date would be around 69 or 70 AD. e. - time of John's arrival in Ephesus. Since John nowhere mentions the destruction of Jerusalem, we can assume that this has not yet happened. This fact allows us to conclude that the Gospel was written before this terrible event.
A number of very liberal-minded scholars and Bible specialists, tracing some connection with the scrolls found near the Dead Sea, put forward the version that the Gospel of John was written in 45-66.
This in itself is an extraordinary event, since it is usually liberals who insist on later dating, while conservatives defend versions of earlier dating.
In this case, the tradition of the early Church stands on the side of the later date of writing.
The case for the end of the first century is quite strong. Most scholars agree with the opinion of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Jerome that the Gospel of John was the last of the four to be written and is partly based on the synoptics.
The fact that this Gospel says nothing about the destruction of Jerusalem may be due to the fact that the book was written fifteen to twenty years ago. later when the first shock has already passed. Irenaeus writes that John lived before the reign of Emperor Trajan, who ascended the throne in 98, which means that it is likely that the Gospel was written shortly before that. The references to “Jews” in the Gospel also rather indicate a later date, when opposition to Christianity on the part of the Jews grew into persecution.
So, the exact date It is not possible to establish the writing, but the most likely period is from 85 to 95 AD. e.
IV. PURPOSE OF WRITING AND TOPIC
The entire Gospel of John is built around seven miracles, or signs, performed by Jesus in front of people.
Each of these signs served as proof that Jesus is God. (1) Turning water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee (2:9). (2) Healing of the courtier's son (4:46-54). (3) Healing of the sick near the pool of Bethesda (5:2-9). (4) Feeding of the five thousand (6:1-14). (5) Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee to save the disciples from the storm (6:16-21). (6) Healing of a man born blind (9:1-7). (7) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-44). In addition to these seven miracles performed publicly, there is one more, eighth miracle that Christ performed in the presence of his disciples after His resurrection - catching fish (21:1-14).
Charles R. Erdman wrote that the Fourth Gospel "has moved more people to follow Christ, inspired more believers to righteous service, and presented more challenges to explorers than any other book."
It is according to the Gospel of John that the chronology Christ's ministry on earth. If we follow the other three Gospels, it would seem that it lasted only a year. The mention of annual national holidays in John identifies a period of approximately three years. Pay attention to the following places: the first feast of the Passover (2:12-13); “Jewish holiday” (5:1) - this could be either Easter or Purim; second (or third) Easter holiday (6.4); setting up tabernacles (7.2); the feast of Renewal (10.22) and the last feast of Easter (12.1).
John is also very precise in his references to time. If the other three evangelists are quite satisfied with approximate indications of time, then John notes such details as the seventh hour (4.52); third day (2.1); two days (11.6); six days (12.1).
Style and vocabulary This Gospel is unique and comparable only to the style of John's epistles.
Its sentences are short and simple. The author clearly thinks in Hebrew, although he writes in Greek. Often, sentences are shorter the more important the idea they contain. The vocabulary is more limited compared to the rest of the Gospels, but deeper in meaning. Please note the following important words and how often they appear in the text: Father (118), believe (100), peace (78), love (45), witness (47), life (37), light (24).
A distinctive feature of the Gospel of John is the author's frequent use of the number seven and multiples of seven. Throughout Scripture, this number is always associated with the idea of perfection and completeness (see Gen. 2:1-3). In this Gospel, the Spirit of God made the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ perfect and complete, therefore examples and various images associated with the number seven are found here quite often.
There are also seven “I am”s from the Gospel of John: (1) “bread of life” (6:35,41,48,51); "light of the world" (8.12; 9.5); "door" (10:7,9); "the good shepherd" (10:11,14); "resurrection and life" (11.25); “the way and the truth and the life” (14:6) and “The Vine” (15:1,5). Less well known are the other “I am” or “this is I”, which are not followed by a definition: 4.26; 6.20; 8:24,28,58; 13.19; 18:5,8; twice in the last verse.
In chapter six, which talks about the bread of life, Greek word, translated as “bread” and “loaves,” appears twenty-one times, a multiple of seven. In the same chapter, the phrase “bread from heaven” occurs exactly seven times, the same number as the expression “came down from heaven.”
Thus, we can conclude that John wrote this Gospel so that all who read it “would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing they would have life in His name” (20:31).
Plan
I. PROLOGUE: THE FIRST COMING OF THE SON OF GOD (1:1-18)
II. THE FIRST YEAR OF THE MINISTRY OF THE SON OF GOD (1.19 - 4.51)
III. THE SECOND YEAR OF THE MINISTRY OF THE SON OF GOD (Ch. 5)
IV. THE THIRD YEAR OF THE SON OF GOD'S MINISTRY: GALILEE (Ch. 6)
V. THIRD YEAR OF THE MINISTRY OF THE SON OF GOD: JERUSALEM (7.1 - 10.39)
VI. THIRD YEAR OF THE MINISTRY OF THE SON OF GOD: PEREA (10.40 - 11.57)
VII. THE MINISTRY OF THE SON OF GOD TO HIS CHOSEN (Ch. 12 - 17)
VIII. THE SUFFERING AND DEATH OF THE SON OF GOD (Ch. 18 - 19)
IX. THE TRIUMPH OF THE SON OF GOD (Ch. 20)
X. EPILOGUE: THE RISEN SON OF GOD WITH HIS CHOSEN (Ch. 21)
C. Jesus prays for His ministry (17:1-5)
Now we will look at the chapter which is known as the prayer of the Lord Jesus to the Most High. In this prayer He interceded for Himself. This is an illustration of His present ministry in heaven, where He prays for His people. Marcus Rainsford said it well:
"The whole prayer is a wonderful illustration of the intercession of our blessed Lord, seated right hand from God. Not a word against His people; no mention of their failures or shortcomings... No, He speaks of them as being in the center of the Father's attention, as those who are an integral part of Himself, as worthy to receive in full what He has to give them by descending from heaven... All the special intercessions of the Lord for His elect concern spiritual things; they all refer to heavenly blessings. The Lord does not ask for wealth, or honor, or worldly power, or successful promotion for them, but very sincerely asks them to keep them from evil, to keep them away from worldly things, to help them do their duty and come home safely to heaven. Spiritual success - best success; this is an indicator of true well-being."(Marcus Rainsford, Our Lord Prays for His Own, p. 173.)
17,1 The hour has come. Not once were the enemies able to take Him, because His hour Not has arrived. But now the time has come when the Lord must die. "Glorify Your Son"- the Savior prayed. He foresaw His death on the cross. If He remains in the grave, the world will know that He was only one of the people. But if God glorifies Him by raising Him from the dead, this will be proof that He is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. God answered this request by resurrecting the Lord Jesus on the third day and then taking Him back to heaven and crowning Him with glory and honor.
"And Your Son will glorify You"- the Lord continued. The meaning of these words is explained in the next two verses.
Jesus glorifies the Father by giving eternal life to those who believe in Him. God is glorified when wandering men and women without God are converted and manifest the life of the Lord Jesus on this earth.
17,2 As a result of the atoning sacrifice on the cross, God gave His Son power over all flesh. This power gave Him the right grant eternal life to those whom the Father Gave him.
Here again we are reminded that before the creation of the world God chose those who belong to Christ. However, remember that God offers salvation to everyone who accepts Jesus Christ. There is no one who cannot be saved if he trusts in the Savior.
17,3 There is a simple explanation on how to get eternal life: know God and Jesus Christ. The one true God- in contrast to idols, which are not true gods.
This verse does not imply that Jesus Christ is not the true God. The fact that His name is mentioned together with God the Father, as the only source of eternal life, means that They are equal.
Here the Lord is named Jesus Christ. "Christ" means "Messiah".
This verse refutes the charge that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah.
17,4 When the Lord spoke these words, He spoke as if He had already died, been buried and resurrected. He glorified His Father by his sinless life, miracles, suffering, death and His resurrection. He did the deed salvation which the Father instructed To him.
Here's how Ryle puts it:
"The crucifixion brought glory to the Father. It glorified His wisdom, faithfulness, holiness and love. It showed His wisdom in carrying out a plan by which He could remain just and at the same time a vindicator of sinners. It showed His faithfulness in fulfilling His promise that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. It showed Him to the saints in demanding the fulfillment of His law through our great Redeemer. He showed His love by sending to sinner such a Mediator, such a Deliverer, and such a Friend as His eternal Son brought glory. To the Son. It glorified His compassion, patience and power. It showed His deepest compassion, for He suffered for us, accepted our sins and curses, redeeming us with His own Blood. It showed His greatest patience when He died. a death unusual for most people, voluntarily enduring such pain and torment that no one can imagine, while it was enough for Him to utter only one word - and the angels of the Father could free Him. He showed His greatest power, for He bore the burden of the sins of the whole world, defeated the devil and took away his spoils."(Ryle, John, III:40, 41.)
17,5 Before His coming into the world, Christ dwelt in heaven with the Father. When the angels saw the Lord, they saw all His Divine glory. For them He was undoubtedly God. But when He walked among men, the Divine glory was hidden. Although He was still God, this was not obvious to most people. They looked upon Him as the Carpenter's Son. Here the Savior asks that the visible manifestation of His glory be restored in heaven. Words: "...glorify Me, Father, with Your own glory"- means: “Glorify Me in Your presence in heaven.
Let the original glory that I shared with You before My incarnation be restored."
This clearly proves that Christ existed before the creation of the world.
S. Jesus prays for His disciples (17:6-19)
17,6 Jesus opened students Name Father. "Name" in Scripture signifies the Person, its attributes and character. Christ fully revealed the true nature of the Father. The students were are given Son from the world. They were separated from the unbelieving majority of humanity and kept apart to belong to Christ. "They were elected Father before the creation of the world, given to Christ as the gift of the Father and became His through the atoning Blood,” wrote J. G. Bellett. "And they kept Your word", - said the Lord. Despite all their failures and shortcomings, He honors them by saying that they believed in Him and kept His teachings. “Not one bad word about His redeemed,” writes Rainsford, “not one hint of what they had done or were about to do—forsake Him.”
17,7-8 The Savior revealed His Father perfectly. He explained to the disciples that He did not speak and act by His own authority, but only by the will of His Father. So they realized that Father sent Son. Moreover, Christ was not initiator Your mission. He obeyed the will of the Father. He was a perfect Servant of Jehovah.
17,9 As High Priest, He prayed for the disciples; He didn't pray for the whole world. This does not mean that Christ never prayed for peace. On the cross He asked: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But here He prayed as the One who presented the believers before the throne of God. Here His prayer is only for His own.
17,10 This verse shows the perfect union between the Father and the Son. No ordinary person could honestly say these words. We could say to God: "All of Mine is Yours" but we couldn't say: "All Yours is Mine." The Son is equal with the Father, so he could speak like that. In these verses (6-19) Jesus represents His poor and timid flock and, dressing each lamb in a robe of many colors, declares: "And I was glorified in them."
17,11 The Lord Jesus was awaiting His return to heaven. He prayed as if he had already gone there. Pay attention to the name "Holy Father." "Holy" speaks of the One who infinitely high. "Father" speaks of the One who infinitely dear.
Jesus Prayer: "...so that they may be one" refers to the unity of Christians. Since the Father and the Son are one in moral likeness, believers must be united to be like the Lord Jesus.
17,12 When Savior was with disciples, He kept them in the name The Father, that is, kept His strength and power in fidelity to Him. "None of them died- said Jesus, - except the son of perdition" that is, Judas. But this did not mean that Judas was one of those whom the Father gave to the Son, or that he was ever a true believer. The sentence means this: “Those whom You gave me I have kept, and not one of them is lost, but the son of perdition is lost, that it might be fulfilled.” Holy Bible". Name "son of perdition" means that Judas was condemned to eternal destruction, or damnation. Judas was not forced to betray Christ in order to fulfill the prophecy, but he himself decided to betray the Savior, and thus The Holy Scriptures were fulfilled.
17,13 The Lord explained why He prayed in the presence of His disciples. It was as if He was saying to them, “These are the ones for whom I will never cease interceding in heaven with God. But now I am saying this in the world, and you listen to better understand how I will pray for you and your well-being so that you can share with Me my joy perfect."
17,14 The Lord gave word God to the disciples, and they received it. As a result world turned his back to them and hated them. They had much in common with the Lord Jesus, and therefore world despised them. They did not conform to the world's system.
17,15 Lord didn't beg Father take believers go home to heaven immediately. They must remain here, grow in grace, and testify for Christ. But Christ prayed that God would preserve them from evil. I didn't take it, but I kept it.
17,16 Christians not from the world like Christ not from the world. We must remember this when we are tempted to take part in some worldly amusements or to join worldly associations where the very name of Jesus is distasteful.
17,17 Sanctify- means to isolate, separate. The Word of God has a sanctifying effect on believers. By reading and observing it, they are set apart, becoming vessels that the Master uses. This is exactly what the Lord Jesus prayed for here. He wanted people to separate themselves from the world and become fit for God's use. "Your word is truth"- said Jesus. He did not say, as many say today: "In Your Word contained true" but: "Your word IS truth".
17,18 Father sent Lord Jesus in to the world to reveal God's character to people. While praying, the Lord understood that he would soon return to heaven. But subsequent generations will also need a witness to God. This work will have to be done by believers by the power of the Holy Spirit. Of course, Christians will never be able to represent God as perfectly as Christ did, since they will never be able to be equal with God. But believers will still represent God to the world. It is for this reason that Jesus sent them into the world.
17,19 Sanctify doesn't necessarily mean do saints. He is holy according to His personal qualities. It says here that the Lord isolates Himself for the work for which the Father sent Him, that is, to sacrificial death. It may also be implied that He set himself apart by taking His place outside the world and receiving glory. "His dedication is an example and an opportunity for us," says Wine. We must separate ourselves from the world and find our destiny in Him.
S.H. Jesus prays for all believers (17:20-26)
17,20 Here the High Priest prayed not only for the disciples. He prays for future generations. In fact, every believer who reads this verse can say, “Over 1,900 years ago, Jesus asked for me.”
17,21 In prayer He asked for unity among believers, but this time it was with the thought of the salvation of sinners.
The unity for which Christ prayed did not imply an external union of churches. Rather, it was a unity based on common moral similarities. He asked the believers were All united revealing the essence of God and Christ. This is what will make the world to believe that God sent His. This unity will force the world to say: “As the Father was seen in Christ, so I see Christ in Christians.”
17,22 In verse two, the Lord prayed for unity in fellowship. Verse 21 is about unity in proclaiming testimony. Here - about unity in glory. He looked forward to the time when the saints would receive their glorified bodies.
"The Glory That You Gave Me" is the glory of resurrection and ascension. We don't have this glory yet. She given us to fulfill God's purposes, but we will not receive it until the Savior returns to take us to heaven. It will be revealed to the world when Christ returns to establish His Kingdom on earth. Then the world will understand the vital unity between the Father and the Son and the Son and His people and recognize (too late) that Jesus is sent by God.
17,23 World will not only understand that Jesus is God the Son, but will also learn that God loves believers just as he loves Christ. It seems almost incredible that we are so loved, but we are!
17,24 The Son desires that His elect should be with Him in glory. Whenever a believer dies, it is, in a sense, an answer to Christ's prayer. If we understand this, we will be consoled in our grief. To die means to go to be with Christ and behold His glory. This glory- not only the Divine glory that He had with God before the creation of the world. This is also the glory that He acquired as Savior and Deliverer.
This glory- proof that God I loved Christ before the foundation of the world.
17,25 World failed to see God revealed in Jesus. But several students were able and believed What Jesus sent God. On the eve of His crucifixion on the cross, there were only a few devoted hearts left in the whole world - and even those were about to leave Him!
17,26 Lord Jesus discovered the name Father to His disciples when He was with them. This implied that He showed them the Father. His words and deeds were the words and deeds of the Father. In Christ they saw the perfect expression of the Father. Jesus will continue open the name of the Father through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. After the day of Pentecost, the Spirit will teach believers about God the Father. We can also know who God is through the Word of God. When people accept the Father revealed by the Lord Jesus, they become special objects of the Father's love. The Lord Jesus abides in all believers, therefore the Father can see His Son in them and treat them as His only Son. Reuss notes:
"The love of God, which is to the ground physical world was entirely directed to the Person of the Son (v. 24), extends after the creation of the new spiritual world on those who are one with the Son."
And Gaudet adds:
“By sending His Son to earth, God precisely wanted to create for Himself from humanity a family of children like Him.”(F. L. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, II:345.)
It is because the Lord Jesus dwells in the believer that God loves him as He loves Christ.
I am so infinitely dear to God,
That I can’t be more expensive;
With the love with which He loves the Son,
He loves me too!
(Catesby Raget)
The intercessions of Christ for His redeemed, as Rainsford observes, ...refer to spiritual things, to heavenly blessings. He asks not for wealth, or honor, or worldly power, but for deliverance from evil, for separation from the world, for devoted service and safe entry into heaven."(Rainsford, Our Lord Prays, p. 173.)
The spirit breathes where it wants. God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Anyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. If a grain of wheat falls into the ground and does not die... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
Papyrus P52, containing one of the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of John found, is dated 125. Gospel of John (Greek... Wikipedia
Gospel of John- probably written in Ephesus in 70 100 AD. It apparently assumes that readers are familiar with the rest of the Gospels. So, for example, in John. 3:24 the imprisonment of John the Baptist is mentioned as a fact known to the readers. It was obviously... Dictionary of Biblical Names
I. THE KEY TO THE GOSPEL The key to E. of I. is found in 1 John 1:1,3: What we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon, and what our hands have touched, the Word of life...we declare to you. Only the tangibility of the eternal makes it possible to preach the gospel about it; don't be this... Brockhaus Biblical Encyclopedia
GOSPEL OF JOHN- see articles Gospel; John the Theologian... Orthodox Encyclopedia
- “In the beginning was the Word” ... The testimony of John the Baptist about the true Light. John points to Jesus as the Lamb of God. The calling of the first apostles...
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him: who are you? John 5:33 ... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Biblical encyclopedia arch. Nikifor.
One of the two who heard from John [about Jesus] and followed Him was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Biblical encyclopedia arch. Nikifor.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night; “You must be born again”; “God so loved the world.” Further testimony of John the Baptist about Jesus... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Biblical encyclopedia arch. Nikifor.
Healing on Saturday a sick person at the bath; the Jews accuse Jesus. Jesus' Answer: Father and Son; the testimony of John and the Scriptures... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Biblical encyclopedia arch. Nikifor.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Proverbs 8:22 1 John 1:1 1 John 1:2 ... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Biblical encyclopedia arch. Nikifor.
Books
- The Gospel of John, Bruce Milne. This book will be produced in accordance with your order using Print-on-Demand technology.
- The Gospel of John has had an invaluable influence on human history. Its pages conclude...
The Gospel of John, Milne B.. The Gospel of John contains an ethical and spiritual force that has brought about political change, changed society and people over the centuries.. The book focuses on...
Art. 1.2. After these words, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and said: Father! The hour has come: glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, since You have given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to all that You have given Him: The doctrines of general and partial atonement are beautifully mixed here. "Since Thou hast given Him authority over all flesh," by the power of His incomparable Sacrifice all flesh is under Christ's mediatorial control, but the special object here meant is the gift eternal life chosen people
: “That He may give eternal life to all that You have given Him.”
This means that no one who is ignorant of God and His Son Jesus Christ has eternal life; but the knowledge of God and the knowledge of Christ is an undoubted proof that we have a life that will never die: “and this is eternal life.”
Art. 4-6. I glorified You on earth, I accomplished the work that You entrusted Me with; and now glorify Me, O Father, with You, with the glory that I had with You before the world was. I have revealed Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word;
Isn't it sweet to become partakers of our Divine Lord? These chosen ones were in best case scenario miserable creatures, very forgetful and very deluded; and yet their Lord brings no charges against them, but says to His Father, “They have kept Thy word.”
Art. 7. Now they have understood that everything that You have given Me is from You;
"They have learned to unite the Father and the Son. They know that although I am the channel of every blessing, yet You, My Father, are the fountain from which it flows."
"Oh, we are the heavenly Father
We honor you as if you were our own!
We seek the light of His face,
we "Father!" we're talking!
The Son redeemed us on the cross,
and we are His people.
But the Son and the Father are One everywhere,
and the grace that is in Christ,
flows to us from the Father."
Art. 8. For the words that You gave Me I delivered to them, and they received and understood truly that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me.
He looks at them in contrast to the world, which has completely rejected Him. In contrast to this world, the disciples accepted and understood Christ. Oh, what a blessed difference the grace of God makes between people! We were all blind by nature, and if now we see, it is because the sacred finger of Christ touched our eyes and opened them. Let all the glory of this belong to Him, but still notice how well He speaks of His people: see v. 8.
Art. 9.10. I pray for them: I do not pray for the whole world, but for those whom You have given Me, because they are Yours; and all that is Mine is Thine, and Thine is Mine; and I was glorified in them.
O blessed unity of interests between Christ and His Father! Oh, how surely we belong to the Father, if truly, in fact we belong to Christ! Oh, what a holy union is thus established!
Art. 11. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father! keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one, just as We are.
Thus, this is a prayer for the preservation and unity of God's people, two very necessary requests. God grant that they be fulfilled in us, that we be kept, and kept to the end, and - further - kept in living unity with all the people of God, and with the Father and the Son!
Art. 12,13. When I was at peace with them, I kept them in Thy name; those whom You gave Me I have kept, and none of them perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Now I come to You, and I say this in the world, so that they may have My complete joy within themselves.
In this amazing prayer, pay attention to the special meaning of Christ’s words: not only that we may have joy, but that we may have the joy of Christ; and not only to have it, but to have it complete in us.
Art. 14-16. I gave them Your word, and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from evil; They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Jesus twice emphasizes this very special and important fact, which we must never forget: “they are not of the world.” Let us never live as if we are from the world, but where such a living difference has been established, may God help that there will be the same difference in our lives! Now comes the prayer for sanctification.
Art. 17.18. Sanctify them with Your truth: Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, so I sent them into the world;
Christ was the Great Missionary, the Messiah, the Sent One. We are lesser missionaries, sent into the world to carry out the will and purpose of the Father.
Art. 19, 20. and for their sakes I consecrate Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me through their word:
This suggests that Christ's prayer also includes those of us who believed in Him according to the word proclaimed by the apostles. Christ looked with a foreseeing eye on each of us who believed in Him, and prayed for each of us just as He prayed for John, Peter and James.
Art. 21, 22. that they may all be one; as You, Father, are in Me, and appear to You, so may they also be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory that You gave Me, I have given them: that they may be one, even as We are one.
Unity is the glory of the Church of Christ. It is called to be the true crown of the Church of the living God, and when she puts it on, then the amazed world will recognize and accept her Lord.
Art. 23. I am in them, and You are in Me; that they may be perfected into one, and that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them as You loved Me.
Amazing words! How can we delve into their depth? Just think - the Father loved us as much as His Only Begotten Son! Oh, the height and depth of this amazing love!
Art. 24, 25. Father! whom You have given Me, I want them to be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory, which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father! and the world did not know You; but I have known You, and these have known that You sent Me;
Notice the division present here. There are two camps: there is the world and there is the Church. What separates them? Read these two phrases: “the world has not known you” and “they have known that you sent me.” What stands between them? - “And I knew You.” This is Christ Himself, walking between the two camps like a pillar of cloud and fire, black with darkness for the Egyptians, but bright with light for the Israelites. Oh, to have Christ between you and the world! This -best shape separation: “I have known You, and these have known that You sent me.”
Art. 26. And I have made Your name known to them, and I will make it known,
I read it as it is written. For fear of falling into tautology, our good translators have always been afraid to use the same word too often. And therefore, for the sake of what they considered the beauty of language, they used the word “revealed” instead of “made known (in the sense: “made known, announced” - P.P.).” But on what basis? Who are they to dare to correct the words of Christ? Here should be the same word that was before: “The world did not know You, but I knew You, and these knew that You sent Me; and I made Your name known to them, and will cause them to know.”
Art. 26. That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.
Oh, let this love be in us, for Christ's sake! Amen.
Commentary on the book
Comment to the section
1-26 This prayer of Christ is called the high priestly prayer, for He pronounces it in preparation for the sacrifice of the cross. “The hour has come,” i.e. the time of death and glorification of the Messiah.
3 “Let them know” - the biblical word “to know” means unity in love (cf. John 10:14).
1. Apostle John the Theologian (as the Eastern Church calls the fourth evangelist), younger brother the Apostle James, was the son of the fisherman Zebedee and Salome (Matthew 20:20; Mark 1:19-20; Mark 9:38-40; Luke 9:54); his mother subsequently accompanied the Savior, along with other women who served Him (Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40-41). For their impetuous character, the Zebedee brothers received from Christ the nickname Boanerges (sons of Thunder). In his youth, John was a disciple of John the Baptist. When the Forerunner pointed out Jesus to Andrew and John, calling Him the Lamb of God (hence, according to the word of Isaiah, the Messiah), they both followed Christ (John 1:36-37). One of the three disciples closest to the Lord, John, together with Peter and James (John 13:23), witnessed the transfiguration of the Lord and the Gethsemane prayer for the cup (Matt 17:1; Matt 26:37). Christ's beloved disciple, he reclined at His chest at the Last Supper (John 1:23); dying, the Savior entrusted him to the filial care of His Most Pure Mother (John 19:26-27). He was one of the first to hear the news of the Resurrection of Christ. After the Ascension of the Lord, John preached the good news in Judea and Samaria (Acts 3:4; Acts 8:4-25). According to legend, he spent the last years of his life in the city of Ephesus, where he died approx. 100 In the letter to the Galatians (Gal 2:9) ap. Paul calls him the pillar of the Church.
2. Early Fathers Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Justin the Martyr is called the fourth Ev. The Gospel of John. It is also named in the list of canonical books that has come down to us, compiled in the 2nd century. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, disciple of St. Polycarp, former student Apostle John, indicates that John wrote his Gospel after the other evangelists during his stay in Ephesus. According to Clement of Alexandria. John, fulfilling the desire of his disciples, who found that the gospels depict mainly the human appearance of Christ, wrote the “Spiritual Gospel.”
3. The text of the Gospel itself testifies that its author was a resident of Palestine; he knows its cities and villages, customs and holidays well and does not neglect specific historical details. In the language of the evangelist one can feel the Semitic overtones and the influence of Jewish literature of that time. All this confirms ancient legend, that the fourth Gospel was written by the Lord’s beloved disciple (not named in John). The oldest manuscript of Ing dates back to 120, and the Gospel itself was written in the 90s. Ev from John differs from the Synoptic Gospels both in its content and in the form of presentation. This is the most theological of the Gospels. It devotes a lot of space to the speeches of Christ, in which the secret of His messengership and sonship of God is revealed. The God-man is presented as the Word who descended into the world from Heaven and returns to the Father. John pays great attention to issues almost not touched upon by other evangelists: the pre-eternity of the Son as the Word of God, the incarnation of the Word, the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, Christ as the bread coming down from heaven, the Comforter Spirit, the unity of all in Christ. The evangelist reveals the mystery of the divine-human consciousness of Jesus, but at the same time does not obscure His earthly features, speaking about the friendly feelings of Christ, about His fatigue, sorrow, and tears. The miracles of the Lord are shown in John as “signs”, signs of the coming new era. The evangelist does not cite the eschatological speeches of Christ, focusing on those of His words where the Judgment of God was declared to have already come (that is, from the moment when the preaching of Jesus began; for example, John 3:19; John 8:16; John 9:39; John 12:31).
3. Construction gospel history In In is more thorough than that of the weather forecasters. The author (who begins with the period after the temptation of Christ in the desert) dwells on each visit of the Lord to Jerusalem. Thus, the reader sees that Christ’s earthly ministry lasted about three years.
4. Plan of John: John is clearly divided into two parts, which can roughly be called: 1. Signs of the Kingdom (John 1:19-12:50); 2. Ascending into the Glory of the Father (John 13:1-20:31). They are preceded by a prologue (John 1:1-18). John ends with an epilogue (John 21:1-25).
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Holy Scriptures of the New Testament were written in Greek, with the exception of the Gospel of Matthew, which, according to tradition, was written in Hebrew or Aramaic. But since this Hebrew text has not survived, the Greek text is considered the original for the Gospel of Matthew. Thus, only the Greek text of the New Testament is the original, and numerous editions in various modern languages around the world are translations from the Greek original.
The Greek language in which it was written New Testament, was no longer the classical ancient Greek language and was not, as previously thought, a special New Testament language. It is a spoken everyday language of the first century A.D., which spread throughout the Greco-Roman world and is known in science as “κοινη”, i.e. "ordinary adverb"; yet both the style, the turns of phrase, and the way of thinking of the sacred writers of the New Testament reveal Hebrew or Aramaic influence.
The original text of the NT has come down to us in a large number of ancient manuscripts, more or less complete, numbering about 5000 (from the 2nd to the 16th centuries). Before recent years the most ancient of them did not go back further than the 4th century no P.X. But for Lately Many fragments of ancient NT manuscripts on papyrus (3rd and even 2nd century) were discovered. For example, Bodmer's manuscripts: John, Luke, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude - were found and published in the 60s of our century. In addition to Greek manuscripts, we have ancient translations or versions into Latin, Syriac, Coptic and other languages (Vetus Itala, Peshitto, Vulgata, etc.), of which the most ancient existed already from the 2nd century AD.
Finally, numerous quotations from the Church Fathers have been preserved in Greek and other languages in such quantities that if the text of the New Testament were lost and all the ancient manuscripts were destroyed, then experts could restore this text from quotations from the works of the Holy Fathers. All this abundant material makes it possible to check and clarify the text of the NT and classify its various forms (so-called textual criticism). Compared with any ancient author (Homer, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Cornelius Nepos, Julius Caesar, Horace, Virgil, etc.), our modern printed Greek text of the NT is in an exceptionally favorable position. And in the number of manuscripts, and in the shortness of time separating the oldest of them from the original, and in the number of translations, and in their antiquity, and in the seriousness and volume of critical work carried out on the text, it surpasses all other texts (for details, see “Hidden Treasures and new life", Archaeological Discovery and the Gospel, Bruges, 1959, pp. 34 ff.). The text of the NT as a whole is recorded completely irrefutably.
The New Testament consists of 27 books. The publishers have divided them into 260 chapters of unequal length to accommodate references and quotations. This division is not present in the original text. The modern division into chapters in the New Testament, as in the whole Bible, has often been attributed to the Dominican Cardinal Hugo (1263), who worked it out when composing a symphony for the Latin Vulgate, but it is now thought with greater reason that this division goes back to Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury Langton, who died in 1228. As for the division into verses, now accepted in all editions of the New Testament, it goes back to the publisher of the Greek New Testament text, Robert Stephen, and was introduced by him in his edition in 1551.
The sacred books of the New Testament are usually divided into laws (the Four Gospels), historical (the Acts of the Apostles), teaching (seven conciliar epistles and fourteen epistles of the Apostle Paul) and prophetic: the Apocalypse or the Revelation of John the Theologian (see the Long Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow).
However, modern experts consider this distribution to be outdated: in fact, all the books of the New Testament are legal, historical and educational, and prophecy is not only in the Apocalypse. New Testament scholarship pays great attention to the precise establishment of the chronology of the Gospel and other New Testament events. Scientific chronology allows the reader to trace with sufficient accuracy through the New Testament the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, the apostles and the primitive Church (see Appendices).
The books of the New Testament can be distributed as follows:
1) Three so-called synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and, separately, the fourth: the Gospel of John. New Testament scholarship devotes much attention to the study of the relationships of the first three Gospels and their relation to the Gospel of John (synoptic problem).
2) The Book of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul (“Corpus Paulinum”), which are usually divided into:
a) Early Epistles: 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.
b) Greater Epistles: Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Romans.
c) Messages from bonds, i.e. written from Rome, where ap. Paul was in prison: Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon.
d) Pastoral Epistles: 1st Timothy, Titus, 2nd Timothy.
e) Epistle to the Hebrews.
3) Council Epistles (“Corpus Catholicum”).
4) Revelation of John the Theologian. (Sometimes in the NT they distinguish “Corpus Joannicum”, i.e. everything that St. John wrote for the comparative study of his Gospel in connection with his epistles and the book of Rev.).
FOUR GOSPEL
1. The word “gospel” (ευανγελιον) in Greek means “good news.” This is what our Lord Jesus Christ Himself called His teaching (Matthew 24:14; Matthew 26:13; Mark 1:15; Mark 13:10; Mark 14:9; Mark 16:15). Therefore, for us, the “gospel” is inextricably linked with Him: it is the “good news” of the salvation given to the world through the incarnate Son of God.
Christ and His apostles preached the gospel without writing it down. By the mid-1st century, this preaching had been established by the Church in a strong oral tradition. The Eastern custom of memorizing sayings, stories, and even large texts helped Christians of the apostolic era accurately preserve the unrecorded First Gospel. After the 50s, when eyewitnesses of Christ's earthly ministry began to pass away one after another, the need arose to write down the gospel (Luke 1:1). Thus, the “gospel” came to mean the narrative recorded by the apostles about the life and teaching of the Savior. It was read at prayer meetings and in preparing people for baptism.
2. The most important Christian centers of the 1st century (Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Ephesus, etc.) had their own Gospels. Of these, only four (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) are recognized by the Church as inspired by God, i.e. written under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. They are called “from Matthew”, “from Mark”, etc. (Greek “kata” corresponds to Russian “according to Matthew”, “according to Mark”, etc.), for the life and teachings of Christ are set out in these books by these four sacred writers. Their gospels were not compiled into one book, which made it possible to see the gospel story from different points of view. In the 2nd century St. Irenaeus of Lyons calls the evangelists by name and points to their gospels as the only canonical ones (Against heresies 2, 28, 2). A contemporary of St. Irenaeus, Tatian, made the first attempt to create a single gospel narrative, compiled from various texts of the four gospels, “Diatessaron”, i.e. "gospel of four"
3. The apostles did not set out to create a historical work in the modern sense of the word. They sought to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ, helped people to believe in Him, to correctly understand and fulfill His commandments. The testimonies of the evangelists do not coincide in all details, which proves their independence from each other: the testimonies of eyewitnesses always have an individual coloring. The Holy Spirit does not certify the accuracy of the details of the facts described in the gospel, but spiritual meaning contained in them.
The minor contradictions found in the presentation of the evangelists are explained by the fact that God gave the sacred writers complete freedom in conveying certain specific facts in relation to different categories of listeners, which further emphasizes the unity of meaning and orientation of all four gospels (see also General Introduction, pp. 13 and 14) .
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17 Christ’s farewell conversation with his disciples is over. But before going to meet the enemies who will lead Him to judgment and torment, Christ pronounces a solemn prayer to the Father for Himself, for His disciples and for His future Church, as the great high priest of humanity. This prayer can be divided into three parts. In the first part (1-8 vv.) Christ prays for Himself: He asks for His own glorification or for the granting of divine greatness to Him, as the God-man, since He is the cornerstone of the Church, and the Church can achieve its goal only then when its Head Christ will be glorified. In the second part (verses 9-19), Christ asks for His disciples: He prays to the Father to protect them from the evil that reigns in the world and to sanctify them with divine truth, for they represent the continuers of the work of Christ in the world. The world will only receive the word of Christ in purity and in all its heavenly power when the apostles themselves are confirmed in this word and sanctified by its power. In the third part (vv. 20-26), Christ prays for those who believe in Him: in order for those who believe in Christ to fulfill their purpose - to form the Church of Christ, they must maintain unity among themselves, and Christ pleads for the maintenance of this unity between believers Father. But first of all, they must be in unity with the Father and Christ.
17:3 This is eternal life. Apparently, true eternal life consists, therefore, only in the knowledge of God. But Christ could not express such a thought, because true knowledge of God does not protect a person from the impoverishment of love ( 1 Cor 13:2). It would be more correct to say, therefore, that here by knowledge we mean not only the theoretical assimilation of the truths of faith, but the attraction of the heart to God and Christ, true love.
The One True God. This is what Christ says about God to point out the contrast between the knowledge of God that He has in mind and the incorrect knowledge that the pagans had about God, transferring the glory of the One to many gods ( Rom 1:23).
And Jesus Christ whom You sent. Here Christ calls Himself this way for the first time. “Jesus Christ” is His name here, which later in the mouth of the apostles becomes His usual designation ( Acts 2:38; 3:6 ; 4:10 etc.). The Lord thus, in this last prayer of His, spoken in the hearing of the disciples, gives, so to speak, a well-known formula that should subsequently be used in Christian society. It is very likely that Christ offers this designation in contrast to the Jewish view of Him, according to which He was simply “Jesus” (cf. 9:11 ).
According to negative criticism (for example, Beishlyag), Christ here clearly says that His Father is God, and He Himself is not God at all. But against such an objection, it must be said that Christ here opposes the Father, as the One true God, not to Himself, but to the false gods whom the pagans revered. Then, Christ says that the knowledge of God the Father is achievable only through Him, Christ, and that the knowledge of Christ Himself is as necessary to obtain eternal life or salvation as the knowledge of God the Father. Isn’t it clear that in this He testifies of Himself as One with God the Father in essence? As for the fact that He speaks about knowing Him separately from the knowledge of God the Father, this, according to the remark of Mr. Znamensky, is explained by the fact that in order to achieve the eternal life, not only faith in God is necessary, but also in the redemption of man before God, which was accomplished by the Son of God through the fact that He became the Messiah - the God-man sent from God (the Father) into the world (p. 325).
Evidence from ancient Christian tradition about the origin of the fourth Gospel. Belief Orthodox Church The fact that the writer of the fourth Gospel was the beloved disciple of Christ, the Apostle John, is based on the solid testimony of ancient Christian church tradition. First of all, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in his “refutation of gnosis” (about 185), referring to the tradition of the Asia Minor Church, to which he belonged by his upbringing, says that the Lord’s disciple John wrote the Gospel in Ephesus. He also cites excerpts from the Gospel of John to refute the teachings of the Valentinian heretics. In the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch there are hints that he knew the Gospel of John. So he says that Christ did nothing without the Father (Magn. VII, 1; cf. John 5:19), speaks of the bread of life, which is the body of Christ (Rom. VII, 3; cf. John 6:51), about the Spirit who knows where he is going and where he comes from (Phil. VII, 1; cf. John 3:8), about Jesus as the door of the Father (Phil. IX, 1; cf. John 10:9). Justin Martyr, who lived in Ephesus before settling in Rome, not only in his teaching about the Logos adheres to the teaching of the Gospel of John, but says that his teaching is based on the “memoirs of the apostles,” that is, obviously on the Gospels (Trif. 105 and Apol. I, 66). He mentions the word of Jesus to Nicodemus about regeneration (Apol. 61; cf. John 3:3 et seq.). Around the same time (approximately in the 60s of the second century), the Montanists formally based their teaching that the Comforter Spirit speaks through them on the Gospel of John. The attempt of their enemies-alogues - to attribute the 4th Gospel itself, as having served as a formal support for heretics, to the heretic Cerinthus did not have any success and only served as a reason to testify to the faith of the Church in the origin of the 4th Gospel precisely from John (Irenaeus. Vs. heresy III, 11, 1). In the same way, the attempt of the Gnostics to use different terms from the Gospel of John did not shake the Church’s faith in the authenticity of this Gospel. In the era of Marcus Aurelius (161-180) both in the Church of Asia Minor and outside it, the 4th Gospel is universally recognized as the work of the apostle. John. So the Attes Carpus and Papila, Theophilus of Antioch, Melito, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Tatian, Athenagoras (the Old Latin and Syriac translations already have the Gospel of John) - all are obviously well acquainted with the Gospel of John. Clement of Alexandria even speaks about the reason for which John wrote his Gospel (Eusebius. Church History VI, 14:7). The Muratorian Fragment also testifies to the origin of the Gospel of John (see Analects, ed. Preyshen 1910, p. 27).
Thus, the Gospel of John existed in Asia Minor undoubtedly from the beginning of the second century and was read, and about half of the second century it found its way into other areas where Christians lived, and gained respect as the work of the Apostle John. Given this state of affairs, it is not at all surprising that in many of the works of apostolic men and apologists we do not yet encounter quotations from the Gospel of John or hints at its existence. But the very fact that the student of the heretic Valentine (who came to Rome around 140), Heracleon, wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John, indicates that the Gospel of John appeared much earlier than the second half of the 2nd century, since, undoubtedly, writing an interpretation on a work that has only recently appeared, it would be quite strange. Finally, the evidence of such pillars of Christian Science as Origen (3rd century), Eusebius of Caesarea and Blessed. Jerome (4th century) speaks clearly about the authenticity of the Gospel of John because there cannot be anything unfounded in the church tradition about the origin of the fourth Gospel.
Apostle John the Theologian. Where was the ap from? John, nothing definite can be said about this. All that is known about his father, Zebedee, is that he, with his sons, James and John, lived in Capernaum and was engaged in fishing on a fairly large scale, as indicated by the fact that he had workers (John 1:20). A more outstanding personality is Zebedee’s wife, Salome, who belonged to those women who accompanied Christ the Savior and from their own means acquired what was required to support a fairly large circle of Christ’s disciples, who made up His almost constant retinue (Luke 8:1-3; Mark 15: 41). She shared her sons' ambitions and asked Christ to fulfill their dreams (Matthew 20:20). She was present from afar when the Savior was taken down from the cross (Matt 27:55 et seq.) and participated in the purchase of aromas for anointing the body of the buried Christ (Mk 16; cf. Lk 23:56).
The family of Zebedee was, according to legend, related to the family of the Blessed Virgin: Salome and the Blessed Virgin were sisters - and this tradition is in full accordance with the fact that the Savior, while He was about to betray His Spirit from moment to moment To His Father, while hanging on the cross, he entrusted the Most Holy Virgin to the care of John (see explanation on John 19:25). This relationship can also explain why it was James and John, of all the disciples, who laid claim to the first places in the Kingdom of Christ (Matthew 20:20). But if James and John were nephews Holy Virgin, then they, therefore, were related to John the Baptist (cf. Luke 1:36), whose preaching should therefore have been of particular interest to them. All these families were imbued with one pious, truly Israeli mood: this is evidenced, by the way, by the fact that the names that the members of these families bore were all real Jewish, without any admixture of Greek or Latin nicknames.
From the fact that James is mentioned everywhere before John, we can confidently conclude that John was younger than James, and tradition also calls him the youngest among the apostles. John was no more than 20 years old when Christ called him to follow Him, and the tradition that he lived until the reign of Emperor Trajan (reigned from 98 to 117) does not imply improbability: John was then about 90 years old. Soon after the call to follow Himself, Christ called John to a special, apostolic ministry, and John became one of the 12 apostles of Christ. Because of his special love and devotion to Christ, John became one of the closest and most trusted disciples of Christ, and even the most beloved among them all. He was honored to be present at major events from the life of the Savior, for example, during His transfiguration, during the prayer of Christ in Gethsemane, etc. In contrast to the ap. Peter, John lived a more internal, contemplative life than an external, practically active one. He observes more than he acts; he often plunges into his inner world, discussing in his mind greatest events which he was called upon to witness. His soul hovers more in the heavenly world, which is why the symbol of the eagle has been established in church icon painting since ancient times (Bazhenov, pp. 8-10). But sometimes John also showed ardor of soul, even extreme irritability: this was when he stood up for the honor of his Teacher (Luke 9:54; Mark 9:38-40). The ardent desire to be closer to Christ was also reflected in John’s request to grant him and his brother the first positions in the glorious Kingdom of Christ, for which John was ready to go with Christ to suffer (Matthew 20:28-29). For this ability for unexpected impulses, Christ called John and James “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17), predicting at the same time that the preaching of both brothers would have an irresistible effect on the souls of listeners, like thunder.
After Christ's ascension into heaven, St. John together with St. Peter acts as one of the representatives of the Christian Church in Jerusalem (Acts 3:1 et seq.; Acts 2:4; Acts 13:19; Acts 8:14-25). At the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem in the winter of 51-52, John, together with Peter and the primate of the Jerusalem Church, James, recognized the Apostle Paul’s right to preach the Gospel to the pagans, without obliging them at the same time to observe the Law of Moses (Gal 2:9). Already at this time, therefore, the meaning of an. John was great. But how it must have increased when Peter, Paul and James died! Having settled in Ephesus, John occupied the position of leader of all the churches of Asia for another 30 years, and of the other disciples of Christ around him, he enjoyed exceptional respect from the believers. Tradition tells us some features of the activities of St. John during this period of his stay in Ephesus. Thus, it is known from legend that he annually celebrated the Christian Easter at the same time as the Jewish Passover and observed fasting before Easter. Then one day he left a public bathhouse, seeing the heretic Cerinthos here: “let’s run away,” he said to those who came with him, “so that the bathhouse does not collapse, because Kerinthos, the enemy of truth, is in it.” How great was his love and compassion for people - this is evidenced by the story of the young man whom John converted to Christ and who, in his absence, joined a gang of robbers. John, according to the legend of Clement of Alexandria, himself went to the robbers and, meeting the young man, begged him to return to the good path. In the very last hours of his life, John, no longer able to speak long speeches, only repeated: “children, love each other!” And when the listeners asked him why, he repeated everything the same, the apostle of love - such a nickname was established for John - answered: “because this is the commandment of the Lord and if only it were fulfilled, that would be enough.” Thus, a will that allows no compromise between a holy God and sinful world, devotion to Christ, love of truth, combined with compassion for unfortunate brothers - these are the main character traits of John the Theologian, which are imprinted in Christian tradition.
John, according to legend, testified his devotion to Christ through suffering. So, under Nero (reign 54-68) he was brought in chains to Rome and here he was first forced to drink a cup of poison, and then, when the poison did not work, they threw him into a cauldron of boiling oil, which, however, , the apostle also suffered no harm. During his stay in Ephesus, John had to, by order of Emperor Domitian (reign from 81-96), go to live on the island. Patmos, located 40 geographical miles from Ephesus to the southwest. Here the future destinies of the Church of Christ were revealed to him in mysterious visions, which he depicted in his Apocalypse. On about. The apostle remained in Patmos until the death of Emperor Domitian (in 96), when, by order of Emperor Nerva (reigns 96-98), he was returned to Ephesus.
John died, probably in the 7th year of the reign of Emperor Trajan (105 A.D.), having reached the age of one hundred.
The reason and purpose of writing the Gospel. According to the Muratorian canon, John wrote his Gospel at the request of the bishops of Asia Minor, who wanted to receive instruction from him in faith and piety. Clement of Alexandria adds that John himself noticed some incompleteness in the stories about Christ contained in the first three Gospels, which speak almost only about the physical, that is, about external events from the life of Christ, and therefore he himself wrote the spiritual Gospel. Eusebius of Caesarea, for his part, adds that John, having reviewed and approved the first three Gospels, still found in them insufficient information about the beginning of Christ’s activity. Blazh. Jerome says that the reason for writing the Gospel was the emergence of heresies that denied the coming of Christ in the flesh.
Thus, based on what has been said, we can draw the following conclusion: when John wrote his Gospel, on the one hand, he wanted to fill the gaps he noticed in the first three Gospels, and on the other hand, to give believers (primarily Greek Christians This is proven by the fact that the Gospel often provides an explanation of Jewish words and customs (for example, John 1:38-42; John 4:9; John 5:28, etc.).It is not possible to accurately determine the time and place of writing of the Gospel of John. It is only likely that the Gospel was written in Ephesus, at the end of the first century.) in hand weapons to fight the emerging heresies. As for the evangelist himself, he defines the purpose of his Gospel as follows: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). It is clear that John wrote his Gospel in order to give Christians support for their faith in Christ precisely as the Son of God, because only with such faith can one achieve salvation or, as John puts it, have life in oneself. And the entire content of the Gospel of John is fully consistent with this intention expressed by its writer. In fact, the Gospel of John begins with the conversion of John himself to Christ and ends with the confession of faith of the apostle. Thomas (Chapter 21 is an addition to the Gospel, which John made after). John wants throughout his entire Gospel to depict the process by which he and his co-apostles came to faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, so that the reader of the Gospel, following the actions of Christ, would gradually understand that Christ is the Son of God... The readers of the Gospel already had this faith, but it was weakened in them by various false teachings that distorted the concept of the incarnation of the Son of God. At the same time, John could have meant to find out how long Christ’s public ministry to the human race lasted: according to the first three Gospels, it turned out that this activity lasted for just over one year, and John explains that more than three years passed.
Plan and content of the Gospel of John. The Evangelist John, in accordance with the goal that he set for himself when writing the Gospel, undoubtedly had his own special narrative plan, not similar to the traditional presentation of the history of Christ common to the first three Gospels. John does not simply report in order the events of the gospel history and the speech of Christ, but makes a selection from them, especially before the rest of the Gospels, highlighting everything that testified to the divine dignity of Christ, which in his time was subject to doubt. Events from the life of Christ are reported in John in a certain light, and all are aimed at clarifying the main position of the Christian faith - the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Not accepted a second time in Judea, Christ again withdrew to Galilee and began to perform miracles, of course, while preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. But here too, Christ’s teaching about Himself as a Messiah who came not to restore earthly things Kingdom of Judah , and to establish a new Kingdom - spiritual and to impart eternal life to people, arms the Galileans against Him, and only a few disciples remain near Him, namely the 12 apostles, whose faith is expressed by the apostle. Peter (John 6:1-71). Having spent both Easter and Pentecost this time in Galilee, in view of the fact that in Judea His enemies were just waiting for an opportunity to seize and kill Him, Christ only on the Feast of Tabernacles went to Jerusalem again - this is already the third trip there and here again He spoke before the Jews with affirmation of his divine mission and origin. The Jews again rebel against Christ. But Christ, nevertheless, on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles boldly declares his high dignity - that He is the giver of the truth of the water of life, and the servants sent by the Sanhedrin cannot fulfill the order given to them by the Sanhedrin - to capture Christ (chapter 7). Then, after forgiving the sinner’s wife (John 8:1-11), Christ denounces the Jews’ unbelief in Him. He calls Himself the Light of the world, and they, His enemies, are the children of the devil - the ancient murderer. When, at the end of his speech, He pointed to His eternal existence, the Jews wanted to stone Him as a blasphemer, and Christ disappeared from the temple, where His altercation with the Jews took place (chapter 8). After this, Christ healed a man born blind on the Sabbath, and this increased the Jews’ hatred of Jesus even more (chapter 9). However, Christ boldly calls the Pharisees mercenaries, who do not value the well-being of the people, and Himself as a true shepherd who lays down His life for His flock. This speech arouses a negative attitude towards it in some, and some sympathy in others (John 10:1-21). Three months after this, on the feast of the renewal of the temple, a clash occurs again between Christ and the Jews, and Christ retires to Perea, where many Jews who believed in Him also follow Him (John 10:22-42). The miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, which testified to Christ as the giver of resurrection and life, arouses faith in Christ in some, and a new explosion of hatred towards Christ in others of Christ’s enemies. Then the Sanhedrin makes the final decision to kill Christ and declares that anyone who knows about the whereabouts of Christ should immediately report this to the Sanhedrin (chapter 11). After more than three months, which Christ spent not in Judea, He again appeared in Judea and, near Jerusalem, in Bethany, attended a friendly evening, and a day after that, he solemnly entered Jerusalem as the Messiah. The people greeted Him with delight, and the Greek proselytes who came to the holiday expressed a desire to talk with Him. All this prompted Christ to announce out loud to everyone around Him that He would soon give Himself up to death for the true good of all people. John concludes this section of his Gospel with the statement that, although the majority of the Jews did not believe in Christ, despite all His miracles, there were believers among them (chap. 12).
Having depicted the gap that occurred between Christ and the Jewish people, the evangelist now depicts the attitude towards the apostles. At the last, secret supper, Christ washed the feet of His disciples, like a simple servant, thereby showing His love for them and at the same time teaching them humility (chap. 13). Then, in order to strengthen their faith, He tells them about His upcoming visit to God the Father, about their future position in the world and about His subsequent upcoming meeting with them. The apostles interrupt His speech with questions and objections, but He constantly leads them to think that everything that will soon happen will be useful both for Him and for them (chap. 14-16). In order to finally calm the anxiety of the apostles, Christ, in their hearing, prays to His Father that He would take them under His protection, saying at the same time that the work for which Christ was sent has now been completed and that, therefore, the apostles will only have to proclaim this to the whole world (chap. 17).
John devotes the last section of his Gospel to depicting the story of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here we are talking about the capture of Christ by soldiers in Gethsemane and about the denial of Peter, about the trial of Christ by spiritual and temporal authorities, about the crucifixion and death of Christ, about the piercing of Christ’s side with a warrior’s spear, about the burial of the body of Christ by Joseph and Nicodemus (chap. 18-19). .) and, finally, about the appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene, ten disciples and then Thomas along with other disciples - a week after the resurrection (John 20: 1-29). A conclusion is attached to the Gospel, which indicates the purpose of writing the Gospel - strengthening faith in Christ in the readers of the Gospel (John 20:30-31).
The Gospel of John also contains an epilogue, which depicts the appearance of Christ to the seven disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, when the restoration of the apostle followed. Peter in his apostolic dignity. At the same time, Christ predicts to Peter about his fate and the fate of John (chap. 21).
Thus, John developed in his Gospel the idea that the incarnate Logos, the Only Begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, was rejected by His people, among whom He was born, but nevertheless gave His disciples grace and truth, and the opportunity to become children of God. This content of the Gospel is conveniently divided into the following sections: Prologue (John 1:1-18). First section: The testimony of John the Baptist to the first manifestation of the greatness of Christ (John 1:19-2:11). Second Section: The Beginning of Christ's Public Ministry (John 2:12-4:54). Third section: Jesus is the giver of life in the fight against Judaism (John 5:1-11:57). Fourth section: From the last week before Easter (chapter 12). Fifth section: Jesus in the circle of His disciples on the eve of His suffering (chap. 13-14). Sixth section: Glorifying Jesus through death and resurrection (chap. 18-20). Epilogue (21 chapters).
Objections to the Authenticity of the Gospel of John. From what has been said about the plan and content of the Gospel of John, one can see that this Gospel contains a lot of things that distinguish it from the first three Gospels, which are called synoptic due to the similarity of the image of the person and activity of Jesus Christ given in them. So, the life of Christ in John begins in heaven... The story of the birth and childhood of Christ, with which he introduces us. Matthew and Luke, John passes over in silence. In his majestic prologue to the Gospel, John, this eagle between the evangelists, to whom the symbol of the eagle is also adopted in church iconography, takes us straight into infinity with a bold flight. Then he quickly descends to earth, but even here in the incarnate Word he gives us signs of the divinity of the Word. Then John the Baptist appears in the Gospel of John. But this is not a preacher of repentance and judgment, as we know him from the Synoptic Gospels, but a witness of Christ as the Lamb of God, Who takes upon Himself the sins of the world. Evangelist John says nothing about the baptism and temptation of Christ. The evangelist does not look at the return of Christ from John the Baptist with His first disciples to Galilee as something that was undertaken by Christ, as the weather forecasters seem to think, with the aim of starting a sermon about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Gospel of John, the chronological and geographical scope of activity is not at all the same as that of the weather forecasters. John touches on the Galilean activity of Christ only at its highest point - the story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand and the conversation about the bread of heaven. Then only in the image last days life of Christ, John converges with the weather forecasters. The main place of Christ's activity, according to the Gospel of John, is Jerusalem and Judea.
John differs even more in his portrayal of Christ as Teacher from the Synoptic Evangelists. U last Christ acts as a people's preacher, as a teacher of morality, expounding to the simple inhabitants of Galilean cities and villages in the most accessible form for them the teaching about the Kingdom of God. As a benefactor of the people, He walks through Galilee, healing every disease in the people who surround Him in whole crowds. In John, the Lord appears either before individuals, like Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, or in the circle of His disciples, or finally, before the priests and scribes, and other Jews more knowledgeable in the matter of religious knowledge - He makes speeches about the divine dignity of His personality. At the same time, the language of His speeches becomes somewhat mysterious and we often encounter allegories here. The miracles in the Gospel of John also have the nature of signs, that is, they serve to clarify the main provisions of Christ’s teaching about His Divinity.
More than a hundred years have passed since German rationalism directed its blows at the Gospel of John to prove that it was not genuine. But it was only from the time of Strauss that the real persecution of this greatest witness to the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ began. Under the influence of Hegel's philosophy, which did not allow the possibility of the realization of an absolute idea in an individual, Strauss declared John's Christ a myth... and the entire Gospel a tendentious fiction. Following him, the head of the new Tübingen school, F.H. Baur, attributed the origin of the 4th Gospel to the second half of the 2nd century, when, according to him, reconciliation began between the two opposite directions of the apostolic age - Petrinism and Paulinism. John's Gospel, according to Baur, was a monument of reconciliation between both of these directions. It aimed to reconcile the various disputes taking place at that time (around 170) in the Church: Montanism, Gnosticism, the doctrine of the Logos, Easter disputes, etc., and for this it used the material contained in the first three Gospels, putting everything depending on one idea of the Logos. This view of Baur wanted to be developed and substantiated by his students - Schwegler, Koestlin, Zeller and others, but in any case nothing came of their efforts, as even such a liberal critic as Harnack admits. The early Christian Church was not at all an arena of struggle between Petrinism and Paulinism, as the latest church-historical science has shown. However, the newest representatives of the New Tübingen school, G.I. Goltsman, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Kreyenbühl (his work in French: “The 4th Gospel”, vol. I - 1901 and vol. II - 1903) are all they still deny the authenticity of the Gospel of John and the reliability of the information contained in it, most of which is attributed to the influence of Gnosticism. Thoma attributes the origin of the Gospel to the influence of Philonism, Max Müller to the influence of Greek philosophy An example of a critical attitude towards the Gospel of John is the book by O. P. Flader, translated into Russian in 1910. The emergence of Christianity. pp. 154-166. .
Since, after all, the New Tübingen school could not help but take into account the evidence about the authenticity of the Gospel of John that comes from the very first decades of the second century A.D., it tried to explain the origin of such evidence with something like the self-hypnosis of those ancient church writers, who have the said evidence. Just a writer, like, for example, St. Irenaeus, read the inscription: “The Gospel of John” - and immediately it was established in his memory that this was really the Gospel belonging to the beloved disciple of Christ... But most of the critics began to defend the position that under “John”, the author of the 4th th Gospel, the entire ancient Church understood “Presbyter John,” whose existence is mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea. This is what Busse and Harnack think, for example. Others (Jülicher) consider the author of the 4th Gospel to be some disciple of John the Theologian. But since it is quite difficult to admit that at the end of the first century there were two Johns in Asia Minor - an apostle and a presbyter - who enjoyed equally enormous authority, some critics began to deny the presence of the apostle. John in Asia Minor (Lutzenberger, Keim, Schwartz, Schmiedel).
Not finding it possible to find a substitute for John the Apostle, modern criticism, however, agrees that the 4th Gospel could not have come from the apostle. John. Let us see how grounded are the objections that modern criticism expresses in the form of a refutation of the general church conviction in the authenticity of the 4th Gospel. When analyzing the objections of critics to the authenticity of the Gospel of John, we will necessarily have to talk about the reliability of the information reported in the 4th Gospel, because criticism specifically points out, in support of its view of the origin of the 4th Gospel not from John, the unreliability of various information given in the Gospel John of facts and the general improbability of the idea that is drawn about the person and activity of the Savior from this Gospel Evidence of the integrity of the Gospel will be given in its place, when explaining the text of the Gospel. .
Keim, followed by many other critics, points out that according to the Gospel of John, Christ “was not born, was not baptized, did not experience any internal struggle or mental suffering. He knew everything from the beginning and shone with pure divine glory. Such a Christ does not meet the conditions human nature" But all this is wrong: Christ, according to John, became flesh (John 1:14) and had a Mother (John 2:1), and there is a clear indication of His acceptance of baptism in the speech of John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). The fact that Christ experienced inner struggle is clearly stated in ch. 12 (v. 27), and the tears He shed at the tomb of Lazarus testify to His spiritual suffering (John 11:33-35). As for the foreknowledge that Christ reveals in the Gospel of John, it is completely consistent with our faith in Christ as the God-man.
Further, critics point out that the 4th Gospel does not seem to recognize any gradualism in the development of the faith of the apostles: the initially called apostles, from the very first day of their acquaintance with Christ, become completely confident in His messianic dignity (chapter 1). But critics forget that the disciples fully believed in Christ only after the first sign at Cana (John 2:12). And they themselves say that they believed in divine origin Christ only when Christ told them a lot about Himself in a farewell conversation (John 16:30).
Then, if John says that Christ went to Jerusalem from Galilee several times, while according to the weather forecasters it seems that He visited Jerusalem only once on the Passover of Passion, then we must say about this that, in -firstly, from the Synoptic Gospels we can conclude that Christ was in Jerusalem more than once (see, for example, Luke 10:38), and secondly, most correctly, of course, it is the Evangelist John who denotes the chronological sequence of events wrote his Gospel after the Synoptics and naturally had to come to the idea of the need to supplement the insufficient chronology of the Synoptics and depict in detail the activity of Christ in Jerusalem, which was known to him, of course, much better than to any of the Synoptics, two of whom were not even to the face of 12. Even up. Matthew could not know all the circumstances of Christ’s activity in Jerusalem, because, firstly, he was called relatively late (John 3:24; cf. Matthew 9:9), and, secondly, because Christ went to Jerusalem sometimes secretly (John 7:10), without being accompanied by the entire crowd of disciples. John, undoubtedly, was given the honor of accompanying Christ everywhere.
But most of all doubts regarding reliability are aroused by the speeches of Christ, which are cited by the Evangelist John. Christ in John, according to critics, speaks not as a practical folk teacher, but as a subtle metaphysician. His speeches could only have been “composed” by a later “writer” who was influenced by the views of Alexandrian philosophy. On the contrary, the speeches of Christ among the weather forecasters are naive, simple and natural. Therefore, the 4th Gospel is not of apostolic origin. Regarding this statement of criticism, first of all, it must be said that it overly exaggerates the difference between the speeches of Christ in the Synoptics and His speeches in John. You can point out about three dozen sayings, which are given in the same form by both the weather forecasters and John (see, for example, John 2 and Matthew 26:61; John 3:18 and Mark 16:16; John 5:8 and Luke 5:21 ). And then, the speeches of Christ given by John should have differed from those given by the weather forecasters, since John set himself the goal of acquainting his readers with the activities of Christ in Judea and Jerusalem - this center of rabbinic enlightenment, where Christ had before Him completely a different circle of listeners than in Galilee. It is clear that the Galilean speeches of Christ, cited by the weather forecasters, could not be devoted to such sublime teachings as the subject of the speeches of Christ spoken in Judea. Moreover, John cites several speeches of Christ, spoken by Him in the circle of His closest disciples, who, of course, were much more capable of understanding the mysteries of the Kingdom of God than the common people.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that Ap. John, by nature, was predominantly inclined to be interested in the mysteries of the Kingdom of God and the high dignity of the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. No one was able to assimilate in such completeness and clarity Christ’s teaching about Himself as John, whom Christ therefore loved more than His other disciples.
Some critics argue that all the speeches of Christ in John are nothing more than a disclosure of ideas contained in the prologue of the Gospel and, therefore, composed by John himself. To this it must be said that rather the prologue itself can be called the conclusion that John made from all the speeches of Christ cited by John. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that the root concept of the prologue, Logos, is not found in the speeches of Christ with the meaning that it has in the prologue.
As for the fact that only John alone cites the speeches of Christ, which contain His teaching about His divine dignity, then this circumstance cannot have any meaning. special significance, as proof of the contradiction that supposedly exists between the weather forecasters and John in the teaching about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, the weather forecasters also have sayings of Christ in which a clear indication of His divine dignity is made (see Matthew 20:18; Matthew 28:19; Matthew 16:16, etc.). And, besides, all the circumstances of the birth of Christ and the numerous miracles of Christ reported by the weather forecasters clearly testify to His divine dignity.
They also point out their monotony in relation to the content as evidence of the idea that Christ’s speeches were “composed” in John. Thus, the conversation with Nicodemus depicts the spiritual nature of the Kingdom of God, and the conversation with the Samaritan woman depicts the general nature of this Kingdom, etc. If there is some uniformity in the external construction of speeches and in the method of proving thoughts, this is explained by the fact that Christ’s speeches John's mission is to explain the mysteries of the Kingdom of God to the Jews, and not to the inhabitants of Galilee, and therefore naturally take on a monotonous character.
They say that the speeches given by John are not in connection with the events described in the Gospel of John. But such a statement does not correspond to reality at all: it is in John that every speech of Christ has a solid support for itself in previous events, one might even say, is caused by them. Such, for example, is the conversation about heavenly bread, spoken by Christ regarding the saturation of the people with earthly bread (chap. 6).
They object further: “how could John remember such extensive, difficult in content and dark speeches of Christ until his ripe old age?” But when a person pays all his attention to one thing, it is clear that he observes this “one thing” in all its details and imprints it firmly in his memory. It is known about John that among the disciples of Christ and in the apostolic church he did not have a particularly active significance and was rather a silent companion of the apostle. Peter than an independent figure. He turned all the ardor of his nature - and he really had such a nature (Mark 9) - all the abilities of his outstanding mind and heart to reproduce in his consciousness and memory greatest personality God-man. From this it becomes clear how he could subsequently reproduce in his Gospel such extensive and profound speeches of Christ. In addition, the ancient Jews were generally able to remember very long conversations and repeat them with literal accuracy. Finally, why not assume that John could have recorded individual conversations of Christ for himself and then used what was written down?
They ask: “Where could John, a simple fisherman from Galilee, receive such a philosophical education as he reveals in his Gospel? Isn’t it more natural to assume that the 4th Gospel was written by some Gnostic or Christian from the Greeks, brought up on the study of classical literature?
The answer to this question is as follows. Firstly, John does not have that strict consistency and logical structure of views that characterize the Greek philosophical systems. Instead of dialectics and logical analysis, John is dominated by a synthesis characteristic of systematic thinking, reminiscent of Eastern religious and theological contemplation rather than Greek philosophy(Prof. Muretov. The authenticity of the Lord’s conversations in the 4th Gospel. Rights Review. 1881 Sep., p. 65 et seq.). It can therefore be said that John writes as an educated Jew, and the question: where could he receive such a Jewish education is resolved quite satisfactorily by the consideration that John’s father was a fairly wealthy man (he had his own workers) and therefore both of his sons, James and John , could receive a good education for that time in one of the rabbinical schools in Jerusalem.
What also confuses some critics is the similarity that is noticed both in the content and style of Christ’s speeches in the 4th Gospel and in the 1st Epistle of John. It seems as if John himself composed the Lord’s speeches... To this it must be said that John, having joined the ranks of Christ’s disciples in his earliest youth, naturally assimilated His ideas and the very manner of expressing them. Then, the speeches of Christ in John do not represent a literal reproduction of everything that Christ said in one case or another, but only an abbreviated rendering of what Christ actually said. Moreover, John had to convey the speeches of Christ, spoken in Aramaic, in Greek, and this forced him to look for turns and expressions that were more appropriate to the meaning of Christ’s speech, so that naturally the coloring that was characteristic of the speech of John himself was obtained in the speeches of Christ. Finally, there is an undeniable difference between the Gospel of John and his 1st Epistle, namely between the speech of John himself and the speeches of the Lord. Thus, the salvation of people by the blood of Christ is often spoken of in the 1st Epistle of John and is silent in the Gospel. As for the form of presentation of thoughts, in the 1st Epistle we find short, fragmentary instructions and maxims everywhere, and in the Gospel - whole large speeches.
In view of all that has been said, contrary to the assertions of criticism, one can only agree with those positions expressed by Pope Pius X in his Syllabus of July 3, 1907, where the pope recognizes as heresy the assertion of modernists that the Gospel of John is not history in in its own sense this word, but mystical speculations about the life of Christ and that it is not authentic certificate Apostle John about the life of Christ, but a reflection of those views on the person of Christ that existed in the Christian Church by the end of the first century A.D.
Self-testimony of the fourth Gospel. The author of the Gospel clearly identifies himself as a Jew. He knows all Jewish customs and views, especially the views of the then Judaism on the Messiah. Moreover, he speaks about everything that happened in Palestine at that time as an eyewitness. If he seems to separate himself from the Jews (for example, he says “the holiday of the Jews” and not “our holiday”), then this is explained by the fact that the 4th Gospel was written, undoubtedly, already when Christians had completely separated from Jews In addition, the Gospel was written specifically for pagan Christians, which is why the author could not speak of the Jews as “his” people. The geographical position of Palestine at that time is also outlined in the highest degree accurately and thoroughly. This cannot be expected from a writer who lived, for example, in the 2nd century.
As a witness to the events that took place in the life of Christ, the author of the 4th Gospel further shows himself in the special chronological accuracy with which he describes the time of these events. It designates not only the holidays on which Christ went to Jerusalem, but it is important for determining the duration of Christ’s public ministry The chronology of the life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of John looks like this. — After receiving baptism from John, Christ stays near the Jordan for some time and here calls His first disciples (chap. 1). Then He goes to Galilee, where He lives until Easter (John 2:1-11). On Passover He comes to Jerusalem: this is the first Passover during His public ministry (John 2:12-13; John 21). Then Christ, after this Passover - probably in April - leaves Jerusalem and remains in the land of Judea until the end of December (John 3:22-4:2). By January, Christ comes through Samaria to Galilee (John 4:3-54) and lives here for quite a long time: the entire end of winter and summer. On Easter (the allusion to it is made in John 4:35) - the second Passover during His social activities- He apparently did not go to Jerusalem. Only on the Feast of Tabernacles (John 5:1) He appears again in Jerusalem, where he probably stayed for a very short time. He then spends several months in Galilee (John 6:1). At Easter this year (John 6:4) Christ again did not go to Jerusalem: this is the third Passover of His public ministry. On the Feast of Tabernacles He appears in Jerusalem (John 7:1-10:21), then spends two months in Perea, and in December, for the Feast of the Renewal of the Temple, He comes again to Jerusalem (John 10:22). Then Christ soon leaves again for Perea, from there to short time goes to Bethany (chap. 11). From Bethany until the fourth Passover He remains in Ephraim, from where He comes on the last Passover, the fourth, to Jerusalem, in order to die here at the hands of enemies. - Thus, John mentions the four Easter holidays, around which lies the history of the public ministry of Jesus Christ, which apparently lasted more than three years., but even days and weeks before and after this or that event and, finally, sometimes the hours of events. He also speaks with precision about the number of persons and objects in question.
The details that the author reports about various circumstances from the life of Christ also give reason to conclude that the author was an eyewitness to everything that he describes. Moreover, the features with which the author characterizes the leaders of that time are so clear that they could only be indicated by an eyewitness who, moreover, well understood the differences that existed between the Jewish parties of that time.
That the author of the Gospel was an apostle from among the 12 is clearly evident from the memories he conveys about many circumstances from the inner life of the circle of the 12. He knows well all the doubts that worried Christ’s disciples, all their conversations among themselves and with His Teacher. At the same time, he calls the apostles not by the names by which they later became known in the Church, but by those that they bore in their friendly circle (for example, he calls Bartholomew Nathanael).
The author’s attitude towards weather forecasters is also remarkable. He boldly corrects the testimony of the latter in many points as an eyewitness, who also has a higher authority than them: only such a writer could speak so boldly, without fear of condemnation from anyone. Moreover, this was undoubtedly an apostle from among those closest to Christ, since he knows much that was not revealed to the other apostles (see, for example, John 6:15; John 7:1).
Who was this student? He does not call himself by name, and yet identifies himself as the beloved disciple of the Lord (John 13:23; John 21:7.20-24). This is not an app. Peter, because this ap. everywhere in the 4th Gospel he is called by name and is directly distinguished from the unnamed disciple. Of the closest disciples, then two remained - James and John, the sons of Zebedee. But it is known about Jacob that he did not leave the Jewish country and suffered martyrdom relatively early (in the year 41). Meanwhile, the Gospel was undoubtedly written after the Synoptic Gospels and probably at the end of the first century. Only John alone can be recognized as the apostle closest to Christ, who wrote the 4th Gospel. Calling himself “another student,” he always adds a member (ο ̔) to this expression, clearly saying that everyone knew him and could not confuse him with anyone else. Out of his humility, he also does not call his mother, Salome, and his brother Isaac by name (John 19:25; John 21:2). Only the apostle could have done this. John: any other writer would certainly have mentioned at least one of the sons of Zebedee by name. They object: “but the Evangelist Matthew found it possible to mention his name in his Gospel” (John 9:9)? Yes, but in the Gospel of Matthew, the personality of the writer completely disappears in the objective depiction of the events of the Gospel history, while the 4th Gospel has a pronounced subjective character, and the writer of this Gospel, realizing this, wanted to put in the shadow his own name, which is already everyone was asking for a memory.
Language and presentation of the 4th Gospel. Both the language and presentation of the 4th Gospel clearly indicate that the writer of the Gospel was a Palestinian Jew, not a Greek, and that he lived at the end of the first century. In the Gospel, first of all, there are direct and indirect references to places holy books The Old Testament (this can also be seen in the Russian edition of the Gospel with parallel passages). Moreover, he knows not only the translation of the LXX, but also the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament books (cf. John 19:37 and Zech 12:10 according to the Hebrew text). Then, “the special plasticity and imagery of speech, which constitute an excellent feature of the Jewish genius, the arrangement of the terms of the assumption and their simple construction, the striking detail of the presentation, reaching the point of tautology and repetition, the speech is short, abrupt, the parallelism of members and whole sentences and antitheses, the lack of Greek particles in the combination of sentences” and much more clearly indicates that the Gospel was written by a Jew, not a Greek (Bazhenov. Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel. P. 374). Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences D. G. Müller, in his abstract “Das Iohannes-Evangelium im Uchte der Strophentheorie” of 1909, even makes, and very successfully, an attempt to divide the most important speeches of Christ contained in the Gospel of John into stanzas and in conclusion states the following : “at the end of my work on the Discussion on the Mount, I also examined the Gospel of John, which in content and style is so different from the Synoptic Gospels, but to my great surprise I found that the laws of strophism prevail here to the same extent as in the speeches of the prophets, in the Discourse on the Mount and in the Koran." Doesn't this fact indicate that the writer of the Gospel was a real Jew, brought up on the study of the prophets of the Old Testament? The Jewish flavor in the 4th Gospel is so strong that anyone who knows Hebrew and has the opportunity to read the Gospel of John in Hebrew translation will certainly think that he is reading the original and not a translation. It is clear that the writer of the Gospel thought in Hebrew and expressed himself in Greek. But this is exactly how the ap should have written. John, who from childhood was accustomed to thinking and speaking in Hebrew, studied Greek already in adulthood.
The Greek language of the Gospel was undoubtedly original, and not a translation: both the testimony of the Church Fathers and the lack of evidence from those critics who for some reason want to claim that the Gospel of John was originally written in Hebrew - all this is quite enough to be sure in the originality of the Greek of the 4th Gospel. Although the author of the Gospel has few terms and expressions of the Greek language in his dictionary, these terms and expressions are as valuable as a large gold coin, which is usually used to pay big owners. In terms of its composition, the language of the 4th Gospel has a general κοινη ̀ διάλεκτος character. Hebrew, Latin, and some terms unique to this Gospel are found here in places. Finally, some words in John are used in a special sense, not characteristic of other New Testament writings (for example, Λόγος, α ̓ γαπάω, ι ̓ ου ̓ δαι ̃ οι, ζωή, etc., the meaning of which will be indicated when explaining the text of the Gospel). With regard to etymological and syntactic rules, the language of the 4th Gospel in general does not differ from the rules of κοινη ̀ διάλεκτος, although there is something special here (for example, the use of a member, the composition of the predicate in plural with the subject of unity, etc.).
Stylistically, the Gospel of John is distinguished by the simplicity of the construction of phrases, approaching the simplicity of ordinary speech. Here we see everywhere short, fragmentary sentences connected by a few particles. But these brief expressions often produce an unusually strong impression (especially in the prologue). To give special power to a well-known expression, John puts it at the beginning of the phrase, and sometimes the sequence in the structure of speech is not even observed (for example, John 7:38). The reader of the Gospel of John is also struck by the extraordinary abundance of dialogues in which this or that thought is revealed. As for the fact that in the Gospel of John, in contrast to the synoptic ones, there are no parables, this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that John did not consider it necessary to repeat those parables that were already reported in the synoptic Gospels. But he has something reminiscent of these parables - these are allegories and various images (for example, figurative expressions in a conversation with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman or, for example, a real allegory about the good shepherd and the door to the sheepfold). In addition, Christ probably did not use parables in His conversations with educated Jews, and it is these conversations that John mainly cites in his Gospel. The form of parables was also not suitable for the content of Christ’s speeches spoken in Judea: in these speeches Christ spoke about His divine dignity, and for this the form of images and parables was completely inappropriate - it is inconvenient to enclose dogmas in parables. The disciples of Christ could also understand the teachings of Christ without parables.
Commentaries on the Gospel of John and other works that have this Gospel as their subject. Of the ancient works devoted to the study of the Gospel of John, the first in time is the work of Valentinian Heracleon (150-180), fragments of which were preserved by Origen (there is also a special edition by Brooke). This is followed by a very detailed commentary by Origen himself, which, however, has not survived in its entirety (ed. Preyshen 1903). Next come 88 conversations on the Gospel of John, belonging to John Chrysostom (in Russian, translated by Pet. D. Acad. 1902). The interpretation of Theodore of Mopsuetsky in Greek has been preserved only in fragments, but now a Latin translation of the Syriac text of this work has appeared, almost reproducing everything in full. Interpretation of St. Cyril of Alexandria was published in 1910 under Moscow. Spirit. Academy. Then there are 124 conversations on the Gospel of John, belonging to Blessed. Augustine (in Latin). Finally, the interpretation on Heb. John, belonging to Blessed. Theophylact (translation, at the Kazakh Theological Academy).
Of the new interpretations of Western theologians, the works of note are: Tolyuk (last edition 1857), Meyer (last edition 1902), Luthardt (last edition 1876), Godet (last edition in German). language 1903), Keil (1881), Westcott (1882), Shantz (1885), Knabenbauer (1906 2nd ed.), Schlatter (2nd ed. 1902 ), Loisy (1903 in French), Heitmüller (in Weiss in Novoz. Writings of 1907), Tsan (2nd ed. 1908), G. I. Goltsman (3rd ed. 1908).
Of the most outstanding works of Western scientists of the so-called critical movement, the works of the Gospel of John are devoted to: Brechneider, Weiss, Schwegler, Bruno, Bauer, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Keim, Thom, Jacobsen, O. Holtzman, Wendt, Keyenbühl, I. Reville, Grill, Wrede , Scott, Wellhausen, etc. The latest major work of the critical direction is the work: Spitta [Spitta]. Das Joh ä nnes evangelium als Quelle d. Geschtehe Iesu. G ö tt. 1910. P. 466.
In an apologetic direction about Ev. John was written by: Black, Stier, Weiss, Edersheim (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, the first volume of which was translated into Russian), Shastan, Delph, P. Ewald, Nesgen, Kluge, Kamerlinck, Schlatter, Stanton, Drummond, Sandey, Smith, Barth, Gebel, Lepin The latest is the work of Lepin [Lepin]. La valeur historique du IV-e Evangile. 2 vol. Paris. 1910. 8 fran.. But these works must be used with caution.
In Russian theological literature there are many explanations of the Gospel of John and individual articles and brochures related to the study of this Gospel. In 1874, the first edition of the work of Archimandrite (later bishop) Mikhail (Luzin) was published under the title: “The Gospel of John in Slavic and Russian dialects with prefaces and detailed explanatory notes.” In 1887, “The Experience of Studying the Gospel of St. John the Theologian" by Georgy Vlastov, in two volumes. In 1903, a popular explanation of the Gospel of John was published, compiled by Archbishop Nikanor (Kamensky), and in 1906, “Interpretation of the Gospel”, compiled by B.I. Gladkov, in which the Gospel of John was also popularly explained. There are also popular explanations for the Gospel of John: Eusebius, Archbishop. Mogilevsky (in the form of conversations on Sundays and holidays), Archpriests Mikhailovsky, Bukharev and some others. The most useful guide for familiarizing yourself with what was written about the Gospel of John before 1893 is “Collection of articles on the interpretative and edifying reading of the Four Gospels” by M. Barsov. Subsequent literature up to 1904 on the study of the Gospel of John is indicated by Prof. Bogdashevsky in Prav.-Bogosl. Encyclopedias, vol. 6, p. 836-7 and partly prof. Sagarda (ibid., p. 822). From the latest Russian literature on the study of the Gospel of John they deserve special attention dissertation: I. Bazhenov. Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel in terms of content and language in connection with the question of the origin of the Gospel. 1907; D. Znamensky. The teaching of St. ap. John the Theologian in the fourth Gospel about the face of Jesus Christ. 1907; Prof. Theological. Public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. 1908, part 1.
Gospel
The word “Gospel” (τὸ εὐαγγέλιον) in classical Greek was used to designate: a) a reward that is given to the messenger of joy (τῷ εὐαγγέλῳ), b) a sacrifice sacrificed on the occasion of receiving some good news or a holiday celebrated on the same occasion and c) this good news itself. In the New Testament this expression means:
a) the good news that Christ reconciled people with God and brought us the greatest benefits - mainly founded the Kingdom of God on earth ( Matt. 4:23),
b) the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, preached by Himself and His Apostles about Him as the King of this Kingdom, the Messiah and the Son of God ( 2 Cor. 4:4),
c) all New Testament or Christian teaching in general, primarily the narration of the most important events from the life of Christ ( ; 1 Thess. 2:8) or the personality of the preacher ( Rome. 2:16).
For quite a long time, stories about the life of the Lord Jesus Christ were transmitted only orally. The Lord Himself did not leave any records of His speeches and deeds. In the same way, the 12 apostles were not born writers: they were “unlearned and simple people” ( Acts 4:13), although literate. Among the Christians of the apostolic time there were also very few “wise according to the flesh, strong” and “noble” ( 1 Cor. 1:26), and for most believers, oral stories about Christ were much more important than written ones. In this way, the apostles and preachers or evangelists “transmitted” (παραδιδόναι) the stories about the deeds and speeches of Christ, and the believers “received” (παραλαμβάνειν) - but, of course, not mechanically, only by memory, as can be said about the students of rabbinical schools, but with all my soul, as if something living and life-giving. But this period of oral tradition was soon to end. On the one hand, Christians should have felt the need for a written presentation of the Gospel in their disputes with the Jews, who, as we know, denied the reality of Christ’s miracles and even argued that Christ did not declare Himself the Messiah. It was necessary to show the Jews that Christians have genuine stories about Christ from those persons who were either among His apostles or who were in close communication with eyewitnesses of the deeds of Christ. On the other hand, the need for a written presentation of the history of Christ began to be felt because the generation of the first disciples was gradually dying out and the ranks of direct witnesses to the miracles of Christ were thinning. Therefore, it was necessary to secure in writing individual sayings of the Lord and His entire speeches, as well as the stories of the apostles about Him. It was then that isolated records of what was reported in the oral tradition about Christ began to appear here and there. The words of Christ, which contained the rules of Christian life, were most carefully recorded, and they were much more free to convey various events from the life of Christ, preserving only their general impression. Thus, one thing in these records, due to its originality, was transmitted everywhere in the same way, while the other was modified. These initial recordings did not think about the completeness of the story. Even our Gospels, as can be seen from the conclusion of the Gospel of John ( In. 21:25), did not intend to report all the speeches and deeds of Christ. This is evident, by the way, from the fact that they do not include, for example, the following saying of Christ: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” ( Acts 20:35). The Evangelist Luke reports about such records, saying that many before him had already begun to compile narratives about the life of Christ, but that they lacked proper completeness and that therefore they did not provide sufficient “affirmation” in the faith ( OK. 1:1-4).
Our canonical Gospels apparently arose from the same motives. The period of their appearance can be determined to be approximately thirty years - from 60 to 90 (the last was the Gospel of John). In biblical scholarship, the first three Gospels are usually called synoptic, because they depict the life of Christ in such a way that their three narratives can be viewed in one without much difficulty and combined into one coherent narrative (synoptics - from Greek - looking together). They began to be called Gospels individually, perhaps as early as the end of the 1st century, but from church writing we have information that such a name began to be given to the entire composition of the Gospels only in the second half of the 2nd century. As for the names: “Gospel of Matthew”, “Gospel of Mark”, etc., then more correctly these very ancient names from Greek should be translated as follows: “Gospel according to Matthew”, “Gospel according to Mark” (κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μᾶρκον). By this the Church wanted to say that in all the Gospels there is a single Christian gospel about Christ the Savior, but according to the images of different writers: one image belongs to Matthew, another to Mark, etc.
Four Gospels
Thus, the ancient Church looked upon the portrayal of the life of Christ in our four Gospels, not as different Gospels or narratives, but as one Gospel, one book in four types. That is why in the Church the name Four Gospels was established for our Gospels. Saint Irenaeus called them the “fourfold Gospel” (τετράμορφον τὸ εὐαγγέλιον - see Irenaeus Lugdunensis, Adversus haereses liber 3, ed. A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleaü Irenée Lyon. Contre les hé résies, livre 3, vol. 2. Paris, 1974, 11, 11).
The Fathers of the Church dwell on the question: why exactly did the Church accept not one Gospel, but four? So St. John Chrysostom says: “Couldn’t one evangelist write everything that was needed. Of course, he could, but when four people wrote, they wrote not at the same time, not in the same place, without communicating or conspiring with each other, and for all that they wrote in such a way that everything seemed to be uttered by one mouth, then this is the strongest proof of the truth. You will say: “What happened, however, was the opposite, for the four Gospels are often found to be in disagreement.” This very thing is a sure sign of truth. For if the Gospels had exactly agreed with each other in everything, even regarding the words themselves, then none of the enemies would have believed that the Gospels were not written according to ordinary mutual agreement. Now the slight disagreement between them frees them from all suspicion. For what they say differently regarding time or place does not in the least harm the truth of their narrative. In the main thing, which forms the basis of our life and the essence of preaching, not one of them disagrees with the other in anything or anywhere - that God became a man, worked miracles, was crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven.” (“Conversations on the Gospel of Matthew”, 1).
Saint Irenaeus also finds a special symbolic meaning in the fourfold number of our Gospels. “Since there are four countries of the world in which we live, and since the Church is scattered throughout the entire earth and has its confirmation in the Gospel, it was necessary for it to have four pillars, spreading incorruptibility from everywhere and reviving the human race. The All-Ordering Word, seated on the Cherubim, gave us the Gospel in four forms, but permeated with one spirit. For David, praying for His appearance, says: “He who sits on the Cherubim, show Yourself” ( Ps. 79:2). But the Cherubim (in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel and the Apocalypse) have four faces, and their faces are images of the activity of the Son of God.” Saint Irenaeus finds it possible to attach the symbol of a lion to the Gospel of John, since this Gospel depicts Christ as the eternal King, and the lion is the king in the animal world; to the Gospel of Luke - the symbol of a calf, since Luke begins his Gospel with the image of the priestly service of Zechariah, who slaughtered the calves; to the Gospel of Matthew - a symbol of a man, since this Gospel mainly depicts the human birth of Christ, and, finally, to the Gospel of Mark - a symbol of an eagle, because Mark begins his Gospel with a mention of the prophets, to whom the Holy Spirit flew, like an eagle on wings "(Irenaeus Lugdunensis, Adversus haereses, liber 3, 11, 11-22). Among the other Fathers of the Church, the symbols of the lion and the calf were moved and the first was given to Mark, and the second to John. Since the 5th century. in this form, the symbols of the evangelists began to be added to the images of the four evangelists in church painting.
Mutual relationship of the Gospels
Each of the four Gospels has its own characteristics, and most of all - the Gospel of John. But the first three, as mentioned above, have extremely much in common with each other, and this similarity involuntarily catches the eye even when reading them briefly. Let us first of all talk about the similarity of the Synoptic Gospels and the reasons for this phenomenon.
Even Eusebius of Caesarea, in his “canons,” divided the Gospel of Matthew into 355 parts and noted that 111 of them were found in all three weather forecasters. IN modern times exegetes developed an even more precise numerical formula for determining the similarity of the Gospels and calculated that the total number of verses common to all weather forecasters goes back to 350. In Matthew, then, 350 verses are unique to him, in Mark there are 68 such verses, in Luke - 541. The similarities are mainly noticed in the rendering of the sayings of Christ, and the differences are in the narrative part. When Matthew and Luke literally agree with each other in their Gospels, Mark always agrees with them. The similarity between Luke and Mark is much closer than between Luke and Matthew (Lopukhin - in the Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia. T. V. P. 173). It is also remarkable that some passages in all three evangelists follow the same sequence, for example, the temptation and the speech in Galilee, the calling of Matthew and the conversation about fasting, the plucking of ears of corn and the healing of the withered man, the calming of the storm and the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, etc. The similarity sometimes even extends to the construction of sentences and expressions (for example, in the presentation of a prophecy Small 3:1).
As for the differences observed among weather forecasters, there are quite a lot of them. Some things are reported by only two evangelists, others even by one. Thus, only Matthew and Luke cite the conversation on the mount of the Lord Jesus Christ and report the story of the birth and first years of Christ’s life. Luke alone speaks of the birth of John the Baptist. Some things one evangelist conveys in a more abbreviated form than another, or in a different connection than another. The details of the events in each Gospel are different, as are the expressions.
This phenomenon of similarities and differences in the Synoptic Gospels has long attracted the attention of interpreters of Scripture, and various assumptions have long been made to explain this fact. It seems more correct to believe that our three evangelists used a common oral source for their narrative of the life of Christ. At that time, evangelists or preachers about Christ went everywhere preaching and repeated in different places in a more or less extensive form what was considered necessary to offer to those entering the Church. Thus, a well-known specific type was formed oral gospel, and this is the type we have in written form in our Synoptic Gospels. Of course, at the same time, depending on the goal that this or that evangelist had, his Gospel took on some special features, characteristic only of his work. At the same time, we cannot exclude the assumption that more ancient gospel could have been known to the evangelist who wrote later. Moreover, the difference between the weather forecasters should be explained by the different goals that each of them had in mind when writing his Gospel.
As we have already said, the Synoptic Gospels differ in very many ways from the Gospel of John the Theologian. So they depict almost exclusively the activity of Christ in Galilee, and the Apostle John depicts mainly the sojourn of Christ in Judea. In terms of content, the Synoptic Gospels also differ significantly from the Gospel of John. They give, so to speak, a more external image of the life, deeds and teachings of Christ and from the speeches of Christ they cite only those that were accessible to the understanding of the entire people. John, on the contrary, omits a lot from the activities of Christ, for example, he cites only six miracles of Christ, but those speeches and miracles that he cites have a special deep meaning and extreme importance about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, while the Synoptics portray Christ primarily as the founder of the Kingdom of God and therefore direct the attention of their readers to the Kingdom founded by Him, John draws our attention to the central point of this Kingdom, from which life flows along the peripheries of the Kingdom, i.e. on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, whom John portrays as the Only Begotten Son of God and as the Light for all mankind. That is why the ancient interpreters called the Gospel of John primarily spiritual (πνευματικόν), in contrast to the synoptic ones, as depicting predominantly the human side in the person of Christ (εὐαγγέλιον σωματικόν), i.e. The gospel is physical.
However, it must be said that the weather forecasters also have passages that indicate that the weather forecasters knew the activity of Christ in Judea ( Matt. 23:37, 27:57 ; OK. 10:38-42), and John also has indications of the continued activity of Christ in Galilee. In the same way, weather forecasters convey such sayings of Christ that testify to His Divine dignity ( Matt. 11:27), and John, for his part, also in places depicts Christ as a true man ( In. 2 etc.; John 8 and etc.). Therefore, one cannot speak of any contradiction between the weather forecasters and John in their depiction of the face and work of Christ.
The Reliability of the Gospels
Although criticism has long been expressed against the reliability of the Gospels, and recently these attacks of criticism have especially intensified (the theory of myths, especially the theory of Drews, who does not recognize the existence of Christ at all), however, all the objections of criticism are so insignificant that they are broken at the slightest collision with Christian apologetics . Here, however, we will not cite the objections of negative criticism and analyze these objections: this will be done when interpreting the text of the Gospels itself. We will only talk about the most important general reasons for which we recognize the Gospels as completely reliable documents. This is, firstly, the existence of a tradition of eyewitnesses, many of whom lived to the era when our Gospels appeared. Why on earth would we refuse to trust these sources of our Gospels? Could they have made up everything in our Gospels? No, all the Gospels are purely historical. Secondly, it is not clear why the Christian consciousness would want - as the mythical theory claims - to crown the head of a simple Rabbi Jesus with the crown of the Messiah and Son of God? Why, for example, is it not said about the Baptist that he performed miracles? Obviously because he didn't create them. And from here it follows that if Christ is said to be the Great Wonderworker, then it means that He really was like that. And why would it be possible to deny the authenticity of Christ’s miracles, since the highest miracle - His Resurrection - is witnessed like no other event? ancient history(cm. 1 Cor. 15)?
Bibliography of foreign works on the Four Gospels
Bengel - Bengel J. Al. Gnomon Novi Testamentï in quo ex nativa verborum VI simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubritas sensuum coelestium indicatur. Berolini, 1860.
Blass, Gram. - Blass F. Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch. Gottingen, 1911.
Westcott - The New Testament in Original Greek the text rev. by Brooke Foss Westcott. New York, 1882.
B. Weiss - Weiss B. Die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Gottingen, 1901.
Yog. Weiss (1907) - Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, von Otto Baumgarten; Wilhelm Bousset. Hrsg. von Johannes Weis_s, Bd. 1: Die drei älteren Evangelien. Die Apostelgeschichte, Matthaeus Apostolus; Marcus Evangelista; Lucas Evangelista. . 2. Aufl. Gottingen, 1907.
Godet - Godet F. Commentar zu dem Evangelium des Johannes. Hanover, 1903.
De Wette W.M.L. Kurze Erklärung des Evangeliums Matthäi / Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Band 1, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1857.
Keil (1879) - Keil C.F. Commentar über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Leipzig, 1879.
Keil (1881) - Keil C.F. Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes. Leipzig, 1881.
Klostermann - Klostermann A. Das Markusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwerthe für die evangelische Geschichte. Gottingen, 1867.
Cornelius a Lapide - Cornelius a Lapide. In SS Matthaeum et Marcum / Commentaria in scripturam sacram, t. 15. Parisiis, 1857.
Lagrange - Lagrange M.-J. Etudes bibliques: Evangile selon St. Marc. Paris, 1911.
Lange - Lange J.P. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. Bielefeld, 1861.
Loisy (1903) - Loisy A.F. Le quatrième èvangile. Paris, 1903.
Loisy (1907-1908) - Loisy A.F. Les èvangiles synoptiques, 1-2. : Ceffonds, près Montier-en-Der, 1907-1908.
Luthardt - Luthardt Ch.E. Das johanneische Evangelium nach seiner Eigenthümlichkeit geschildert und erklärt. Nürnberg, 1876.
Meyer (1864) - Meyer H.A.W. Kritisch exegetisches Commentar über das Neue Testament, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 1: Handbuch über das Evangelium des Matthäus. Gottingen, 1864.
Meyer (1885) - Kritisch-exegetischer Commentar über das Neue Testament hrsg. von Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Abteilung 1, Hälfte 2: Bernhard Weiss B. Kritisch exegetisches Handbuch über die Evangelien des Markus und Lukas. Göttingen, 1885. Meyer (1902) - Meyer H.A.W. Das Johannes-Evangelium 9. Auflage, bearbeitet von B. Weiss. Gottingen, 1902.
Merx (1902) - Merx A. Erläuterung: Matthaeus / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte, Teil 2, Hälfte 1. Berlin, 1902.
Merx (1905) - Merx A. Erläuterung: Markus und Lukas / Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte. Teil 2, Hälfte 2. Berlin, 1905.
Morison - Morison J. A practical commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. London, 1902.
Stanton - Stanton V.H. The Synoptic Gospels / The Gospels as historical documents, Part 2. Cambridge, 1903. Tholuck (1856) - Tholuck A. Die Bergpredigt. Gotha, 1856.
Tholuck (1857) - Tholuck A. Commentar zum Evangelium Johannis. Gotha, 1857.
Heitmüller - see Yog. Weiss (1907).
Holtzmann (1901) - Holtzmann H.J. Die Synoptiker. Tubingen, 1901.
Holtzmann (1908) - Holtzmann H.J. Evangelium, Briefe und Offenbarung des Johannes / Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament bearbeitet von H. J. Holtzmann, R. A. Lipsius etc. Bd. 4. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1908.
Zahn (1905) - Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Matthäus / Commentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 1. Leipzig, 1905.
Zahn (1908) - Zahn Th. Das Evangelium des Johannes ausgelegt / Commentar zum Neuen Testament, Teil 4. Leipzig, 1908.
Schanz (1881) - Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Marcus. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881.
Schanz (1885) - Schanz P. Commentar über das Evangelium des heiligen Johannes. Tubingen, 1885.
Schlatter - Schlatter A. Das Evangelium des Johannes: ausgelegt für Bibelleser. Stuttgart, 1903.
Schürer, Geschichte - Schürer E., Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. Bd. 1-4. Leipzig, 1901-1911.
Edersheim (1901) - Edersheim A. The life and times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 Vols. London, 1901.
Ellen - Allen W.C. A critical and exegetical commentary of the Gospel according to st. Matthew. Edinburgh, 1907.
Alford N. The Greek Testament in four volumes, vol. 1. London, 1863.
1–26. High Priestly Prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ's farewell conversation with his disciples is over. But before going to meet the enemies who will lead Him to judgment and torment, Christ pronounces a solemn prayer to the Father for Himself, for His disciples and for His future Church, as the great High Priest of humanity. This prayer can be divided into three parts.
In the first part (verses 1-8) Christ prays for Himself. He asks for His own glorification or for the granting of divine greatness to Him, as the God-man, since He is the cornerstone of the Church, and the Church can achieve its goal only when its Head, Christ, is glorified.
In the second part (verses 9–19) Christ asks for His disciples. He prays to the Father to protect them from the evil that reigns in the world, and to sanctify them with Divine truth, for they represent the continuers of the work of Christ in the world. The world will only receive the word of Christ in purity and in all its heavenly power when the apostles themselves are confirmed in this word and sanctified by its power.
In the third part (verses 20–26) Christ prays for those who believe in Him. In order for believers in Christ to fulfill their purpose, to form the Church of Christ, they must maintain unity among themselves, and Christ begs the Father to maintain this unity between believers. But first of all, they must be in unity with the Father and Christ.
John 17:1. After these words, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and said: Father! the hour has come, glorify Your Son, that Your Son also will glorify You,
“Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven” - see comments on John. 11:41.
“Father! the hour has come." For Christ the hour of glorification has come, because the hour of death has come (cf. John 12:23). The victory over death, the devil and the world, one might say, has already been won by Christ - the time has come for the Son to receive the heavenly glory in which He resided before His incarnation (cf. verse 5).
“Let Your Son also glorify You.” Christ had previously glorified His Father (cf. Matt. 9:8), just as the Father glorified Christ before (cf. John 12:28). But Christ’s glorification of God the Father has not yet been brought to perfect completeness while Christ is still on earth, in conditions of existence that limit the full manifestation of His glory. Only when He, with His glorified flesh, again sits on the Divine throne, will it be possible for the full revelation of His and the Father’s glory, which consists in drawing all the ends of the earth to Christ.
John 17:2. For You have given Him authority over all flesh, so that He may give eternal life to all that You have given Him.
“Because You gave Him power” is more correct, “according to the fact that” (καθώσ). Christ here clarifies His right to such glorification. This right gives Him the greatness of the work of saving people entrusted to Him by the Father.
"Over all flesh." The entire human race, which is here called “flesh” due to its spiritual weakness, due to its powerlessness in arranging its own salvation (cf. Isa. 40 et seq.), is given over to the power of the Son. But, of course, only from heaven, from the heavenly throne, can Christ exercise this power, make it valid for countless millions of people scattered throughout the earth (and this power, once it is given, cannot and should not remain unused by Christ for the good of humanity and for the glory of the name of God). Consequently, the Lord has every right and reason to ask the Father to glorify Him with the highest, heavenly glory throughout humanity.
“That He may give eternal life to all that You have given Him.” Now Christ said that the power given to Him over all humanity must be realized. But He has not yet determined how, in what direction this power will be exercised. It may also mean that Christ will save many people, but, undoubtedly, by virtue of the same power, Christ at the final judgment will condemn many for their unwillingness to accept salvation from His hands. Now He says definitely that salvation or, in other words, “eternal life” (cf. John 3:15), He wants, in accordance with the will of the Father, not to give to everyone, but only to those whom He gave, whom the Father especially attracted to Him as worthy of salvation (cf. John 6:37, 39, 44, 65).
John 17:3. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
“This is eternal life...” Apparently, true eternal life consists, therefore, only in the knowledge of God. But Christ could not express such a thought, because true knowledge of God does not protect a person from the impoverishment of love (1 Cor. 13:2). It would be more correct to say, therefore, that here by “knowledge” we mean not only the theoretical assimilation of the truths of faith, but the attraction of the heart to God and Christ, true love.
"The one true God." This is what Christ says about God to point out the contrast between the knowledge of God that He has in mind and the incorrect knowledge that the pagans had about God, transferring the glory of the One to many gods (Rom. 1:23).
"And Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Here Christ calls Himself this way for the first time. “Jesus Christ” is His name here, which later in the mouths of the apostles becomes His usual designation (Acts 2:38, 3:6, 4, etc.). The Lord thus, in this last prayer of His, spoken aloud before the disciples, gives, so to speak, a well-known formula, which should subsequently be used in Christian society. It is very likely that Christ offers this designation in opposition to the Jewish view of Him, according to which He was simply “Jesus” (cf. John 9:11).
According to negative criticism (for example, Beischlag), Christ here clearly says that His Father is God, and He Himself is not God at all. But against such an objection, it must be said that Christ here opposes the Father as the One true God not to Himself, but to the false gods whom the pagans revered. Then, Christ says that the knowledge of God the Father is achievable only through Him, Christ, and that the knowledge of Christ Himself is as necessary to obtain eternal life or salvation as the knowledge of God the Father. Isn’t it clear that in this He testifies to Himself as One with God the Father in essence? As for the fact that He speaks about knowing Him separately from the knowledge of God the Father, this, according to Znamensky’s remark, is explained by the fact that in order to achieve eternal life, faith is necessary not only in God, but also in the redemption of man before God, which was accomplished The Son of God through the fact that He became the Messiah - the God-Man sent from God the Father into the world.
John 17:4. I glorified You on earth, I accomplished the work that You entrusted Me with.
John 17:1. And now glorify Me, O Father, with You, with the glory that I had with You before the world was.
The new motive for fulfilling Christ’s request for glorification is that He has already, on His part, so to speak, objectively fulfilled the task entrusted to Him (see verse 3) - He has communicated to people the saving knowledge of the Father and Himself. By this He glorified the Father, although, of course, so far only on earth, in the state of His humiliation. Now let the Father, for His part, glorify Christ in Himself, i.e. He will lift Him up into heaven and give Him the greatness in which He abided from eternity (cf. John 1 et seq.; John 8:58). Christ possessed divine glory on earth, but this glory was still hidden and only occasionally flared up (for example, in the transfiguration). Soon she will fall everyone with his greatness as Christ the God-Man.
John 17:6. I have revealed Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world; They were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
John 17:7. Now they have understood that everything that You have given Me is from You,
John 17:8. For the words that You gave Me I delivered to them, and they received and truly understood that I came from You, and believed that You sent Me.
Speaking about the fulfillment of the task entrusted to Him in a subjective sense, precisely about those results that He achieved in the close circle of the chosen ones given to Him by the Father, achieved through His teaching and deeds (cf. John 14 et seq.), Christ indicates that He revealed to these people the “name” of the Father, i.e. He made it known to these chosen ones that God is truly the Father, that He loves all people and therefore from eternity predetermined to redeem them from sin, curse and death.
"They were Yours." The apostles belonged to God even before they turned to Christ. Such was, for example, Nathanael, a true Israelite (John 1:48).
"They have kept Your word." Christ thus recognizes the Gospel which He proclaimed not as His own, but as the word of the Father. The apostles accepted him for this, and kept him in their souls to this day. The Lord, saying that the apostles preserved the word of the Father transmitted to them through Him, here probably means those statements that were made on their behalf by the Apostle Peter (John 6:68) and all of them (John 16:29).
“Now they have understood...” With the understanding that everything Christ told them was given to Him from God, is connected, of course, with entering the path to eternal life (cf. verse 3).
“For the words that You gave Me...” The disciples came to such an understanding because Christ, for His part, did not hide anything from them (of course, excluding what they could not understand, cf. John 16:12) and, on the other hand, because the apostles accepted with faith words of Christ. Apparently, here the understanding of the divine dignity of Christ (“that I came from You”) precedes the faith in his Messianic dignity (“that You sent Me”). But in fact, both go simultaneously, and faith in the Divinity of Christ is placed in first place only because of its primary importance.
John 17:9. I pray for them: I do not pray for the whole world, but for those whom You have given Me, because they are Yours.
Christ is the Advocate of the whole world (1 Tim. 2:5-6) and wants to save all people (John 10:16). But in currently His thoughts are occupied only with the fate of those who are entrusted to Him and who must continue His work on earth. The world is still holding itself hostile towards Christ, and Christ has no reason yet to tell the Father about how He would like to arrange the affairs of this world so alien to Him. His concern for the time being is entirely directed towards the apostles as those about whom He must give an account to the Father.
John 17:10. And all that is mine is yours, and yours is mine; and I was glorified in them.
Having noticed that not only the apostles, but also everything He has in common with the Father, Christ, as an incentive to special prayer for them, exposes the fact that He has already been glorified in them. Of course, He speaks of the future activity of the apostles, but due to the confidence in them, He depicts their activity as already past, as part of history (“I was glorified in them”).
John 17:11. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father! keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one, just as We are.
Here appears a seemingly new motive for prayer for the apostles. They are left alone in this hostile world: Christ leaves them.
"Holy Father." The holiness of God consists in the fact that God is infinitely elevated above the world, detached from it as the totality of all imperfection and sinfulness, but at the same time can always descend into the world for salvation or for judgment.
“Keep them.” Since he is completely uninvolved in sin and at the same time punishes sinners and saves the righteous, the Father can save the apostles from the influence of worldly vices and from the persecutions of the world.
“In Your name”: it is more correct to read “in Your name” (in the Greek text it reads ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί σου). God's name is, as it were, the central point where the apostles find refuge from the influences of the world. Here, having found shelter, they recognize each other as spiritual brothers, as people different from those who live in the world. In the name of God or, in other words, in God Himself, the apostles will find support for maintaining such unity among themselves as exists between the Father and the Son. And they desperately need this unity in order for all their activities to be successful. Only through united efforts will they be able to defeat the world.
John 17:12. While I was at peace with them, I kept them in Your name; those whom You gave Me I have kept, and none of them perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Hitherto, Christ Himself did the work that He now asks the Father to take upon Himself. And Christ did this work successfully: the eleven apostles were preserved, they stand here, near Christ. If one of those entrusted to Him died, then Christ was not to blame for his death. Holy Scripture itself foretold this fact (Ps. 109:17). The Lord obviously wants to say with this reference to the words of the Psalmist what he said in the 13th chapter (John 13:18).
John 17:13. Now I come to You, and I say this in the world, so that they may have My complete joy within themselves.
Since Christ must now withdraw from the disciples, He deliberately speaks His prayer for them out loud while He still remains with them “in peace.” Let them hear, let them know to whom He entrusts them. This knowledge that the Father Himself has become their patron will save them from discouragement during the impending trials.
John 17:14. I have given them Your word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Here the apostles' need for protection from the Father is even more clearly defined (cf. verse 11). On the one hand, the disciples, through the word of the Father communicated to them (verse 8), are separated from communication with the world; on the other hand, for the same reason as Christ (cf. John 8:23), they became objects of hatred for the world (John . 15:18-19).
John 17:15. I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from evil.
Of course, in order to protect students from the hatred of the world, they could be taken from the world. But the world cannot do without them; through them it must receive the news of Christ’s completed redemption. Therefore, the Lord asks that in the work ahead of the apostles, evil will not defeat them.
John 17:16. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
The Lord repeats the thought expressed in verse 14 in order to justify the following request.
John 17:17. Sanctify them with Your truth; Your word is truth.
“Sanctify them” (ἀγίασον αὐτούς). Here the Lord speaks not only about preserving the apostles from vicious worldly influences: He asked the Father about this earlier, but also about supplying them with holiness in the positive sense of the word, which they need to perform future service.
“Thy Truth”: more correctly – “in truth” (ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ). Christ Himself now explains that this truth is “the word of the Father,” which Christ conveyed to the apostles (verses 8, 14). Once the apostles, with the help of the grace of the Father, who will teach them this grace in the Holy Spirit, assimilate this “word,” then they will be completely ready (sanctified) to spread this word in the world.
John 17:18. Just as You sent Me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
The apostles need sanctification because of their high calling: they are sent by Christ with great powers, just as Christ Himself was sent into the world by the Father.
John 17:19. And for them I consecrate Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth.
Previously, Christ asked the Father to sanctify the disciples for their high service. Now Christ adds that He also consecrates Himself to God as a sacrifice, so that the disciples may be completely sanctified.
“For them”, i.e. to their benefit (ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν).
“I dedicate Myself.” According to the interpretation of the holy fathers, here we are talking specifically about Christ sacrificing Himself (see, for example, St. John Chrysostom). Some of the new interpreters object to this explanation, pointing out that Christ sacrificed Himself for all people, while here we are talking only about the apostles. In view of this, the “dedication” that Christ speaks of here is understood, for example, by Tzan not as the offering of an atoning sacrifice, but as the offering of the so-called sacrifice of dedication, which was once offered by Aaron for himself and his sons (Num. 8:11). But even if such an explanation can be accepted, the essence of the matter that Christ is talking about here will not change, and what is important is that He offers a sacrifice, even an initiatory one, when He enters into the service of the high priest (“Himself”, ἐμαυτόν). Christ points to this self-sacrifice in order to highlight the special importance of the calling of disciples.
“So that they too may be sanctified.” Here “sanctification” (the same verb ἀγιάζειν is placed as in the main sentence) is undoubtedly understood as the dedication of the disciples to the property of God, their dedication to serving God without a direct hint of the apostles sacrificing their own lives to God.
“By the truth”: more precisely, “in truth” (ἐν ἀληθείᾳ), as opposed to the symbolic representative initiation that took place in the Old Testament.
John 17:20. I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me through their word,
The circle of persons for whom Christ considers it necessary to offer His prayer to the Father is now expanding. If earlier He considered it necessary to ask the Father only for the apostles, now He sends up prayer for His entire future Church, which will be formed from those who believe the sermon or word of the apostles.
John 17:21. that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.
Here three objects or three goals are indicated to which the attention of the praying Christ is directed (the particle ἵνα is used three times - so that). The first goal is contained in the request: “that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.” The unity of believers is understood here, obviously, as agreement in the motives and goals of their spiritual aspirations. Of course, exactly the kind of unity that exists between the Father and Christ cannot exist between people. But, in any case, this highest unity between the persons of the Divine must always be presented to the believing consciousness as an ideal.
The second goal is defined by the words “and they may be one in Us.” Believers will only be able to maintain mutual unity when they abide in the Father and the Son: the unity that exists between the Father and the Son will also contribute to strengthening the unity between believers.
The third goal is special: “that the world may believe that You sent Me.” A world tormented by selfish aspirations could never dream of achieving true unity in thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the unanimity that he sees in Christian society will strike him with surprise, and from such surprise the transition to faith in Christ as the Savior sent to people by God Himself will not be far away. The history of the Church indeed shows that such cases have occurred. Thus, the unity of all believers, in turn, should itself serve the cause of divine economy. Unbelievers, seeing the close unity of believers among themselves and with the Father and the Son, will come to faith in Christ, who established such a wonderful unity (cf. Rom. 11:14).
John 17:22. And the glory that You gave Me, I have given them: that they may be one, even as We are one.
John 17:23. I am in them, and You are in Me; that they may be perfected in one, and that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them as You loved Me.
In order for the unity of believers to be stronger, Christ has already made His first disciples partakers of His glory, which He had on earth as the Only Begotten Son of the Father (John 1:14). Here one can see an allusion to the power given to the apostles when they were first sent to preach - a power that was not taken back by Christ (cf. Matt. 10:1; Luke 9:54). And now He does not leave them: being in communion with Christ, they are through this in communion with the Father, and in this way they achieve perfect communion with each other. As a result, the whole world again benefits spiritually.
John 17:24. Father! whom You have given Me, I want them to be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory, which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
John 17:25. Righteous Father! and the world did not know You; but I have known You, and these have known that You sent Me.
John 17:26. And I have made known to them Your name, and will make it known, that the love with which Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.
Here is the conclusion of the prayer. As the one whom the Father loved before the creation of the world, the Son now expresses not a request, but a desire (“I want”) that believers - not only the apostles - be with Him and contemplate His glory. It is very likely that Christ is speaking here about His second coming to earth, coming in glory (Matthew 24:30). Christ is quite confident in the fulfillment of His desire: “righteous”, i.e. just, the Father cannot fail to fulfill His desires. A world that does not know the Father can still be denied glorification with Christ, but believers, whom Christ has already taught to know the Father and will teach this in the future (through the Comforter Spirit), cannot be refused. From Christ, the Father will transfer His love to believers (John 16:27). And since the eternal and closest object of the Father’s love is Christ Himself, in whom the Father’s love rested entirely, it means that Christ Himself descends together with the Father’s love into the souls of believers.
Virgo
