Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 17:3

αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος ζωή ἵνα … On ἵνα in this construction, see Burton, 213, and cf. John 15:8; ὅτι in John 3:19 is not quite equivalent. In Isaiah 37:20 God is designated ὁ Θεὸς μόνος, and in Exodus 34:6 ἀληθινός; cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:10. He is the only true God in contrast to many that are “called gods,” 1 Corinthians 8:5-6. But cf. especially 1 John 5:20. It was by making known to them this God, and thus glorifying the Father, that Christ “gave men eternal life”. The life He gave consisted in and was maintained by this knowledge. But to the knowledge of the Father, the knowledge of “Him whom Thou didst send, Jesus Christ,” was necessary, John 1:18; John 14:6. As in John 1:17, so here, Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν is the double name which became common in Apostolic times, and not (as Meyer and others) “an appellative predicate,” “Jesus as the Messiah”. Whether Jesus' naming of Himself as a third person can be accounted for by the solemnity of the occasion (“der feierliche Gebetstyl,” Lücke), or is to be ascribed to John, is much debated. Westcott seems justified in saying that “the use of the name ‘Jesus Christ' by the Lord Himself at this time is in the highest degree unlikely.… It is no derogation from the truthfulness of the record that St. John has thus given parenthetically, and in conventional language (so to speak), the substance of what the Lord said at greater length.”

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

John 17:3

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