John 17:3

Vv. 3 establishes the connection between the idea of glorifying God (John 17:1) and that of giving eternal life (John 17:2): to live is to know God; to glorify God is, accordingly, to give life by giving the knowledge of Him.

Ver. 3. “ Now this is eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou has sent, Jesus Christ. ”

Jesus contemplates that eternal life in which He is to make mankind participate; He fathoms the essence of it; it is the knowledge of God. Such a knowledge is certainly not, in His thought, a purely rational fact. The Scriptures always take the word know in a more profound sense. When the question is of the relation between two persons, this word designates the perfect intuition which each has of the moral being of the other, their intimate meeting together in the same luminous medium. Jesus has described in John 14:21-23 the revealing act from which there will result for His own this only real knowledge of God. It is the work of the Spirit, making Jesus, and with Him God, dwell in us.

The epithet only neither refers, as Luthardt says, to the word true, nor to the word God, but to the entire phrase true God. The term ἀληθινός, true, declares that this God is the only one who answers perfectly to the idea expressed by the word God. How is it possible not to find here, with Meyer, the contrast to manifold divinities and divinities unworthy of this name which appertained to the reigning polytheism? I do not see how Weiss can refuse to admit this tacit antithesis. It suits precisely the idea of the extension of Christ's action beyond the limits of Israel, which is, according to him, the idea of John 17:2. Does not the word all flesh call up the image of all these peoples foreign to Israel, which compose the idolatrous portion of mankind?

But Meyer is certainly mistaken in making the words: the only true God, the attribute of σέ, thee: “recognize thee as the only....” In this construction the word know takes a meaning too intellectual and one contrary to the part here ascribed to the knowledge as being one with the life itself. The expression: the only true God, is appositional with σέ : “ to know thee, thyself, the only true God. ” Thus the word to know preserves the profound and living sense which it should have. This does not at all exclude the contrast with polytheism indicated above.

If Jesus had prayed only with a view to Himself, He would have limited Himself to these words: “ That they should know thee, the only true God. ” But He prays aloud, and consequently associating in His prayer those who surround Him. This is the reason why He adds: “ and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. ” While rendering homage to God, as the first source of eternal life, He has the consciousness of being Himself the sole intermediate agent through whom those who listen to Him can have access to this source; for it is in Him that God manifests and gives Himself (John 14:6). The possession of eternal life is identified therefore in His view, for all that is called man, with the knowledge of Himself, Jesus, as well as with that of God. Since Augustine, some interpreters (Lampe, etc.) have made the words “(him) whom thou hast sent,” etc., a second apposition to σέ, thee.

The aim of this impossible construction is evidently to save the divinity of Christ; but this is exposed to no danger with the natural construction. The words: “ Him whom thou hast sent,” are certainly the object of the verb that they should know. No more need we make the word Christ the attribute of Jesus: “that they should know Jesus whom thou hast sent as the Christ;” this construction would bring us back to the intellectual sense of the word know. The words Jesus Christ are in apposition with the object, him whom thou hast sent. But we need not unite them in one single proper name, in conformity with the later use of this phrase, as Weiss, Reuss and some others do, who see in such an expression, which could not, as they say, be placed in the mouth of Jesus Himself, a proof of the freedom with which the evangelist has reproduced this prayer.

Tholuck also finds here a coming in of the later ecclesiastical language; even Westcott regards these words, as well as the preceding ones: the only true God, as glosses due to the evangelist who is explaining the Master's prayer an explanation which is indeed certainly superfluous. Bretschneider is the one who has most severely criticised this form; he sees in it a gross historical impropriety from which he derives a proof against the authenticity of the Gospel. We think that this objection, on the contrary, springs from the fact that one does not place himself, in a sufficiently living way, in the historical situation in which this prayer was uttered. Until now, Jesus had always avoided assuming before the people the title of Christ. Rather than use this term, subject to so many misapprehensions, when the ordinary designation Son of man was not sufficient, He had had recourse to more strange circumlocutions (John 8:24; John 10:25 ff.). He had acted in the same way in the circle of His disciples (John 13:13; John 13:19). Once only, and by way of exception, in Samaria, on non-Jewish ground, He had openly assumed the title of Messiah (John 4:26). In the Synoptics, He conducts Himself in the same way. Matthew 16:20, while accepting Peter's confession, He takes occasion to forbid the disciples to designate Him publicly as the Christ. This reticence must not continue to the end. And since the moment was come when the new word of command for mankind, Jesus Messiah, was to be proclaimed throughout the whole earth by the apostles, it was necessary that once at least they should hear it coming expressly from the lips of their Master Himself. And under what more favorable circumstances and in what more solemn form could this watchword of the new religion be proclaimed than in this last conversation with His Father, which was setting the seal upon His whole work? This is what Jesus does in this solemn formula: Jeschouah hammaschiach (Jesus Messiah).

John has not therefore committed an inadvertence here. He has faithfully reproduced this inexpressibly serious and thrilling moment, when he heard Jesus Himself, by this declaration, explicitly sanction at last the faith which had not ceased to develop itself within him since the day when he for the first time drew near to Jesus (John 1:42) that faith which he and his colleagues had henceforth the mission of preaching to the world. Would to God that all the confessions of faith, throughout the Church, had always been, like this, acts of adoration!

It has been objected that the word χριστόν, without the article, can only be regarded as a proper name. But comp. John 9:22, where John says, “If any one confessed him as the Christ,” without using the article. As to John 1:17, we have there the technical form indeed, but as a reproduction by the pen of the evangelist of the more living form which is found in our prayer.

This second clause of the verse separates the new religion from Judaism, as the first does from Paganism.

The Arians and Socinians have combated the divinity of Jesus Christ by means of this verse in which Jesus is placed beside and apart from the only true God. But John takes the same course in speaking of the Logos, John 1:1. No one is more express in his statements of subordination than John. And yet, at the same time, no one teaches more distinctly the participation of Jesus, as the Word, in the Divine nature. In this very verse Jesus is presented as the object, and not only as the intermediate agent, of the knowledge which is eternal life. How could the knowledge of a creature be the life of the human soul?

The conjunction ἵνα, that, is used here rather than ὅτι, because this knowledge is presented as an end to be reached, the supreme good to be obtained.

After this outpouring, Jesus returns to the prayer of John 17:1; He presents to God in a new form the same ground to justify the petition: Glorify me! He insists on all that He, Jesus, has already done, to establish on the earth this twofold knowledge which is eternal life, and on the actual necessity of a change in His position in order to finish this divine work (John 17:4-5).