John 6:46

Ver. 46. The phrase οὐχ ὅτι, not that, marks a restriction. This restriction can only refer to the term teaching (John 6:45). The notion of teaching seems to imply a direct contact between the disciple and the Master. Now no other but Jesus has possessed and possesses the privilege of immediate contact with God through sight. All can certainly hear, it is true, but He alone has seen. And this is the reason why the divine teaching of which He has just spoken is only preparatory; it is designed not to take the place of His own, but to lead to Him, the only one who has seen and consequently can reveal God perfectly, John 17:3; comp. Matthew 11:27. This saying is, certainly, one of those from which John has drawn the fundamental ideas of his Prologue (comp. John 1:1; John 1:14; John 1:18). If the preposition παρά, from, were not connected with the words ὁ ὤν, who is, it might be applied solely to the mission of Jesus. But that participle obliges us to think of origin and essence; comp. John 7:29. This παρά is the counterpart of the πρός of John 1:1; united, they sum up the entire relation of the Son to the Father. Everything in the Son is from (παρά) the Father and tends to (πρός) the Father.

Does the sight of the Father here ascribed to Jesus proceed from His divine state before the incarnation, as most interpreters and even Weiss think? This does not seem to me possible. It is the contents of the human consciousness which He has of God, which He sets forth to His brethren in human words. Comp. John 3:34-35, where His knowledge of God is inferred from the communication of the Spirit without measure, which has been made to Him as man; the same in John 14:10, where it is explained by the communion in which He lives here on earth with the Father. The perfect ἑώρακε, has seen, proves absolutely nothing for the contrary view; comp. John 8:38, and the analogous expressions, John 5:19-20, which evidently refer to His earthly existence. Only it must not be forgotten that the unique intimacy of this paternal and filial relation rests on the eternal relation of Jesus to the Father; comp. John 17:24: “Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world.” It is because this son of man is the eternal well-beloved of the Father, that God completely communicates Himself to Him. The readings of א : “who comes from the Father,” instead of “ from God,” and of א D: “has seen God,” instead of “ the Father,” arose undoubtedly from the desire to make our text more literally conformed to the parallel expressions of the Prologue; comp. for the first John 1:14: παρὰ τοῦ πατρός, and for the second John 1:18: Θεὸν ἑώρακε. By this saying Jesus gives it to be understood that after the divine teaching has led to the Son, it is He, the Son, who, in His turn, leads to the Father: “ I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me ” (John 14:6). Through this idea Jesus comes back to the principal idea which had excited the murmuring of the Jews and He reaffirms it with still more of solemnity than before, in the words of John 6:47-51: