John 17:3 - Exposition

The life eternal , of which Jesus has just spoken, is this (cf. for construction, John 15:12 ; 1 John 3:11 , 1 John 3:23 ; 1 John 5:3 ), that £ they might know —should come to know— thee, the only veritable God . All ideas of God which deviate from or fall short of "the Father" revealed to us by Christ, are not the veritable God, and the knowledge of them is not life eternal. The Father is here set forth as the fens Deitatis . This does not exclude "the Son," but is inconceivable without him. The Fatherhood expresses an eternal relation. The one element involves the ether as integral to itself: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." There is a knowledge of the Father possible even now. "Henceforth, he has said, ye have seen him, and known him;" yet not till the veil is lifted, and we see face to face, shall we know as we are known ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 ; 1 John 3:2 ), shall we see him as he is. And him whom thou didst send, Jesus the Christ (not Jesus to be , or as Christ , but rather "Jesus the Christ," as the expansion and explanation of the more indefinite term, "him whom thou didst scud"). Why does our Lord add to this expression one that at first sight seems so incompatible with the idea of this prayer? It has led so careful and reverential a commentator as Westcott to remove the difficulty by supposing that the whole verse is a gloss of the evangelist, expressing the sense of what our Lord may have uttered at greater length. We are loath to admit this method of exegesis, especially as the sole reasons for it are the supposed strangeness of our Lord's here using a phrase so unaccustomed, and thus giving himself not only his Personal Name, but his own official title. It is unusual. The phrase does undoubtedly belong to a later period for its current and constant use. Yet it must not be forgotten