76 - 1Jn 5:12
Ὁ ἔχων τὸν υἱὸν, ἔχει τὴν ζωήν· ὁ μὴ ἔχων τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, τὴν ζωὴν οὐκ ἔχει. But the apostle does not only say that through Him, the source of life, life has been brought to men generally, but that it has been brought to (ἡμῖνἔδωκενὁΘεὸς [“God gave to us”]). For it is taken for granted in this verse that the witness of God, the historically actual witness, has been received by us, and thus become a μαρτυρία ἐνἡμῖν [“testimony in us”] (compare 1Jn 5:10); in other words, that we have received our portion in the life brought by the Redeemer. The connection between the Son of God and the life, declared in 1Jn 5:11, is then in 1Jn 5:12 evolved under two aspects: where the Son of God is, there is also life; and it is to be found only where He is. And thus the apostle has come back to the idea which he had laid down at the outset of his document; in 1Jn 1:1 he had declared that His annunciation concerned the Logos, but as the λόγος τῆς ζωῆς [“word of life”], that is, the divine and eternal life which is in the Logos, and flows forth from Him. That Son of God and life are correlative terms, is here obviously the conclusion of all his development. The conclusion it is; for that which now follows is not a continuation of the discussion of 1Jn 5:6 ff.: that it is not this is evident from the matter of what follows, in which the μαρτυρεῖν [“to testify] no more appears; as well as from the emphasized resumption of the twelfth verse in the thirteenth, a thing to be accounted for only on the ground that something new is about to be entered on. Nor is what follows a new train of thought, which stands co-ordinately by the side of the previous development. We have rather only a recapitulation yet before us, in which, indeed, the apostle expands one single thought, that of intercession, under one aspect, intercession in regard to the sin unto death. That this close of the whole Epistle falls again into two members is evident at the first glance: 1Jn 5:13-17 and 1Jn 5:18-21 must be taken together; but it will require a discussion of the details to show in what relation these two sub-sections stand to each other.