John 6:69

Ver. 69. The pronoun ἡμεῖς, we, sets the apostles in marked contrast with the disciples who had just deserted Jesus. The verbs in the perfect tense have believed, known, indicate things gained for the future and which are not necessary to be reconsidered. Jesus may declare in their presence the most surprising things; it matters not; the faith which they have in Him and the knowledge which they have of Him cause them in advance to accept all. There is a certain knowledge which precedes faith (1Jn 4:16); but there is also a knowledge which follows it and which has a more inward and profound character (Php 3:10); it is of this latter that Peter here speaks. Under the power of an immediate impression they John, Andrew and himself had proclaimed Jesus as the Christ (John 1:42; John 1:50), and from that time they had, through a daily experience, recognized and established the truth of that first impression.

The substance of Peter's profession is formulated somewhat differently in the Alexandrian and Byzantine readings. The expression: Son of the living God, in the second, is connected with the whole contents of the chapter; comp. John 6:57: “ The living Father. ” But what renders it suspicious is its resemblance to Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16. At the first glance, the designation: the Holy One of God, of the Alexandrian authorities is less easily justified in this context. But it is nevertheless connected with the idea expressed in John 6:27: He whom the Father, God, has sealed. The unexceptionable divine seal, by which the apostles had recognized Jesus as the Messiah was not especially His acts of power; it was His holiness. The term: Holy One of God, “set apart from the rest of men by His consecration,” is not a Messianic designation either in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. It is the demons who used it the first time (Mark 1:24 and Luke 4:34). They were led to it by the feeling of the contrast between Christ and themselves, impure spirits; Peter and the apostles, by that of sympathy. Comp. Luke 1:35; Acts 4:27; Revelation 3:7.