Verses 31-59
IV
Christ The Liberator, As Son Of The House In Opposition To Servants; The One Sent From God, As Against The Agents Of The Devil; The Eternal And The Hope Of Abraham As Against The Bodily Seed Or Abraham. Or: The Liberator Of Israel, The Adversary Of Satan, The Hope Of Abraham. A Great Swinging From Faith To Unbelief. Attempted Stoning
(John 8:46-59, the Pericope for Judica Sunday.)
31Then said Jesus [Jesus therefore said] to those Jews which believed on him [who had believed him]. If ye continue in my word, then are ye [ye are] my45 disciples indeed; 32And ye shall [will] know the truth, and the truth shall [will] make you free. 33They answered him, We be [are] Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall [will] be made free? 34Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [a bondman, a slave] of sin.46 35And the servant [the bondman] abideth not in the house for ever: but [omit but] the Son [son] abideth ever.47 36If the Son therefore shall make you [If then the Son make you] free, ye shall [will] be free indeed. 37I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place 38[maketh no progress] in you. I speak that which I have seen with my [the] Father: and ye [likewise]48 do that which ye have seen with your father.49 39They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were [are]50 Abraham’s children, ye would51 do the works of Abraham. 40But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you [spoken to you] the truth, which I have heard of [I heard from] God: this [the like of this] did not Abraham. 41Ye do the deeds [works] of your father. Then said they [They said] to him, We be [were] not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came [am come] from God; [for] neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43Why do ye not understand my speech? even because52 ye cannot hear my word. 44Ye are of your father [of the father who is] the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will [ye desire to] do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not [doth not stand] in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he53 speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own [from his own nature]: for [because] he is a liar, and the father of 45it [thereof]. And [But] because I tell you [speak] the truth, ye believe me not. 46Which of you convinceth [convicteth] me of sin? And [omit And] if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? 47He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not [for this cause ye do not hear], because ye are not of God.
48Then answered the Jews [The Jews answered], and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil [demon]? 49Jesus answered, I have 50not a devil [demon]; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And 51[But] I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying [my word]54 he shall [will] never see death.
52Then55 said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil [demon]. Abraham is dead [died], and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying 53[my word], he shall [will] never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead [who died]? and the prophets are dead [the prophets also 54died]: whom makest thou [dost thou make] thyself? Jesus answered; If I honour [glorify] 56 myself my honour [glory] is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth 55[glorifieth] me; of whom ye say, that he is your [our]57 God: Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall [should] 56be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying [word]. Your58 father Abraham rejoiced to see [that he should see, ἵνα ἴδῃ] my day: and he saw it, and was glad. 57Then said the Jews [The Jews therefore said] unto him, Thou art not yet fifty59 years old, and hast thou seen60 Abraham? 58Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was [was made, or, born, γενέσθαι] I am [εἰμί].
59Then took they up [Therefore they took up] stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by [omit going—by].61
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[The last discourse had made an impression on many, and brought them to the door of a superficial discipleship (John 8:30), while yet their heart was full of prejudice. These half converts the Lord now addresses and warns them not to be satisfied with a passing excitement of feeling, but to become true and steady disciples. Then they would know the truth, and the truth would give them true freedom from the degrading bondage of sin and error. Knowledge appears here as the fruit of faith, and freedom as the fruit of knowledge. This earnest exhortation brings out the latent hatred of the Jews, whereupon the Lord, with fearful severity, exposes the diabolical nature of their opposition to Him, while He at the same time reveals His divine nature as the destroyer of death and the One who was before Abraham was born. This address, in the lively form of dialogue, unites the character of a testimony concerning Himself and a judgment of the Jews, and rises to the summit of moral force.—P. S.]
John 8:31. If ye continue in my word.—That is, here, not merely: continue to believe, but believe according to the spirit of the word, and in obedience to the word, which He spoke. Working towards an exposure of their misapprehension of His words—Ye are my disciples indeed.—This, therefore, must first appear. [There is a latent antithesis between πεπιστευκότας and μαθηταί. It was one thing to believe in Jesus, quite another to be disciples, learners. Tue one could be a momentary impulse; the other required constant study and obedience?] True discipleship is the condition and guaranty of their knowing the truth; and then this knowledge carries the blessing, that the truth should make them free. Freedom is the very thing they were bent upon all along; but a political, theocratic freedom, as pictured by a chiliastic mind. Christ opens to them the prospect of a higher freedom which, if they should be true disciples, they would owe to the liberating effect of the truth, the living knowledge of God; He opens the prospect of freedom from sin.
John 8:32. Ye shall know the truth more and more. [Hengstenberg: “A difference of degree of knowledge is put in the form of knowledge itself as opposed to ignorance, because in comparison with future attainments of knowledge in the path of fidelity, the present knowledge would be quite insignificant. The truth is not merely something thought; it has taken flesh and blood in Christ, who says, I am the truth. By a deeper and deeper knowing of Christ they would know also the truth, after which, as after freedom, every man who is not utterly lost has a deep constitutional longing, and this living truth would make them free from the bondage of sin and error; while the truth considered merely as a thought of the mind would be utterly powerless. The same liberating effect which is here ascribed to the truth, is in John 8:36 ascribed to Christ.”—E. D. Y.]
[The truth will make you free, ἡἀλήθειαἐλευθερώσειὑμᾶς. Comp. John 8:36 : “If the Son make you free, ye will be free indeed,” ὄντωςἐλεύθεροι. Christ associates liberty always with the truth, which He is Himself, and presents the truth as the cause, and liberty as the effect. So also Paul speaks of liberty always in this positive, highest and noblest sense, liberty in Christ, the glorious liberty of the children of God, liberty from the bondage of sin and error, comp. Romans 8:21; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 2:4; Galatians 5:1; Galatians 5:13; James 1:25; 1 Peter 2:12. Man is truly free when he is released from abnormal foreign restraints and moves in harmony with the mind and will of God as his proper element. “Deo service vera libertas est.”—P. S.]
John 8:33. They answered him, We are Abraham’s seed (or, offspring).—Here comes the turning-point. Christ has openly told them that He would redeem them spiritually from sin by the truth, and in this sense make them free; and now they see their misapprehension of His former words. But in bitter vexation they plunge into a new mistake, supposing that Christ had their political bondage in view, and would require them to console themselves under their political oppression with the enjoyment of spiritual truth. Hence, instead of explaining: Thou shouldst free us from the domination of the Romans, they explain with insulted pride, that they are already free; they have never been any man’s slaves. This answer contains (1) an unbelieving denial of their spiritual servitude; for they studiously avoid the spiritual meaning of the words of Jesus; (2) a revolutionary, chiliastic protest against the idea that they acknowledged the dominion of the Romans, or that they could, as the words of Jesus implied, console themselves under it with spiritual elevation. This breaks again the scarcely formed union with Christ. This sharp contrast in the same Jews between a great demonstration of submission to Jesus and a hostility ready to stone Him,—this reaction of sentiment, coming the moment they were undeceived concerning their chiliastic expectations, appears repeatedly in the Gospel of John in significant gradations. It has already come distinctly to view John 6:30 (comp. John 8:15); and in John 10:31 (comp. John 8:24) it is still more glaring than here.
If these historical points are not duly considered, it must seem strange that the same Jews who had just believed in a mass, should so soon relapse into the bitterest unbelief. Hence many have supposed that here other Jews of the mass, quite distinct from those believing ones, now come forward and take up the conversation (Augustine, Calovius, etc., Lücke et al.). Tholuck: “It is far more likely that the same adversaries who have hitherto been in view, the Ἰουδαῖοι, are the subject of ἀπεκρίθησαν. Before the believing hearers speak, some of the rulers interpose, to repel the supposed slander upon the whole people.” This would imply an inaccuracy of expression. On the contrary, according to the narrative of the evangelist, they are manifestly the same to whom Jesus had spoken, and ἀπεκρίθησεν cannot be translated: it was answered. Justly, therefore, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Bengel, and others, have taken them to be the same. Chrysostom gave the sufficient interpretation: Κατέπεσεν εὐθέως αὐτῶν ἡ διάνοια• τοῦτο δὲ γέγονεν . [“Their belief immediately gave way; and that because of their eagerness after worldly things.”] It seems transparent (1) that Jesus in His reply, John 8:34, to those who speak in John 8:33, simply pursues the discourse He had begun in John 8:31-32; and (2) that His suggestion of the need of being made free, John 8:32, was intended to test the sincerity, or provoke the latent insincerity, of the faith of the persons of John 8:30-31. Contrary to Dr. Tholuck’s remark above, the evangelist has here very accurately designated the interlocutors, John 8:31, as Jesus and those Jews who believed on Him. Meyer suggests that “the πολλοί, John 8:30, are many among the hearers in general; among these ‘many’ were some hierarchical Jews, and to these Jesus speaks in John 8:31.” There probably was this difference among the believing many; but it is hardly in John’s view here. Hengstenberg, who agrees on this point with Tholuck, thinks “John was quite too much intent upon reality than to ascribe faith to such murderous enemies of Christ as these, on the ground of a mere fleeting emotion.” But this very consideration might work the other way: the Evangelist would take even a transient and impure faith for what it is worth as faith for the time. This great relapse from a flash of faith into deepened darkness of unbelief may be just the “reality” on which John is intent. [Of recent expositors Olshausen, Meyer, Stier, Alford, Ellicott (“Life of Christ”), J. J. Owen, and others, take the same view with Dr. Lange.—E. D. Y.]
Ibid. We are Abraham’s seed.—These words are put as the foundation of what follows: And were never in bondage (never yielded ourselves as bond-servants). Because they were Abraham’s seed (on the strength of many Old Testament passages like Genesis 22:17; Genesis 17:16), they claimed, according to Jewish theology, not only freedom, but even dominion over the nations. As πώποτε includes the whole past, these words can only mean: Often as we have been under oppression (under Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians), we have never acknowledged any oppressor as master, but have always submitted only from necessity, reserving our right to freedom, and striving after it. This reservation carried the spirit and design of revolution, and afterwards, in the Jewish war, acted it out in the Zealots and Sicarii (Joseph. De bello Jud., VII. 8, 6).
This extremely simple state of the case many interpreters have lost sight of, failing to distinguish between a bondage de facto and a bondage de jure; hence a list of mistaken explanations (specified by Tholuck, p. 250). Tholuck, referring to my Leben Jesu, II. 2, John 968: “They were as far from acknowledging subjection to Rome, as modern Rome is from acknowledging secular relations which contradict its hierarchical consciousness.” “Only as a domination de facto, and not de jure, does even Josephus represent to them the Roman domination, on the prudential principle of yielding to superior force (De bello Jud. V. 9, 3). And to this day it stands among the fifteen benedictions which should be said every morning: ‘Blessed art Thou, that Thou hast not made me a slave.’ Schülchan Aruch. tr. Orach Chajim, fol. 10, John 3:0. The meanest laborer who is of the seed of Abraham, is like a king, says the Talmud.”62
John 8:34. Whosoever committeth sin [πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, living in the practice of sin], is a slave of sin.—A solemn declaration, enforced with: Verily, verily. In these words Jesus utterly expels the political question from His scope. He states first the principle, then the application. The committing of sin is to be taken with emphasis; He whose tendency and habit is to commit sin;63 which may be applied in a wide sense to every man born of the flesh (Romans 7:14), in the narrower sense to the evil propension of the earthly-minded (John 3:20; 1 John 3:8). He is the servant, the slave, of sin; fallen into the worst conceivable bondage, or rather the only real bondage; the man being even at heart a slave, whereas in other sorts of servitude the man may himself be free within, though in outward bonds. And the application was obvious. Jesus implied that they, not only for being born of the flesh, but for being carnally-minded and practically hostile to the truth, committed sin. The hint that they were therefore in the hardest slavery, and in the utmost need of liberation by the truth which they despised, the Lord in the sequel turns gradually into a decided opinion. Comp. Romans 6:17; Romans 7:14, if. “Analogous instances from the classics see in Wetstein; from Philo, in Lösner, p. 149.” Meyer. [“The mere moral sentiment of which this is the moral expression, was common among the Greek and Roman philosophers.” Alford.—P. S.]
John 8:35. And the bondman abideth not in the house for ever.—The thought takes its turn from the legal relations of civil life
The bond-servant is not an organic member of the household, has no inheritance, and can be expelled or sold, Genesis 21:10; Galatians 4:30. According to the law of Moses the Hebrew servant must be set free in the seventh year, if he desire; but even if he wishes to remain servant of the house, he does not thereby become a member of the family, Exodus 21:1 ff. To this legal status of the servant, however, as not a permanent member of the household, Jesus gives an allegorical meaning. And in so doing He goes upon a presumption, where expositors readily incline to see a jump. He who is the servant of sin, is, under the dispensation of the law, an involuntary subject of the law; therefore a slave of the letter; and he who is such a slave of the letter, is a slave of sin. Paul also goes on this presumption in Galatians 3:10. The slave of the letter, therefore, being a slave of sin, abides not in the house of God, the theocracy. The application is obvious: In the kingdom of God there have been hitherto children and servants (Galatians 3:22; Galatians 4:1); the servants at this time are the unbelieving Jews; they are one day driven out (Matthew 8:12; Romans 9:31; Galatians 4:30). Not all Israel, but only the unbelieving portion; of these, who treat the law as a mere statute, a slavery to the letter, which corresponds with the bondage of sin, it is declared that they hold no relation of affinity and sonship to the master of the house. The reference of the servant to Moses, propounded by Chrysostom and Euthymius, belongs to a different train of thought and a different aspect of the servant, Heb 3:5.64 The house; typically denoting the royal family of the Lord, the household of God, Psalms 23:6; Psalms 27:4.
The son abideth forever [viz., in the house.]—He is by blood one with the house and heir of the house. This point of law is also a similitude, expressing the perpetual dwelling and ruling of Christ in the kingdom of God. As the son is spoken of in the singular, the word cannot be taken to imply a class of men who are morally and religiously free. And in fact the children of the house themselves, under the Old Testament economy, not having attained their maturity, are put under the same law with the proper alien slaves.65
[The contrast is here between bondage to sin and a freedom to which even the children of the house of God could attain only in a new stage, a manhood, of spiritual life; and into this new stage of full-grown sonship they, and much more those who had let themselves down into servitude, could come only in Christ, the Son of God. There were no sons, whose position would afford, except prospectively, a general maxim of the kind here before us. Even the children differed not yet from servants, though they were not servants of sin. While, therefore, the word son not directly denoting Christ, but being used generically, might properly be printed both here and in the verse following without a capital, Dr. J. J. Owen’s remark upon it in this verse is unwarrantable, and in the next inconsistent: “The word son improperly commences with a capital in our common version, as though it referred to the Son of God. It stands here opposed to servant, and is generically put for all those born to a state of freedom, and consequently heirs to the paternal inheritance and privileges. In the next verse the word Son is properly capitalized.”—E. D. Y.].
John 8:36. If then the Son make yon free.66—A new legal principle is here again presupposed by this expression. The son can give servants their freedom; and he can receive them to membership in the house, as adopted brothers, and to participation in his inheritance. The spiritual application which Jesus makes of this principle stops with the first point. The house of God has its son; and this son must make the servants in the house of God free, before any true freedom can be spoken of among you.
Note, that He speaks primarily only of the son of the house, not of the Son of God, and that He does not designate Himself as the son (comp. John 5:0). But His meaning, that He is the son of the house, and as such the Son of God, the only one who is spiritually free and can give spiritual freedom, stands out clearly enough. The sentence is so framed, that it may be taken as containing at once the condition of the true freedom for Israel, a prophecy concerning the believing portion of Israel, and a warning and threatening for the unbelieving portion.
Ye will be free indeed [ὅντωςἐλεύθεροι].—As opposed to their visionary, fanatical effort after external, political freedom in their spiritual bondage. Without the real freedom they could neither attain, nor maintain, nor enjoy the outward; while the inward freedom must ultimately bring about the outward. The fact that the son appears as the liberator, instead of the lord of the house himself, agrees with the figure; all depends in this case on what he is willing to do in regard to his hereditary right in the servants. Comp. John 10:26-27.
John 8:37. I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me.—The acknowledgment of their claim to natural descent from Abraham serves only to strengthen the reproof that follows. What a contrast: Abraham’s seed, murderers of Christ! Christ can charge them with seeking to kill Him: (1) because they are already turned into an apostasy from Him, which cannot stop short of deadly enmity; (2) because they are impelled by the chiliastic idea of Christ, which leads in the end to the crucifixion of Christ; (3) because they go back to the hierarchical opposition, which has already determined His death.
Because my word maketh no progress in you.—Χωρεὶν: to make way, go through, encompass. Metaphorically: to come to something, to succeed, to make progress. The last meaning is the most probable here. These adversaries are the persons in view; hence ἐν ὑμῖν cannot mean among you (does not take effect: Luther; has no success: Lücke). In you: (a) Finds no room, gains no ground in you. Origen, Chrysostom, Beza, et al. Meyer says, it cannot mean this; Tholuck favors this meaning; and Origen and Chrysostom ought to have known the admissible use of the word. Yet this thought must then be reduced to: (b) Finds no entrance into you (Nonnus, Grotius, Luthardt, Tholuck). But then the accusative [or εἰς ὑμᾶς] would be expected. Better, therefore, De Dieu and Meyer: It makes no progress in you. It does not thrive in you. This, in fact, Christ has just had experience of with them. They have first misunderstood His word, then loose hold of it again. This then turns into an opposition, which by the strength of its spirit and its reaction (“he that is not with Me,” &c.) must pass into deadly enmity.
John 8:38. I speak what I have seen with the (my) Father.—The contrast between Him and them is threefold: 1. My Father, your father (though the verbal antithesis here is critically doubtful; see the Text. and Gram. Notes.) 2. He acts according to what He has clearly seen with His Father; they act according to what they have indistinctly heard from their father (and a further antithesis between the perfect ἑώρακα and the aorist ἠκούσατε.) Yet to limit ἐώρακα, with Meyer, to the pre-existent state of Christ, is partial.67 3. His way towards them is to speak openly (λαλῶ) what He has known to be the will and decree of the Father; they, on the contrary, true to the manner of their father, even in moral concerns, go right on to malicious dealing. (“In οὖν there is a sad irony.”—Meyer.) It is the contrast, therefore, of a moral parentage, a moral instruction, a moral way, which in Christ issues in a purely spiritual witness-bearing, and one which in the Jews issues in a fanatical, murderous falling upon Christ. He speaks God’s judgment respecting them; they put Him on Satanic trial for death. The other result of Christ’s seeing: His doing what He sees His Father do, does not here come into view. His doing is all a doing good, and for this a susceptibility is prerequisite. But to His adversaries He says how it stands with them before the law and judgment of God. Who His Father is, and who is theirs, they must for the present forebode. Meyer: “He means, however, the devil, whose children in the ethical view they are, whereas He is in the metaphysical view and in reality the Son of God.” But the ethical view is also included. On the one hand, clear impression, free compliance, calm declaration; on the other, dark, sullen impulse, forced obedience, malignant practice. “Ποιεῖτε: constant conduct; including the seeking to kill, but not exclusively denoting that.” Meyer.
John 8:39. Abraham is our father.—The distinction between true children of Abraham and spurious children who therefore, as to their moral nature, must have another father, Christ has introduced by the foregoing sentence. They suspect the stinging point of His distinction; hence their proud assertion, which calls forth the Lord’s denial: If ye were Abraham’s children. In the spiritual sense [children in moral character and habits, as distinct from seed or mere natural descent, John 8:37.—P. S.] Ye would do the works of Abraham, works of faith, above all the work of faith. [τέκνα and ἔργα are correlative.] Abraham had a longing for the coming of Christ, John 8:56. “Just as Paul does in Romans 9:8, Jesus here distinguishes the ethical posterity as τέκνα from the physical as σπέρμα.” Tholuck. [So also Meyer and Alford.—P. S.] Επέρμα, seed, is rather used to designate Abraham’s posterity as a unit, Galatians 3:16.
John 8:40. But now ye seek to kill me.—The very opposite of Abraham’s spirit. The Lord does not yet characterize their murderous plot as a killing of the Christ; this alone condemns them, that they wished to kill in Him a man, and a man who had spoken to them the truth, who did nothing more but told the truth which He had heard from God, and therefore stood as a prophet.68 The counterpart is Abraham with his benevolent spirit in general, with his homage for Melohizedek, and with his sparing of Isaac when God interposed.
[A man, ἄνθρωπον, with reference to παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ. This self-designation of Christ as a man, a human being, implies all that is essential to our nature. It occurs nowhere else, but instead of it the frequent title the Son of Man, with the definite article, which at the same time elevates Him above the ordinary level of humanity, λελάληκα, the first person, according to Greek rule, see Buttmann, N. T. Gr. p. 241. This did not Abraham. Litotes, ἐποίησε, fecit (not fecisset), a statement of fact all the more stinging. A reference to Abraham’s treatment of the Angel of Jehovah, Genesis 18:0 (Lampe, Hengstenberg), is not clear.—P. S.]
John 8:41. Ye do the works of your father.—Thus much is now perfectly manifest: They have, in respect to moral character, some other father than Abraham, who is exactly the opposite of them in spirit. The deeds of that father they do; that is, they do according to his deeds, and they do according to his bidding; they do his deeds in his service.
We were not born of fornication.—They seem to suspect the spiritual intent of Christ’s words, yet they avoid it by at first standing upon the literal interpretation of them, that they may then immediately save themselves by a bold spring to the spiritual. In the first instance, therefore, they say: We are not bastards fathered upon Abraham, but genuine offspring of Abraham (bastards were excluded from the congregation, Deuteronomy 23:2). But they intend thereby at the same time to say; We are not idolaters (Grotius, Lampe, Lücke); as is evident from their next words: We have one Father, God.—Their genuine descent from Abraham, is supposed to involve their having God for their Father, in the spiritual sense; and when they speak of Him as the one Father, the ἕνα is also emphatic.
Accordingly they intend to say: We (ἡμεῖς, with proud emphasis) are not like the heathen, who are born of whoredom, in apostasy from God (Hosea 2:4; [Ezekiel 20:30; Isaiah 57:3]), and have many gods for their spiritual fathers (as they charged especially the Samaritans); bodily and spiritually we are free from the reproach of adulterous birth.69 Children of Abraham, children of God, Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:16; Malachi 2:10; Romans 4:16; Galatians 4:23. The position: God is our father, is therefore in no opposition to the paternity of Abraham. The reference of Euthymius Zigabenus to the contrast of Isaac and Ishmael is unwarrantable. [For the Jews would not call Abraham’s connection with Hagar one of πορνεία, which implies several fathers, but one mother.] It is obvious that with their appeal to the fatherhood of God they wish to crowd Jesus from His position; whether they at the same time intended an allusion to the birth of Jesus (Wetstein and others) is doubtful. In their monotheistic pride they could boast of being the children of God, even while the accusations of the prophets, that Israel was of Gentile whoredom (Ezekiel 16:3; see Tholuck, p. 254), were in their mind; and we already know how little the Jewish fanaticism felt bound by the Scriptures.
John 8:42. If God were your father, ye would love me.—Emphatic: Ye would have (long ago) learned to love Me;70 that is, being kindred in spirit and life. Luthardt: This would be the ethical test. From the fact, therefore, that they do not love Him [the Son of God, the Beloved of the Father], He can infer with certainty their ungodly mind and nature. Proof: For I (ἐγώ) proceeded forth and am come from God.—His consciousness is the clear mirror, the true standard. He is certain (1) that He proceeded forth in His essence and in His personality from God, ontologically and ethically; (2) that also, in His appearance and mission among them, in His coming like a prophet to them, He came from God.71 But again, He is certain of this because He came not of Himself, i. e. because He knew Himself to be pure from all egotistic motives (love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power; see the history of the temptation, Matthew 4:0); and because He was conscious of being sent by God, i.e. of being actuated by divine motives. Nothing but this alternative was conceivable: from Himself, or from God, (John 7:18; John 7:28); no third origin (Meyer) is supposable.
John 8:43. Why do ye not understand my speech?—Λαλιά, in distinction from λογος; the personal language, the mode of speech, the familiar tone and sound of the words, in distinction from their meaning [John 12:48 : ὁ λόγος ὅν ἐλάλησα; comp. Philippians 1:14; Hebrews 13:7]. From its original idea of talk, babble, λαλιά72 here preserves the element of vividness, warmth, familiarity. It is the φωνή, the tone of spirituality and tone of love in the shepherd-voice of Christ.73 They are so far from recognizing this “loving tone,” that they are incapable of even listening to the substance of His words with a pure, undistracted, spiritual ear. Fanaticism is characterized by “false hearing and words;” primarily by false hearing. Our Lord means unprejudiced, kindly-disposed hearing and attention; something more therefore, even here, than the general power to understand, which is expressed by γινώσκετε, and, in the first instance, something less than the willing hearing which is the beginning of faith itself. To take λαλιά and λόγος as equivalent, and to lay stress on ἀκούειν, and make it the condition precedent to γινώσκειν (as Origen and others do), in the first place ignores the distinction of the two meanings of λέγειν and λαλεῖν, which distinctly runs through this Gospel, and in the second place it overlooks the language: οὐ δύνασθε . The point here is an ability to hear the λόγος, to which the recognition of the λαλιά is the condition precedent. We therefore, with Calvin, take the ὅτι as inferential, equivalent to ὥστε, not with Luther as meaning for. Manifestly δύνασθε is to be understood ethically, not, with Hilgenfeld, in a Gnostic, fatalistic sense (see Tholuck). The lively emotion in the painful interrogatory utterance of these words introduced the solemn declaration following.
John 8:44. Ye are of the father who is the devil.—[Of the (spiritual or moral) fatherhood or paternity of the devil, ἐκτοῦπατρὸςτοῦδιαβόλου. This is the most important doctrinal statement of Christ concerning the devil, teaching soberly and solemnly without figure of speech: (1) the objective personality of the devil; (2) his agency in the fall of the human race, and his connection with the whole history of sin as the father of murder and falsehood; (3) his own apostasy from a previous normal state in which he was created; (4) the connection of bad men with the devil.—ὑμεῖς with great emphasis, ye who boastfully claim to be lineal children of Abraham and spiritual children of God, are children of His great adversary, the devil. τοῦ διαβόλου is in apposition to πατρός.—P. S.] Not: Of the father of devils (plural τῶν διαβόλων: Grotius); nor the Gnostic absurdity: “of the father of the devil” [the demiurge], that is the God of the Jews [Hilgenfeld, Volkmar]; also not: “of your father, the devil” (Lücke, [De Wette, E. V., Alford74, Wordsworth]); but: “of a father who is the devil” (Meyer). The idea is clearly confined to ethical fatherhood by the placing of father first; so that John could not have written simply ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου. And the lusts [τὰςἐπιθυμίαςτοῦπατρόςὑμῶνθέλετεποιεῖν]—Plural; primarily meaning not merely thirst for blood [but this is included]. According to Matthew 4:0, these are of three main classes [love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power.—P. S.]. These lusts of the devil are the main springs of the life of his like-minded children, who, with their captive propensity, desire (θέλετε) to do them.75
He was a murderer [lit. a manslayer] from the beginning [ἀνθρωποκτόνοςἀ π’ ἀρχῆς].—With special reference to their hatred of the Messiah issuing in blood-thirstiness and falsehood, hardened adherence to delusion and calumnious persecution of the truth and the evilness of it. The devil was a murderer of men from the very beginning (not of his existence, but) of human history (comp. Matthew 19:4, where ἁρχή likewise stands for the beginning of human history).76 How so? Different interpretations.
(1) The devil is a murderer as the author of the fall of Adam, by which death came on man (Genesis 3:0; Romans 5:12). So Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, and most in modern times. [Schleierm., Thol., Olsh., Luth., Meyer, Ewald, Hengstenb., Godet, Alford, Wordsworth.—P. S.] This interpretation is supported by the expression: “from the beginning;” and by Wis 2:24; Revelation 12:9; Revelation 20;77 comp. also Ev. Nicod.: where the devil is called ἡ τοῦ θανάτου [and ἡ ρίζα τῆς ἁμαρτίας, the beginning of death, and the root of sin.—P. S.]
(2) As the author of Cain’s murder of his brother. Cyril, Nitzsch, Lücke, and others. [So also De Wette, Kling, Reuss, Bäumlein, Owen. The arguments for this interpretation are its appropriateness in view of the design of the literal murder of Christ entertained by the Jews, and especially the apparent parallel passage, 1 John 3:12 : “Cain was of the wicked one (i.e. a child of the devil, like other sinners, 1 John 3:8) and slew his brother,” comp. John 8:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” But neither here nor in Genesis 4:0 is the Satanic agency in the murder of Abel expressly mentioned, as it is in the history of temptation (Genesis 3:0), although it stands out prominently in the Bible as the first glaring consequence of the fall and as the type of bloodshed and violence that have since in unbroken succession desecrated the earth (comp. besides 1 John 3:12, also Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51; Judges 11:0). Moreover, Cain’s deed itself presupposes the previous agency of the devil, when by the successful temptation of our first parents, he introduced first spiritual and then temporal murder and death into the world. The fall is the “beginning” of history, and of universal significance as the virtual fall of the whole race, and the fruitful source of sin in general and murder in particular. There the devil, in the shape of a serpent, proved himself both a murderer and a liar, as he is here described. To it therefore the passage must chiefly refer. 1 John 3:8 (ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστιν, ὄτι ̓ ἀρχῆς ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτανει) which all commentators refer to the history of the fall, is the real parallel to our passage, and not 1 John 3:12.—P. S.]
(3) He is quite generally described as a murderer, without any special reference. Baumgarten-Crusius, Brückner.(4) Evidently the thing intended is the murderous work of Satan in all history, aiming to complete itself in the killing of Christ, but having signalized itself in the beginning in the temptation of man and the lie against God, which afterwards bore their full fruit in Cain’s murder of his brother (Theodoret, Heracleon, Euthymius).
We therefore consider that there is properly no question here between Adam and Cain, 1 John 3:15-16. Yet the chief stress plainly lies on the temptation of Adam; for the devil, by his spiritual murder of man, brought man himself also to murder; and he is described pre-eminently as a liar. From that “beginning” he was a murderer of man from time to time.
And doeth not stand [οὐχ ἕστηκεν] in the truth.—Interpretations:
(1) He did not continue in the truth. Augustine (Vulg.: stetit), Luther, Martensen [Dogmatik, § 108], Delitzsch [Psychol. p. 62]. This makes the word refer to the fall of the devil according to 2 Peter 2:4; Jude John 8:6. Against this interpretation see Lücke and Meyer. It would require the pluperfect εἱστήκει, stood. The perfect ἕστηκα means, I have placed myself, I stand [comp. John 1:26; John 3:29; Matthew 12:47; Matthew 20:6, etc.]
(2) He does not stand in the truth. He has taken no stand and he holds no ground in it. In an emphatic sense he does not take a position; he has not honorably planted himself and valiantly stood. Euthymius: Οὐκ ἐμμένει, ἀναπαύετει; Lücke: “He is perpetually in the act of apostasy from the truth,” De Wette, Meyer: “Falsehood is the sphere in which he stands; in it he is in his proper element, in it he has his station.” Correct, except that there can be no standing or fixedness, and no station in falsehood. Perpetual restlessness and going to and fro are his element, Job 2:2. Hence he is the spirit or devil of endless toil, and the number of his representative, as antichrist, is 666 (Revelation 13:18). Compare the description of Lokke, his deceptions and his flights, in the Scandinavian mythology. He denies his own existence, as he denies all truth and reality.78 But he is the perpetual rover, because he is the deceiver.
[The passage then does not teach expressly the fall of the devil, but it presupposes it. ἔστηκεν has the force of the present and indicates the permanent character of the devil, but this status is the result of an act of a previous apostacy, as much as the sinful state of man is brought about by the fall of Adam. God made all things, without exception, through the Logos (John 1:3), and made the rational beings, both men and angels, pure and sinless, yet liable to temptation and fall. As to the time of the creation and fall of Satan and the bad angels, the Scriptures give us no light.—P. S.]
Because there is no truth in him.—Because falsehood is in him as the maxim of his life, he is in falsehood; because he keeps no position with himself, he keeps no position in reality. As he deceives himself, so he deceives the world. For internal truth is the centre of gravity which causes a moral being in the sphere of truth to stand firm as a pillar in the world. [Mark the absence of the article before ἀλήθεια, subjective truth, truthfulness, while in the preceding clause ἀλήθεια has the article and means objective truth, the truth of God. Comp. De Wette and Meyer.—P. S.]
When he speaketh [λαλῇ] a lie.—[τὸ ψεῦδου is generic, but the English language requires here the indefinite article, while it retains the definite article in the phrase “to speak the truth.” See Alford in loc.—P. S.] Through the devil falsehood comes to its manifestation, thorough his familiar way, his persuasion, his whispering, his insinuation (λαλεῖν). But then he always speaketh of his own [ἐκτῶνἰδίωνλαλεῖ, out of his own resources], from his own nature; himself revealing his own truthless and loveless mind (“The devil has a half-charred heart”); revealing himself to his own condemnation, Matthew 12:34 [ἐκ τοῦ περισσεύματος τῆς καρδίας τὸ στόμα λαλεῖ. His ἴδια are to be taken ethically. Yet the description of a lie as that which is the devil’s own, includes the idea that it originates from his own will, and that, being only for his own sake, it remained a thing of his own, having no ground in the foundation of truth, in God.
For he is a liar and the father thereof [ὃτιψεύστηςἐστ ιν καὶὁπατὴραὐτοῦ].—That which he says proceeds indeed from within himself, and what he is within himself as devil, in his ἴδιον of Satanic egoism, that he puts forth continually in his own work and in the work of his child as its father. Different interpretations of πατὴρ αὐτοῦ:
(1) The father of the lie, τοῦ ψεύστους, Origen, Euthymius, et al., Lücke. [With reference to the first lie recorded in history, by which the devil seduced Eve: “Ye shall not surely die,” Genesis 3:4.—P. S.] Observe, on the contrary, that Christ intends to speak here not merely of the author of the lie, but also concretely of the father of the liars, to whom he returns. Therefore,
(2) Father of the liar [τοῦ ψεύστου = τῶν ψεύστων. Consequently he is your father, and ye are his children, see beginning of the verse—ψεύστης being singular the pronoun αύτῶν is attracted into the singular αὐτοῦ.—P. S.] Bengel, Baumgarten-Crusius, Luthardt, Meyer [Tholuck, Stier, Alford, Hengstenberg]. Then we must of course take πσεύστης first as a general predicate of the wicked personality. The devil is a liar in himself, and is father of the liar in abominable self-propagation through the delusion of the children of wickedness (2 Thessalonians 2:0)
The ancient Gnostic [and Manichean] interpretation, taking the demiurge as father of the devil, re-applied to the Gospel by Hilgenfeld [and Volkmar], is disposed of by Meyer [p. 359].79 Meyer justly observes that in this passage the fall of the devil is presupposed; but it is by no means presupposed that the devil always was wicked (Hilgenfeld and others). It should be added that this description of the devil always suggests the causes of his fall: selfishness, falsehood, envy, hatred. The devil, the beginner of wickedness, 1 John 3:8; 1 John 3:12; the founder of wickedness, the spirit of the wicked. In the temptation of Adam (Wis 2:24; Hebrews 2:14; Revelation 12:9)80 as well as in Cain’s fratricide, that twofold nature of selfishness showed itself: hatred of truth and love of murder, which culminated in the crucifixion of Christ.81 There is, however, here no opposition of formal truth and formal falsehood, but the full extent of both ideas is kept in view (Luthardt, Tholuck); this is evident from the nature of the completed opposition itself, when speaking the truth turns life itself into truth, and in like manner lying makes life itself a lie. So the external murder of Abel which Satan effected through Cain is inconceivable without the spiritual murder performed in Adam, which became the cause of the literal murder.
John 8:45. But I—because I speak the truth, ye believe me not.—The ἐγὼ δέ is forcibly put first, not so much in opposition to the devil (Tholuck, Meyer), as in opposition to the Jews as the spiritual children of the devil. After telling them what they are, the last word of the explanation, what He is, hovers on His lips. Jesus characterizes His Ego to the extent of their present need: (1) He is the witness or the prophet of truth, in opposition to the arch-liar and his children; 2) The sinless one, in opposition to their lust of murder, intending to kill Him; 3) Coming from God, with the word of God, in opposition to their diabolic nature. This however is the great obstacle of His full self-revelation, or rather the Messianic designation of His full self-revelation, that in their hardened lying disposition they are opposed to His spirit of truth; that they do not believe Him for the very reason of His telling them the truth. [Alford: “This implies a charge of wilful striving against known and recognized truth.”] Euthymius [filling up the context]: εἰ μὲν ἔλεγον ψεῦδος, ἐπιστεύσατέ μοι ἄν, ὡς τὸ ἴδιον τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν λέγοντι [If I should speak a lie, you would believe Me as speaking what properly belongs to your father].
John 8:46. Which of you convicteth me of sin? [τίς ἐξ ὑμῶνἐλέγχειμεπερὶἁμαρτίας.]—Different explanations of sin.
1) Because the truth in speaking is previously mentioned, ἁμαρτία must here mean error or intellectual defect. Origenes, Cyril, Erasmus and others. Against this speaks a) that ἁμαρτία in the New Testament throughout designates sin, and even with the classics it does not mean error, deceit, unless with a defining addition, e.g., τῆς γνώμης. [Comp. Meyer, p. 360 f.—P. S.] b) Jesus would in this case make the examination of truth an object of intellectual reflection, we might say, of theological disputation, while otherwise He represents it as a moral and religious process, c) The truth of His word is authenticated by the truthfulness and sinlessness of His life, see John 7:17-18.
2) Sin in speech, untruth, falsehood. Melancthon, Calvin [false doctrine], Hofmann [“Sünde des Wortes”], Tholuck. Against this: Either this interpretation amounts to the same as the first, or it must include the idea of intentional delusion, of sinful and wicked speech, or all this together (“wicked delusion,” Fritzsche, Baumgarten-Crusius). But for this the expression is too general.
3) Sin, the moral offence. [This is the uniform usage of ἁμαρτία in the New Testament.—P. S.] Lücke, Stier, Luthardt,82 etc. Jesus speaks from the fundamental conception that the intellectual life is inseparably connected with the ethical (Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 99). There is no reason in this explanation (with Tholuck) to miss a “connecting link,” or to assume a defect in the narrative. Meantime this declaration is also differently interpreted: a) The sinless one is the purest and safest organ of the perception and communication of truth (Lücke), or the knowledge of the truth rests upon purity of the will (De Wette). b) Meyer against this: this would be discursive, or at least imply that Jesus acquired the knowledge of the truth in the discursive way, and only in His human state, while, according to John especially, He knew the truth by intuition and from His pre-existent state, and in His earthly state by virtue of His unbroken communion with God. His reasoning is: If I am without sin—and none of you can prove the contrary—I am also without error, consequently I say the truth, and ye, on your part have no reason to disbelieve Me. But Jesus could exhibit His morally pure self-consciousness only by His life. Hence c) the word is to be understood according to the historical connection of the reproach of theocratic sin, They tried to make Him a sinner in the sense of the Jewish regulation with regard to excommunication, but they do not venture to accuse Him publicly, still less can they convict Him. But this consciousness of His legal irreproachableness implies at the same time the consciousness of the moral infallibility of His life and the sinlessness of His character and being, as He on His part recognizes no merely legal righteousness. Our expression is therefore certainly a solemn declaration of the Lord in regard to His sinlessness, which indeed is indirectly implied also in other testimonies concerning Himself, as for instance in John 8:29. The circumstance, that the divine-human sinlessness of Christ had to develop and prove itself in a human way, affords no reason to call it (with Meyer) relative in opposition to the absolute sinlessness of God according to Hebrews 5:8.
[This is a most important passage, teaching clearly the sinlessness, or (to use the positive term) the moral perfection, of Christ. He here presents Himself as the living impersonation of holiness and truth in inseparable union, in opposition to the devil as the author and instigator of sin and error. The sinlessness of Jesus is implied in His whole mission and character as the Saviour of sinners from sin and death; for the least transgression or moral defect would have annihilated His fitness to redeem and to judge. It is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:14; John 1:15; John 3:31), and the apostles (Acts 3:14; 1 Peter 1:19; 1Pe 2:22; 1 Peter 3:18; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:5; 1 John 3:7; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 7:26). Christ challenged His enemies to convict Him of sin, in the absolute certainty of freedom from sin. This agrees with His whole conduct, with the entire absence of everything like repentance or regret in His life. He never asked God forgiveness for any thought or word or deed of His; He stood far above the need of regeneration, conversion or reform. No other man could ask such a question as this without obvious hypocrisy or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, while from the mouth of Jesus we hear it without surprise, as the unanswerable self-vindication of one who always speaks the truth, who is the Truth itself, and is beyond the reach of impeachment or suspicion. If Jesus had been a sinner, He must have been conscious of it like all other sinners, and could not have thus challenged His enemies, and conducted Himself throughout on the assumption of entire personal freedom from sin without a degree of hypocrisy which would be the greatest moral monstrosity ever conceived and absolutely irreconcilable with any principle of virtue. But if Christ was truly sinless, He forms an absolute exception to a universal rule and stands out the greatest moral miracle in midst of a fallen and ruined world, challenging our belief in all His astounding claims concerning His divine origin, character and mission.—The sinlessness of Jesus must not be confounded with the sinlessness of God: it is the sinlessness of the man Jesus, which implied, during His earthly life, peccability (the possibility of sinning, posse-peccare), temptability and actual temptation, while the sinlessness of God is an eternal attribute above the reach of conflict. If we view Christ merely in His human nature, we may say that His sinlessness was at first relative (impeccabilitas minor, posse non peccare) and, like Adam’s innocence in paradise, liable to fall (though such fall was made impossible by the indwelling divine Logos); nevertheless it was complete at every stage of His life in accordance with the character of each, i.e., He was sinless and perfect as. a child, perfect as a boy, perfect as a youth, and perfect as a man; there being different degrees of perfection. Sinless holiness grew with Him, and, by successfully overcoming temptation in all its forms, it became absolute impeccability or impossibility of sinning (impeccabilitas major, non posse peccare). Hence it is said that He learned obedience, Hebrews 5:8.—The historical fact of the sinlessness of Jesus overthrows the pantheistic notion of the necessity of sin for the moral development of man.—P. S.]
John 8:46. I speak the truth, why do ye not believe me.—Luther co-ordinates this word with the former; Christ asking the reason why they did not believe in Him, since they could censure neither His life nor His doctrine. My life is pure, for none of you can convict Me of sin, My doctrine also, for I tell you nothing but the truth. But εἰ δὲ cannot be [illigible words found] co-ordinate to the question. The connection is [illigible words found]rather this: Sinlessness is the truth of life; he who acts out the truth in a blameless life, must be admitted also to speak the truth and to be [illigible words found] worthy of faith. Purity of life guarantees purity [illigible words found] οf doctrine, as vice versa, James 3:2.
John 8:47. He that is of God heareth God’s word.—A syllogism; but not with this conclusion: I now speak God’s words (De Wette), but: you are not of God. That Jesus speaks the word of God is pre-supposed in the foregoing. An attentive hearing and reception of the word of God is meant. This is conditioned by being from God, by moral relationship with God; for only kindred can know kindred. The being of God has above been more particularly characterized as a being drawn by God (John 4:44), being taught by Him (John 8:45), as showing itself by doing truth in God, John 3:21.
Explanations of he that is of God (ὁ ὢν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ): a) of divine essence and origin, in the dualistic, Manichean sense of two originally different classes of men (Hilgenfeld); b) elect, predestinated (Augustine, Piscator); c) born again (Lutheran and recent Reformed interpreters). In reference to the third interpretation it is to be assumed, that to be of God and to manifest it by hearing His word, is the beginning of the new birth; in reference to the second, that hereby true election comes to light, in reference to the first, that the antagonism between the children of God and the children of the devil is not metaphysical or ontological, but ethical, and is so defined in the New Testament, especially in John. On both sides self-determination is pre-supposed, but a direction and change of life is hereby expressed, which on the one side appears more and more as freedom and resemblance to God, on the other as demoniacal slavery (See John 8:24; John 8:34).
John 8:48. Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon.—Malicious refusal of, and reply to, His reproach. A Samaritan is doubless the designation of a heretic; but also with the secondary meaning of a spurious origin (from a mongrel nation), and an adversary of orthodox Judaism. (Paulus).83 “Samaritan” is meant to be a retort to His reproach: “You are no spiritual children of Abraham.” But His reproach: “You are of the devil,” they answer with the insult: “Thou hast a demon,” here in the more definite sense of being possessed of a Satanic spirit. To His two ethical reproaches they oppose two insults, by which they expect triumphantly to silence Him. Hence the self-complacent expression: οὐ καλῶς λέγομεν ἡμεῖς; Are we not right? Did we not hit it? The form of the expression betrays, that they do not utter these words for the first time. Perhaps the reproach: “Thou art a Samaritan,” was hinted at already in John 8:19; at all events the other reproach: “Thou hast a demon,” in a milder form, was made by the people on a previous occasion (John 7:20); but here we must remember the fact, that the Pharisees had already formerly slanderously charged Him with casting out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils (Matthew 9:34; comp. John 10:25; John 12:24). It is significant that in their view demoniacal possession and a voluntary demoniacal working are the same thing, or rather that they consider the former condition the higher degree of devilish life.
John 8:49. I have not a demon.—Jesus, with, sublime self-control and calmness, ignores the first reproach (especially as He cannot recognize the designation of Samaritan either as a title of abuse or a verdict of rejection, “because He had already believers among the Samaritans, and He therefore did not hesitate in the parable of the good Samaritan to represent Himself under the symbol of a Samaritan.” Lampe). Yet He answers this reproach, while answering the second. He does this first with a simple refusal or protest, but then by the positive declaration: I honor my Father. This furnishes at the same time the counter-proof that He is no Samaritan and has no demon. No Samaritan: He proves it by word and life that God is His Father; not a demon: He proves it, that He is not possessed of a dark spirit, but full of the Spirit of the Father, and glorifying Him. This explains the character of their reproaches: they insult and blaspheme; they insult in Him the representative of God’s glory, therefore indirectly the glory of God itself. With this wickedness the matter cannot rest, because God reigns as the God of truth and righteousness. His τιμή obscured by their ἀτιμάζειν, must face them in higher brilliancy as δόξα. But it is not His business to aspire to this δόξα arbitrarily (John 5:41); He leaves this to the Father with the confidence: that as surely as He seeks the δόξα of His Father, so surely will the Father, by His guidance, seek His. He knows that this is even a constant direction of the divine guidance; God is in this respect ὁ ζητῶν, and brings the case to a decision as ὁ κρίνων, in opposition to those who restrain the truth.
John 8:51. If a man keep my saying, he will never see death.—The announcement of God’s judgment, includes the announcement of death. This announcement Jesus could not make unconditionally to a Jewish audience, for 1) there might be some among them and there were some who really kept His word; and 2) He could not yet withdraw from His adversaries the invitation to salvation; 3) the thought of the terrible judgment always awakened in Him an impulse of pity and mercy (comp. Matthew 23:27). It is therefore incorrect to assume (with Calvin, De Wette) that these words after a pause were addressed to believers only, or to connect them (with Lücke) with John 8:31, instead of John 8:50. Meyer justly points out the antithesis to the reference to the judgment. His word will carry the believers safely through judgment and death, or rather beyond judgment and death, as the Christians afterwards really experienced at the destruction of Jerusalem. Generally the expression is equal to the similar one: to hear the word, to remain in the word; yet in this keeping the probation in trials and dangers of apostasy is especially emphasized in the κρίσις (Matthew 13:21; John 15:20; John 17:6). He will never see death (not: he will not die for ever); a promise, that his life shall pass entirely safe through the whole succession of judgments, and will not see death even in the final judgment.
John 8:52. Now we know that thou hast a demon.—The answer of blind enmity to His enticing call of mercy. If they understand the word of Jesus of His natural death, it is probably an intentional misunderstanding in order to escape the force of His thoughts. They argue thus: He who promises to others bodily immortality, must Himself possess it in a still higher degree. But since Abraham and the Prophets died, it is a senseless and demoniacal self-exaltation if you claim for yourself freedom from death. It seems to be a characteristic part of their speech when they say: Now we know that Thou hast, etc, i.e., Now at last we know positively what we have before accused you of; and when they further change τόν ἐμὸν λόγον (John 8:51) into τὸν λόγον μου (John 8:52), and the expression οὑ μὴ θεωρήσῃ into: οὐ μὴ γεύσηται, though the latter expression is also used by the Lord in a different connection, Matthew 16:28. The γεύεσθαι is a usual expression among the Rabbins (Schöttgen, Wetstein), probably not merely in general a picture of experience, but a figure of the drinking from the cup of death; in any case it denotes ironically the antithesis to every enjoyment of life. While the expression: not to see death, denotes the objective side of the believer’s experience, according to which death is changed into a metamorphosis of life, the phrase: not to taste death, means the subjective emancipation from the guilty sinner’s dread and horror of death.
John 8:53. Whom dost thou make thyself?—With more than half-feigned shudder before the word of self-exaltation, which He is about to utter, they manifest at the same time a demoniacal curiosity to know the last word of His self-designation. Thus the form of the excited questions is explained by the mixture of their fanatical and chiliastic emotions.
John 8:54. If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.—At first a protest against the reproach of self-exaltation. He makes nothing of Himself from His own will, but suffers Himself to become everything through the guidance of God. He does not answer their question directly, because every word referring to the true greatness of His δόξα would only be to them unintelligible and cause error and offence. The full majesty of the divine-human Son of God must as a new fact be accompanied by the new idea, a new name, Philippians 2:9. The accomplishment of this fact, however, belongs to the government of the Father. Therefore He cannot arbitrarily anticipate His glorification, without contradicting His real δόξα, which is just a fruit of self-humiliation and perfect patience, Philippians 2:6. But for this very reason the Father is active as the one that glorifieth Him (ὁ δοξάζων με), of whom they say that He is their God (ὅτι θεὸς ἡμῶν ἐστιν). To them it is the strongest reproach, that He is the same, whom they with spiritual pride point out as their God, and which is true in a historical, though not in a spiritual sense, to their own condemnation. The whole force of the contrast between their and His knowledge of God lies in this, that He can say: it is My Father, who glorifies Me, the same one whom you unjustly call your God, as you do not even know Him. That they do not know Him, they prove by their not recognizing His revelation in Christ, and their persecuting and insulting Him unto death.
John 8:55. Ye know him not, but I know him.—Commentators are apt to ignore the contrast between the οὐκ ἐγνώκατε αὐτόν and the threefold οἶδα αὐτόν [see, however, Meyer, footnote, p. 366]. In any case it means: you have not even indirectly made His acquaintance, but I have made His acquaintance directly; I. have looked at Him and know Him by intention. We choose from the different shades of the idea, the expression: I know Him.—I should be a liar like you. The child-like expression of the sublime self-consciousness of Christ. Were He to deny this unique and constant experience of God as His Father (Matthew 11:27), He would, if this were possible, through mistaken and cowardly modesty become a liar like them. They are liars and hypocrites while pretending to know God (comp. John 8:44); He would fall into the opposite kind of hypocrisy, if He were to deny His consciousness.—The addition: But I know him and keep his word, is an ultimatum, a declaration of war against the whole hell: the word of God confided to Him, which is one with His own consciousness, He will not permit to be torn out of His heart by the storm of the cross.
John 8:56. Abraham your father84 rejoiced that He should see [ἠγαλλιάσατο ἵνα ἵδῃ]. The object of His joy is represented as its purpose and aim. Abraham rejoiced, that he should see, and that he might see. His belief in the word of promise (Genesis 15:4; Genesis 17:17; Genesis 18:10) was the cause of his joy,—this the reason of the rejuvenating of his life, and this again the condition of his patriarchal paternity, Hebrews 11:11-12; comp. John 1:13. The birth of Isaac was mediated by inspiration of faith (Romans 4:19; Galatians 4:23), and is therefore a type of that complete inspiration of faith, with which the Virgin conceived the promised Saviour by the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost. The laughing of Abraham, Genesis 17:17, forms only an incident in this cheerful elevation of life, and so far as it is connected with a doubt of Abraham, it can be only regarded as a symbol of rejoicing, not, according to Philo, as a pure expression of his hope.85
That he should see my day.—The expression of all the immeasurable hopes of Abraham united in their central point of aim. The hope for the heir—for the heirs—for the inheritance (Hebrews 11:0) was a hope whose aim and centre appeared on the day of the Divine Heir who embraces all other heirs and the whole inheritance. The day of Christ is therefore also the whole time of the New Testament, as it reaches beyond the last day into the eternal day of His glory. “Not the passion-time (Chrysostom),86 not the time of the parusia (Bengel), not the birth-day (Schleusner),87 but the time of the appearance of Christ, as in the plural, Luke 17:23, in the singular, John 8:24.” Tholuck. On the worthlessness of the hypothetical shape of the sentence with the Socinians, see Lücke and Tholuck, p. 267. In reference to a similar longing of the theocratic pious kings, see Luke 10:24. The connection with the previous: 1) Chrysostom, Calvin: Ille me absentem desideravit, vos præsentem aspernamini. 2) De Wette: Now Jesus really places Himself above Abraham, by representing Himself as the object of Abraham’s highest desire. 3) Baumgarten-Crusius: As the Giver of life He could raise Himself above Abraham, for Abraham himself had in joyful anticipation expected and received life from Him. “Origen also finds in the εἶδεν καὶ ἐχάρη a definite refutation of the Ἀβρ. ἀπέθανε,” maintained by the Jews (Tholuck). In answering their question whether He was greater than Abraham who had died, Christ asserts two points: 1) Abraham did not die in their cheerless sense of death; 2) He did not raise Himself above Abraham, but Abraham subordinated himself to Him; comp. the parallel word on David, Matthew 22:45.
And he saw it and rejoiced.—Different explanations:
1) He foresaw the day of Christ in faith [on the ground of the Messianic promises made to him during his earthly life, Genesis 12:0; Genesis 15:0; Genesis 17:0; Genesis 18:0; Genesis 22:0; Romans 4:0; Galatians 3:6 ff.—P. S.] So Calvin, Melanchthon and older Protestant commentators [also Bengel: Vidit diem Christi, qui in semine, quod stellarum instar futurum erat, sidus maximum est et fulgidissimum.—P. S.].
2) He saw it in types: the three angels [one of them being the Logos, Genesis 18:0; so Hengstenberg], especially the sacrifice of Isaac [as foreshadowing the vicarious death and resurrection of Christ]. So Chrysostom, Theophyl., Roman commentators, Erasmus, Grotius.
3) In prophetical vision. So Jerome, Olshausen [who refers to Isaiah’s vision of the glory of Christ, John 12:41], etc.
4) In the celebration of the birth and meaning of Isaac. Hofmann. [So also Wordsworth, fancifully: The name Isaac (laughing), Genesis 17:17, had a reference to the ἀγαλλίασις of Abraham; for in Isaac, the promised seed, he had a vision of Christ, in whom all rejoice.—P. S.]
5) Visio in limbo patrum. Este, etc.88
6) As one living in paradise in the other world [comp. Luke 16:22; Luke 16:25], like the angels, 1 Peter 1:12; Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, Matthew 17:4; Luke 9:31. So Origen [Lampe], Lücke, De Wette [Meyer, Stier, Luthardt, Alford, Bäumlein, Godet] and different others.89 Doubtless the proper sense: therefore His living Abraham in opposition to their dead one. [Abraham saw the day of Christ as an actual witness from the higher world, like the angels who sang the anthem over the plains of Bethlehem.—P. S.]
And rejoiced.—Indication of changes in the realm of death, wrought by the appearance of Christ.90 The calm joy of the blessed, ἐχάρη, in opposition to the excited joy of anxious desire, ἠγαλλιάσατο. According to rabbinical traditions God showed to Abraham in prophetic vision the building, the destruction and re-construction of the temple, and even the succession of empires (see Lücke, the note on p. 363). These traditions represent the dark shadow of the light which the word of Christ casts into Hades.
John 8:57. Thou art not yet fifty years old.—The sensual, half imbecile and half malicious and intentional misunderstanding grows more and more in its folly. “The fiftieth year was the full age of a man, Numbers 4:3.” Tholuck: From this passage arose the misunderstanding of Irenæus that Jesus had gone through all the ages of human life. [Irenæus inferred from this passage that Jesus was not quite, but nearly fifty years of age, Adv. hær. II. 22, § 6 (ed. Stieren I. p. 360). E. V. Bunsen (a son of the celebrated statesman and scholar) defends this view, and infers from John 2:20 f., that Christ was forty-six years of age (The Hidden Wisdom of Christ, Lond. 1865, II p. 461 ff.). Keim also is inclined to extend the earthly life of Christ to forty years, but confines His public ministry to one year and a few months, (Geschichtl. Christus, p. 235, Gesch. Jesu von Nazara, I 469 f. note). It is obvious that no clear inference as to the age of our Lord can be drawn from this indefinite estimate of the Jews, and Irenæus was influenced by a dogmatic consideration, viz., that Christ must have passed through all the stages of human life, including old age (senior in senioribus), in order to redeem thorn all. But the idea of declining life is incompatible with the true idea of the Saviour. He died and lives for ever in the memory of His people in the unbroken vigor of early manhood.—P. S.]
John 8:58. Verily, verily … Before Abraham became I am.91 Over against the completely hardened stupidity of spiritual death flashes up the perfect mystery of eternal life. Γενέσθαι not “was” (Tholuck [De Wette, Ewald,]), or “born” (Erasmus), but “became” (Augustine); the antithesis of the created and the eternal, which implies at the same time the antithesis of the temporal and the eternal. Εἰμί expresses the pre-existence (after the fathers), yet not only as the divine pre-existence, but that which reflects itself in Christ’s divine-human consciousness of eternity and extends to the present and the future as well as the past, or that form of existence which makes Him the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is the propelling principle and centre of the times. We distinguish, therefore, a threefold mode of existence: 1) The divine, timeless or pre-temporal existence of the Logos; 2) the divine-human principial existence of the Logos as the foundation of humanity and the world; 3) the divine-human existence of the coming and appearing Christ through the succession of times. This implies at the same time the ethical elevation of the feeling of eternity above the times. The principial and dynamic pre-existence must be understood in a sense analogous to the pre-existence of Christ before John, John 1:15; John 1:17. To the Jews this sense was most obvious: Abraham’s existence presupposes Mine, not Mine that of Abraham; he depends for his very existence on Me, not I on him. We have then here again a revelation of His essential Messianic consciousness, His primitive feeling of eternity over and above all time. Comp. John 6:63; John 8:25; John 8:42; John 13:3; John 16:28; John 17:5.
Socinus explains according to his system: Antequam Abraham fiat Abraham, i.e., pater multorum gentium, ego sum Messias, lux mundi. The interpretation of Baumgarten-Crusius: “I was in the predestination of God,” does not suffice, but is not incorrect, as Tholuck thinks; it denotes the principial aspect of pre-existence. In a similar sense the Rabbins boasted that Israel and the laws existed before the world.
[The passage most clearly teaches the essential and personal pre-existence of Christ before Abraham, in other words, before the world (John 17:5), and before time (John 1:1), which was made with the world, and implies His eternity, and consequently His deity, for God alone is eternal. This the Jews well understood, and hence they raised stones to punish the supposed blasphemer. The same doctrine is taught, John 1:1; John 1:18; John 6:62; John 17:5; Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:2. Alt attempts of ancient and modern Socinians and Rationalists to explain away the pre-existence, or to turn it into a merely ideal pre-existence in the mind and will of God (which would constitute no difference between Christ and Abraham), are “little better than dishonest quibbles” (Alford). I add Meyer’s explanation which is clear and satisfactory. “Before Abraham became (ward, not war), I am; older than Abraham’s becoming, is my being. Since Abraham had not pre-existed, but by his birth came into existence, the verb γενέσθαι is used, while εἰμί denotes being as such (das Sein an sich), which in the case of Christ who, according to His divine essence, was before time itself, does not include a previous γενέσθαι or coming into existence. Comp. John 1:1; John 1:6, and Chrysostom. The present tense denotes that which continues from the past, i.e., here from the pre-temporal existence (John 1:1; John 17:5). Comp. LXX., Psalms 90:2; Jeremiah 1:5. But the ἐγώ εἰμι is neither an ideal existence (De Wette) nor the Messianic existence (Scholten), and must not be found in the counsel of God (Sam. Crell, Grotius, Paulus, Baumgarten-Crusius), which is made impossible by the present tense; nor is it (with Beyschlag) to be conceived of as the existence of the real image of God, nor is the expression a momentary vision of prophetic elevation (Weizsäcker), but it essentially corresponds with Christ’s permanent consciousness of personal pre-existence which in John meets us everywhere. Comp. John 17:5; John 6:46; John 6:62. It is not an intuitive, retrospective conclusion (Rückschluss),. but a retrospective look (Rückblick) of the consciousness of Jesus.” In other words, Christ, did not, in a moment of higher inspiration, infer that He existed before Abraham and the world (Beyschlag), but He calmly declared His knowledge and conviction, or revealed His personal consciousness concerning His superhuman origin and pre-temporal existence.—P. S.]
John 8:59. Then took they up stones.—The clear sound of the word concerning His eternity sounds to the Jews like blasphemy. They get ready, therefore, to execute theocratic judgment as zealots of the law (comp. John 10:31). A summary stoning in the temple is related by Josephus, Antiq. XVII. 9, 3. “The stones were probably the building-stones in the vestibule, see Light-foot, p. 1048 (Meyer),” Considering the frequent attempts of the Jews to stone Jesus, it must appear the more providential, that He nevertheless found His death on the cross, and the more divine that He foresaw it with certainty.
But Jesus hid himself (withdrew Himself), ἐκρύβη. A vanishing out of sight (ἄφαντος γινεσθαι), as in Luke 24:31 (Augustine, Luthardt [Wordsworth]), is hardly to be thought of: to become invisible is not a withdrawal, a hiding, and Jesus was not yet transfigured. He hid Himself while disappearing among the multitude of the people, especially His adherents. Therefore also not quite so ἀνθρωπίνως, as if He had fled (Chrysost.). The doubtful addition: διελθών, etc. [see Text. Notes], does not express a miraculous disappearance, but rather that He secured His safety in virtue of His majesty, just by breaking through the midst of the group of His enemies. Meyer, therefore, has no good reason to say that this occurrence is quite different from the one related, Luke 4:30. The conjecture of a docetic view (Hilgenfeld, Baur) is arbitrarily put in. Also in these details we see how the crisis thickens and the storm is gathering.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The grand decisive turning point in the position of the Jews in Jerusalem towards the Lord, or the falling away from the beginnings of faith, a consequence of His exposition of true discipleship (in antithesis to false): (1) Real faith, true orthodoxy: continuance in His word, faithful obedience in contrast to arbitrary perversion of His word. (2) The fruit of faith, true philosophy: knowledge and recognition of divine truth in antithesis to the delusions of error. (3) The blessing of truth: true freedom, liberation from the service of sin, in antithesis to a spurious freedom or mock freedom, contemning the spiritual conditions of external freedom. The truth shall make you free. Afterwards: the Son maketh free. Truth is personal in Christ, Christ is universal in truth. Truth is the light, freedom the might of life. Truth is the enlightenment of the reason, liberty the redemption of the will. Truth is the harmony of the contrasts of life, having its central point in the life and work of Christ, its source in God, its rays in all fragments of knowledge: liberty the harmony of man in his true self-destination in accordance with his abilities and the reality of God. Truth corresponds to revelation, liberty to redemption.
2. Causes of the falling away: (1) Pride (Abraham’s seed); (2) self-delusion (“not slaves”); (3) carnal aspirations (outward rebellion); (4) evil fellowship, or party spirit (“we, we,” etc.).
3. Antithesis of true freedom and true servitude.—Servitude: (1) Beginning of servitude (the commission of sin); (2) state of servitude (the slave of sin); (3) result (only an unfree bond servant in the house of God, over whom expulsion is impending).—The servant (also the servile spirit) abideth not in the house of God (in the communion of the kingdom) forever. This has been first fulfilled in the case of unbelieving Israel.
4. The Son of the house, as the real Freeman, also the true Liberator.
5. The contrast between Christ and His adversaries: (1) In disposition. He estimates them impartially (Abraham’s seed); He woos them with His word. They, on the other hand, do not suffer His word to spring up in them, therefore hatred to Christ buds within them (they change the savor of life unto life into a savor of death unto death). (2) In the impulses of life. The Father of Christ, the father of the Jews; the seeing of Christ, the hearing of the Jews; the witnessing of Christ, the doing of the Jews. (3) In conduct: Israelitish, anti-Israelitish (“if Abraham were your father”); prophetic (“a man that telleth you the truth”), murderously anti-prophetic (“ye seek to kill Me”); divine-human, anti-Christian. (4) In origin: Of God, of the devil.
6. “I am from above.” This answer to the intimation: He is about to descend far below as a suicide, contains the idea of His ascent. To the Jews death was in general a going downward. In the Old Testament the germ of the opposite hope was implanted. Genesis 5:24; Genesis 28:12, in the holy mountain-ascents of Moses (Exodus 19:0; Deuteronomy 34:4), in Elijah’s ascension to heaven, in expressions such as Proverbs 15:24. Christ here makes the idea of the heavenly abode appear more clearly (comp. John 7:34); at a later period, chap. 14, He reveals it openly to His disciples in order to confirm it by His ascension.
7. The doctrine of Jesus concerning the devil. See the Exegetical Notes. Comp. Com. on Matthew 4:1; Matthew 12:26 [pp. 81, 223, Am. ed.]. Comp. the Dogmatik of the author (Die Lehre vom Teufel).
8. Characteristics of the devil and his children: (1) Lusts, passions; (2) murder, hate; (3) falsehood; (4) contagion and seduction. Starke: “A seed is figuratively ascribed to the devil, Genesis 3:15. By this are commonly understood not only the fallen angels but also all malignant sinners (1 John 3:10; Matthew 13:38-39); partly because the first origin of the evil was the first sin of the devil, partly because all wicked people fulfil his will with filial obedience and hence bear his image. Διάβολος means properly a slanderer, calumniator, because Satan is (1) a slanderer who belies (slanders) and defames God to men (Genesis 3:3; Genesis 3:5), in that he suggests to believers hard thoughts of God, and tells them that He is angry with them, whilst in reality He is reconciled to them through Christ, but persuades the wicked that God is favorable to them and unmindful of their iniquities. He also accuses and calumniates men to God, Job 1:9; Revelation 12:17. (2) An adversary of Christ and the faithful, Genesis 3:15; Zechariah 3:1; 1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 12:9. (3) A deceiver and seducer of men, 2 Corinthians 11:3; 2 Corinthians 11:14, etc.; he is the chief seducer, and then also all evil spirits who are under him as their head.”
9. The Sinlessness of Jesus. Comp. Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus [7th ed., 1863] and Schaff on the Person of Christ—[Germ. ed. Gotha, 1865, revised ed. New York, 1870, Engl. ed. Boston, 1865, pp. 50 ff. The sinlessness of Jesus is strongly asserted even by divines who are by no means orthodox, (Schleiermacher, Hase, Keim, Bushnell) and has been assailed only by a few writers of any note (such as Strauss, Pecaut, Theo. Parker, Renan), and even these are forced to admit that He made a nearer approach to moral perfection than any other man. But the only logical alternative is between absolute sinlessness or absolute hypocrisy; and to admit the former is virtually to admit the whole Christian system.—P. S.]
10. Unbelief the uniform characteristic of the devilish mind: (1) Unbelief of the truth of Christ because it is truth, (2) because it is the effluence of His holiness, (3) because it is divine. Or (1) the lack of a sense of truth, proneness to falsehood, (2) the want of appreciation of the purity of life, (3) the lack of affinity to God, of obedience to the voice of God in the breast.
11. “A Samaritan.”—The insulting and abusive retort to the calm sentence of truth contains the life-picture of fanaticism, which has first boldly chicaned (John 8:13), then quibbled and sneered (John 8:19), after this uttered taunts (John 8:22); then with eager longing for a chiliastic mystery and mystical proceeding has drawn Him out (John 8:25), and worshipped Him (John 8:30). Turning round again it grows rancorous (John 8:33), boasts (John 8:39), and arrogantly and abusively contradicts (John 8:41). Here it stands in its fullest development. It slanders while it reviles and reviles as it slanders.
12. The wonderful proof of Christ’s self-command, patience and freedom of spirit exhibited throughout the chapter. His frankness, His prudence, His wisdom, His incorruptibleness (John 8:30-31), the most diverse virtues of the Lord prove superior to the most difficult situation and the severest temptations. From the midst of the solemnly moving serenity with which He proclaims judgment, His mercy bursts forth again as a flaming beacon of deliverance, John 8:51. The declaration in John 8:51 reverts to that contained in John 8:31.
13. Christ and Abraham in antithesis to the previously depicted relation of the Jews to Abraham. On the feeling of life and the feeling of death. Between the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ and the doctrine of the anticipatory joy of Abraham in the Messiah and his celebration of the Messianic day in the other world, there exists the closest connection; similarly, the comfortless speech of the Jews with regard to the death of Abraham and the prophets is connected with their witless estimation of the duration of the life of Christ. (And thus the Evangelical Church was reproached with her three centuries and the Evangelical Alliance with its three decennaries under the misapprehension of the eternity of the Evangel and the primitiveness of the fellowship of faith.)
14. Abraham’s exultation in this world, Abraham’s joy in the other world, or the excited celebration (of the Messianic day) of the mortal, and the calm, peaceful celebration of the glorified one. The anticipatory joy of the ancients was not without painful longing, their longing not devoid of rapturous glimpses of the future.
15. Isaac, the son of faith, also in this a type of Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of Mary, the Virgin.16. Christ’s proffer of everlasting life answered by the Jews with an attempt to stone and kill Him.17. As Christ, ever more gloriously escaped from the Jews, thus too shall the Church of Christ in her evangelical confession and spiritual life ever more gloriously escape the persecutions of the legalists.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The uprightness of Christ.—How the Lord by His heavenly uprightness gradually enchains the true disciples, gradually alienates the false ones (see John 3:6; John 9:1).—How He does not captivate the false disciples: 1. Will not captivate them; 2. cannot captivate them.—The true profitable conduct of disciples towards the word of Jesus: 1. The conduct; (a) to suffer themselves to be kept by the word (to continue in it, the obedience of faith, John 8:31); (b) to keep the word in temptation as a guiding star through the darkness of judgments (the loyalty of faith, John 8:51). 2. Whereunto this is profitable: knowledge of the truth and freedom from sin. (life in brightness and freedom from death).—Continuance in the word of Jesus the condition of true spirit-life: 1. Of true knowledge of God, 2. of true moral freedom.—Through truth to freedom.—Through inner freedom to outer freedom.—The false confidence of legal saints in their freedom (religious, ecclesiastical, political freedom): 1. They are enslaved outwardly by the world (the Jews by Rome); 2. enslaved at home by the letter of the law; 3. enslaved within and without by sin.—Domestic right in the house of God: 1. The Song of Solomon , 2. the bond-servants, 3. the freedmen.—The true children of Abraham, Romans 4:0—Where the word of Christ can not grow in the heart, enmity against Christ flourishes, John 8:37.—How man can by spiritual pride turn inherited blessings, even ecclesiastical ones, into a curse (as here the boast, about being Abraham’s seed).—The prudence of Christ in antithesis to the temerity of sinners, John 8:38 : 1. He speaks that which He has seen of God. 2. The evil that they have faintly heard, they do.—The trial of the Jews, instituted by the Lord, as to whether they are genuine heirs of the spirit and faith of Abraham: 1. The trial, (a)after the works of Abraham, (b) after their susceptibility of God’s words. 2. The result, John 8:44.
Abraham’s seed (consecrated children of God by circumcision; called regenerate), and yet of their father the devil. So, too, one may be called a Christian, an evangelical Christian, etc., and yet be of one’s father, the devil.—
The devil a person who, by murder and lying continually, calls in question his personality and all personality.—Christ’s severe words concerning the devil (here, Matthew 13:0, Matthew 4:0 and elsewhere).—The fundamental traits of the devilish nature. How they are embraced in the One fundamental trait of unbelief (or of apostasy).—Falsehood and hate cognate: 1. Falsehood a murder of truth, of ideal reality. 2. Murder falsehood against life (denial of God, of love, sullying of the right).—How all threads of human falsehood and hatred and murder unite in the murder of Christ, the crucifixion.—How love and loyalty to all truth shine inseparable and pristine in the Crucified One.—The majesty of Jesus in His testimony to the devil and his children, etc. 44.—Hatred of truth.—Unbelief as a hatred of truth resting upon the love of sin.
The Gospel for Judica [fifth Sunday in Lent], John 8:46-59.—The two-fold judgment in the separation between Christ and His adversaries: 1. The false judgment of the world, resulting in the justification of Christ; 2. Christ’s true judgment of the world, that shall lead to the justification of sinners.—Christ, the Prophet of everlasting life, considered in relation to the prophets of death: 1. Wherefore He is the Prophet of life, and why they are prophets of death, (a) He is the Holy One, the Sinless One, the publisher of the Word of God, and Himself the Word; existing from eternity, in respect of His essence—as respects His works, the Saviour of life, in time; (b) they are the sinners, enemies of the word, lost in temporalness, killing life with the fatal letter. 2. How He proclaims everlasting life, but they can preach of nothing but death, (a) Of His eternal life, of the eternal life of Abraham; (b) they of the death of Abraham and the Prophets. 3. How He offers them eternal life (John 8:5), whilst they, in return, wish to kill Him, John 8:59. John 8:4. How He is proved to be the Ever-Living One, while they have gone the way of death, John 8:54-55.—As error is connected with sin, so is truth with innocence and righteousness.
The sinlessness of Jesus corroborated by challenging the testimony of His enemies.—The testimony of the world and of Christ’s enemies to the innocence of Jesus (Pilate, Judas, the high-priests and elders themselves, Matthew 27:43).—The innocence of Christ in respect of its complete revelation: 1. Founded upon divine impeccability, 2. approved in human sinlessness.—The voice of Jesus, from the mere fact of its being the voice of the Holy Man, should receive the consideration of the whole world. 1. In its uniqueness, 2. in its credibility, 3. in its revelations.—He that is of God heareth God’s words.
John 8:48. The answer of the Jews a historically stereotype reply of the spirit of the law to the preaching of the gospel.—How religious testimony is turned into invectives in the mouth of fanaticism, John 8:48.—The calmness of the Lord in contrast to the railing excitement of His enemies.—Peter imitates Him in this composure (Acts 2:0); so likewise do all faithful witnesses for the truth.—The cry of grief with which the Lord again offers salvation even to self-hardeners and blasphemers.—The New Testament word of everlasting life decried as a word of the devil by the false servants of the Old Testament.
John 8:55. And if I should say. The fidelity of the Lord to truth in the faithfulness of His self-consciousness and knowledge of God.
John 8:57. The length of true life, 1. measured by earthly-mindedness, 2. measured by godly-mindedness.—The Jews as accountants and reckoners opposed to the Lord and His numbers.—How the everlasting To-day of the Father (Psalms 2:0) is re-echoed in the everlasting I am of the Son,
John 8:59. The ever repeated and ever vain attempt of Christ’s enemies to stone Him.—They were able in the end to crucify Him and they thus contributed to His glorification, but to consign Him to oblivion beneath a heap of stones was beyond their power.—How Christ always passes gloriously through the midst of His enemies.
Starke: It is not enough to make a good beginning in Christianity if one do not end well (continue and persevere).—Make free, Romans 6:18; Galatians 5:1; 1 Peter 2:10. From the bondage of sin, John 8:34, and of eternal death, John 8:51; Luke 1:77; by remission of guilt and punishment and by communication of the Spirit of adoption and of faith.—That only is real and sound truth which can sanctify and save.—Osiander: Believers are not free from external servitude and civil burdens; their freedom is far more glorious, for they are free from sin, death, the devil and hell, and can bid defiance to all enemies, Romans 6:22.—Zeisius: Of what avail is it to have pious parents and ancestors, and not to be pious ourselves? To be of noble blood, but ignoble in soul, &c.—Ibid.: Oh wretched liberty whose companion is thraldom under sin and the devil!—Canstein: If sin but play the master and have dominion over a man, it obtains right and might to plunge him into sundry and greater sins.—He who will be forever with God must not be a slave but a son; and this is the highest good, this is true felicity—to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalms 23:6.—Zeisius: Priceless liberty of the children of God; but beware that thou abuse not such liberty by making it an occasion of security!
John 8:41. The sinner who is forever vindicating himself does but entangle himself the more.—It is the way of the flesh to be always intent upon evasions.—Nova Bibl. Tub.: He who loves not Jesus, is not born of God but of the devil.—Jesus proceeded from the Father to seek us; should not we then go forth from ourselves and the whole world to meet Him?—The Can Not John 8:43 : A wicked, unruly will lay at the bottom of this.—Zeisius: Execrable as falsehood is because it is the offspring of the devil, just so base is it, alas! But O insolvent nobility of liars!—Ibid.: It is the old way of the world to love and to hearken to the devil’s lies, hypocrisy and flattery rather than truth.—As long as man can not endure truth he is incapable of faith.
John 8:46. Against him who can ground his defence upon a good conscience the harshest invectives and abuse of his enemies will accomplish nothing.—A Christian is bound to appeal to his good conscience when his enemies revile and slander him without a cause.
John 8:47. Zeisius: Infallible test of those who belong to God: who truly love God’s word, &c.—When wicked men are convinced of their wickedness and have nothing to answer, they resort to abuse, invective, and calumny, Acts 6:10-11,—Lampe: To call upright witnesses for the truth heretics and enthusiasts, moreover to persecute them, and to boast of one’s own orthodoxy on the other hand—are characteristics of antichristian spirits, 1 Peter 3:9.
John 8:49. The more we honor God, the more the world will dishonor us. But courage! God will honor us in return.—Perverse world! It honors what is despicable, and despises what is honorable.
John 8:50. It is honor enough for believers that they are the children of God. God, moreover, will defend them.—The godly find what they do not seek, but the wicked attain not that for which they strive.
John 8:52, The wicked trample the most precious promises under foot and draw only poison from the fairest flowers of the divine word.—Cramer: The devil is a sophist.
John 8:54. Vanity and folly make a great boast of themselves! Consider the Saviour and follow His example.
John 8:56. The most pious parents often leave descendants who do not possess their faith, piety and virtue.—Believers see what is invisible, and believe that which is incredible, and rejoice with all their hearts.—Christians existed before the birth of Christ and were saved through Him, Hebrews 13:8.—Canstein: Truth always comes off conqueror.
Gerlach: The truth, the revelation in Christ, 1Jn 1:6; 1 John 1:8; 1 John 2:21; Hebrews 10:26. This truth makes free, for only that being is free that develops in accordance with its God-created nature.—The first sinner in God’s creation, the devil, fell from the truth; he fell out of God, as the eternal source and vital element of all created beings. Thus he became a living contradiction in himself, a lie.
John 8:47; 1 John 5:20.—Recognize Him they would not, refute Him they could not, therefore they reviled Him.
John 8:52. All the Jews at that time believed that the Messiah would raise the dead and judge the world, even in the carnal, literal sense; hence the language of Jesus might well have excited their astonishment if they had not been inclined to receive Him as the Messiah: bitter enmity however prompted their treatment of His words, and the utter contempt which they entertained for Him is visible in their reply. (Be it observed only that they were also offended because He asserted His possession of this power without publicly presenting Himself as the Messiah.)—He strengthens the impression of mysterious majesty about His person, in that He, by virtue of His glance into the higher spirit-world, affirms that of Abraham which a mere man could not know.
Braune: Continuance, 1 John 2:28.—Blessed is he that endureth unto the end.—A real delirium of liberty had seized the Jews.—Bondage, 2 Peter 2:19.—Emancipation, Romans 8:2.—When a man takes offence at the expression of Jesus, he is not in harmony with the thoughts and mind of Jesus.—The evil will is the tool of Satan, the true devilish momentum.—Thus the devil’s nature is not naturally evil; but wickedness made it evil. It is not I that is evil but egotism. Without the I there were no love in which I learns thou and says we.—“To his haughtiness humility is servility, dependence on God slavery; to his false serpent-wisdom simplicity and honesty seem stupidity, and his egotism holds love to be foolish sensibility; his pride finds contrition, repentance and petitions for mercy an insufferable humiliation. The struggle for autocratic likeness to God delusively causes his aspirations and efforts to seem grand to him, his non-subjection to God sublime” (Sartorius).—There is cause for fear when he deceives and lies rather than when he rages.—Why did they say fifty years old? The fiftieth year is the close of manhood, and hence formed the period of the Levites’ time of service. Jesus was not as old as this, but they mention this age, as though they magnanimously granted more than could be demanded, in order to give an appearance of absurdity to His language.
Heubner: Christ distinguishes between real and false, firm and wavering disciples.—The slave of sin does not so much as know that he lacks freedom. One does not perceive that until one begins to see clearly. That is already the beginning of freedom.—Man is blinded by many things so that he thinks himself perfectly free. Here it is a religious species of pride of ancestry, &c. But besides family pride there are a number of other considerations which exert a delusive power: external refinement, rank, authority, proficiency in business, commendation, a varnish of morality, art, science.—Why servant? when he says: it is my own will. Answer: Because the sinner never can say that his choice is the result of full and sober-minded conviction. He is reproved by conscience.—God will have no slaves, no unwilling servants by compulsion and for hire; He wants children, free, loving children. Their supreme right is: to abide in the Father’s house.—Man’s destiny: either adoption into the paternal house of God or exclusion from it.—The Son has broken the chains forged by Satan. He is the Redeemer of the human race.—Fictitious freedom.—The remembrance of pious ancestors should be a mighty impulse to good.—Christ has a unique speech.—The devil abode not. Hence the earliest fathers of the Church called the devil an apostate (ἀποστάτης).—Apostasy from truth leads to the entire loss of truth. Be it observed, moreover, that as early as in the apocryphal Predicatio Pauli the sinlessness of Jesus is denied.—Good men can be understood only by the like-minded. Christ teaches us equanimity in reference to worldly honor.—What is true honor?—The difference between honor with God and honor with the world.—That no slander can strip us of our true honor.
John 8:52. The words of Christ seem presumptuous because virtue often has the appearance of presumption. He who is morally good really makes the highest claims without immodesty or presumption; on the other hand presumption is to be found in the world.—Living among wicked and perverse people the severest trial of holy men.—What strengthens the pious in this life? 1. The consciousness of their lofty and intimate fellowship with the devout of all ages; 2. The prospect of everlasting blessedness, from eternity prepared for believers, through Christ.
Gossner: The world falsely declares itself free when it is over head and ears in slavery.—This is the tyranny of the devil, which he exercises over natural men to such an extent, that Paul rightly calls him the god of this world, who hath his work in the children of unbelief, Eph 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4.—From the Son of God all the children of God derive their birth, their life, their freedom, their redemption, their right of sonship and heirship.—What He is, that He also communicates to His people and makes them kings, prophets and priests. They have the honor of bearing His unction, seal and name.—Infidels believe the devil, while denying his existence.92—A man may try himself whether he be a child of God or of the devil.—Lying is his proper character.—Christ would not die in the temple because He was to be sacrificed not alone for the Jewish nation, but for the whole world; for this another altar was requisite, whereon He might be offered up in the sight of all the world, as upon Golgotha.—What a judgment, to cast out Jesus! What a void in the heart, the temple of the Church, where Jesus must hide Himself and give way to blind zeal, pride, ambition, falsehood, selfishness—before all which He must flee!
Schleiermacher: Their belief (John 8:30-31) was in itself utterly imperfect, because expectations were mingled with it which did not correspond with the real purpose of God, that He would accomplish in Christ. Now so long as these expectations exist, it is possible that when a man begins to doubt their truth and yet still clings to them at heart, he will forsake the faith. But just that clinging of the heart to something incompatible with true and living faith in the Redeemer is at the same time a non-continuance in His word and a cherishing of another word in the heart, 2 Corinthians 3:15.—There is no other way for us all to be filled and penetrated with the truth than by gazing into His holy image and suffering ourselves to be purified through Him from all falseness.
Besser: John 8:32. Something of this was known also to the heathen; Cicero says: The wise man alone is free. But they comprehended the nature neither of divine wisdom nor of divine liberty.—No thraldom, says Seneca, is worse than the thraldom of the passions. Plato calls the infamous lusts the hardest tyrants. Epictetus says: Liberty is the name of virtue, slavery the name of vice. The Brahmin sages call the natural state of man: “Bondage.”—Schmalz: The rage for heretical accusation: 1. It makes invectives take the place of convincing arguments; 2. it craftily distorts the plainest utterances of others; 3. it casts suspicion on the heart of others; 4. to combat them it grasps at unlawful and violent means.—Rambach: Jesus the sublimest pattern of meekness.—J. C. E. Schwarz: Falsehood: 1. in respect to its nature (apostasy from God, rebellion against His kingdom, pollution of His image in ourselves and others); 2. in respect to its fruits (self-belying, mischief, impulse to new sin).—J. Mueller: The holiness of Jesus Christ is proof of the truth of His testimony about His divine dignity.—Schnur: Why truth is so hated: 1. Because it sees too deeply; 2. because it speaks too openly; 3. because it judges too severely.—Rautenberg: Truth and its lot upon earth: 1. It is rejected but does not keep silence; 2. it is reviled but wearies not; 3. it is persecuted but does not succumb.
Footnotes:
John 8:31; John 8:31.—[Cod. Sin. omits the μου, so generalizing the idea of disciple.—E. D. Y.]
John 8:34; John 8:34.—Τῆς ἁμαρτίας is wanting in Cod. D., Iren., Hil., etc. [Cod. Sin., with most of the leading authorities, has it]. The omission has been caused by the general expression ὁ δὲ δοῦλος following.
John 8:35; John 8:35.—[This whole clause ὁ υἱὸς—αἰῶνα is wanting in Cod. Sin. Otherwise it is unquestioned. The omission is probably an effort to strip the ὁ δὲ δοῦλος, John 8:34, of that generalness which seemed to others to require the omission of the τῆς ἁμαρτίας before it.—E. D. Y.]
John 8:38; John 8:38.—[οὖν after ὑμεῖς is disputed in the Greek text, and should be translated therefore or accordingly or likewise or by the same rule. Meyer: “In οὖν liegt eine schmerzliche Ironie.”—P. S.]
John 8:38; John 8:38.—Instead of ὃ ἑωράκατε παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ ὑμῶν, we should read, according to decisive authorities (B. C. K.): δἠκούσατε παρα τοῦ πατρ́ς. [An ironical allusion to the devil.] Μου and ὑμῶν are probably exegetical interpolations. [Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford omit them. א. D. have them. They also support Lachmann and Tischendorf in reading δ ἐγώ instead of ἐγὼ ὃ, in the first clause. But in the second it reads: ἃ ἑωράκατε παρα τοῦ πατρό ς. Nothing in the nature of the case would seem to require ἠκούσατε here rather than the ἑωράκ. which is used of Christ in His relation to the Father; for in John 8:40 the hearing is applied to Christ, and in John 8:41 the seeing is implied in the case of the Jews.—Y.]
John 8:39; John 8:39.—B. D. L. [א] ἐστε, [instead of ἦτε, were, text, rec.] to which, however, the ἐποιεῖτε does not correspond. [Meyer: “The apparent want of grammatical correspondence between the two members has occasioned the change now of ἐστε into ἦγε, now of ἐποιεῖτε into ποιεῖτε (Vulg., Aug.).” Meyer, with Griesbach and Lachmann, prefers ἐστε, and is supported by Cod. Sin.—Y.]
[51]Ibid.—The ἅν is not sufficiently accredited.
John 8:43; John 8:43.—[Dr. Lange translates this as belonging to the question, not as an answer; takes ὅτι ὥστε: “Why do ye not understand my speech, so that ye cannot hear my word?” See the Exegesis.—Y.]
John 8:44; John 8:44.—[The reading ὅς ἅν is untenable.]
John 8:51; John 8:51.—Τὸν ἐμὸν λό γον. The reading τὸ ν λό γον τὸν ἐμό ν is exegetical. [Lachmann and Tischendorf read τὸν ἐμὸνλό γον, and Meyer thinks the balance of authority in favor of that reading. Hahn, Stier and Theile, etc., prefer the other, and Cod. Sin. supports it. Cod. Sin. also has the weaker futures τηρή σει and θεωρή σει, instead of the subjunctives τηρή ση and θεωρή σῃ. But in John 8:52 it agrees with all the great authorities in γεύ σηται, against the future γεύ σεται of the Text. Rec—Y.]
John 8:52; John 8:52.—[Cod. Sin. supports Lachmann and Tischendorf in omitting οὖν.—Y.]
John 8:54; John 8:54.—According to B. C.* D. [Cod. Sin.], etc., δοξά σω. [Rec.: δοξά ζω.]
[57]Ibid.—[The Recepta, and therefore the English Version, are supported by the Cod. Sin.: ὑμῶν but A. B.2 C. al. read ἡμῶν, direct discourse. J. J. Owen: “Some critics connect” the succeeding clause with this, “and translate of whom ye say ‘he is our God,’ and know him not. But this presents less forcibly the contrast between their arrogant claims and real ignorance of God.” The conjunction is simply καί. The main contrast also would seem to lie between the Jews’ ignorance and Christ’s knowledge of God.—Y.]
John 8:56; John 8:56.—The authorities waver between ἡμῶν (our father) and ὑμῶν (your father). The first reading is more probable. [There is probably a mistake here. Lachmann indeed quotes Origen in favor of ἡμῶν, but Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort mention no such reading in this verse, while in John 8:55 the authorities are divided between θεὸς ὑμῶν and θεὸς ὑμῶν.—P. S.]
John 8:57; John 8:57.—The reading τεσσαρά κοντα, in Chrysostom and others is exegetical.
[60]Ibid.—[Cod. Sin.1 ἑώ ρακεν σε; hath Abraham seen thee? to conform their question to Christ’s assertion, John 8:56.—Y.]
John 8:59; John 8:59.—The words from διελθώ ν to the end are wanting in B.D., Vulgate, and seem to have been transferred from Luke 4:30 by way of exegesis. [Wanting also in Cod. Sin.—Y.]
[62][Meyer’s interpretation that the Jews here in an excited state of mind, confine their view to their own time, and then make earnest of the show of freedom allowed them by the Romans (Joseph. vi. 6, 2), by no means excludes Dr. Lange’s, which Meyer thinks unnecessary. Indeed the constitutional and traditional temper of the Jews, as Lange here finely analyzes it, would be just the source of such excited exaggeration as Dr. Meyer finds in these words. And conversely, Lange’s view might well include Meyer’s; for the Jews are here not so much stating a refined political doctrine, as venting a passionate jealousy supported by it. Nor need even the still less qualified view of Dr. J. J. Owen De left out: “to refer their reply to the loose and inconsiderate manner of speaking which characterizes persons in a state of high excitement, such as that into which these persons were thrown by the answer of Jesus.” Y.]
[63][Comp. Matthew 8:23, ἐργαζόμενος τὴν ἁμαρτίαν.]
[64][Alford, with Bengel, Stier, Ebrard, assumes here a reference to Ishmael and Isaac, the bond and the free sons of the same Abraham, but the bondwoman and her son are cast out. Meyer objects; the sentence being general.—P. S.]
[65][Meyer: “ὁ υἱος μένει εἰς τ. αἰῶνα, namely, ἐν τ. ῇ οἰκίᾳ—is likewise a general sentence, but with the intended application of the ὁ υἱός to Christ, who as the Son of God forever retains His position and power in the house of God, i.e. in the theocracy, comp. Hebrews 3 ff.”—P. S.]
[66][Grotius: “Tribuitur hic filio quod modo (John 8:32) veritati, quia eam profert filius.”—P. S.]
[67][Dr. Lange, it will be observed, adopts the reading: Ye do that which ye heard with your father. See the Text Note. This reading seems, indeed, to be doubtful. But παρὰ τοῦ πατρός here (from your father), in distinction from the π. τῷ πατρί (with, my Father) in the former clause, is less doubtful, and warrants substantially Dr. Lange’s second antithesis.—Y.]
[68][Godet: “Remarque la gradation: 1, Faire mourir un homme: 2, un homme organe de la verite; 3, de la vérité qui vient de Dieu.”—P. S.]
[69][Meyer denies all reference to idolatry, as defended by Lange with Lampe, Lücke, De Wette, Tholuck, Stier, Hengstenberg, Bäumlein, Alford. Bengel aptly characterizes this objection of the Jews as a novus importunitatis Judaicæ paroxysmus.—P. S.]
[70][Dr. Lange presses the imperfect ὴγαπᾶτε, but this is conditioned by the ἧν in the protasis, and is better rendered: Ye would love Me, than: Ye would have loved Me. The sentence belongs to the fourth class of hypothetical sentences mentioned by Winer, p. 273 and 285, where the condition of the protasis is supposed not to exist: in these cases εἱ is used with the imperf. indic., and followed in the apodosis by a præterit with the same force; comp. John 8:39 : εἰ τέκνα τοῦ ̓Αβρ. ἧτε, τὰ ἕργα τοῦ ̓Αβρ. ἐποιεῖτε “if ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham;” John 5:46 : εἰ γὰρ ἐπιστεύέτε Μωϋσῇ, ἐπιστεύετε ἅν ἐμοί, if ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me; John 9:41 : εἰ τυφλοὶ ἥτε, οῦκ , “if ye were blind, ye would not have sin;” John 15:19 : εἰ ἑκ τοῦ κόσμος ἅν τὸ ἴδιον ἐφίλει, “if ye were of the world, the world would love its own;” John 18:36; Luke 7:39 : εἰ ἧν προφήτης, ἐγίνωσκεν ἄν, “if he were a prophet, he would know,” etc.—P. S.]
[71][Meyer refers ἐξῆλθον to Christ’s incarnation, and ἥκω to His presence. It is the result of ἐξῆλθον, and still belonging to ἐκ τ. θεοῦ.—P. S.]
[72][In classical Greek, but in Hellenistic Greek and with later writers it often is sermo, speech, without any contemptuous meaning. λαλιά refers to the delivery or manner and form, λὸγος to the matter or substance, of His discourses.—P. S.]
[73][Alford: “The spiritual idiom in which He spoke, and which can only be spiritually understood.”—P. S.]
[74][Alford defends the rendering of the E. V. on account of the definite article before πατρός. But Meyer objects that this would require ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ ὑ μ ῶ ν πατρός.—P. S.]
[75][The force of θέλετε, ye are willing, ready, desirous, ye love, to do, is obliterated in the E. V. Comp. on this use of θέλειν John 4:21; Acts 10:10; Philippians 2:13; Philem. John 8:14. Alford: “It indicates, as in John 8:40, the freedom of the human will, as the foundation of the condemnation of the sinner.” Godet: “Le verb θ έ λ ε τ ε est contraire à l’idée d’une dépendance fataliste que Hilgenfeld attribue à Jean; il exprime l’assentiment volontaire, l’abondance de sympathie, avec laquelle ils se mettent a l’œuvre pour satisfaire les appetils de leur pèré.”—P. S.]
[76][ἀρχή is relative and must be defined by the connection, here by ἀνθρωποκτόνος which implies the existence of man.—P. S.]
[77][Add Hebrews 2:14, where Satan is called the prince of death, ὁ ἕχων τὸ κράτος τοῦ θανάτου. The rabbinical writings prove that the agency of the devil in the fall was the universal belief of the Jews.—P. S.]
[78] [Mephistopheles, in Göthe’s Faust, characterizes himself as the persistent denier and enemy of all existence:
Jch bin der Geist der stets verneint,Und das mit Recht, denn was eutsteht,
Ist werth, dass es zu Grunde geht.
D’ rum besser war’s, dass nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz, das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.—P. S.]
[79][This interpretation refers αὐτοῦ to the devil and πατήρ to the demiurge: “He (the devil) is a liar, and his father (the demiurge) also;” or, “He is a liar like his father” (hence the old reading ὡς and καθὼς καί instead of καί). This translation would require αὐτός before φεύστης, and implies the unscriptural doctrine that the devil has a father. Another interpretation even more absurd and untenable is that of so sensible and learned a man as Bishop Middleton who, according to Alford in loc., proposed this rendering of the passage: “When (any of you) speaks that which is false, he speaks after the manner of his kindred (ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων!), for he is a liar, and so also is his father,” i.e. the devil. Middleton stumbled at the article before πατήρ, which on the contrary is emphatic and necessary. There is but one father of lies and liars, that is the devil. The kingdom of darkness is a monarchy as well as the kingdom of light.—P. S.]
[80]Comp. the passage from Sohar Chadash: “The children of that old serpent who has slain Adam and all his posterity.” Tholuck, p. 257 [Krauth’s trans. p. 236].
[81][In the midst of this sentence the translation of my dear, departed friend, Dr. Yeomans, was interrupted by disease, never to be resumed. Yale—pia anima!—P. S.]
[82][So also Meyer, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson, Owen. (Wordsworth says nothing of this important verse.) I quote the remarks of Alford, which are to the point: “ἁμαπτία here is strictly sin: not ‘error in argument,’ or ‘falsehood.’ These two latter meanings are found in classical Greek, but never in the Now Testament or LXX. And besides, they would introduce in this most solemn part of our Lord’s discourse a vapid tautology. The question is an appeal to His sinlessness of life, as evident to them all,—as a pledge for His truthfulness of word: which word asserted, be it remembered, that He was sent from God. And when we recollect that He who challenges men to convict Him of sin, never would have upheld outward spotlessness merely (see Matthew 23:26-28), the words amount to a declaration of His absolute sinlessness, in thought, word, and deed.”—P. S.]
[83][So also Meyer: ein kelzerischer Widersacher des reinen Gottesvolkts.]
[84][Dr. Lunge reads our father, and adds the remark: “Our father is here full of meaning.” But he seems to have had in view John 8:54. where the authorities are divided between θ εὸς ἡ μ ῶ ν (oratio directa) and θ. ὑ μ ῶ ν. In John 8:56 the text, rec. ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν, is adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles and Alford, and ἡμῶν is not even mentioned by them in their apparatus of variations (except by Lachmann). As to the meaning, ‘your father’ is rather more forcible with reference to John 8:39, and shows the antagonism of their claim with the true spirit of Abraham.—P. S.]
[85][See the passage in Lücke, p. 363, likewise a similar passage from the Sohar.]
[86][In the offering of Isaac as a type of the vicarious sacrifice on he cross. So also Theophylact and Wordsworth.—P. S.]
[87][So also Meyer (p. 366, note), who insists that the singular ἡ ημέπα ἡ ἐμή means the specific day of the birth of Christ when ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο. But “the day” of Christ is no more to be contracted in this way, than the day of grace, and the day of judgment.—P. S.]
[88][The limbus patrum, like the limbus infantum, is one of the border regions of Sheol or Hades in the supernatural geography of Romanism; it was the abode of the Old Testament saints before Christ, but when He descended into Hades and proclaimed the redemption and deliverance to them, they were transferred to heaven. The limbus patrum, therefore, is empty now, while the limbus infantum is still the receptacle of all unbaptized children who die in infancy and are excluded from heaven, yet not actually suffering the pain of damnation.—P. S.]
[89][Meyer, p. 368, quotes from the apocryphal fiction of the Testamentum Levi, p. 586 sq., where it is said after the Messiah Himself opens the gates of Paradise and feeds the believers from the tree of life: then will Abraham rejoice (τότεἀγαλλιάσεται ̓Αβρ.), and Isaac and Jacob, and I shall be glad and all the saints shall put on gladness.—P. S.]
[90][The descent of Christ into the region of the departed spirits changed the gloom of the Old Testament Sheol into the light of the New Testament Paradise; Luke 23:43; Hebrews 11:39-40.—P. S.]
[91][The E. V. (Before Abraham was, I am) obliterates the important distinction between γενέσθαι, to become, to begin to be, to be born, to be made, which can be said of creatures only, and εῖναι, to be, which applies to the uncreated God as well. This distinction clearly appears already in the Prologue where the Evangelist predicates the ἐστί and ἦν of the eternal existence of the Logos, ἐγένετο of the man John; comp. John 1:1; John 1:6 and the notes there. The present “I am,” for “I was,” should also be noticed. It denotes His perpetual divine existence independent of all time. “He identifies Himself with Jehovah.” See Chrysostom.—P. S.]
[92][A free rendering of the German: Sie glauben IHM (dem Teufel), ohne IHN (den T.) zu glauben.—P. S.]
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