John 3:20 - Exposition

This verse expounds and supplies a further and causal explanation of the relation of conduct to character. For every one that praetiseth bad things . The first suggests the repeated acts of a man's conduct, his habits, his practice, and not unfrequently it has a bad sense attributed to it, while the second, ποιεῖν , refers to the full expression of an inward life, and is more appropriate to denote the higher deeds and grander principles). This practice of bad ways ( φαῦλα ) leads infallibly, by the just judgment of God, to a hatred of that which will reveal and confound the transgressor. Every one, etc., hateth the light (this shows that we cannot err in giving to μᾶλλον in John 3:19 the sense of potius ) , and the hardening process which is a judgment of God upon man, ever going on, becomes more conspicuous in this, that he cometh not to the light, in order that his works may not be convicted; i.e. lest his works should be revealed—shown to him and to others in their true light. The night time, during which so many evil things, base things, unclean things, are practised, was darkening down over Jerusalem when our Lord was speaking, and would give fateful emphasis to these solemn words. This love of darkness proceeded from a hatred of the revealing power of the light. This rejection of the only begotten Son of God proceeded from a long habit of sin, showing more emphatically than before the need of radical spiritual regeneration—a birth of water and of the Spirit. The rejection of the Christ's claim to cleanse the temple—a fact of which Nicodemus, as Sanhedrist, must have been fully aware—was a striking illustration of his great argument. The "dread of the light is both moral pride and moral effeminacy" (Meyer). (See parallel in Ephesians 5:11 , Ephesians 5:12 .)