John 5:43 - Exposition

I have come in the name ( i.e. in the power, with the credentials, with the encompassing revelation) of my Father, and ye receive me not. Your idea of the Father's glory is so profoundly different from the reality, that you do not recognize it when it is offered you and shining over you. Christ did not profess to have come in his own name. He was not a mere evolution of humanity, or of Israel, or of the house of David. He was the Only Begotten of the Father, born from above, sent down from heaven. The language of the world was, "This is not Divine;" "It is too gentle, too gracious, too sympathetic for God!" The religious world listened eagerly for some echo of the trumpet peals of Sinai. It desired a king greater than Solomon, a prophet more terrible than Elijah. When he came with the real glory robes of the love of God, and with the majesty of the Name of the Lord, there was widespread disappointment and cruel rejection of his commission. Should another come in his own (proper, peculiar) name , that is, with no testimony from heaven, seeking "honour ( δόξα , glory) from men," creating a sovereignty by enlisting the voices of men, compromising with evil, making no warfare against the power of the world, allowing the legitimacy of the throne of the prince of this world;—should he come in his own name, alas! him (that one) ye will receive. The eagerness on the part of the Jews to find the Messiah has led them to accept in some sort no fewer than sixty-four false Christs (Schudt, 'Judische Merkwurdigkeit,' John 6:27-30 ; Bengel and Meyer). Nor must the Christian Church take the flattering unction that it is free from this charge. The teacher that can utilize to the widest extent the fashionable worldliness, and can mingle the pungent human condiment with the princely food of the King's banqueting house, is he who at the present hour meets with the loudest response and the readiest reception. There is solemn warning here for statesman and author, artist and preacher.