You don’t have his word living in you, because you don’t believe him whom he sent.
Parallel Translations
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You don’t have his word living in you, because you don’t believe him whom he sent.
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therto his wordes have ye not abydinge in you. For whome he hath sent: him ye beleve not.
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And his worde haue you not abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye beleeued not.
Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to John 5:38 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 John 2:14 I have written to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
- Deuteronomy 6:6-9 These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
- John 12:44-48 Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. He who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness. If anyone listens to my sayings, and doesn’t believe, I don’t judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me, and doesn’t receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke will judge him in the last day.
- Proverbs 7:1-2 My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you. Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye.
- Isaiah 53:1-3 Who has believed our message? To whom has Yahweh’s arm been revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.
- James 1:21-22 Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
- Joshua 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.
- Proverbs 2:1-2 My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you, so as to turn your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
- Isaiah 49:7 Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, says to him whom man despises, to him whom the nation abhors, to a servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and rise up, princes, and they shall worship, because of Yahweh who is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
- John 1:11 He came to his own, and those who were his own didn’t receive him.
- John 3:17-21 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”
- John 5:42-43 But I know you, that you don’t have God’s love in yourselves. I have come in my Father’s name, and you don’t receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
- John 5:46-47 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me. But if you don’t believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
- John 8:37 I know that you are Abraham’s offspring, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you.
- John 8:46-47 Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you don’t hear, because you are not of God.”
- John 15:7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.
- Psalms 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
- Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 38. And you have not his word abiding in…
38. And you have not his word abiding in you. This is the true way of profiting, when the word of God takes root in us, so that, being impressed on our hearts, it has its fixed abode there. Christ affirms that the heavenly doctrine has no place among the Jews, because they do not receive the Son of God, on whom it everywhere bestows commendation. And justly does he bring this reproach against them; for it was not in vain that God spake by Moses and the Prophets. Moses had no other intention than to invite all men to go straight to Christ; and hence it is evident that they who reject Christ are not the disciples of Moses. Besides, how can that man have the word of life abiding in him who drives from him the life itself? How can that man keep the doctrine of the Law who destroys the soul of the Law, as far as lies in his power? For the Law without Christ is empty and has no solidity. Just in proportion, therefore, as any man knows Christ, is the proficiency which he has made in the word of God.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 38 And ye have not his word abiding in…
38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.
Ver. 38. And you have not his word abiding in you] As an "engrafted word," Jas 1:21: ye have heard it, but with your bodily ears only, with those gristles that grow upon your heads: ye have not drawn up the ears of your minds to the ears of your bodies, that one sound piercing both, ye might believe; ye have not mixed the word with faith in your hearts, as in a vessel, &c.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Though they had heard the word of the Lord,…
Though they had heard the word of the Lord, their forefathers by the prophets, and in that generation by John the Baptist, (the messenger sent before Christ’s face), and now by Christ himself, whom the Father had sent; yet the word of the Lord had no place in their hearts, Joh 8:37; it was unto them as a tale told; they received the sound of it, but it was not graven in their hearts. And this appeared, because as of themselves they had no intimacy of communion with God to know his mind; so, when the Son was sent out of the bosom of the Father to reveal God unto them, yet they would not receive him, so as to give any steady, fixed assent to what he revealed, and to yield him any just and true obedience.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And ye have not his word abiding in you,....…
And ye have not his word abiding in you,.... Which some understand of Christ himself, the Logos, or word: who, though he was now with them, being made flesh, and dwelling among them, yet would not long continue with them: though rather this designs the written word, or the Scriptures of truth; and especially that part of them, which contains prophecies concerning the Messiah, which did not dwell in them richly, nor they dwell in their meditation on them, as was requisite. Or rather, it may intend that word of God expressed in the testimony he bore to the sonship of Christ at his baptism, by a voice from heaven, which made no lasting impression upon the minds and hearts of the Jews that heard it; as appears by what follows:
for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not; meaning himself; for if they had had either a due regard to the sacred oracles, or to that voice from heaven at his baptism, they would have received and embraced him as the Messiah, and sent of God, and not have disbelieved and rejected him, as now they did.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Ye have not his word - All who believe…
Ye have not his word - All who believe have the word of the Father (the same with the word of the Son) abiding in them, that is, deeply ingrafted in their hearts.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 38. Ye have not his word abiding in…
Verse 38. Ye have not his word abiding in you] Though ye believe the Scriptures to be of God, yet ye do not let them take hold of your hearts-his word is in your mouth, but not in your mind. What a miserable lot! to read the Scriptures as the true sayings of God, and yet to get no salvation from them! Thy word, says David, (Ps 119:11,) have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. This, these Jews had not done. Reader, hast thou?
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain His word abiding in you - His law does…
His word abiding in you - His law does not abide in you - that is, you do not regard or obey it. This was the “third” thing that he charged them with.
They had not obeyed the command of God. They had not regarded his manifestations, either in the times of the old dispensation, or now through the Messiah. They did not yield to what he had said in the revelation of the Old Testament.
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For whom he hath sent - God had foretold that the Messiah would come. He had now given evidence that Jesus was he; but now they rejected him, and this was proof that they did not regard the word of God.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain You do not observe the commandment he gave you.…
You do not observe the commandment he gave you. (Deuteronomy xviii. 15. 19.) of listening to the prophet He would send you.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain not his word abiding in you--passing now from the…
not his word abiding in you--passing now from the Witness to the testimony borne by Him in "the lively oracles" (Act 7:38): both were alike strangers to their breasts, as was evidenced by their rejecting Him to whom all that witness was borne.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 3. God’s testimony to Christ through the Holy Scripture,…
3. God’s testimony to Christ through the Holy Scripture, Joh_5:39-40.
The mention of voice has prepared a transition to the written word of the Old Testament.
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38. His word—His revealed truth; whether by work, by spirit, by testimony, or by Scripture.
Ye believe not—The very fact that they accepted not Him to whom the word testified, proved that the word dwelt not in their heads or hearts.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 38. And ye have not his word] ‘And hence…
38. And ye have not his word] ‘And hence it is that ye have no inner appropriation of the word’—seeing that ye have never received it either by hearing or vision. ‘His word’ is not a fresh testimony different from the ‘voice’ and ‘shape:’ all refer to the same thing,—the testimony of Scripture to the Messiah.
for whom he hath sent] Better, because whom He sent. This is the proof of the previous negation: one who had the word abiding in his heart could not reject Him to whom that word bears witness. Comp. 1Jn_2:14; 1Jn_2:24.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (38) Abiding in you.—This striking thought of the word…
(38) Abiding in you.—This striking thought of the word taking up its abode in the mind, and forming the mind in which it dwells, meets us only in St. John. (Comp. Joh_15:7; 1Jn_2:14; 1Jn_2:24; 1Jn_3:9; 1Jn_3:17; and Note on Joh_6:36.) They had, indeed, the word of God, but they had it not as a power ever living in them. They locked it up with sacred care in ark and synagogue, but it found no home in their inmost life, and had no real power on their practice. They could take it up and put it down. It was something outside themselves. Had it been in them, it would have produced in them a moral consciousness, which would have accepted, as of the same nature with itself, every fuller revelation from God. Their own spirits, moulded by the word of God dwelling in them, would have received the Word of God now among them. (Comp. Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word.) The fact that they believed not Him whom God sent (not “hath sent”) was itself the proof that they had not the abiding word.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And further, you have not his Word (TON LOGON…
And further, you have not his Word (TON LOGON AUTOU) abiding in you. The Word of the Father (for the autou refers to the Father), i.e. the full expression of the Father"s heart, was sounding through the voice of the Son of God, and might have entered into and become an abiding power in their inmost conscience and their spiritual life; but they had not received the "Word" of the Lord through the "Voice" of the Lord. The reason given is, Because him whom he (the Father) sent, him (this One) ye believe not. In other words, "Your lack of faith in me accounts for your perverse misconception, for your inability to see and hear all that there is of the Father"s personal testimony to me." Some suspect a petitio principii in this argument, but the reasoning seems to be this; there is abundant evidence, corroboration, and cooperative glory, affirming the truth of all that Christ has said about himself as the Source of life and Judge of man; but the moral susceptibility of his hearers is paralyzed, and their faith in the most fundamental facts of their own experience is at fault. They seem impervious, not only to Christ"s Word, but to the corroborative testimonies themselves.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.