Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
They answered him, “We are Abraham’s offspring, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn’t live in the house forever. A son remains forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv31–36 31. If you continue in my word. Here Christ…
31. If you continue in my word. Here Christ warns them, in the first place, that it is not enough for any one to have begun well, if their progress to the end do not correspond to it; and for this reason he exhorts to perseverance in the faith those who have tasted of his doctrine. When he says that they who are firmly rooted in his word, so as to continue in him, will truly be his disciples, he means that many profess to be disciples who yet are not so in reality, and have no right to be accounted such. He distinguishes his followers from hypocrites by this mark, that they who falsely boasted of faith give way as soon as they have entered into the course, or at least in the middle of it; but believers persevere constantly to the end. If, therefore, we wish that Christ should reckon us to be his disciples, we must endeavor to persevere.
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.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv31–33 The true disciples of Christ continue in his doctrine,…
The true disciples of Christ continue in his doctrine, that profiting more and more in the knowledge of the truth, they may be delivered from the most grievous burden of sin, into the true liberty of righteousness and life.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv31–36 31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed…
31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Ver. 31. If ye continue in my word] Non quaeruntur in Christianis initia, sed finis, said Jerome. And that which is but almost done is not done, saith Basil. {a} It is the evening that crowns the day, and the last act that commends the whole scene. Temporary flashings are but like conduits running with wine at the coronation, that will not hold; or like a land flood, that seems to be a great sea, but comes to nothing.
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{a} το παρ ολιγον γεγονος, ου γεγονεν.
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 On vv31–36 Believed on him, in the sense before expressed. Our…
Believed on him, in the sense before expressed. Our Saviour well enough saw their hearts, and in what manner they believed, and what sort of disciples they were, viz. only nominal: they have the name of disciples who come after Christ to hear him; but they are his disciples indeed, who make his doctrine the rule of their lives. He therefore tells them, That not a mere saying to him Lord, Lord, and yielding some light assent to some propositions of truth in the gospel, would make them his disciples in truth and reality, without an abiding and continuance in the words which he taught them.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v33 Observe here, How these carnal Jews understand all that…
Observe here, How these carnal Jews understand all that our Saviour said, to be spoken in and after a carnal manner; when he spoke to them before, of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they understood it grossly of his natural body.
When he speaks to them here of a spiritual freedom from sin, they understand it of a civil freedom from servile bondage and subjection: alledging, They were Abraham’s seed, and never in bondage to any man: which was a manifest untruth, having been in bondage, in their ancestors, to the Egyptians and Babylonians: and in their own persons to the Romans.
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But this was not the bondage that Christ meant: but a spiritual slavery and thraldom under the dominion of sin, and power of Satan; for he that committed sin, is the servant of sin: that is, whosoever doth habitually, willfully, deliberately, and constantly, allow and tolerate himself in a sinful course, he is under the servitude and thraldom of sin. Every sinner is a bond-slave; and to live in sin is to live in slavery. And this every man doth till the Son makes him free; then, and not till then, is he freed indeed.
Learn hence, That interest in Christ, and continuance in his doctrine, sets the souls at liberty from all that bondage whereunto it was subject in its natural and sinful state.
O happy exchange, from being the devil’s slaves, to become Christ’s freemen! and also freed from the rigorous exactions and terrible maledictions of the law.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v31 We have in these verses,
We have in these verses,
I. A comfortable doctrine laid down concerning the spiritual liberty of Christ's disciples, intended for the encouragement of those Jews that believed. Christ, knowing that his doctrine began to work upon some of his hearers, and perceiving that virtue had gone out of him, turned his discourse from the proud Pharisees, and addressed himself to those weak believers. When he had denounced wrath against those that were hardened in unbelief, then he spoke comfort to those few feeble Jews that believed in him. See here,
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1. How graciously the Lord Jesus looks to those that tremble at his word, and are ready to receive it; he has something to say to those who have hearing ears, and will not pass by those who set themselves in his way, without speaking to them.
2. How carefully he cherishes the beginnings of grace, and meets those that are coming towards him. These Jews that believed were yet but weak; but Christ did not therefore cast them off, for he gathers the lambs in his arms. When faith is in its infancy, he has knees to prevent it, breasts for it to suck, that it may not die from the womb. In what he said to them, we have two things, which he saith to all that should at any time believe: -
(1.) The character of a true disciple of Christ: If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed. When they believed on him, as the great prophet, they gave up themselves to be his disciples. Now, at their entrance into his school, he lays down this for a settled rule, that he would own none for his disciples but those that continued in his word. [1.] It is implied that there are many who profess themselves Christ's disciples who are not his disciples indeed, but only in show and name. [2.] It highly concerns those that are not strong in faith to see to it that they be sound in the faith, that, though not disciples of the highest form, they are nevertheless disciples indeed. [3.] Those who seem willing to be Christ's disciples ought to be told that they had as good never come to him, unless they come with a resolution by his grace to abide by him. Let those who have thoughts of covenanting with Christ have no thoughts of reserving a power of revocation. Children are sent to school, and bound apprentices, only for a few years; but those only are Christ's who are willing to be bound to him for the term of life. [4.] Those only that continue in Christ's word shall be accepted as his disciples indeed, that adhere to his word in every instance without partiality, and abide by it to the end without apostasy. It is menein - to dwell in Christ's word, as a man does at home, which is his centre, and rest, and refuge. Our converse with the word and conformity to it must be constant. If we continue disciples to the last, then, and not otherwise, we approve ourselves disciples indeed.
(2.) The privilege of a true disciple of Christ. Here are two precious promises made to those who thus approve themselves disciples indeed, Joh 8:32.
[1.] "You shall know the truth, shall know all that truth which it is needful and profitable for you to know, and shall be more confirmed in the belief of it, shall know the certainty of it." Note, First, Even those who are true believers, and disciples indeed, yet may be, and are, much in the dark concerning many things which they should know. God's children are but children, and understand and speak as children. Did we not need to be taught, we should not need to be disciples. Secondly, It is a very great privilege to know the truth, to know the particular truths which we are to believe, in their mutual dependences and connections, and the grounds and reasons of our belief, - to know what is truth and what proves it to be so. Thirdly, It is a gracious promise of Christ, to all who continue in his word, that they shall know the truth as far as is needful and profitable for them. Christ's scholars are sure to be well taught.
[2.] The truth shall make you free; that is, First, The truth which Christ teaches tends to make men free, Isa 61:1. Justification makes us free from the guilt of sin, by which we were bound over to the judgment of God, and bound under amazing fears; sanctification makes us free from the bondage of corruption, by which we were restrained from that service which is perfect freedom, and constrained to that which is perfect slavery. Gospel truth frees us from the yoke of the ceremonial law, and the more grievous burdens of the traditions of the elders. It makes us free from our spiritual enemies, free in the service of God, free to the privileges of sons, and free of the Jerusalem which is from above, which is free. Secondly, The knowing, entertaining, and believing, of this truth does actually make us free, free from prejudices, mistakes, and false notions, than which nothing more enslaves and entangles the soul, free from the dominion of lust and passion; and restores the soul to the government of itself, by reducing it into obedience to its Creator. The mind, by admitting the truth of Christ in the light and power, is vastly enlarged, and has scope and compass given it, is greatly elevated and raised above things of sense, and never acts with so true a liberty as when it acts under a divine command, Co2 3:17. The enemies of Christianity pretend to free thinking, whereas really those are the freest reasonings that are guided by faith, and those are men of free thought whose thoughts are captivated and brought into obedience to Christ.
II. The offence which the carnal Jews took at this doctrine, and their objection against it. Though it was a doctrine that brought glad tidings of liberty to the captives, yet they cavilled at it, Joh 8:33. The Pharisees grudged this comfortable word to those that believed, the standers by, who had no part nor lot in this matter; they thought themselves reflected upon and affronted by the gracious charter of liberty granted to those that believed, and therefore with a great deal of pride and envy they answered him, "We Jews are Abraham's seed, and therefore are free-born, and have not lost our birthright - freedom; we were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou then, to us Jews, You shall be made free?" See here,
1. What it was that they were grieved at; it was an innuendo in those words, You shall be made free, as if the Jewish church and nation were in some sort of bondage, which reflected on the Jews in general, and as if all that did not believe in Christ continued in that bondage, which reflected on the Pharisees in particular. Note, The privileges of the faithful are the envy and vexation of unbelievers, Psa 112:10.
2. What it was that they alleged against it; whereas Christ intimated that they needed to be made free, they urge, (1.) "We are Abraham's seed, and Abraham was a prince and a great man; though we live in Canaan, we are not descended from Canaan, nor under his doom, a servant of servants shall he be; we hold in frank-almoign - free alms, and not in villenage - by a servile tenure." It is common for a sinking decaying family to boast of the glory and dignity of its ancestors, and to borrow honour from that name to which they repay disgrace; so the Jews here did. But this was not all. Abraham was in covenant with God, and his children by his right, Rom 11:28. Now that covenant, no doubt, was a free charter, and invested them with privileges not consistent with a state of slavery, Rom 9:4. And therefore they thought they had no occasion with so great a sum as they reckoned faith in Christ to be to obtain this freedom, when they were thus free-born. Note, It is the common fault and folly of those that have pious parentage and education to trust to their privilege and boast of it, as if it would atone for the want of real holiness. They were Abraham's seed, but what would this avail them, when we find one in hell that could call Abraham father? Saving benefits are not, like common privileges, conveyed by entail to us and our issue, nor can a title to heaven be made by descent, nor may we claim as heirs at law, by making out our pedigree; our title is purely by purchase, not our own but our Redeemer's for us, under certain provisos and limitations, which if we do not observe it will not avail us to be Abraham's seed. Thus many, when they are pressed with the necessity of regeneration, turn it off with this, We are the church's children; but they are not all Israel that are of Israel. (2.) We were never in bondage to any man. Now observe, [1.] How false this allegation was. I wonder how they could have the assurance to say a thing in the face of a congregation which was so notoriously untrue. Were not the seed of Abraham in bondage to the Egyptians? Were they not often in bondage to the neighbouring nations in the time of the judges? Were they not seventy years captives in Babylon? Nay, were they not at this time tributaries to the Romans, and, though not in a personal, yet in a national bondage to them, and groaning to be made free? And yet, to confront Christ, they have the impudence to say, We were never in bondage. Thus they would expose Christ to the ill-will both of the Jews, who were very jealous for the honour of their liberty, and of the Romans, who would not be thought to enslave the nations they conquered. [2.] How foolish the application was. Christ had spoken of a liberty wherewith the truth would make them free, which must be meant of a spiritual liberty, for truth as it is the enriching, so it is the enfranchising of the mind, and the enlarging of that from the captivity of error and prejudice; and yet they plead against the offer of spiritual liberty that they were never in corporal thraldom, as if, because they were never in bondage to any man, they were never in bondage to any lust. Note, Carnal hearts are sensible of no other grievances than those that molest the body and injure their secular affairs. Talk to them of encroachments upon their civil liberty and property, - tell them of waste committed upon their lands, or damage done to their houses, - and they understand you very well, and can give you a sensible answer; the thing touches them and affects them. But discourse to them of the bondage of sin, a captivity to Satan, and a liberty by Christ, - tell them of wrong done to their precious souls, and the hazard of their eternal welfare, - and you bring certain strange things to their ears; they say of it (as those did, Eze 20:49), Doth he not speak parables? This was much like the blunder Nicodemus made about being born again.
III. Our Saviour's vindication of his doctrine from these objections, and the further explication of it, Joh 8:34-37, where he does these four things: -
1. He shows that, notwithstanding their civil liberties and their visible church-membership, yet it was possible that they might be in a state of bondage (Joh 8:34): Whosoever commits sin, though he be of Abraham's seed, and was never in bondage to any man, is the servant of sin. Observe, Christ does not upbraid them with the falsehood of their plea, or their present bondage, but further explains what he had said for their edification. Thus ministers should with meekness instruct those that oppose them, that they may recover themselves, not with passion provoke them to entangle themselves yet more. Now here,
(1.) The preface is very solemn: Verily, verily, I say unto you; an awful asseveration, which our Saviour often used, to command a reverent attention and a ready assent. The style of the prophets was, Thus saith the Lord, for they were faithful as servants; but Christ, being a Son, speaks in his own name: I say unto you, I the Amen, the faithful witness; he pawns his veracity upon it. "I say it to you, who boast of your relation to Abraham, as if that would save you."
(2.) The truth is of universal concern, though here delivered upon a particular occasion: Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin, and sadly needs to be made free. A state of sin is a state of bondage. [1.] See who it is on whom this brand is fastened - on him that commits sin, pas ho poiōn hamartian - every one that makes sin. There is not a just man upon earth, that lives, and sins not; yet every one that sins is not a servant of sin, for then God would have no servants; but he that makes sin, that makes choice of sin, prefers the way of wickedness before the way of holiness (Jer 44:16, Jer 44:17), - that makes a covenant with sin, enters into league with it, and makes a marriage with it, - that makes contrivances of sin, makes provision for the flesh, and devises iniquity, - and that makes a custom of sin, who walks after the flesh, and makes a trade of sin. [2.] See what the brand is which Christ fastens upon those that thus commit sin. He stigmatizes them, gives them a mark of servitude. They are servants of sin, imprisoned under the guilt of sin, under an arrest, in hold for it, concluded under sin, and they are subject to the power of sin. He is a servant of sin, that is, he makes himself so, and is so accounted; he has sold himself to work wickedness; his lusts give law to him, he is at their beck, and is not his own master. He does the work of sin, supports its interest, and accepts its wages, Rom 6:16.
2. He shows them that, being in a state of bondage, their having a place in the house of God would not entitle them to the inheritance of sons; for (Joh 8:35) the servant, though he be in the house for awhile, yet, being but a servant, abideth not in the house for ever. Services (we say) are no inheritances, they are but temporary, and not for a perpetuity; but the son of the family abideth ever. Now, (1.) This points primarily at the rejection of the Jewish church and nation. Israel had been God's son, his first-born; but they wretchedly degenerated into a servile disposition, were enslaved to the world and the flesh, and therefore, though by virtue of their birthright they thought themselves secure of their church membership, Christ tells them that having thus made themselves servants they should not abide in the house for ever. Jerusalem, by opposing the gospel of Christ, which proclaimed liberty, and adhering to the Sinai-covenant, which gendered to bondage, after its term was expired came to be in bondage with her children (Gal 4:24, Gal 4:25), and therefore was unchurched and disfranchised, her charter seized and taken away, and she was cast out as the son of the bond-woman, Gen 21:14. Chrysostom gives this sense of this place: "Think not to be made free from sin by the rites and ceremonies of the law of Moses, for Moses was but a servant, and had not that perpetual authority in the church which the Son had; but, if the Son make you free, it is well," Joh 8:36. But, (2.) It looks further, to the rejection of all that are the servants of sin, and receive not the adoption of the sons of God; though those unprofitable servants may be in God's house awhile, as retainers to his family, yet there is a day coming when the children of the bond-woman and of the free shall be distinguished. True believers only, who are the children of the promise and of the covenant, are accounted free, and shall abide for ever in the house, as Isaac: they shall have a nail in the holy place on earth (Ezr 9:8) and mansions in the holy place in heaven, Joh 14:2.
3. He shows them the way of deliverance out of the state of bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God, Rom 8:21. The case of those that are the servants of sin is sad, but thanks be to God it is not helpless, it is not hopeless. As it is the privilege of all the sons of the family, and their dignity above the servants, that they abide in the house for ever; so he who is the Son, the first-born among many brethren, and the heir of all things, has a power both of manumission and of adoption (Joh 8:36): If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Note,
(1.) Jesus Christ in the gospel offers us our freedom; he has authority and power to make free. [1.] To discharge prisoners; this he does in justification, by making satisfaction for our guilt (on which the gospel offer is grounded, which is to all a conditional act of indemnity, and to all true believers, upon their believing, an absolute charter of pardon), and for our debts, for which we were by the law arrested and in execution. Christ, as our surety, or rather our bail (for he was not originally bound with us, but upon our insolvency bound for us), compounds with the creditor, answers the demands of injured justice with more than an equivalent, takes the bond and judgment into his own hands, and gives them up cancelled to all that by faith and repentance give him (if I may so say) a counter-security to save his honour harmless, and so they are made free; and from the debt, and every part thereof, they are for ever acquitted, exonerated, and discharged, and a general release is sealed of all actions and claims; while against those who refuse to come up to these terms the securities lie still in the Redeemer's hands, in full force. [2.] He has a power to rescue bond-slaves, and this he does in sanctification; by the powerful arguments of his gospel, and the powerful operations of his Spirit, he breaks the power of corruption in the soul, rallies the scattered forces of reason and virtue, and fortifies God's interest against sin and Satan, and so the soul is made free. [3.] He has a power to naturalize strangers and foreigners, and this he does in adoption. This is a further act of grace; we are not only forgiven and healed, but preferred; there is a charter of privileges as well as pardon; and thus the Son makes us free denizens of the kingdom of priests, the holy nation, the new Jerusalem.
(2.) Those whom Christ makes free are free indeed. It is not alēthōs, the word used (Joh 8:31) for disciples indeed, but ontōs - really. It denotes, [1.] The truth and certainty of the promise, the liberty which the Jews boasted of was an imaginary liberty; they boasted of a false gift; but the liberty which Christ gives is a certain thing, it is real, and has real effects. The servants of sin promise themselves liberty, and fancy themselves free, when they have broken religion's bands asunder; but they cheat themselves. None are free indeed but those whom Christ makes free. [2.] It denotes the singular excellency of the freedom promised; it is a freedom that deserves the name, in comparison with which all other liberties are no better than slaveries, so much does it turn to the honour and advantage of those that are made free by it. It is a glorious liberty. It is that which is (so ontōs signifies); it is substance (Pro 8:21); while the things of the world are shadows, things that are not.
4. He applies this to these unbelieving cavilling Jews, in answer to their boasts of relation to Abraham (Joh 8:37): "I know very well that you are Abraham's seed, but now you seek to kill me, and therefore have forfeited the honour of your relation to Abraham, because my word hath no place in you." Observe here,
(1.) The dignity of their extraction admitted: "I know that you are Abraham's seed, every one knows it, and it is your honour." He grants them what was true, and in what they said that was false (that they were never in bondage to any) he does not contradict them, for he studied to profit them, and not to provoke them, and therefore said that which would please them: I know that you are Abraham's seed. They boasted of their descent from Abraham, as that which aggrandized their names, and made them exceedingly honourable; whereas really it did but aggravate their crimes, and make them exceedingly sinful. Out of their own mouths will he judge vain-glorious hypocrites, who boast of their parentage and education: "Are you Abraham's seed? Why then did you not tread in the steps of his faith and obedience?"
(2.) The inconsistency of their practice with this dignity: But you seek to kill me. They had attempted it several times, and were now designing it, which quickly appeared (Joh 8:59), when they took up stones to cast at him. Christ knows all the wickedness, not only which men do, but which they seek, and design, and endeavour to do. To seek to kill any innocent man is a crime black enough, but to compass and imagine the death of him that was King of kings was a crime the heinousness of which we want words to express.
(3.) The reason of this inconsistency. Why were they that were Abraham's seed so very inveterate against Abraham's promised seed, in whom they and all the families of the earth should be blessed? Our Saviour here tells them, It is because my word hath no place in you, ou chōrei en humin, Non capit in vobis, so the Vulgate. "My word does not take with you, you have no inclination to it, no relish of it, other things are more taking, more pleasing." Or, "It does not take hold of you, it has no power over you, makes no impression upon you." Some of the critics read it, My word does not penetrate into you; it descended as the rain, but it came upon them as the rain upon the rock, which it runs off, and did not soak into their hearts, as the rain upon the ploughed ground. The Syriac reads it, "Because you do not acquiesce in my word; you are not persuaded of the truth of it, nor pleased with the goodness of it." Our translation is very significant: It has no place in you. They sought to kill him, and so effectually to silence him, not because he had done they any harm, but because they could not bear the convincing, commanding power of his word. Note, [1.] The words of Christ ought to have a place in us, the innermost and uppermost place, - a dwelling place, as a man at home, and not as a stranger or sojourner, - a working place; it must have room to operate, to work sin out of us, and to work grace in us; it must have a ruling place, its place must be upon the throne, it must dwell in us richly. [2.] There are many that make a profession of religion in whom the word of Christ has no place; they will not allow it a place, for they do not like it; Satan does all he can to displace it; and other things possess the place it should have in us. [3.] Where the word of God has no place no good is to be expected, for room is left there for all wickedness. If the unclean spirit find the heart empty of Christ's word, he enters in, and dwells there.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv31–36 Jesus answered them, verily verily I say unto you,....…
Jesus answered them, verily verily I say unto you,.... Taking no notice of their civil liberty, to which he could easily have replied to their confusion and silence, he observes to them their moral servitude and bondage, and in the strongest manner affirms, that
whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin; which must be understood, not of one that commits a single act of sin, though ever so gross, as did Noah, Lot, David, Peter, and others, who yet were not the servants of sin; or of such who sin through ignorance, weakness of the flesh, and the power of Satan's temptations, and especially who commit sin with reluctance, the spirit lusting against it; nor indeed of any regenerate persons, though they are not without sin; nor do they live without the commission of it, in thought, word, or deed; and though they fall into it, they do not continue and live in it, but rise up out of it, through the grace of God, and by true repentance; and so are not to be reckoned the servants of sin, or to be of the devil. But this is to be understood of such whose bias and bent of their minds are to sin; who give up themselves unto it, and sell themselves to work wickedness; who make sin their trade, business, and employment, and are properly workers of it, and take delight and pleasure in it: these, whatever liberty, they promise themselves, are the servants of corruption; they are under the government of sin, that has dominion over them; and they obey it in the lusts thereof, and are drudges and slaves unto it, and will have no other wages at last but death, even eternal death, if grace prevent not; see Rom 6:16.
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 On vv32–36 The truth - Written in your hearts by the…
The truth - Written in your hearts by the Spirit of God, shall make you free - From guilt, sin, misery, Satan.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv31–35 Verse 31. If ye continue in my word] Or,…
Verse 31. If ye continue in my word] Or, in this doctrine of mine. It is not enough to receive God's truth-we must retain and walk in it. And it is only when we receive the truth, love it, keep it, and walk in it, that we are the genuine disciples of Christ.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v33 Joh 8:33-36. They answered him — Namely, the other…
Joh 8:33-36. They answered him — Namely, the other Jews that were present, not those that believed, as appears by the whole tenor of the conversation; We be Abraham’s seed — A person always free, and a peculiar favourite of Heaven; and were never in bondage to any man — A bold, notorious untruth. At that very time they were in bondage to the Romans, and their ancestors had been slaves, first in Egypt, and afterward in Assyria and Babylon. How sayest thou, Ye shall be made free — Upon becoming thy disciples? Jesus answered, Whosoever committeth sin — Greek, ποιων αμαρτιαν, worketh, or acteth known sin; is the servant — Δουλος, the slave; of sin — Namely, as far as he knowingly commits it. And the servant — Or slave; abideth not in the house for ever — That is, as a person who is only a slave in a family, does not abide always in the house of his master, but is liable to be dismissed at his lord’s pleasure, or transferred to another; much less can you, who are the servants, not of God, but of sin, promise yourselves, that ye shall still, on account of your descent from Abraham, continue in the possession of those privileges, which, by undeserved mercy, you hitherto enjoy; but the Son abideth ever — The eldest son and heir of the family continually abides in his Father’s house: and his power and influence there are always increasing. The casting out of Ishmael, though a son of Abraham by the bond-woman, beautifully illustrates this exposition of the passage, and the connection. Dr. Macknight paraphrases the verse thus: “As a slave cannot be so assured of his master’s favour as to depend upon it, that he shall never be turned out of the family, since it is always his master’s right, and in his power, to sell or keep him, as he shall think fit, so my Father can, when he pleases, turn you, who are habitual sinners, out of his family, and deprive you of the outward economy of religion, in which you glory, because through sin you have made yourselves bondmen to his justice. Whereas, if you will become God’s children, you shall be sure of remaining in his family for ever. And the only way to arrive at the blessed relation, is to submit to the authority of his Son, in which case the Son will adopt you as co-heirs with himself.” If, therefore, I, who am the only-begotten Son of God, and the heir of all things, and who have power of receiving whom I will into the family, shall make you free — You, claiming in virtue of my right and authority, will be free indeed — Free from the slavery of sin, the tyranny of Satan, and the bondage of corruption; free to do good, free in respect of your right to the inheritance, and free in your possession of present privileges, remaining in the house of God without danger of being ever thrust out. Archbishop Tillotson is of opinion, that this alludes to a custom in some of the cities of Greece, and elsewhere, whereby the son and heir had the liberty to adopt brethren, and give them the privileges of the family. “But I rather imagine,” says Dr. Macknight, “that the allusion is to something more generally known. For, as in all countries the sons succeed their fathers in the possession of their estates, such slaves as gained the good-will of the son by their obliging behaviour during his minority, were sure to be well treated by him when he came to his estate; perhaps might in time obtain their freedom, and even some small share of the inheritance itself.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv31–36 If ye continue in my word - If you…
If ye continue in my word - If you continue to obey my commandments and to receive my doctrines.
Then are ye ... - This is the true test of Christian character. Joh 14:21; “he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” See Joh 2:4; Joh 3:24; 2Jo 1:6. In this place Jesus cautions them against too much confidence from their present feelings. They were just converted - converted by a single sermon. They had had no time to test their faith. Jesus assures them that if their faith should abide the test, if it should produce obedience to his commandments and a truly life, it would be proof that their faith was genuine, for the tree is known by its fruit. So we may say to all new converts, Do not repress your love or your joy, but do not be too confident. Your faith has not yet been tried, and if it does not produce a holy life it is vain, Jam 2:17-26.
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 On vv31, 32, 35, 36 If you persevere in the true faith, and in…
If you persevere in the true faith, and in the observance of my words, you shall be my disciples indeed. It is not sufficient to believe; you must likewise do what my words command you to do: nor will it be sufficient to have the true faith for a time; you must persevere in that faith to the end. (St. Augustine, Ven. Bede, St. John Chrysostom, Theophylactus, Euthymius, &c.) --- Faith alone without perseverance, or abiding in God’s commandments, will not suffice. (Bristow)
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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v31 Christ The Liberator, As Son Of The House In…
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
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Joh_8:31-59
(Joh_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 (Joh_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.]
Joh_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.
Joh_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 Joh_8:36 ascribed to Christ.”—E. D. Y.]
[The truth will make you free, ἡἀλήθειαἐλευθερώσειὑμᾶς. Comp. Joh_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. Rom_8:21; 2Co_3:17; Gal_2:4; Gal_5:1; Gal_5:13; Jam_1:25; 1Pe_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.]
Joh_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 Joh_6:30 (comp. Joh_8:15); and in Joh_10:31 (comp. Joh_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 ἀπὸ τοῦ πρὸς τὰ κοσμικὰ ἐπτοῆσθαι . [“Their belief immediately gave way; and that because of their eagerness after worldly things.”] It seems transparent (1) that Jesus in His reply, Joh_8:34, to those who speak in Joh_8:33, simply pursues the discourse He had begun in Joh_8:31-32; and (2) that His suggestion of the need of being made free, Joh_8:32, was intended to test the sincerity, or provoke the latent insincerity, of the faith of the persons of Joh_8:30-31. Contrary to Dr. Tholuck’s remark above, the evangelist has here very accurately designated the interlocutors, Joh_8:31, as Jesus and those Jews who believed on Him. Meyer suggests that “the πολλοί, Joh_8:30, are many among the hearers in general; among these ‘many’ were some hierarchical Jews, and to these Jesus speaks in Joh_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 Gen_22:17; Gen_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. The meanest laborer who is of the seed of Abraham, is like a king, says the Talmud.”62
Joh_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 (Rom_7:14), in the narrower sense to the evil propension of the earthly-minded (Joh_3:20; 1Jn_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. Rom_6:17; Rom_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.]
Joh_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, Gen_21:10; Gal_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, Exo_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 Gal_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 (Gal_3:22; Gal_4:1); the servants at this time are the unbelieving Jews; they are one day driven out (Mat_8:12; Rom_9:31; Gal_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, Psa_23:6; Psa_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.].
Joh_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). 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. Joh_10:26-27.
Joh_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.
Joh_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.
Joh_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, Joh_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, Joh_8:56. “Just as Paul does in Rom_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, Gal_3:16.
Joh_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 (Lampe, Hengstenberg), is not clear.—P. S.]
Joh_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, Deu_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 (Hos_2:4; [Eze_20:30; Isa_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, Deu_32:6; Isa_63:16; Mal_2:10; Rom_4:16; Gal_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 (Eze_16:3; see Tholuck, p. 254), were in their mind; and we already know how little the Jewish fanaticism felt bound by the Scriptures.
Joh_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); 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, (Joh_7:18; Joh_7:28); no third origin (Meyer) is supposable.
Joh_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 [Joh_12:48 : ὁ λόγος ὅν ἐλάλησα; comp. Php_1:14; Heb_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 ἀκούειν. 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.
Joh_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, 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. Mat_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; Rom_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; Rev_12:9; Revelation 20;77 comp. also Ev. Nicod.: where the devil is called ἡ τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή [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, 1Jn_3:12 : “Cain was of the wicked one (i.e. a child of the devil, like other sinners, 1Jn_3:8) and slew his brother,” comp. Joh_8:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” But neither here nor in Genesis 4 is the Satanic agency in the murder of Abel expressly mentioned, as it is in the history of temptation (Genesis 3), 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 1Jn_3:12, also Mat_23:35; Luk_11:51; Judges 11). 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. 1Jn_3:8 (ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστιν, ὄτι ἀπ̓ ἀρχῆς ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτανει) which all commentators refer to the history of the fall, is the real parallel to our passage, and not 1Jn_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, 1Jn_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 2Pe_2:4; Jude Joh_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. Joh_1:26; Joh_3:29; Mat_12:47; Mat_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 (Rev_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 (Joh_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, Mat_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,” Gen_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)
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, 1Jn_3:8; 1Jn_3:12; the founder of wickedness, the spirit of the wicked. In the temptation of Adam (Wis_2:24; Heb_2:14; Rev_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.
Joh_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].
Joh_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 Joh_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 Joh_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 Heb_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 (Mat_3:14; Joh_1:15; Joh_3:31), and the apostles (Act_3:14; 1Pe_1:19; 1Pe_2:22; 1Pe_3:18; 2Co_5:21; 1Jn_2:29; 1Jn_3:5; 1Jn_3:7; Heb_4:15; Heb_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, Heb_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.]
Joh_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 ἀλήθειαν λέγω 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, Jam_3:2.
Joh_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 (Joh_4:44), being taught by Him (Joh_8:45), as showing itself by doing truth in God, Joh_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 Joh_8:24; Joh_8:34).
Joh_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 Joh_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 (Joh_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 (Mat_9:34; comp. Joh_10:25; Joh_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.
Joh_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 (Joh_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.
Joh_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. Mat_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 Joh_8:31, instead of Joh_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 (Mat_13:21; Joh_15:20; Joh_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.
Joh_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 (Joh_8:51) into τὸν λόγον μου (Joh_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, Mat_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.
Joh_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.
Joh_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, Php_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, Php_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.
Joh_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 (Mat_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. Joh_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.
Joh_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 (Gen_15:4; Gen_17:17; Gen_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, Heb_11:11-12; comp. Joh_1:13. The birth of Isaac was mediated by inspiration of faith (Rom_4:19; Gal_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, Gen_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) 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, Luk_17:23, in the singular, Joh_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 Luk_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, Mat_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; Genesis 15; Genesis 17; Genesis 18; Genesis 22; Romans 4; Gal_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; 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, Joh_12:41], etc.
4) In the celebration of the birth and meaning of Isaac. Hofmann. [So also Wordsworth, fancifully: The name Isaac (laughing), Gen_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. Luk_16:22; Luk_16:25], like the angels, 1Pe_1:12; Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, Mat_17:4; Luk_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.
Joh_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, Num_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 Joh_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.]
Joh_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, Joh_1:15; Joh_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. Joh_6:63; Joh_8:25; Joh_8:42; Joh_13:3; Joh_16:28; Joh_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 (Joh_17:5), and before time (Joh_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, Joh_1:1; Joh_1:18; Joh_6:62; Joh_17:5; Col_1:17; Heb_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. Joh_1:1; Joh_1:6, and Chrysostom. The present tense denotes that which continues from the past, i.e., here from the pre-temporal existence (Joh_1:1; Joh_17:5). Comp. LXX., Psa_90:2; Jer_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. Joh_17:5; Joh_6:46; Joh_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.]
Joh_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. Joh_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 Luk_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, Luk_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. Gen_5:24; Gen_28:12, in the holy mountain-ascents of Moses (Exodus 19; Deu_34:4), in Elijah’s ascension to heaven, in expressions such as Pro_15:24. Christ here makes the idea of the heavenly abode appear more clearly (comp. Joh_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 Mat_4:1; Mat_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, Gen_3:15. By this are commonly understood not only the fallen angels but also all malignant sinners (1Jn_3:10; Mat_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 (Gen_3:3; Gen_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; Rev_12:17. (2) An adversary of Christ and the faithful, Gen_3:15; Zec_3:1; 1Pe_5:8; Rev_12:9. (3) A deceiver and seducer of men, 2Co_11:3; 2Co_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 (Joh_8:13), then quibbled and sneered (Joh_8:19), after this uttered taunts (Joh_8:22); then with eager longing for a chiliastic mystery and mystical proceeding has drawn Him out (Joh_8:25), and worshipped Him (Joh_8:30). Turning round again it grows rancorous (Joh_8:33), boasts (Joh_8:39), and arrogantly and abusively contradicts (Joh_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 (Joh_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, Joh_8:51. The declaration in Joh_8:51 reverts to that contained in Joh_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 Joh_3:6; Joh_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, Joh_8:31); (b) to keep the word in temptation as a guiding star through the darkness of judgments (the loyalty of faith, Joh_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—Where the word of Christ can not grow in the heart, enmity against Christ flourishes, Joh_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, Joh_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, Joh_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, Matthew 4 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], Joh_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 (Joh_8:5), whilst they, in return, wish to kill Him, Joh_8:59. 4. How He is proved to be the Ever-Living One, while they have gone the way of death, Joh_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, Mat_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.
Joh_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, Joh_8:48.—The calmness of the Lord in contrast to the railing excitement of His enemies.—Peter imitates Him in this composure (Acts 2); 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.
Joh_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.
Joh_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) is re-echoed in the everlasting I am of the Son,
Joh_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, Rom_6:18; Gal_5:1; 1Pe_2:10. From the bondage of sin, Joh_8:34, and of eternal death, Joh_8:51; Luk_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, Rom_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. Psa_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!
Joh_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 Joh_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.
Joh_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.
Joh_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, Act_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, 1Pe_3:9.
Joh_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.
Joh_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.
Joh_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.
Joh_8:54. Vanity and folly make a great boast of themselves! Consider the Saviour and follow His example.
Joh_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, Heb_13:8.—Canstein: Truth always comes off conqueror.
Gerlach: The truth, the revelation in Christ, 1Jn_1:6; 1Jn_1:8; 1Jn_2:21; Heb_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.
Joh_8:47; 1Jn_5:20.—Recognize Him they would not, refute Him they could not, therefore they reviled Him.
Joh_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, 1Jn_2:28.—Blessed is he that endureth unto the end.—A real delirium of liberty had seized the Jews.—Bondage, 2Pe_2:19.—Emancipation, Rom_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.
Joh_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; 2Co_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 (Joh_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, 2Co_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: Joh_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:
[45]Joh_8:31.—[Cod. Sin. omits the μου, so generalizing the idea of disciple.—E. D. Y.]
[46]Joh_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.
[47]Joh_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, Joh_8:34, of that generalness which seemed to others to require the omission of the τῆς ἁμαρτίας before it.—E. D. Y.]
[48]Joh_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.]
[49]Joh_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 Joh_8:40 the hearing is applied to Christ, and in Joh_8:41 the seeing is implied in the case of the Jews.—Y.]
[50]Joh_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.
[52]Joh_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.]
[53]Joh_8:44.—[The reading ὅς ἅν is untenable.]
[54]Joh_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 Joh_8:52 it agrees with all the great authorities in γεύ σηται, against the future γεύ σεται of the Text. Rec—Y.]
[55]Joh_8:52.—[Cod. Sin. supports Lachmann and Tischendorf in omitting οὖν.—Y.]
[56]Joh_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.]
[58]Joh_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 Joh_8:55 the authorities are divided between θεὸς ὑμῶν and θεὸς ὑμῶν.—P. S.]
[59]Joh_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, Joh_8:56.—Y.]
[61]Joh_8:59.—The words from διελθώ ν to the end are wanting in B.D., Vulgate, and seem to have been transferred from Luk_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. Mat_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 (Joh_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. Joh_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;” Joh_5:46 : εἰ γὰρ ἐπιστεύέτε Μωϋσῇ, ἐπιστεύετε ἅν ἐμοί, if ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me; Joh_9:41 : εἰ τυφλοὶ ἥτε, οῦκ ἀν εἷχετε ἁμαρτίαν, “if ye were blind, ye would not have sin;” Joh_15:19 : εἰ ἑκ τοῦ κόσμος ἅν τὸ ἴδιον ἐφίλει, “if ye were of the world, the world would love its own;” Joh_18:36; Luk_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 Joh_4:21; Act_10:10; Php_2:13; Philem. Joh_8:14. Alford: “It indicates, as in Joh_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 Heb_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 Mat_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 Joh_8:54. where the authorities are divided between θ εὸς ἡ μ ῶ ν (oratio directa) and θ. ὑ μ ῶ ν. In Joh_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 Joh_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; Luk_23:43; Heb_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. Joh_1:1; Joh_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.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv31, 33, 34, 35 Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed, If…
Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, &c.--The impression produced by the last words of our Lord may have become visible by some decisive movement, and here He takes advantage of it to press on them "continuance" in the faith, since then only were they His real disciples (compare Joh 15:3-8), and then should they experimentally "know the truth," and "by the truth be made (spiritually) free."
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 On vv31–36 31. If ye continue—Theirs was one of the cases…
31. If ye continue—Theirs was one of the cases which, founded on false suppositions, would fail as soon as the supposition was dissipated. Perseverance is not always a test of the reality of faith; for real faith does often diminish and disappear. But faith based upon mistake must cease when the mistake is corrected.
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 On vv31–36 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed…
31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him] Better, Jesus said, therefore, to the Jews who had believed Him. There is a change in the expression respecting their belief. In Joh_8:30 S. John uses the strong phrase ‘believed on Him;’ here he uses the much weaker ‘believed Him’ (see on Joh_1:12), as if to prepare us for the collapse of their faith.
If ye continue, &c.] Or, If ye abide in My word (see on Joh_1:33), ye are truly My disciples. Both ‘ye’ and ‘My’ are emphatic: ‘you on your part’—‘the word that is Mine.’ “The new converts, who come forward with a profession of faith, receive a word of encouragement as well as of warning. They were not to mistake a momentary impulse for a deliberate conviction.” S. p. 155. ‘If ye abide in My word, so that it becomes the permanent condition of your life, then are ye My disciples in truth, and not merely in appearance after being carried away for the moment.’
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 On vv31–36 (31) Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed…
(31) Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him.—Better, to those Jews who had believed Him. The act of faith is mentioned in the previous verse. They are here placed among the believers, with an expression of contrast mixed with, perhaps, something of wonder—Jews and yet believers.
If ye continue in my word.—Or, If ye abide in My word. Comp. Note on Joh_15:7, where we have the opposite form of the thought, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you.” See also for this idea of abiding, Notes on Joh_5:37-38. His word was the expression of the eternal truth of God, and He therefore was the one great Teacher. Every other must sit as a disciple at His feet, and continue in daily learning and in daily living to grasp the truth which, in that word and that word only, was revealed to man.
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Here, as very frequently, part of the force of the sentence is expressed in the emphasis of the pronoun, “If ye continue in My word.” “Ye, on your part, ye who now believe, but have not the courage to rank yourselves openly among My disciples.”
Then are ye my disciples indeed.—The insertion of “then” does not improve the rendering—“If ye continue in My word, ye are My disciples indeed.” The words imply that He who reads the heart has no confidence in this momentary conviction, which will not stand the test of true discipleship, and all that this includes. (Comp. Notes on Joh_2:23-25; Joh_6:66.)
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 On vv31–36 Vers. 31-59 describe a further conversation, not with the…
Vers. 31-59 describe a further conversation, not with the same audience. The words record a vivid conflict between the Lord and the Jews who believed him, who accepted the Messianic claims, but persisted in interpreting them, not by his word, but by their own ideas of the theocratic kingdom, by their privileges as children of Abraham, by their national animosity to their nearest neighbours the Samaritans, by their inability to press behind the veil of his humanity to his Divine nature. Their faith was of the most imperfect kind; but such as it was, it was made manifest to the observation of the apostle, and this throws light upon the fact that, among the many who believed on him, or rather alongside of these, there was a certain section of "the Jews," of the chief rulers and rabbis, who made a definite movement towards him. This doubtless excited the intense enthusiasm of the disciples, who might at once hope and almost expect that Jesus would with open arms accept their homage. But he at once puts this faith of theirs perhaps ignorantly expressed to a proof absolutely necessary for the salvation of his hearers.
Vers. 31, 32. (4) The test Christ supplied to those who admitted his testimony true discipleship and freedom. Jesus therefore said to the Jews who had believed him or, had become believing, and were now waiting for some special sign that their belief of his words was to be immediately rewarded by some closer conformity between his next step and their own prepossessionsIf ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples. Short of making the word of Jesus the resting place for both heart and intellect, full discipleship would be impossible. The true disciple receives and continues in the word of his Master. The expression expands and illustrates the difference between believing Christ to speak the truth, and believing in him. Many ancient Jews and modern Christians believe so much of Christ"s word as is verified by their moral consciousness, and dispute or dispose of the rest as Aberglaube. The genuine disciple continues, abides, in the word of him who is the incarnate Word, yielding to it entire acquiescence, as the absolute reality of things, as the truth about God and man. He adds, And ye shall come fully to know the truth; i.e. to realize in the very depths of your being the trustworthy character of my word. "The Truth" (see Joh_14:6) is one of the distinguishing names which Jesus takes to himself. He is the Truth, and "full of grace and truth." So far this statement corresponds with Joh_7:16, Joh_7:17. The "Jews" who had believed him would not feel the fiery ordeal and touch of flame applied to the sensitive skin of their pride and self-importance; but when he added, And the truth shall emancipate you, the case was altered. Truth only can set the mind free from its bondage under ignorance and prejudice and evil habit. If the Light of the world shines into the dark places of the heart, the chains erewhile misunderstood will not only become visible, but will be broken. Godet beautifully says that "the empire of sin in a human heart is based upon an illusion, a fascination. Let truth shine, and the spell is broken, the will is disgusted with that which seduced it bird escapes from the net of the fowler. But this proffer of freedom to his disciples by continuing in his word was too startling a suggestion for their nascent and imperfect faith. He had told them that without faith in him they would die in their sins (ver. 24); now he assures them that, unless they abide steadfastly in his word, they will not escape from a bondage manifest enough to his eye, if not to theirs. This brings from them an angry response.
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"My disciples.
Teaching and learning are the condition alike of the intellectual and of the moral life of humanity. All men who live do both, and good men do both well. Of the scholar of Oxenford, Chaucer says, "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." Christianity, being a Divine religion, accepts and adapts itself to this condition of our existence.
I THE MASTER. Christ was acknowledged to be a Hebrew Rabbi, even a Prophet. But the enlightened knew him to be the Teacher and the Master of mankind. Witness his ministry, his sermons, his parables, his conversations and discourses. As a Master, he was wise, winning, patient. His vocation of teaching he continues to fulfil through human history. He is still and ever teaching men who are prepared to learn from him. And those who know him first as Teacher, come to know him afterwards in the other great mediatorial offices he sustains to man.
II THE SCHOLARS. As the Pharisees had their disciples, and as John had his, so the Prophet of Nazareth gathered around him those who were docile and sympathetic, and communicated to them his truth, and bestowed upon them his spirit. Thus the twelve, the seventy, learned of him. Wherever Jesus went, he made disciples: women, as the woman of Samaria and Mary of Bethany; scholars, as Nicodemus; persons counted socially inferior, as Zacchaeus. After our Lord"s ascension, "disciples" became a common designation of Christian people, as much as "saints" or "brethren," It justly remains such throughout this spiritual dispensation.
III THE LESSONS. Christ himself has always been his own chief Lesson, far greater than any words can embody and convey. This appears from his own language, "Learn of me," and from the apostolic appeal, "Ye have not so learned Christ." His character and his Word are truth. In Christ his disciples learn
(1) to believe aright regarding God, man, eternity; and, what is even greater,
(2) to do, viz. to acquire the practical lessons of righteousness, fortitude, and patience, etc. Who has mastered Christ"s teaching? Who has thoroughly learned his lessons? Who has completely drunk into his spirit?
IV THE STRAIT OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP.
1. Lowly, as regards ourselves, the learners.
2. Reverent, as regards him, the Teacher.
3. Diligent and persistent, as regards the lessons to be acquired.
4. Interested and appreciative, sympathetic and receptive.
V THE CULTURE OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP. Learning is a means to an end. To what end is Christian discipleship the means? To what discipline of blessing do Christ"s pupils attain?
1. The culture of knowledge Divine and precious knowledge.
2. The culture of character Christ-likeness.
3. The culture which qualifies for usefulness. As school and college fit a youth for business or professional life, so Christ"s discipline qualifies for Christian service.
4. The culture for immortality. This is Christ"s school; above is Christ"s home, the scene of perfect service and of lasting joy. T.
Vers. 31, 32. True Christian discipleship.
I IN ITS CONDITIONS. These are:
1. The possession of Christs Word.
(1) The possession of his Word is necessary to faith in him. The Word of Christ reveals him to faith reveals his mind, his thoughts, his heart, his will, his character and mission. His Word is as an instrument is the generator of faith. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing," etc. It is the great medium of communication between Christ and faith, and the means by which faith transforms Christ into the soul. It is the nutriment, strength, and the life of faith.
(2) Faith in Christ is necessary to discipleship. Christian discipleship begins with faith in Christ. This is its lowest condition and first grade. These Jews were disciples because they had a certain degree of faith in Christ; but they were weak disciples, their faith being weak and young they were infant scholars. But they could not be even this without a degree of faith, and faith comes from the Word.
(3) His Word is the great disciplinary instrument of his school. It contains the lessons taught by him and learnt by the disciples. All illumination, knowledge, inspiration, moral and spiritual training, and progress, are attained through his Word. In his Word the disciples meet and find him.
(4) His Word must be possessed in its fulness and purity. "My Word." It must be Christ"s Word, pure and simple, and the whole of his Word, without any addition, subtraction, or admixture. Any of these will affect the discipleship, make it incomplete or unreal
2. A vital possession of Christs Word. The possession is not merely outward and intellectual, but inward and spiritual. The Word must be in the soul, and the soul in the Word. Christ is in the Christian, and the Christian is in Christ. Christ"s Word is in his disciple, and the disciple is in his Word. Both mean the same, only in the latter prominence is given to the Word. This implies:
(1) The closest union between the soul and the Word. The Word is in the soul, and the soul is in the Word. The union between the body and soul is not as near, real, and lasting. It is like the union between the Divine Son and the Father,
(2) The Word as the subject of the most devoted study. The disciple, heart and soul, is in it. It is his meditation in the day and his song in the night; so attractive it is that it has stolen away all the thoughts and affections, and become their centre and the source of their most exquisite delight.
(3) The object of implicit faith. "In my Word." The whole soul, with its eternal concerns, rests upon it with childlike confidence, and trusts in it with more implicitness than even the farmer and the mariner trust the laws of nature.
(4) The object of absolute obedience. It is not merely the object of faith and trust, but of obedience. Its authority is fully recognized, its directions minutely followed, and its commands strictly and joyfully obeyed. It is the polar star of the soul and the absolute law of life, and the disciple is its willing and happy slave.
3. An abiding possession of Christs Word. "If ye abide," etc.
(1) This is an essential condition of a permanent union with Christ. Without union with Christ, there can be no discipleship. Without abiding in his Word, there can be no true union with him. If the Word be forsaken or deviated from, the chief connecting chain between the disciple and the Master is broken.
(2) This is an essential condition of reality of discipleship. "If ye abide," etc. There may be discipleship without continuance in Christ"s Word, but it is not real, only nominal. Such are temporary disciples, not disciples indeed. Abiding, firmness, and perseverance in Christ"s Word are essential features and conditions of reality. What is real is abiding. The presence or absence of this abiding feature of faith is perceived by Christ from the first, but must be manifested by the conduct of the disciple.
(3) This is an essential condition of the perfection of Christian discipleship. It is progressive. The Word progresses in the soul, and the soul in the Word. As the soul abides in the Word, it is admitted from stage to stage to the society and confidence of Christ, and attains the perfection of discipleship by likeness to the Master.
(4) As a condition of true discipleship, it is certain. There is an "if" with regard to the condition ye abide;" but there is no "if" with regard to the consequence, "Ye are my disciples indeed." Abiding in Christ"s Word in the sense indicated is real discipleship. It is not perfect, but true. The soul in Christ"s Word is like a good seed in a good soil, ever growing up in and unto him.
II IN ITS BLESSED RESULTS. There are:
1. Knowledge of the truth.
(1) There is the highest knowledge the truth. There are many truths, but this is the truth. This truth means the great facts of human redemption through Jesus Christ. We need not enumerate them; they will naturally occur to each in their magnitude, beauty, and order. They are various, yet one, constituting one Divine system of salvation. This is the truth made known by Christ, and to know this is the highest knowledge attainable by man, because it pertains to his spiritual nature, and involves his highest good. It is the most necessary and valuable.
(2) It is a most reliable knowledge. Taught by the highest authority, the Son of God, the source, the centre, the natural expression, and the fulness of all redemptive truths; in fact, the truth itself. It is communicated in the most direct, absolute, attractive, and convincing manner in the life, example, teaching, testimony, and miracles of the Son of God in human nature.
(3) This knowledge of the truth is experimental. It is not merely outward and intellectual, but inward and spiritual; not as illustrated in others, but as experienced by the soul itself. Know the truth as the liberated captives know the blessings of freedom, as the restored sick know the benefit of health. Spiritual truth can only be absolutely known by the spiritual nature and experience. Its kingdom is within, and the true disciple has the witness in himself.
(4) This knowledge of the truth is the natural result of true Christian discipleship. "Ye are my disciples indeed, and ye shall," etc. The truth can only be known by the true disciple. Pilate asked, "What is truth?" He had no reply; he had not an eye to see it, nor a heart to receive it. Knowledge of the truth is alone the privilege of the disciple indeed.
2. Spiritual freedom.
(1) Freedom from sin. From its bondage, its control, its consequences, its guilt, and from sin itself. In the true disciple sin will be ultimately effaced, not a vestige of it will be left behind.
(2) Freedom from the Law. From its curse, penalties, terrors, its heavy and unbearable burdens. The known truth, or Christ, becomes the law of the disciple"s life, written on his heart. Its letter becomes dead, while its spirit is preserved.
(3) Freedom from the tyranny of self. From the lower passions and appetites, from the captivity of self-seeking. The soul is brought out from itself into Christ, to breathe the natural and pure air of spiritual life, love, holiness, self-sacrifice, and willingness.
(4) This freedom is effected by the truth.
(a) The truth is the efficient means of spiritual freedom. It is based on and produced by the great facts of redemption.
(b) The truth is the efficient incentive to spiritual freedom. The revelation of sin, in its enormity, debasing effects, and ultimate consequences, and the revelation of God"s loving, costly, and self-sacrificing provisions for sinners, are calculated to inspire the captive soul to struggle for and accept the offered liberty.
(c) The truth experimentally known brings the fact of spiritual freedom to the consciousness. No sooner the facts of redemption, such as justification, forgiveness, and reconciliation by faith, are experimentally known than the soul begins to realize in itself the blessings of spiritual freedom. Christ lives in the disciple"s consciousness, and he feels that he is a subject of the spiritual empire and a free born citizen of the new Jerusalem.
LESSONS.
1. The weakest faith has the sympathy and care of Jesus. The faith of these Jews was very weak and imperfect, hence this address to them. He despised not the day of small things bruised reed shall he not break," etc.
2. The weakest faith by continuance in Christs Word will reach perfection. "If ye abide," etc. The quality of faith at first is more important than quantity; quantity will follow. Spiritual millionaires commenced with a very little capital. The apostles properly addressed as, "Ye of little faith." Lean sheep thrive in green pastures. It is surprising how a weak faith is improved and strengthened in the society and under the tuition of Jesus.
3. The weakest faith by abiding in Christs Word shall enjoy the richest blessings. We say Know all first, and then believe. But the Christian order is rather Believe first, and then know. The little knowledge required to precede faith is nothing to that which follows. It leads to true discipleship, and to the highest knowledge the knowledge of the truth. It opens the door of the temple of redemptive truth, and thus opens the portals of eternal freedom. Ignorance is captivity, knowledge is liberty. Let the scientific facts of the world be known, and men will be intellectually free; let the Divine facts of redemption be experimentally realized, and men shall walk in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. B.T.
Genuine discipleship.
In the earlier part of his ministry Jesus probably had a great many disciples. At all events this might be suspected. He taught a great deal, and the testimony is that he spoke "with authority, and not as the scribes." We may be sure he was always ready to speak concerning the things of the kingdom of heaven. In synagogue, in temple, in the homes of the people, out in the open air, he lost no opportunity. He that soweth sparingly, reapeth sparingly. Thus a large company of nominal disciples would be gathered. But Jesus did not care for mere quantity as such, He was quite prepared for desertions and backslidings. Only a hundred and twenty were gathered in the upper room to wait for the Day of Pentecost.
I THE DIFFICULTY OF DISCIPLESHIP. Nominal Christianity is easy enough, but to be a real disciple is as hard as ever. Jesus made it hard for those who first thronged round him, and the same tests, the same requirements, the same difficulties, face us still. The would-be disciple has to contend with his own indolence, impatience, self-indulgence. What changes in our thoughts and ways there must be, so that our thoughts may become as the thoughts of Jesus, our ways as the ways of Jesus! We are not to be known by distinctions in outward appearance, but by deep distinctions in character and purpose. He who wants an easy, smooth, level life will not indeed find it anywhere; least of all will he find it with Christ. It is not mere attendance at school that makes the scholar it is learning; and in the school of Christ learning by practice.
II SEE JESUS TESTING DISCIPLES. The man who said he would follow Jesus wherever he went. The man who said he would follow when he had buried his father. The man who said he would follow after saying farewell to his friends. The disciples in the storm, who deemed they trusted Christ, and yet could, not trust him till they had wakened him from sleep. Faith in Jesus as a Teacher must rise above the difficulties of any particular single demand of his. You must learn to look at Jesus, not in any one single action, not in any one single word, but in the sum total of all his actions and all his words. Jesus is always teaching, and we have to be always learning. What others reckoned to be discipleship he did not so reckon. Departure from old associations does not make discipleship. Departure into new circumstances does not make discipleship. He is the disciple indeed who breaks from an old life into a new one into that new life which gets nearer perfectness the nearer it gets to perfect trust in Jesus. Diogenes went about Greece with his lantern, looking for an honest man; and so Jesus goes about among us with his tests and with his searching, undeceivable eye, looking for a disciple indeed. He looks to see whether we abide in his Word, whether we carry it into every thought, every transaction, every temptation, every trouble. He would lead us on from lesson to lesson, deepening our faith, marking us off as his disciples more and more distinctly those ever learning and ever able to come more and more to knowledge of the truth. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v31 Then said Jesus unto those Jews which believed on…
Joh_8:31-59
Then said Jesus unto those Jews which believed on Him.
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A glorious liberator
I. FREEDOM PROFFERED.
1. Sin makes bondage (Joh_8:34; Mat_6:24; Luk_16:13; Rom_6:16-17; Gal_4:25; 2Pe_2:19).
2. Truth brings freedom (Joh_8:32; Rom_6:14; Rom_6:18; Rom_7:6; Jam_1:25; 1Pe_2:16).
3. Christ gives freedom (Joh_8:36; Psa_40:2; Psa_118:5; Rom_6:23, 1Co_7:22; Gal_5:1).
II. BONDAGE DEMONSTRATED.
1. By doing evil deeds (Joh_8:44; Gen_3:13; Gen_6:5; Mat_13:38; Mar_7:23; Act_13:10; 1Jn_3:8).
2. By disbelieving the Lord (Joh_8:45; Isa_53:1; Luk_22:67; Joh_4:48; Joh_5:58; Joh_6:36; Joh_8:24).
3. By not hearing truth (Joh_8:47; Isa_6:9; Mat_13:15, Joh_3:12; Joh_5:47, 1Jn_4:6).
III. DEATH VANQUISHED.
1. A dying race (Joh_8:53; Gen_3:19; Psa_89:48; Ecc_12:5; Zec_1:5; Rom_5:12; Heb_9:27).
2. A life-giving obedience (Joh_8:51; Deu_11:27; Act_5:29; Rom_6:16; Heb_5:9; 1Pe_1:22).
3. An ever-living Saviour (Joh_8:58; Psa_90:1; Joh_1:1; Joh_17:5; Col_1:17; Heb_1:10; Rev_1:18). (Sunday School Times.)
Bondage and freedom
I. PHYSICAL BONDAGE.
1. An ancient institution (Gen_9:25-26).
2. Called bondmen (Gen_43:18; Gen_44:9).
3. Some born in bondage (Gen_14:14; Psa_116:16).
4. Some captured in war (Deu_20:14; 2Ki_5:2).
5. Subject to sale (Gen_17:27; Gen_37:28-36).
6. Debtors sold into bondage (2Ki_4:1; Mat_18:25).
7. Thieves sold into bondage (Exo_22:3).
8. Bondage of Israelites not perpetual (Exo_21:2; Lev_25:10).
II. SPIRITUAL BONDAGE.
1. Is to the devil (1Ti_3:7; 2Ti_2:26).
2. Is to fear of death (Heb_2:14-15).
3. Is to sin (Joh_8:34; Rom_6:16).
4. Is to corruption (2Pe_2:19; Rom_8:21).
5. Is to iniquity (Act_8:23).
6. Is to the world (Gal_4:8).
7. Is to spiritual death (Rom_7:24).
8. Is unknown by its subjects (Joh_8:33).
III. SPIRITUAL FREEDOM.
1. Promised (Isa_42:6; Isa_24:7; Isa_61:1).
2. Typified (Exo_1:13-14 with Deu_4:20),
3. Through Christ (Joh_8:36; Rom_7:24-25).
4. Proffered by the gospel (Luk_4:17-21).
5. Through the truth (Joh_8:32).
6. Testified by the Spirit (Rom_8:15; Gal_4:5-6).
7. Enjoyed by saints (Rom_6:18-22).
8. Saints should abide in it (Gal_5:1).
(Sunday School Times.)
The Kingdom of the Truth
I. THOSE WHO ARE NOT ITS SUBJECTS THOUGH THEY SAY THEY ARE.
1. Accepting a mere dead orthodoxy does not constitute one a genuine subject of the Kingdom of Truth (Joh_8:31-33). This declaration is levelled against the traditional faiths and old maxims which those Jews were holding as their birthright blessing.
2. Nor being born of respectable and even believing lineage. Our Lord was confronted with the dry statement that they descended from Abraham, and that they were never slaves even in morality. Professing themselves wise, they became fools. Christ answered with directness that the plain reason why they did not believe in Him, was that they were not born of God. All there was of good in their boasted ancestor was due to his having by faith seen Christs day. And when this maddened them, He raised His word to an imperial utterance, such as only the King of the Kingdom of Truth could make (Joh_8:58). There are two things in this:
(1) He that is not in Christs kingdom is in Satans.
(2) He who is not a Christian cannot be a true man in life, thought, temper, etc.
3. Nor following mere blind formulas of performance. Education has value; but the truest men in an age like ours must sometimes turn back upon their training with a free judgment. Antiquity is no proof of soundness in the right. The devil has all the force of the argument in that direction, and Jesus told these Jews that Satan was their first father.
4. Nor insisting on mere sincere convictions. One may have honest preferences for an absolutely false standard. It is possible that the affections have grown perverted. The later history of Turner can be explained only on the supposition of a disease in his eyes; this threw all his work out of drawing. He was as honest and industrious as ever; his sense of colour was as fine as in his early days, but his eyes had become mechanically untrustworthy. The men, arguing here with our Lord, did not believe in Him, not because what He told them was not true, but because they, in their innermost hearts, were not true; there was a distorted image upon their souls.
II. THOSE WHO ARE ITS SUBJECTS.
1. A true man will accept true doctrines. As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. The two grand divisions of our race have always been ranged around Christ and Anti-Christ (1Jn_4:2-6).
2. A true man will cherish true principles. Joseph said he must refuse sin because he could not offend against God. Hazael had no more to offer in objection than that he was afraid he might be thought only a dog. Expediency is not enough, genuineness of principle is needed.
3. A true man will cultivate true tastes. He may not always get in love with some forms and phases of religion. He may find that 1:8 has to get himself into a more amiable and trustful frame of mind before he is anything but the artificial being that training for a bad lifetime has made him. If he does not love gentleness, or humility, or charity, or temperance, or godliness, when he sees it, it is a task for him to set about to grow to love it as soon as he can. For a critic who does not like a true painting is not himself true. If one prefers Turkish jargon to a harmonious tune, he is not true. And when one turns away from a true child of God, it is because he is not true.
4. A true man will manifest true consistency. Christ gave us the Word of God as the standard of reference. The New Testament is the book of manners in the social circle of the Kingdom of Truth.
5. A true man will live a true life. There will be a fine, high unconsciousness that anything else could be expected of him. He never will seek to pose; he means to be. Pure and noble, he wishes only for a career without fear and without reproach. Can anyone tell why the old college song still thrills us when we are quite on in life? There is a wonderful power in the famous Integer Vitae of our early days. We would like to be reckoned as integers--whole numbers--when the world adds up the columns of its remembered worthies (Psa_15:1-4). (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)
Jesus and Abraham
I. THE RELIGION OF THESE JEWS.
1. It was a matter of blood and ancestry. There were, it is true, certain ceremonies to be observed, but it was enough to be Abrahams seed to secure the favour of Jehovah. Without that the most diligent piety could not avail. Good parentage no one will despise. If we have got our vigour from virtuous ancestors, we may well be thankful. Even if prodigal of such an inheritance, we shall still have an advantage in the battle of life. Aaron Burr was a stouter sinner because his mother was Jonathan Edwards daughter. Robert Burns exhausted himself at thirty-eight, but what did he not owe to an honest and frugal parentage? The first generation of sinners lasts longer than the second; much longer than the third. But it will not do to trust blood as a substitute for religion. Who is your father? may be the first question, but Who are you? comes next. Many a boy disclosing his fathers name has excited surprise in the police court, but the fathers good name does not keep him out of prison. Absalom was Davids son, and Judas Abrahams.
2. Christ told the Jews that this dead faith in our ancestor was really a bondage to the devil (Joh_8:34-44). Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt and Babylon, and now the Roman Eagle had them in its talons. Yet by some legerdemain of logic they reasoned that to be a Hebrew was to be a free man. At once Jesus set them on a deeper search (Joh_8:44). What a hard master the devil is! For Paradise Eve gets an apple. See this illustrated in the case of Cain, Esau, Samson, Saul, Judas, Agrippa. The prodigal is sure to be set on the lowest tasks, and left to crave even husks. Nor has the devil grown kinder since.
3. Of course the bondsmen of Satan cannot bear the truth (Joh_8:43; Joh_8:45; Joh_8:47), neither receive nor recognize it. Paul thought he was doing God service when killing Christians, and perhaps these Jews were sincere, but with the maladroitness of those who give themselves to the service of evil they reserve their criticisms for that which was most fair, and direct their assaults when the line was most secure. Our Lords treatment of the woman was apparently the cause of their hostility. The truth and goodness which angered them angers sinners now.
II. CHRISTS DISCIPLES.
1. They are those who abide in Christs Word. The dead religion was a mere name, an accident of birth; the new religion laid hold of the soul and was light and life (Joh_8:31-32; Joh_8:47). What the mind must have is truth. A man who believes a lie warms a serpent in his bosom. Christs heel has crushed the head of the serpent of falsehood, and for His disciples its charm is broken. Having come to the light the real children of Abraham continue in it. Bartimaeus has no wish to return to his blindness. The Christians love of the truth is one that lasts. And Christians obey the truth (Joh_8:31; cf. Pe 1:22; Gal_3:1; Gal_3:5; Gal_3:7). The truth not only touches their intellect, judgment, conscience, but quickens, guides and establishes their will (Joh_8:39).
2. Yet they enjoy a real freedom--a further contrast (Joh_8:32; Joh_8:36; cf. Rom_6:14-22). Subjection to Christs word is not slavery. Freedom does not destroy law nor overturn authority. The best liberty finds its satisfaction within the limits of a law which is loved. Note the Divine order; first a change of heart, then morality and piety. To require these bloodthirsty children of Abraham to do his works would be to put an intolerable yoke upon them. The Bible is a weary book to a bad man. Prayer to the worldly is a burden. For the dissolute no shackles so heavy as the rules of virtue. But change a mans mind, and his world is changed. Obedience becomes a song. Besides this, there is the liberty from the penalty of sin by Christs Cross.
3. As a result of all comes an assurance of endless life (Joh_8:51, etc.). (H. A.Edson, D. D.)
The grace of continuance
I. A PREPARATORY STAGE OF DISCIPLESHIP. The mind, heart, will, moved, but the soul not yet made new in Christ. The vestibule of salvation. All depends on holding on. The seed is in the soil, but needs to get root and grow. Satan then tries to check it.
II. THE RESULTS OF CONTINUANCE.
1. Confirmation of discipleship.
2. Revelation of truth.
3. Emancipation from sin.
III. OUR LORD GIVES HIS FOLLOWERS SOMETHING
1. To do.
2. To prove.
3. To know.
4. To become. (A. T. Pierson, D. D.)
Disciples indeed
I. THE CHARACTER OF A DISCIPLE INDEED. Let us look at Christs first disciples.
1. They forsook all they had. See the case of Paul (Php_3:7-8). Every sin, idol, circumstance inconsistent with Christs claim must be renounced.
2. They were docile. Christ taught them as they were able to hear. They had much ignorance and many prejudices, but they willingly sat at Christs feet. This is requisite in all true disciples (Mat_18:2-3).
3. They had a spiritual knowledge of Christ (Joh_17:6-8), although the world knew Him not. So it is still (2Co_4:6).
4. They enjoyed the friendship of Christ (Joh_15:15). The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him (1Jn_1:3).
5. They were engaged in Christs service (Joh_15:16). None of us liveth to himself.
II. THE PRIVILEGE PROMISED TO CHRISTS DISCIPLES. Ye shall know the truth.
1. The truth referred to. Christ is the truth (Joh_14:6). We read Eph_4:21) of the truth as in Jesus--the truth full of Christs personal glory, love, power to save. There is truth in His holy character, in His sublime life, in His vicarious death. He speaks here of the redemptive truth of which He Himself was the sum and substance!
2. The knowledge spoken, of Ye shall know, not as mere theory, but living power, spiritually, experimentally. The inner eye is opened, the inner car is unstopped, the heart is melted, the soul is subdued. Truth must be engrafted in the soul (Jam_1:21).
3. The result predicated. The truth in Jesus emancipates the soul from the
(1) Condemnation (Rom_8:1);
(2) the power and depravity of sin (Rom_6:23; Rom_8:30);
(3) harassing fear of the wrath to come (1Th_1:9-10);
(4) the depressing anxieties of life;
(5) from the dark and gloomy forebodings of death (Heb_2:14-15).
III. THE CROWNING EVIDENCE THAT ONE IS A DISCIPLE INDEED. If ye continue in My word. Many of Christs professing disciples do not continue in His word. See the parable of the sower. But all Christs true disciples do.
1. His word is engrafted in their souls. The gospel is a living shoot that produces fruit of its own. That soul thus Divinely operated on continues in Christs word, and Christs word continues in it.
2. They are joined to the Lord in an everlasting covenant. Every true disciple has entered into a perpetual covenant to be Christs, having found that he is interested in Gods everlasting covenant, ratified and established forever by the blood of the Surety! His motto is, I am not My own!
3. They are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise. Without the indwelling, ever-abiding Spirit, there is no spiritual life, power, worship or service; without Him there is no safety. He comes as our life, and He seals us as Gods forever and ever.
4. They are kept by the power of God through faith unto final salvation (1Pe_1:5; Joh_13:1-2). His Almighty arms of unchanging love areplaced underneath, and round about (Deu_33:27; Isa_27:3). Gods true people are kept not in mere safety, but in a life of holy love and devotedness; not in sloth and indolence, but in holy activity and spiritual diligence. (T. G. Horton.)
Continuous piety is piety indeed
It is the evening that crowns the day, and the last act that commends the whole scene. Temporary flashings are but like conducts running with wine at the coronation, that will not hold, or like a land flood, that seems to be a great sea, but comes to nothing. (J. Trapp.)
Constancy a severe test of piety
Many who have gone into the field, and liked the work of a soldier for a battle or two, soon have had enough, and come running home again; whereas few can bear it as a constant trade: war is a thing that they could willingly woo for their pleasure, but are loath to wed upon what terms soever. Thus many are easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion, and as easily persuaded to lay it down. Oh! this constancy and persevering is a hard word; this taking up the cross daily; this praying always; this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour, indulging ourselves to remit and unbend in our holy waiting upon God, and walking with God, this sends many sorrowful from Christ; yet this is the saints duty, to make religion his every days work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other. (J. Spencer.)
The best service is constant
After a great snowstorm a little fellow began to shovel a path through a large snow bank before his grandmothers door. He had nothing but a small shovel to work with. How do you expect to get through that drift? asked a man passing along. By keeping at it, said the boy, cheerfully. Thats how. That is the secret of mastering almost every difficulty under the sun. If a hard task is set before you, stick to it. Do not keep thinking how large or how hard it is, but go at it, and little by little it will grow smaller, until it is done. If a hard lesson is to be learned, do not spend a moment in fretting; do not lose breath in saying, I cant, or I dont see how; but go at it, and keep at it--steady. That is the only way to conquer it. If you have entered your Masters service and are trying to be good, you will sometimes find hills of difficulty in the way. Things will often look discouraging, and you will not seem to make any progress at all; but keep at it. Never forget thats how.
Evidence of discipleship
A soldiers confidence in his commander is evidenced by the soldier obeying his commanders orders. A patients trust in his physician is shown by the patient following the physicians directions. A disciples sincerity in his professions of discipleship is proved by the disciple walking according to the Masters teaching. It is not that there is any merit in the obedience itself; but it is that there is no sincerity in a profession of faith where there is no obedience. (H. C. Trumbull.)
Truth and liberty
Faith cometh by hearing (Joh_8:30). It is in connection with the word of truth that the Holy Spirit works in us.
I. THE RECEPTION OF CHRISTS WORD BEGINS DISCIPLESHIP. There may be alarm, disquietude, inquiry, before this, but these are not discipleship. They are but inquiries after a school and a teacher which will meet the wants, capacities, and longings. All men are saying, Who will show us any good? Discipleship begins, not with doing some great thing, but with receiving Christs word as the scholar receives the masters teaching. What does He teach?
1. The Father.
2. Himself. From the moment that we accept this we become disciples--taught not of man, but of God.
II. CONTINUANCE IN THAT WORD IS THE TEST OF TRUE DISCIPLESHIP. This is not continuance in general adherence to His cause; but continuance in the word by which we become disciples. As it is by holding the beginning of our confidence that we are made partakers of Christ, so by continuing in the word we make good the genuineness of our discipleship. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly--in that word is everything we need.
1. It is an expansive word: ever widening its dimensions; growing upon us; never old, ever new; in which we make continual discoveries; the same tree, but ever putting forth new branches and leaves; the same river, but ever swelling and widening--loosing none of its old water, yet ever receiving accessions.
2. It is a quickening word: maintaining old life, yet producing new--Thy word Lord hath quickened me.
3. It is a strengthening word: nerving and invigorating us; lifting us when bowed down; imparting health, courage, resolution, persistency.
4. It is a sanctifying word: it detects the evil and purges it away, pouring holiness into the soul. Let us continue in this word; not weary of it, not losing relish for it.
III. KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH IS THE RESULT OF DISCIPLESHIP. All that enter Christs school are taught of God. Consequently they know the truth; not a truth or part of it, but the truth--not error--Him who is the Truth. They shall know it; not guess at it, speculate on it, get a glimpse of it; but make choice of it, realize it, appreciate it. Blessed promise in a day of doubt and error!
IV. THIS TRUTH IS LIBERTY. All truth is, so far, liberty, and all error bondage; some truth is greater liberty, some error greater bondage. Bondage, with many, is simply associated with tyranny, bad government, evil or ecclesiastical despotism. Christs words go deeper, to the root of the evil. The real chains, prison, bondage are within--so true liberty. It springs from what a man knows of God and of his Christ. Seldom do men realize this. Error, bondage! How can that be if the error be the mans own voluntary doing--the result of his intellectual effort? But the Master is very explicit. The truth shall make you free. There is no other freedom worthy of the name. He is a free man whom the truth makes free; and all are slaves besides. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free
True freedom
1. Three mighty thoughts--knowledge, truth, freedom.
2. Men claim to be free born or to attain freedom at a great price; yet he who sins is a slave of sin.
(1) Political freedom is but the bark, intellectual freedom but the fibre, of the tree spiritual: freedom is the sap. Men contend for bark and fibre, Christ gives the sap. Sometimes we have political freedom, but formal, sapless, as dead as telegraph poles strung with the wires of politicians.
3. Circumstances cannot fetter freedom or confer it. Joseph was as free in the dungeon as on the throne. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. The Israelites in the desert were a nation of slaves despite their liberty. It matters not where I place my watch, so I wind it, it is really free; if I interfere with the works, wherever it may be, it is in bondage. So of man--bind, chain, imprison; if the soul be in sympathy with God, sustained by truth, you have a free man; if the reverse, you have a slave. John, though in prison, was free; Herod, though on the throne, was a slave--Christ and Pilate. Freedom, like the kingdom of heaven, is within. Thetext teaches a threefold lesson--man may know; truth is: the knowledge of the truth brings freedom.
I. The word KNOW carries us back to the dawn of history.
1. Two possibilities are placed before man--life or knowledge. Full of life, he chooses knowledge at the risk of life.
2. The race is true to its head--exploration, geographical, scientific, philosophical.
3. Yet men were then setting up altars to the unknown God: men now to God unknowable. The great Teacher says: Ye shall know.
4. The promise implies that man can trust himself and the results of his research and experiences.
II. THE SUBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE IS TRUTH. Truth stands in contrast
1. With a lie. Christ accuses His hearers of being children of the devil. Today as then men lie; wilfully misrepresent in business, political, and social life. Truth is consistency between what we
2. With veracity, think and say and what is. Veracity is consistency between what we say and think; but we may think wrongly.
3. Truth is reality as opposed to a lie and to appearance. Christ, as Son of God and Son of Man, sets forth certain realities regarding both, and the relation between the two. That God is, what God is, and what man is: alienation and possible reconciliation; regeneration by the Spirit; the results of separation from and reconciliation with God. These facts, relations, results, are truth, and may be known,
III. THE RESULTS OF SUCH KNOWLEDGE IS FREEDOM.
1. Freedom from the past, Son, remember; but the knowledge of Gods reconciliation blots out the sin-stained past as a cloud.
2. Freedom from fears for the future based upon the past.
IV. THE ONE CONDITION OF ALL THIS IS BELIEF IN CHRIST. Faith as a grain of mustard seed grows into knowledge, etc. (O. F. Gifford.)
Freedom by the truth
Observe
1. The greatness of Christs aim--to make all men free. He saw around Him man in slavery to man, race to race; men trembling before priestcraft, and those who were politically and ecclesiastically free, in worse bondage to their own passions. Conscious of His Deity and His Fathers intentions, He, without the excitement of an earthly liberator, calmly said: Ye shall be free.
2. The wisdom of the means. The craving for liberty was not new, nor the promise of satisfying it; but the promise had been vain. Men had tried
(1) Force: and force in the cause of freedom is to be honoured, and those who have used it have been esteemed as the worlds benefactors--Judas Maccabaeus, etc. Had Christ willed so to come, success was certain. Men were ripe for revolt, and at a word, thrice three hundred thousand swords would have started from their scabbards; but in that case one nation only would have gained independence, and that merely from foreign oppression.
(2) Legislative enactments. By this England could and did emancipate her slaves; but she could not fit them for freedom, nor make it lasting. The stroke of a monarchs pen will do the one--the discipline of ages is needed for the other. Give a constitution tomorrow to some feeble Eastern nation, and in half a century they will be subjected again. Therefore Christ did not come to free the world in this way.
(3) Civilization. Every step of civilization is a victory over some lower instinct; but it contains elements of fresh servitude. Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave. The workman is in bondage to his machinery, which determines hours, wages, habits. The rich man acquires luxuries, and then cannot do without them. Members of a highly civilized community are slaves to dress, hours, etiquette. Therefore Christ did not talk of the progress of the species; he freed the inner man that so the outer might become free. Note
I. THE TRUTH THAT LIBERATES.--The truth Christ taught was chiefly about:
1. God. Blot out that thought and existence becomes unmeaning, resolve is left without a stay, aspiration and duty without a support. Christ exhibited God as
(1) Love; and so that fearful bondage to fate was broken.
(2) A Spirit, requiring spiritual worship; and thus the chain of superstition was rent asunder.
2. Man. We are a mystery to ourselves. So where nations exhibit their wealth and inventions, before the victories of mind you stand in reverence. Then look at those who have attained that civilization, their low aims and mean lives, and you are humbled. And so of individuals. How noble a given mans thoughts at one moment, how base at another I Christ solved this riddle. He regarded man as fallen, but magnificent in his ruin. Beneath the vilest He saw a soul capable of endless growth; hence He treated with respect all who approached Him, because they were men. Here was a germ for freedom. It is not the shackle that constitutes the slave, but the loss of self-respect--to be treated as degraded till he feels degraded. Liberty is to suspect and yet reverence self.
3. Immortality. If there be an idea that cramps and enslaves the soul it is that this life is all. If there be one which expands and elevates it it is that of immortality. This was the martyrs strength. In the hope and knowledge of that truth they were free from the fear of pain of death.
II. THE LIBERTY WHICH TRUTH GIVES.
1. Political freedom. Christianity does not directly interfere with political questions, but mediately it must influence them. Christ did not promise this freedom, but He gave it more surely than conqueror, reformer, or patriot. And this not by theories or constitutions, but by truths. God a Spirit, man His redeemed child; before that spiritual equality all distinctions vanish.
2. Mental independence. Slavery is that which cramps powers, and the worst is that which cramps the noblest powers. Worse therefore than he who manacles the body is he who puts fetters on the mind, and demands that men shall think and believe as others have done. In Judaea life was a set of forms and religion--a congeries of traditions. One living word from Christ, and the mind of the world was free. Later a mountain mass of superstition had gathered round the Church. Men said that the soul was to be saved only by doing what the priesthood taught. Then the heroes of the Reformation said the soul is saved by the grace of God; and once more the mind of the world was set flee by truth. There is a tendency to think, not what is true, but what is respectable, authorized. It comes partly from cowardice, partly from habit. Now truth frees us from this by warning of individual responsibility which cannot be delegated to another, and thrown off on a church. Do not confound mental independence with mental pride. It ought to co-exist with the deepest humility. For that mind alone is free which, conscious of its liability to err, and, turning thankfully to any light, refuses to surrender the Divinely given right and responsibility of judging for itself and having an opinion of its own.
3. Superiority to temptation. It is not enough to say that Christ promises freedom from sin. Childhood, paralysis, impotence of old age, may remove the desire of transgressions. Therefore we must add that ode whom Christ liberates is free by his own will. It is not that he would and cannot; but that he can and will not. Christian liberty is right well sustained by love, and made firm by faith in Christ. This may be seen by considering moral bondage. Go to the intemperate man in the morning, when his head aches and his whole frame unstrung: he is ashamed, hates his sin, and would not do it. Go to him at night when the power of habit is upon him, and he obeys the mastery of his craving. Every more refined instance of slavery is just as real. Wherever a man would and cannot, there is servitude.
4. Superiority to fear. Fear enslaves, courage liberates. The apprehension of pain, fear of death, dread of the worlds laugh at poverty, or loss of reputation, enslave alike. From all such Christ frees. He who lives in the habitual contemplation of immortality, cannot be in bondage to time; he who feels his souls dignity cannot cringe. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Spiritual and scientific truth
There is a well-known picture by Retzsch, in which Satan is represented as playing at chess with a man for his soul. The pieces on the board seem to represent the virtues and the deadly sins. The man is evidently losing the game, while in the background stands an angel sad and helpless, and statue-like. We need not stay to criticize the false theology implied in that picture, because our immediate concern is with a meaning which has been read into that picture by a great scientific teacher of our day. We have been told by Professor Huxley, that if we substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing, as we say, for love, and would rather lose than win, we shall have a true picture of the relation of man to nature. The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us, We know that his play is always fair, and just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. Such is the modern reading of the picture. And here there is a great truth, or at least one side of a great truth, expressed. It puts before us in a very real and concrete form the fact that, in our mere physical life, we are engaged in a great struggle. We must learn to adapt ourselves truly to the physical conditions of our life, or we must perish in a fruitless opposition to natural laws. But that physical life which we live is not our whole life, nor are what we call the laws of external nature the only laws which we need to know. We are surrounded by spiritual forces in which our moral life is lived. In that more real life we have relations with spiritual beings, some like ourselves and some above us, and One whom we love to call our Father, which is in heaven. Are there no laws in that spiritual world? No truths there, the knowledge of which will make us free? If the violation of physical law is death, is there no death in the moral and spiritual sphere? Is the life of the soul less real, its death less terrible than that of the body? And if not, what do we know of the great spiritual realities which environ life?
1. All truth gives freedom. To know nature is to gain freedom in regard to her; to know her fully is to conform ourselves to her. And to know God is to cease to be afraid of Him, to know Him fully is to love Him perfectly, and to conform ourselves to His likeness.
2. Why, then, is there such fear and jealousy of dogma amongst men who gladly welcome every new truth about their physical life? If all truth is from God, and every truth sets us free, why is it that men hesitate to allow these characteristics to that which, above all, claims to be from God, and to give us perfect freedom? It is here that we touch the characteristic difference which exists between the laws of the spiritual and the laws of the material world. The laws of nature are discoveries; the laws of the spiritual world are revelations. The former are found out; the latter are given. The former are confessedly imperfect, added to continually as years go by; the latter are complete, the same yesterday, to day, and forever. The former lay claim to no finality; they may be challenged, put upon their trial, called upon to justify themselves. The latter, if they are from God, claim our reverence, our obedience, our willing submission. (Aubrey L. Moore, M. A.)
Freedom only to be found in God
Last summer the good ship Wieland brought over a large number of caged birds. When we were about mid-ocean one restless bird escaped from his cage. In ecstasy he swept through the air, away and away from his prison. How he bounded with outspread wings! Freedom! How sweet he thought it! Across the pathless waste ha entirely disappeared. But after hours had passed, to our amazement, he appeared again, struggling towards the ship with heavy wing. Panting and breathless, he settled upon the deck. Far, far over the boundless deep, how eagerly, how painfully had he sought the ship again, now no longer a prison, but his dear home. As I watched him nestle down on the deck, I thought of the restless human heart that breaks away from the restraints of religion. With buoyant wing he bounds away from Church the prison, and God the prison. But if he is not lost on the remorseless deep, he comes back again with panting, eager heart, to Church the home, and God the home. The Church is not a prison to any man. It gives the most perfect freedom in all that is good and all that is safe. It gives him liberty to do what is right, and to do what is wrong, there is no rightful place to any man in all the boundless universe. (R. S. Barrett.)
Freedom by the truth
The truth shall set us free from
I. PHYSICAL SUFFERING. The laws of nature are the laws of God, and to know and obey them will liberate us from every sickness except that of death. There is
1. The law of heredity, This is a Bible law; for it states that the sins of the fathers shall be carried down to the third and fourth generation, Know that, and care for the health of your bodies, and your posterity will be free from the taint of hereditary disease.
2. The law of sanitation. Know that, and obey it, and you free your cities from fevers and infectious diseases. Much suffering is entailed by ignorance, apathy, or wilful negligence about this truth.
3. The law of temperance; that obeyed will make you free from the suffering of bodily anguish and the sense of degradation.
II. SOCIAL DISARRANGEMENT. This is one of our most rampant evils. Contrast the suburbs with their villas and the slums with their hovels. These extremes should not exist in a Christian country. What is the cure? The truth that humanity is one.
1. The strong should help the weak. The rich, who enjoy their libraries, drawing rooms, gardens, should not be satisfied that the poor should have to tramp long distances to see a tree or read a book. Parks, museums, baths, libraries, should be within reach; and by recognising the truth on this matter, the wealthy should lend a helping hand.
2. The weak should help themselves. Too much help would pauperize. The poor must be taught and encouraged to raise themselves. Much can be affected by cooperation. If the money spent in beer were utilized for this purpose, the millennium would be hastened.
III. CHRISTIAN ANTAGONISM. What a pity it is to see the strife of sects over nice doctrinal or ceremonial points. Christ wants His Church to be one, and so do good men. But the truth only will unify; and there is enough truth held in common by all churches, which, if recognized, would soon bring Christian unity. All are agreed that Christs life should be lived by His followers. Surely this is a good working truth; and as all hold it, all should act upon it, and be one.
IV. ALIENATION FROM GOD. What a slave was the prodigal, and all his degradation arose from his distance from God. But when the vision of his father arose before his mind, he arose and went back. What sinful men want to know is, the truth about God as revealed by Christ; how He loves the sinner, and would save him from his sins. (W. Birch.)
Freedom by the truth
It is no strange thing for truth to set people free. What delivers men from terror--e.g., over prodigies, etc.--but the truth about them? In the darkness, which invests harmless objects with weird appearances, the imaginative man is as timid as a child. But let the day dawn, and the truth of things be revealed, and fear vanishes. The truth sets us free from
I. THE DREADS OF LIFE.
1. Those which belong to our physical life--dreads of want, disease, poisoned air, accidents. Christ frees us from these by revealing the providence of God (Mat_6:26-28).
2. Social fears--fears of what men can do unto us. Christ says, Fear not them which kill the body, etc. Their wrath is restrained by our Father; and at their worst they can only drive man closer to God, and bring him nearer home.
3. Spiritual fears--about God. Christ frees from this by His truth--Our Father.
II. THE SINS OF LIFE. These make the real bondage. Our fears weaken us, but our sins corrupt, and lead to death. They bind in two ways.
1. By spreading their shame through our soul (Ezr_9:6). Christ frees us by His declaration (Joh_3:17), and His own treatment of a sinner in shame (Joh_8:3-11).
2. By weakening our will, so that when we would do good we cannot. Christ brings not only pardon to banish shame, but power to put away sin 1Ti_1:13).
III. DWARFED CONDITIONS OF LIFE.
1. In church life--from the tyranny of forms and places (Joh_4:21-23).
2. In individual life. The truth of Jesus liberates the highest faculties--faith, hope, love, conscience. (J Todd.)
Freedom by the truth
Christ, by His truth, delivers man
I. From the bondage of IGNORANCE. That truth enlightens, invigorates, instructs.
II. From the bondage of ERROR.
1. Intellectual--scepticism or superstition.
2. Practical; for with it He gives His example and His guiding spirit.
III. From the bondage of ream
1. The fear of death and judgment.
2. Of Gods conscience-searching word.
3. Of the supernatural.
IV. From the bondage of sin.
1. As a fitter.
2. As a service.
V. From the bondage of the LAW.
1. The ritual, which is abolished.
2. The moral, which by grace becomes perfect freedom. (P. N.Zabriskie, D. D.)
Truth and liberty
Gods grace reveals itself in endless diverse forms. The thousand changing colours which play upon sea, land, and sky, in the high day of summer, are but variations of the one clear and transparent light which comes down from above; and the same water of the sea is the same water of the sea, whether it is called ocean, gulf, or strait. A recognition of this truth is essential to the understanding of what Christian liberty is. It is the liberty of the light which, always opposed to darkness, yet reveals itself in constantly new tints and shades of colour; it is the liberty of the water, ever cleansing and ever essential to life, which yet takes its shape from the vessel into which it is poured. It is the liberty of the tree to be green, of the sea to be blue, of the sunset to be crimson, of the sand to be yellow--each obtaining its own tint from Gods clear light, and no one quarrelling with the beauty of the other. So Gods grace reveals itself in the lives of Gods true children. In each it is the same grace, yet in each it takes a special form and colour--that of the individuality in which it reveals itself. And the liberty for which Christ has made us free, is the liberty for each of us to grow into that special manifestation of grace for which his nature is most fitted. It is freedom for us to grow in our own way, without conforming at all points to the growth of another; and (what we are more likely to forget) it is liberty for others to grow in their way without conforming at all points to our way of growth. If we compare the Church to a garden shut up, we ought to remember that the wise cultivator does not expect the tender vine to grow in the same way as the sturdy oak, nor does he expect the apple or the pear tree to bring forth grapes or figs. (H. G. Trumbull, D. D.)
Spiritual liberty
Liberty is a matter which interests everyone. But it is sadly limited. By it men mean political, intellectual, physical, and some, alas! sinful freedom. Christ proclaims real liberty--that of the soul. Secure this, and all that is worth the name of liberty will follow. Christ effects this emancipation by the truth. We must accept the truth, not as theory in our minds, or sentiment in our hearts, but by experience and practice; then we shall be free. The truth thus received liberates from
I. THE FETTERS OF IGNORANCE, SUPERSTITION, AND PREJUDICE--three links in a mighty chain.
1. We have but to pass the line of Christendom to behold a world ignorant of God and Divine truth. What follows? The most debasing superstition, idolatry, witchcraft, etc. Hence the almost invincible prejudice there is at first against the reception of the gospel.
2. But within Christendom and in its most cultivated circles, how many men learned in this worlds wisdom are utterly ignorant of the things of God? And what can result here but superstition, the worship of the idols of the mind, and putting light for darkness, bitter for sweet? The consequence is sceptical prejudice.
3. The same holds good in regard to Popery. The Bible-prohibited people are in gross darkness; believe what they are told to believe, however irrational; bow to images, and worship the creature above the Creator; and therefore bitterly oppose, and, where they can, persecute the gospel.
4. From all this Christs truth sets us free.
(1) By throwing light on the darkness of ignorance, and bringing knowledge to mind and heart.
(2) This knowledge removes the grounds of superstition and prejudice.
II. THE THRALDOM OF SATAN. However manifold the links bound round the soul led captive by the devil, the last link is in his hand. Men are either slaves of Satan or free men of Christ. Christ comes as a strong man armed to break the links of the chain, which are mainly three.
1. Guilt, and the consequent curse of God. For this Christ provides pardon, and secures Gods blessing.
2. Corruption, and consequent moral impotence. For this Christ provides the grace of the Holy Spirit.
3. The world and the fear of man, that bringeth a snare. But this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
III. THE BONDAGE OF THE FEAR OF DEATH. Spite of his boasting, no man is so hardy but he shrinks from death. Why? Because after death the judgment. This is seen in the mad recklessness of the profligate, and the unspiritual service of the moralist, the religious inventions of the devotee. Momentary oblivion of the dread spectre is all that these can produce. But he who receives the truth of Christ triumphs over death. Conclusion: This liberty includes a service, but it is perfect freedom. (Canon Stowell.)
Spiritual emancipation
These words suggest
I. THAT A KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH MAY BE SECURED.
II. THAT THIS KNOWLEDGE IS MENTAL AND EXPERIMENTAL.
III. THAT EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE IS ALONE SAVING.
IV. WHAT IS THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH, THE EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH MAKES FREE.
1. We may know the truth as we know language, science, etc.; as a mass of doctrines; Christ a historical character like Pilate. All this knowledge may have no effect on the heart or life.
2. The new man obtains his knowledge by a different process. He experiments, verifies, proves. Truth becomes the prevailing principle of action, and enthrones itself. To be sure a man must become possessed of Christian facts and doctrines. These are the bones for the body of holiness.
3. An experimental knowledge of the truth frees man morally, and from the bondage of merely human views, and introduces man into the broad province of ideas world wide in their grasp and extending back to the Creation.
4. The condition of the freedom promised by Christ is belief in His Divine sonship, as many as received Him, etc. The emancipating power of this truth is made to us
(1) Wisdom, by enlightening us and thus freeing the mind;
(2) Righteousness, by justifying us and thus freeing us from the law;
(3) Sanctification, by purifying us and thus freeing our hearts:
(4) Redemption by the union of them all, thus purchasing us into blessed immortality. (J. M. King, D. D.)
The hour of emancipation
August 1, 1834, was the day on which 700,000 of our colonial slaves were made free. Throughout the colonies the churches and chapels were thrown open, and the slaves crowded into them on the evening of the 31 st of July. As the hour of midnight approached they fell upon their knees and awaited the solemn moment, all hushed in silent prayer. When 12 oclock sounded, they sprang upon their feet, and through every island rang the glad sound of thanksgiving to the Father of all, for the chains were broken and the slaves were free. (Heroes of Britain.)
The freedom which Christ gives
It is a freedom from the servitude of sin, from the seduction of a misguided judgment, and the allurement of any ensnaring forbidden object: consisting in an unbounded amplitude and enlargedness of soul towards God, and indetermination to any inferior good; resulting from an entire subjection to the Divine will, a submission to the order of God, and steady adherence to Him. (John Howe.)
Spiritual freedom
They make a great fuss when they give a man the freedom of the City of London. There is a fine gold casket to put it in. You have got the liberty of the New Jerusalem, and your faith, like a golden box, holds the deeds of your freemanship. Take care of them and rejoice in them tonight. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
We be Abrahams seed, and were never in bondage to any man
Moral bondage
Note that its subjects
I. ARE UNCONSCIOUS OF IT (Joh_8:33). This was an interruption of Christs discourse on freedom. As much as to say Why talk of freedom to us? We are free men. But in the eye of Christ they were in the most miserable captivity. It is common here in England to hear men
1. Boast of religious liberty who have no religion. Some of its most strenuous advocates are destitute of reverence to God, and charity to men. These will repeat the boast while they are in bondage to their own prejudices, exclusiveness, love of fame or gain.
2. Boast of civil freedom who are moral slaves. Men who are under the tyranny of their own lusts and greed, who are even governed, as Carlyle says, by a pot of heavy wet and a clay pipe, peal out in thunderous chorus Britons never shall be slaves. The worst part of this bondage is that men are unconscious of it. Hence they are mere creatures of circumstances. It is the more sad because it precludes any aspiration for self-manumission; and it is only self-effort that can liberate. Other men may deliver the prisoner from his dungeon, or the slave from his tyrant, or the serf from his despot; but no one can deliver him from bondage but himself, He who would be free, himself must strike the blow.
II. ARE THE AUTHORS OF IT (Joh_8:34). It is not the sin of another man that makes me a slave, but my own. Solomon says, His own iniquities shall take the wicked. Paul says, To whom ye yield yourselves to obey his servants ye are, etc. Shakespeare says, Vice is imprisonment. Every sin a man commits forges a new link in the chain that manacles his soul. The longer a man pursues a certain course of conduct the mere wedded he becomes to it, and the less power he has to abandon it. Habit is a cord strengthened with every action, at first it is as fine as silk, and can be easily broken. As it proceeds it becomes a cable. Habit is a momentum, increasing with motion. At first a childs hand can obstruct the progress, by and by an army of giants cannot arrest it. Habit is a river, at its spring you can divert its course with ease, as it approaches the ocean it defies opposition.
III. CAN BE DELIVERED FROM IT (Joh_8:36). How does Christ make the soul free? By generating in the heart supreme love to the supremely good. It is a law of mind to have some permanent object of affection, and that object limits its field of operation. The man who loves money most will have all his faculties confined to that region. The same with him who loves fame, or pleasure, etc. But all these objects are limited; hence the soul is hemmed in as in a cage. In order to have freedom the heart should be centred on an infinite object, and this Christ does. And with God as the centre of the heart all the faculties have unbounded scope. Conclusion: All souls not made free by Christ are in slavery. Even the heathen considered the virtues essential to true freedom. Cicero said The wise man alone is free. Plato represents the lusts as the hardest tyrants. Seneca speaks of the passions as the worst thraldom. Epictetus said Liberty is the name of virtue. And this virtue is obtained only through Christ. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The vain boast of the Jews
The whole past history of their nation was the record of one bondage following hard on another, they for their sins having come at one time or another under the yoke of almost every people round about them. They have been, by turns, in bondage to the Canaanites, in bondage to the Philistines, in bondage to the Syrians, in bondage to the Chaldaeans; then again to the Greece-Syrian kings; and now, even at the very moment when this indignant disclaimer is uttered, the signs of a foreign rule, of the domination of the stranger, everywhere met their eye. They bought and sold with Roman money; they paid tribute to a Roman emperor; a Roman governor sat in their judgement hall; a Roman garrison occupied the fortress of their city. And yet, with all this plain before their eyes, brought home to their daily, hourly experience, they angrily put back the promise of Christ, The truth shall make you free, as though it conveyed an insult: How sayest thou, ye shall be made free? We were never in bondage to any man. (Abp. Trench.)
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin
Sin is spiritual slavery
Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. It destroys the power to do right, which is mans true freedom. The effect of vicious habit in diminishing a mans ability to resist temptation is proverbial. But what is habit but a constant repetition of wrong decisions.
The will cannot be forced or ruined from outside. But if we watch the influence upon the will of its own yielding to temptation, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within. Whatever springs from will we are responsible for. The drunkards powerlessness issues from his own inclination and therefore is no excuse. If weakness may excuse, what murderer, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, may not plead it? All wickedness is weakness. Sin is spiritual slavery, if viewed in reference
I. TO MANS SENSE OF OBLIGATION TO BE PERFECTLY HOLY.
1. The obligation to be holy as God is rests upon every rational being, and he is a debtor to this obligation until he has fully met it. Hence even the holiest are conscious of sin, because they are not completely up to this high calling. This sense is as exceeding broad as the commandment, and will not let us off with the performance of a part of our duty. It is also exceeding deep, for it outlives all others. In the hour of death it grows more vivid and painful as all else grows dimmer. A man forgets then whether he has been prosperous or unsuccessful and remembers only that he has been a sinner. It might seem that this sense would be sufficient to overcome sin, and bring man up to the discharge of duty; but experience shows that in proportion as a man hears the voice of conscience, in this particular does be become aware of the bondage of his will.
2. In our careless unawakened state we sin on, just as we live on without being distinctly aware of it. A healthy man does not go about holding his fingers on his wrist, neither does a sinner as he goes about his business think of his transgressions. Yet the pulse beats, and the will transgresses none the less. Though the chains are actually about us they do not gall us. We are alive without the law. But as the Spirit of God awakens the conscience, that sense of the obligation to be perfectly holy starts up and man begins to form an estimate of what has been done in reference to it. Now the commandment comes, shows us what we ought to be and what we are, and we die (Rom_7:9-11). The muscle has been cut by the sword of truth, and the limb drops helpless, and we learn in a most affecting manner that whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin. But suppose after this discovery we endeavour to comply with the obligation: this only renders us more painfully sensible of the truth of the text.
II. TO THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOUL. All those serious impressions and painful anxieties concerning salvation, which require to be followed up by a mighty power from God to prevent their being suppressed again by the love of sin and the world. For though man has fallen into a state of death in sins, yet through the common influences of the Spirit of Grace, and the workings of rational nature, he is at times the subject of aspirations which indicate the heights from which he fell The minds of the greatest of the ancient pagans were the subjects of these aspirations, and they confess their utter inability to realize them. The journals of the missionary disclose the same in modem heathenism. All these phenomena show the rigid bondage of sin. The drunkard in his sober moments longs to be free and resolves never to drink again. But the sin is strong and the appetite that feeds it is in his blood. Temptation comes before the enslaved will. He aspires to resist but will not; and never is he more conscious of being a slave to himself than when he thus ineffectually aspires to be delivered from himself. This applies to all sin. There is no independent and self-realizing power in mere aspiration, and when, under the influence of Gods common grace, a man endeavours to extirpate the inveterate depravity of his heart, he feels his bondage more thoroughly than ever.
III. TO THE FEARS OF THE SOUL.
1. The sinful spirit fears the death of the body, and therefore we are all our lifetime subject to bondage. We know that bodily dissolution can have no effect on the imperishable essence, yet we shrink back from it.
2. The spirit fears that fearful something after death--eternal judgment. We tremble having to give an account of our own actions, and to reap the harvest, the seed of which we have sown.
3. The spirit has an awful dread of eternity. Though this invisible realm is the proper home of the soul, never is the soul stirred to so great depths as when it feels the power of an endless life. Men will labour convulsively day and night for money, power, fame, pleasure; but what is the paroxysm of this activity compared with those throes, when the startled sinner sees the eternal world looming into view.
4. If, now, we view sin in relation to these three great fears we see that it is spiritual slavery. Our terror is no more able to deliver us than our aspirations. The dread that goes down to hell can no more save us than the aspiration that goes up to heaven.
Conclusion:
1. This bondage is self-inflicted, and therefore the way of release is not to throw the burden of it upon God.
2. The way out of it is to accept the method of deliverance afforded by Christ. (Prof. Shedd.)
The progress of the lost soul to destruction
I. Note OF WHOM OUR LORD SPEAKS. He that committeth sin--i.e., he who has become a doer of sin; the habitual, conscious, wilful sinner. He is the bondslave, the absolute thrall, the hopeless subject of an overmastering tyranny. It will help us to obtain a completer view of what this implies if we trace the steps by which the end is reached.
1. We must begin by having a clear idea of what temptation is. It is the suggestion to our mind of the pleasure or good to be got by doing or allowing something which is against the will of God, and so against the perfectness of our own true nature. Such suggestions are innumerable and take their peculiar colour from the temperament of our own mental and bodily constitution. For as there is a special excellence to which we may attain, so there must be, in the perversion of that excellence, a special character of evil to which we are most prone. In the mere entrance of this suggestion there is nothing sinful. Such were east into the mind of our Lord. Sin begins when the mind rests with pleasure upon the evil suggestion, but if this is resisted there is no sin. But when the sweet morsel is rolled under the tongue, the acting of sin has begun, and the next step is near the consent of the will to the suggestion.
2. How the bond is wound around the soul, the contemplation of the progress of sin suggests to us. One impure thought cherished, still more one impure act allowed, is the certain cause of after suggestions of impurity: and so it is of every other sin. The harbouring of anger opens the mind to new suggestions of wrath; the allowance of one wandering thought in prayer, invites the disturbing presence of a crowd of others: the nursing one doubt multiplies after its kind.
3. He who has allowed his spirit to rest on the conscious sweetness of sin has made that indulgence a necessity to him: and then, as this, like all other sweetness, soon palls upon the taste, he has made it needful in order to obtain the same gratification, to yield himself more completely to it, and to seek it in its larger measures and fiercer qualities. And so his taste becomes degraded and his gratifications coarser; until the power of relishing purer pleasures is rapidly becoming extinguished; they seem used up and insipid; and thus he is led to the one step further of consenting to the evil which has miserably become his good. Then indeed the chain is bound about him. For though every indulgence lessens the pleasure of indulging, yet the growing power of habit more than supplies the place of the energy of enjoyment, nay, the pleasure of sin may not only be lessened, but be gone; the chain may even gall him, but he cannot break it.
4. Other bonds besides those of habit are winding themselves around him.
(1) There is from the conscience, commixing continually with pollution, a daily lower ins of the standard of the soul, which makes it with less consciousness of its degradation bow itself to greater evils, until the infirmity is such that it can in no wise lift itself up.
(2) With this growing disorder of the conscience the other faculties sympathize. The will which was once calm, ready, resolute, grows vehement and irresolute, passionate and yet tardy, an uncrowned king, the helpless sport of insolent menials.
5. Even this is not all. For higher powers and greater endowments have been passing from his soul in the sad process of its enchaining; it has been denying its fellowship with Christ, resisting and grieving the Holy Spirit; and as that free Spirit withdraws itself, all true liberty for the soul is lost, and the evil spirit comes in and dwells there, making the slavery complete.
6. All this is true of spiritual sins. The suggestion of doubt--e.g., involves no sin; for into the mind of Jesus was thrown the question, If Thou be the Son of God? But if the suggestion, instead of being cast out, is gloated on; if the pleasant thought is indulged of being a great thinker, and being able to manifest a certain shallow ability by the utterance of petulant flippancy, then assuredly sin enters, and the assent of the soul to that which at first startled or offended it soon follows. Then comes boldness and rudeness of spirit in dealing with heavenly mysteries. The mind becomes darkened, and the eyes blind, and then comes the end of the dungeon and the chain. The lamentations which sometimes break forth from the prison are the saddest to be heard on earth; the voice of the despairing soul crying aloud for its early power of believing, sad echo of this note of warning, He that committeth sin is the servant of sin.
II. THE CHIEF PRACTICAL GUARDS AGAINST THE ENEMY.
1. Guard especially against the beginnings of temptation. Galling as is the end of the sinners captivity, the separate bonds by which it is secured are seldom heavy. The soul is the giant who is being manacled unawares, by the winding round him of a multitude of threads; those painted gossamers which float so brightly in the dewy morning will grow into fetters, and you will lose the power of resisting before you know that it is threatened. Moreover, temptations in their early stages are mostly to little sins, which severally do not alarm the conscience, and thus men grow to sin securely. The snowflakes, with their feathery lightness, choke the highway with an immovable barrier, whilst the giant tree which falls across it, is but the obstruction of an hour. A waterspout bursts, makes a moments inundation, and disappears; whilst the small but numberless drops of rain furnish the deep floods which fill the banks of mighty rivers.
2. Realize your own place in the kingdom of grace. Despair is destruction; and self-trust only despair in its early unsuspected actings. Only in the strength of Gods grace can we resist sin.
3. Seek a living union with Christ. If thou art one with Him, thou canst not be enslaved. But for this, more is needed than profession, or baptism; there must be personal surrender to Christ. He must be the centre round which thy life moves. (Bp. Samuel Wilberforce.)
The servant abideth not in the house forever, but the Son abideth ever
1. Our Lord is speaking of servant and son generically. A son is a natural inalienable part of the family; a slave is not. He may be acquired, sold, given away, set free. There was in Jewish servitude provision against the slaves continuing in the houses forever, at the Jubilee, unless he gave himself to his master, in which case bondage was exchanged for consecration: he was free. But a son is bound to his fathers household by a tie which no distance breaks, and no time wears away.
2. The application of this is not that the servants are the Jews, who were such because of their constrained obedience, and would, therefore, forfeit their national privileges, and be cast out of the house; for in Joh_8:34 the master of the slave is distinctly specified Sin, and therefore cannot be God in this verse.
3. The force of the thought, Slaves sin does not abide in sins house, is that, however hard the bondage of sin, the slave is not in his true home, nor incorporated hopelessly into his taskmasters family.
4. Into the midst of this tyrants household there has come one who is a Son, and abides forever in the household of God, even Christ. Sins house, in so far as that expression denotes this fair world, belongs to God, and the tyranny is usurpation. Into the midst of human society He comes who is a Son forever, and the emancipation He effects is adoption.
I. THE POSSIBLE ENDING OF THE TYRANNY OF SIN. A slave abides not in the house forever. All the world has dimly hoped that it was so; but no man has been sure of it, apart from revelation. Christ has shown that sin is not natural to man, as God meant him to be, howsoever it may have twined around his life.
1. We see that from our own constitution. Look at these minds of ours, originating thoughts, born for immortality; these hearts with their rich treasures of transcendent affections; these wills so weak, yet so strong, craving for authority, and yet striving to be a law unto themselves; these consciences so sensitive and yet so dull, waking up only when the evil is done, voices which have no means of getting their behests obeyed, and yet are the echo of the supreme Lawgivers voice; the manifest disproportion between what we are, and might, and ought to be; and then say whether the universal condition of sinfulness is not unnatural, a fungus, not a true growth.
2. Then there is no such relation between a sinner and his sin as that deliverance should be impossible. It must be possible to part them, and to leave the man stronger for the loss of what made him weak. We may be brought to our true home in our Fathers house. Howsoever the fetters may have galled and mortified the limbs they may be struck off.
3. Men have always cherished these convictions, and in spite of history and experience. They have tried to set themselves free, and their attempts have come to nothing--and yet after all failures this hope has sprung immortal. True, we cannot effect the deliverance. It is like some cancer--a blood disease. We may pare and cut away the rotting flesh--the single manifestations of evil we can do something to reduce; but a deeper surgery is needed. Sin is not our personality, and so we may have it removed and live, but sin has become so entangled with ourselves that we cannot undo it. The demoniac, who, in his confused consciousness, did not know which was devil and which man--my name is legion, for we are many--could not shake off the demon. But the voice that said Come out of him has power still.
II. THE ACTUAL DELIVERER. The Son abideth ever, while a general statement, has a specific reference to our Lord, and if so the two houses must be the same, or at least the Son, who is ever in His Fathers house, must yet be in the midst of the bondsmen in the dark fortress of the tyrant. That is but a figurative way of putting the necessity that our freedom must come from outside humanity, and yet be diffused from a source within. Unless it come from above it will not be able to lift us, but unless it be on our level we shall not be able to grasp it. The Deliverer must Himself be free, therefore must be removed from the fatal continuity of evil; but he must be a sharer in their condition whom He would set free. These contradictory requirements meet in Him who has been anointed to proclaim liberty to the captives (Joh_3:13). Two things are required, that the Deliverer should be the Son of God, and that He should be the Son forever Gal_4:4-5). We have to trust to a living Saviour who is as near the latest generations as to the first. This man because he continueth ever is able to save to the uttermost.
III. THE ABIDING SONSHIP WHICH CONSTITUTES THE SLAVES EMANCIPATION. The process of deliverance is the transfer from the one household to the other. We are set free from our bondage when through Christ we receive the adoption, and cry, Abba! Father! This filial spirit, the spirit of life which was in Christ Jesus, makes us free from the law of sin and death. Conclusion: There are but two conditions in which we can stand--slaves of sin or sons of God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The son and the slave contrasted
This contrast between the position of the slave, who is a chattel that maybe bought or bartered or sold, and has no affinity with the members of the house, and no permanent right in it; and the son, in whose veins is the masters blood, and who is heir of all things, is obvious and general; but here, again, the present meaning is special. They claim to be the seed of Abraham. Did they remember the history of Isaac and Ishmael? The son of the freewoman abideth in the house; the son of the bondmaid is cast out. (Archdeacon Watkins.)
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.--In Rome, and in other ancient communities, it was no unusual occurrence for a son, on coming into his inheritance, to set free the slaves who had been born in the house. The form of setting a slave free was very picturesque. The master, the slave, and some third person, appeared before one of the higher magistrates. This third person touched the slaves head, saying, as he did so, I claim that this man is free. The master then took hold of the slave, turned him around, and said: I concede that this man is free. The slave was then pronounced free by the magistrate, and thenceforth he was free indeed. Man being a slave, and not having any permanent authority--not abiding in the house forever--cannot endow others with freedom that endures to eternity; but that freedom the Son can give, who abideth in the house forever with the Father. (S. S. Times.)
The English slave; or, the man who was afraid of his neighbours
A common objection of workingmen to going to church is that they will be brought into subjection to the priesthood. They stay away therefore to protect their freedom. Now let us look at
I. THE ENGLISH SLAVE WHO GOES TO CHURCH. He is a man who dares not think for himself, or dares not say what he thinks.
1. No one can deny that some forms of religion frighten people from the use of their faculties on religious subjects; hence they give themselves over to a priesthood who tell them how they must and how they must not think. And so wherever we find religious teachers organized into a priesthood, we find a mighty instrument for the enslavement of the mind. It was so of old. Whenever there was an organized national priesthood, the nation lost its senses, and became slaves to caste, as in Egypt and India; but wherever the priests of the different temples had no organic connection, or the monarch was priest, as in Greece, and Rome, there the people retained some of their freedom. The same holds good in England today. In proportion as priests congregate in councils, unchecked by the laity, to issue decrees, candid thought is extinguished. But to what a miserable condition is the man reduced whose soul is a sort of parrot, kept by a priest to repeat the phrases authority has taught him.
2. But there are slaves who are not under the thumb of the priesthood, but dare not think or speak for themselves for fear of their congregation or party. Thus it is that so many persons never grow wiser. In order to grow wiser you must drop some old opinion or form some new one; and to do either of these you must defy the world and use your faculties without asking anyones leave. And this is what many are not prepared to do, because it might involve loss of repute, friends or position.
3. Now, whatever they may profess, neither the priest or party ridden are true worshippers of God. True worship is based on personal conviction--In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
II. THE ENGLISH SLAVE WHO DOES NOT GO TO CHURCH. The influence of men upon each other is at its maximum where there is the closest association and the freest speech. This is the case among the working classes. Here, therefore, it requires most courage for a man to stand on his own feet and be true to his own conscience. And there is a large proportion of skilled artizans who are not strong minded enough to resist the dictation of their leaders or equals. Suppose a man who works in a large factory finds himself in the midst of a system of drinking and conversation which disgusts his better nature, and where his conscience commands him not to go with this multitude to do evil, but to assert his manhood; does every skilled workman obey that inward voice? Is it not notorious that thousands dare not? And is it not as bad to be in slavery to bad people as to good? Or if an intelligent workman finds himself surrounded by men who have resolved that the clumsy and idle shall be paid at the same rate as the industrious and skilful, and who in his heart abhors this part of the system, has he the courage to say so and to act accordingly? There is in some parts a reign of terrorism, so that few would dare to say that the present exaggerated system of combination and intimidation in strikes is crushing the spirit of personal liberty, and the chivalrous, independent character of the old English artificer. Now such, notwithstanding all their other excellencies, are the last who ought to point to the enslavement of mens minds in the churches. The secret of national greatness and dignity is the setting free of thought, labour, trade, capital. Combine voluntarily for trade purpose as much as you please, but intimidate no man.
III. THE TRUE METHOD OF BECOMING FREE.
1. Slavery requires two parties--the tyrant who domineers, and the slave who submits. The true remedy therefore is to teach men not to submit to unlawful authority; and this is what Christ came to do. All external slavery proceeds from internal. When men dare to think and speak honestly, and act out their convictions, the tyrants occupation is gone. To set free the thinking power, therefore, is the secret of all other liberties. But this is enslaved. What is freedom? To have the proper use of ones powers and faculties. The condition of the free action of the understanding is that the animal appetites be restrained within certain limits. If a man give way to his thirst for drink, then his intellect ceases to act freely, and thus he is a slave. And so with the other passions.
2. Christ offers to set us free.
(1) By setting before us the only Being who has a right to control our thoughts, and by demanding that we should fear Him and no one else. Out of this springs all true freedom. This is what gave boldness to the early Christians. We ought to obey God rather than man.
(2) By supplying the only adequate motive--love to God and man. (E. White.)
The spiritual slavery of man
I. THE AFFECTING REPRESENTATION WHICH GODS WORD GIVES OF MEN AS SINNERS. The text goes upon the supposition that freedom is required. The idea of bondage represents
1. Our relation to God as sinners. We have violated the law, which consequently has its hand upon us. We are therefore convicted criminals, shut up until the judgment shall be executed.
2. Our moral condition, which is under the control of diabolical powers who reign in the children of disobedience. This spiritual slavery may differ much. There are some who have practised upon them, and who practise on others, a splendid imposition. Their chains are gilded. Their tyrants put on the appearance of virtue. But others are slaves to the lowest and most degrading appetites.
II. SCRIPTURE GIVES US A CONTRAST--LIBERTY.
1. With respect to our relation to God. The law takes off its hand, the man is loosened, and he comes forth to the liberty of the child of God, forgiven, justified.
2. With respect to the bondage of the devil. As the man once gave up his members, servants of unrighteousness, he now yields himself to God as a servant of holiness.
III. HOW THIS EMANCIPATION IS EFFECTED. It is evidently of such a nature that it could not effect itself. Observe that bondage may be a matter of justice or of usurpation. Then freedom in the former case must be a matter of righteous arrangement, in the latter of force.
1. With respect to bondage as a matter of justice, the case of the sinner in relation to God, the law has a righteous demand on the sinner, for it is holy and good and cannot be violated. Hence we find there is a righteous arrangement--a consideration, a ransom--the atoning death of Christ. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, etc.
2. With respect to the usurpation. Sin and Satan are usurpers. Man was made for God, not for sin; for truth, not for error. Hence there is a positive operation of mind. God comes down upon a mans heart by the power of His Spirit and renews him.
3. All this is accomplished in consistency with our rational nature. There is something to be observed in the mind of man. The ransom being paid, the mind of man must be brought to harmonize with the mind of God. There are three stages in the process of delivery from the bondage which is matter of justice.
(1) The offended Moral Governor admitting an arrangement at all; it is matter of grace entirely.
(2) This arrangement being effected is acknowledged and accepted by God, and then published to the individuals concerned, that they may know that their loss will henceforth be their own.
(3) Repentance, and faith in the means, thus harmonizing with the arrangement of God. But this faith which justifies also sanctifies. Faith leads to the acceptance of the proffered Deliverer, who frees us from the bondage of corruption.
IV. THE PERFECTION AND REALITY OF THE GOSPEL--free indeed.
1. Freedom from bondage by ransom is complete in every sense.
2. Freedom by power brings the highest liberty of a rational and moral nature.
3. When God gives the one He always gives the other. You may emancipate the slave, but you cannot give him the virtues of a freeman, but when God sets you free He operates on the character, and thus we are free indeed.
V. PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS.
1. We rejoice in the liberty of the slave, and we do well, but how dreadful to think that many who do this are slaves themselves. The slave often fixed his hope on death, which would terminate his agony, but if you die in slavery it will continue forever.
2. Let your minds be affected by the splendour of that ransom which has been paid for your freedom. We talk about the twenty millions that we gave for the liberty of the slave, but Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, etc.
3. If you profess to be the subjects of Gods delivering mercy, walk worthy of your profession. Ye are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh.
4. Rejoice in that which is to come.
(1) The liberating kingdom of Christ.
(2) The deliverance of the whole creation from bondage. (T. Binney.)
The Great Liberator
Blessed is that word free, and blessed He who lives to make men so. Political slavery is an intolerable evil, and blessed the man who hurls down the despot and gives men their true rights. But men may have political liberty and yet be slaves, for there is religious bondage, and he who cringes before the priest is a slave. Blessed are our eyes that see the light of gospel liberty, and are no longer immured in Popish darkness. Yet a man may be delivered from the bond of superstition only to become a slave to his own lusts. He only is a free man who is master of himself by the grace of God.
I. FREEDOM IS POSSIBLE. The Son of God can make the prisoner free.
1. Negatively.
(1) From past guilt which weighs so heavily upon many--for His blood cleanseth from all sin.
(2) From the punishment of sin, the fear of which is grievous bondage, for He has borne it in our place,
(3) From the power of sin, the same blood which purifies enables a man to overcome. They in heaven washed their robes and overcame through the blood of the Lamb.
(4) From the fear of death, which keeps many all their lifetime subject to bondage. When sin is pardoned the law is satisfied, and the strength of sin therefore broken and the sting taken out of death. If we believe in Christ we shall fall asleep, but never die.
2. Positively. We are not only free from, but free to. When persons receive the freedom of a city certain privileges are bestowed. To be made free by Christ is to be free to call oneself Gods child, to claim His protection and blessing, to sit at His table, to enter His Church, and at last to be free of the New Jerusalem.
II. BEWARE OF FALSE LIBERTY. Every good thing is imitated by Satan. There is
1. Antinomian liberty. I am not under the law, therefore I may do as I like. A blessed truth followed by an atrocious inference. To be under the law is to give God the service of a slave who fears the lash, but to be under grace is to serve God out of pure love.
2. National professional freedom, based upon baptism, and regular attendance at religious ordinances, and performance of outward religious duties. But a good many people dream that they are what they are not. Christ must have come and shown you your slavery, and you must have found through Him the way of escape or you are enslaved.
3. The liberty of natural self-righteousness and the power of the flesh.
III. TRUE FREEDOM COMES TO US THROUGH HIM WHO IS IN THE HIGHEST SENSE THE SON. No man gets free but as he comes to Christ; otherwise he will only rivet on his fetters. This liberty
1. Is righteously bestowed. Christ has the right to make men free.
2. Was dearly purchased. Christ speaks it by His power, but He bought it by His blood. He makes free, but by His own bonds.
3. Is freely given. Jesus asks nothing of us for it. He saves sinners just as they are.
4. Is instantaneously received. The captive has often to pass through many doors--but the moment we believe we are free, although we may have been fettered at ten thousand points.
5. Is done forever. When Christ sets free no chains can bind again.
IV. ARE WE FREE? If so, then
1. We have changed our lodging place, for the slave and the Son sleep not in the same room. The things which satisfied the servant will not satisfy the Son.
2. We live not as we used to do. We go not to slaves work, to toil and sweat to earn the wages of sin; but now as a Son serveth His Father we do Sons work.
3. We strive to set others free; if we have no zeal for the emancipation of others we are slaves still.
4. We hate all sorts of chains, all kinds of sin, and will never willingly put on the fetters any more. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Liberty
Free indeed! Really free! Then there must be an unreal, imaginary freedom.
1. A whole family or nation in bondage is a sad sight, but it is sadder if their eyes are out, so that they fondly dream themselves free.
2. The most melancholy thing in a madhouse is the poor patient who weaves a crown of rags and gives orders as a king, casting all the while stolen and startled glances on the iron bars, and trembling under the keepers glance.
3. You have lain down wearily to sleep, and dreamt that you soared in the upper air; but when you awoke your limbs were stiffer and heavier. Flying was a dream; the cold reality was only a painful dragging of benumbed limbs.
4. In literary and political circles liberty is plentiful as a profession, but scanty as a power. Independence is frequently a term of sarcasm when men desire to make sport of bondage.
5. But the cases are most numerous of men loudly boasting of their liberty, while vice, like a possessing spirit rules in the heart, and lashes to a degrading task. Apart from Christ, redemption and the Spirits renewal, the struggles of a sinful race to shake off their bonds are like those of Samson when his locks were shorn and his eyes put out, with the Philistines making sport.
6. The Jews took it ill that Jesus should propose to make them free. We were never in bondage, and yet the Romans held them in their grip.
7. Our inherited and actual bondage has two sides, corresponding to the two sides in Christs liberty. Spiritual slavery is guilt on the conscience and rebellion in the will. Like the relation between perpendicular pressure and horizontal motion is the relation between these two. Sin and the wrath it deserves constitute the dead weight which presses the spirit down, and thus it cannot go forward in duty. When Gods anger is removed we yield ourselves willing instruments of His righteousness. When the Son, by redeeming us from the guilt and power of sin, has made us free, we are free indeed.
I. THE MAIN ELEMENT OF THE BONDAGE IS GUILT AND APPREHENSION OF JUDGMENT.
1. The book in which our debt is registered lies far above, out of our sight; but the charge against a man is led by an electric wire from Gods secret book right into the mans own bosom, disturbing his rest and blighting all his joys. Conscience is a mysterious, susceptible instrument, bringing the man in close and mysterious connection with the great white throne and the living God. The pain is in practice deadened more or less by a hardening of the instrument, so that it loses a measure of its susceptibility; but mysterious beatings sometimes thrill through all its searings and compel the sinner to realize the presence of the living God.
2. It is natural that the slave, wearied of such inspection, should cast about for means of becoming free. To quench this burning of the unclean conscience all the bloody sacrifices of the heathen were offered, all the efforts of self-righteousness are directed. They are so many blows to sever the connecting rod, so that the Judges anger may not be felt; but there is no peace to the wicked.
3. But a real liberty is possible. The Son can open the seven-sealed book and blot out the reckoning: The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. The Mediator has placed Himself in the line of communication between the Judge and the culprit. The frown of justice due to sin is changed into love as it passes through the Mediator, no longer a consuming fire, but the light of life. On the other side, my sins are absorbed in the suffering Saviour as they pass, and His righteousness ascends as mine and for me.
II. THERE IS A FALSE FREEDOM WITH WHICH MEN DELUDE THEMSELVES AND A REAL FREEDOM WHICH CHRIST BESTOWS UPON HIS OWN.
1. The essence of slavery lies in the terror of the master, that sits like a stone upon the heart. After the slave has accomplished his task, something occurs that he ought to have done, and he asks tremblingly, What lack I yet? There may be a good deal of work without reconciliation, but there is no liberty in it and no love. It is the heavy weight of unforgiven sin that prevents a man bounding fleetly on the errands of his Lord. When condemnation is taken away obedience begins (Psa_116:16).
2. Those who are strangers to the liberty of dear children misunderstand this obedience. Here is a man who lives for pleasure. He is good-natured, and if he would not suffer much to promote the happiness of others he would not injure them. He knows another who denies himself, and prosecutes some difficult line of benevolence, and cannot understand him. If the Christian were morose and gloomy he could explain his conduct, but he is precisely the reverse. He counts that liberty which the Christian counts bondage, and that bondage which the Christian counts liberty. But the disciple of Christ has changed, and therefore cannot be understood: he has been made willing in the day of Gods power, which the worldling has never felt. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
True liberty
It is impossible to mistake the charm and power which attach to the word liberty. There is something in our nature which at once responds to it. It appeals to sympathies which are universal and profound. Liberty is itself, in one particular sense, the excellence of man as man, i.e., of man as endowed with a free will. As man compares himself with the inanimate creation and the lower animals he knows that he is what they are not. The sense of this prerogative is the ground of human self-respect. To attempt to crush the exercise of this endowment is regarded, as a crime against human nature, while the undertaking to strengthen its vigour and enlarge its scope appeals to mans profound desire to make the best of that which is his central self. But when in this connection we use the word two different things are often intended. The liberty to choose between good and evil, with an existing inclination in the direction of evil is one thing; the true moral liberty of man is another. Mans true liberty may be described as the unimpeded movement of his will towards God; but the only liberty with which many speakers and writers trouble themselves is a liberty to choose between good and evil, as though we could not conceive of a liberty which did not include the choice of evil--as though the power of choosing evil was an integral element of real human liberty. Let us rid ourselves of this miserable misconception. True liberty is secured when the will moves freely within its true element, which is moral good. Moral good is to the human will what the air is to the bird, what water is to the fish. Bird and fish have freedom enough in their respective elements. Water is death to the bird as air is death to the fish. A bird can sometimes drown itself; a fish can leap out of the water and die upon the bank; but the liberty of fish and bird is sufficiently complete without this added capacity for self-destruction. And so it is with man. Moral good, the moral law of God, is the element within which the human will may safely find room for its utmost capacities of healthful exercise and invigoration; and when a man takes it into his head that his freedom is incomplete if it does not include a license to do wrong, he is in a fair way to precipitate himself out of his true vital element, to the enslavement and ruin of his will. Every Christian will understand this. He knows that he would gain nothing in the way of moral freedom by a murder or a lie. He knows that our Lord, who did no sin, was not, therefore, other than morally free, since it was His freedom in giving Himself to death, which is the essence of His self-sacrifice for the sins of the world. Nay, a Christian knows, too, that God could not choose evil without doing violence to His essential nature. But is God, therefore, without moral freedom? And does it not follow that the more closely man approaches the holiness of God, the more closely does he approach to the true idea of liberty. (Canon Liddon.)
The liberty of believers
I. WHAT BELIEVERS ARE NOT FREED FROM IN THIS WORLD.
1. From obedience to the moral law. It is true that we are not under it as a covenant for justification, but we are still under it as a rule for direction. Its matter is as unchangeable as the nature of good and evil is (Mat_5:17-18). Its precepts are still urged under the gospel to enforce duties Eph_6:12). It is therefore a vain distinction of the Libertines that it binds us as creatures, not as Christians; the unregenerate part, but not the regenerate. But this is a sure truth that they who are freed from its penalties are still under its precepts, and though no more under its curse, Christians are still under its conduct. The law sends us to Christ to be justified, Christ sends us to the law to be regulated (Psa_119:4-5).
2. From the temptations and assaults of Satan. Even those who are freed from his dominion are not free from his molestation (Rom_16:20; 2Co_12:7). Though he cannot kill them, he can and does afflict them (Eph_6:16).
3. From the motions of indwelling sin (Rom_7:21-24). Corruptions, like Canaanites, are still left to be thorns in the side.
4. From inward troubles and exercises on account of sin (Job_7:19;Psa_88:14; Psa_88:16; Psa_38:1-11).
5. From the rods of affliction. God in giving us liberty does not abridge His Psa_89:32). All Gods children are made free, yet what son is there that his father chasteneth not (Heb_12:8). Exemption from affliction is rather the mark of a slave.
6. From the stroke of death, though they are freed from its sting Rom_8:10).
II. WHAT THAT BONDAGE IS FROM WHICH EVERY BELIEVER IS FREED BY CHRIST.
1. From the rigour and curse of the law, which is replaced by the gentle and easy yoke of Christ (Mat_11:28). The law required perfect working under the pain of a curse (Gal_3:10), accepted of no short endeavours and no repentance, gave no strength. But now strength is Php_4:13), sincerity is reckoned perfection (Job_1:1), duty becomes delight, and failings hinder not acceptance.
2. From the guilt of sin. It may trouble, but it cannot condemn them Rom_8:33), the handwriting against them is cancelled Col_2:14).
3. From the dominion of sin (Rom_6:14; Rom_8:2).
4. From the power of Satan (Luk_11:21-22).
(1) By price. The blood of Christ purchases believers out of the hand of justice by satisfying the law for them, which being done, Satans authority fails of course, as the power of a jailer over the prisoner when he has a legal discharge (Heb_2:14).
(2) By power (Act_26:18; 2Co_10:5; Col_2:15).
5. From the poisonous sting and hurt of death (1Co_15:55-56). Where there is no hurt there should be no horror.
III. WHAT KIND OF FREEDOM THAT IS WHICH COMMENCES UPON BELIEVING. There are two kinds of liberty.
1. Civil, which belongs not to the present business. Believers are not freed from the duties they owe to their superiors, whether servants Eph_6:5) or citizens (Rom_13:4).
2. Spiritual. That which believers have now is but a beginning--they are free only in part--but it is growing every day and will be complete at last.
IV. THE EXCELLENCY OF THIS STATE OF SPIRITUAL FREEDOM.
1. It is a wonderful liberty never enough to be admired.
(1) We owed God more than we could pay.
(2) We were in the possession of the strong man, armed.
(3) We were bound with many chains--the understanding with ignorance, the will with obstinacy, the heart with hardness, the affections with bewitching vanities. For such to be set at liberty is a wonder of wonders.
2. It is a peculiar freedom--one which few obtain, the great multitude abiding still in bondage (2Co_4:4).
3. A liberty dearly purchased. What the captain said (Act_22:28) may be much more said of ours (1Pe_1:18).
4. A growing and increasing liberty (Rom_13:11).
5. A comfortable freedom (1Co_7:22). It ranks the slave above the noble.
6. Perpetual and final (Act_26:18). Improvement.
1. How rational is the joy of Christians above the joy of all others in the Psa_126:1-2; Luk_15:24).
2. How unreasonable and inexcusable the sin of apostasy. Will a delivered captive return to his shackles (Mat_12:44-45).
3. How well-becoming is a free spirit in believers to their state of liberty.
4. Let no man wonder at the opposition of Satan to the preaching of the gospel (Act_26:18).
5. How careful should Christians be to maintain their spiritual liberty Gal_5:1; 2Co_1:24).
6. Let Satans captives be encouraged to come to Christ. (J. Flavel.)
Only in the Son does human nature come to liberty, to the free use of all its powers to the realization of all its privileges, to the full satisfaction of all its desires Christ gives us freedom from sin.
I. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN UNBELIEF.
1. Peter says of some, they cannot see afar off. They are short-sighted, they can only see what is close to them: food on the table, a five-pound note, title deeds, the earth and the stars, but they cannot see the highest universe, its grandeurs, its treasures, its delights. Thousands of men apparently free are really the poorest of slaves--the slaves of the senses. Some of these look round and think it a big cage, but the physical is only a cage, ample as it may seem. Many contrive to make themselves comfortable in their captivity; they trim their feathers, peek their sugar, sing their song, yet is the earthly life at its best but a captivity. It is only when man emerges into the spiritual element that he gets into the sky, stretches his wings, and tastes the pleasures for which he was born.
2. The truth as it is in Jesus makes us free from the tyranny of the senses; it opens our eyes and causes us to see the world behind the world, the sun behind the sun; it strengthens us that those heavenly places become accessible to us. Oh! how the walls of the prison house of sense would close in upon us quite if it were not for Jesus Christ. How the Lords Prayer brings us into the full presence of the spiritual universe--the Divine Father, the Divine kingdom, the Divine will, the Divine grace, the Divine and everlasting goal! With that prayer realized in our heart, we feel there is something more than physiology, mechanism, and victuals; we have dropped the fetters of sense, we have got our feet out of the clogging bird lime of earthliness, we are free, gloriously free, like Tennysons eagle ringed round with the azure sky!
3. We hear much in these days about free thought, but free thought in the truest, noblest sense is realized only in Jesus Christ. The bondage of thought is the tyranny of materialism. Christ frees us from the most terrible illusions of all, the illusions of time and sense, and causes us to see that real universe, that glorious city of God of which this earth is but the shadow.
II. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN DISOBEDIENCE.
1. Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin. Sin makes slaves of us in a variety of practical irregularities. Some of these are coarser, some more refined, but how impossible thousands find it to shake off the tyranny of those evil habits which have established themselves through years! One man is the victim of vanity, another of covetousness, another of ambition, another of appetite. A mans will can do much, but it sadly fails here. You will see sometimes a performer at a fair with an electric machine. At length a bumpkin comes up, and at the invitation of the professor smilingly seizes the handles. In a moment the poor fellow is convulsed, dances in pain, and cries for deliverance. Why does he not drop the thing? He cannot. Does not the crowd help? No; the crowd grins--the crowd always grins. The poor simpleton is at the mercy of the operator, and he goes on grinding. So it is today with thousands of men in sin; they are ashamed of themselves, horrified at themselves, filled full of torment and remorse; but they are powerless under the mysterious spell, and do again and again the thing they execrate.
2. But here again Christ can make you free indeed. Some of you think you will have to be buried in your fetters. Let me assure you Christ, by His mighty truth, and love, and grace, can strengthen you to burst these miserable bonds as Samson burst the green withes wherewith he was bound. Where is the proof? I will give you the best logical proof in the world--thousands of living men and women who have attained full mastery by the spirit of Christ. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God?…And such were some of you, etc.
III. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN LUST.
1. Christ does not repeal the moral law. He does not accommodate it to our weakness; on the contrary, He brings out more fully its deep, wide meaning, making it more imperative than ever. One of our sceptical writers tells us that when she got rid of Christianity she felt she emerged on the broad breezy common of nature. Well, we are bound to accept her testimony. But, is there anything so very desirable about breezy commons? I never understood that the best things grew there; ferns and furze bushes are there, brambles, and crab apples; but the ripe orchards, the golden corn, the purple clusters, the richest blooms and blossoms, these are not found on breezy commons. I never understood that breezy commons were very desirable places to live on. And I never understood that the picturesque parties who usually pitch their tents and live on breezy commons constitute the cream of the worlds population. There was far more truth in that ladys words than she suspected. To get rid of Christianity, its laws, its hopes, its fears, its inspirations, its reverence and love, is to emerge on a breezy common, all the best things lost forever. If our countrymen are to repudiate Christ, our country will emerge on that breezy common, and we shall dwell there as our Druidical fathers did before us. It has taken us more than a millennium to get off that breezy common, and find the goodly heritage of our present civilization, and every step of our progress has been through self-denial, self-limitation, renunciation, subordination, obedience. We have nothing to gain by license.
2. Christ does not give us liberty by modifying the law to suit our weakness. He destroys in us the element of lust or irregular desire. We find in ourselves what the theologian calls our fallen self, what the evolutionist calls our animal self, and this contradicts our best reason, and brings us into bondage. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, etc. A man is a real slave when he is a slave at heart, when he cannot follow out delightfully the noble impulses and aspirations of his nature, and such slaves are we all by birth. Christ makes us free indeed by putting Gods laws into our heart and writing them in our mind; by filling us with high, pure, bright, strong, expansive feeling; by making us to say with Himself, in His strength, I delight to do Thy will O God. This is the true liberty, to will the good, to delight in it, to follow it passionately, to find our only heaven in it. And this is the freedom wherewith Christ maketh free.
IV. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN FEAR.
1. The slave serves in fear. Now Christ, the Son, makes us sons, and, filling our heart with love to our heavenly Father, makes all lifes duty light. In the power of a sublime love we accomplish the loftiest law, and taste the utmost freedom. Science tells us that the atmosphere presses upon us to the extent of something like fifteen pounds to the square inch, and an average sized man carries about with him something like fifteen tons weight. But we feel the atmosphere no burden--it is a pleasure to breathe, to feel it around us; light as air is a proverb. Why is this? The inward pressure of gases in our body is equal to the external weight, so we suffer no inconvenience--the air is no burden, it is life, joy, to all healthy organizations. So, as John shows, when we love God His commandments are not grievous. The inward pressure, joy, power, hope, are equal to every exaction of the outward law, and so far from the commandment being a burden to us, it is a delight and glory.
2. And then, as to the future, sin fills us with fear. As Christ shows us in this place, sin disinherits us. The slave has no permanent place in the household. And so we look forward with dismal apprehension. We are all our lifetime subject to the fear of death. Here Christ, by making us sons, changes fear to hope, and so gives us precious liberty. The sting of death is sin, etc. (W. L. Watkinson.)
Ye shall be free indeed
or in reality:--The word is not the same as in Joh_8:31. The Jews claimed political freedom, but they were in reality thesubjects of Rome. They claimed religious freedom, but they were in reality slaves to the letter. They claimed moral freedom, but they were in reality the bondmen of sin. The freedom which the Son proclaimed was in reality freedom, for it was the freedom of their true life, delivered from the thraldom of sin and brought into union with God. For the spirit of man, that in knowledge of the truth revealed through the Son can contemplate the Father and the eternal home, there is a real freedom that no power can restrain. All through this context the thoughts pass unbidden to the teaching of St. Paul, the great apostle of freedom. There could be no fuller illustration of the words than is furnished by his life. He, like St. Peter and St. John (Rom_1:1; 2Pe_1:1; Rev_1:1), had learned to regard himself as a bondservant, but it was of Christ, whose service is perfect freedom. We feel, as we think of him in bonds before Agrippa, or as a prisoner at Rome, that he is more truly free than he himself was when armed with authority to bind men and women because they were Christians. The chains that bind the body cannot bind the spirit whose chains have been loosed. (Archdeacon Watkins.)
The method of Christian freedom
A ship outward bound has struck on a sunken rock ere she has well cleared out of the harbour. There she lies in the water, a mile from land, with the ocean all clear before her from that spot to her journeys end; but she moves not. What will make her move? The mechanical resources of our time could bring an enormous accumulation of force to bear upon her, but under all its pressure she will remain stationary. If you increase the dragging power beyond a certain point, you will wrench her asunder limb from limb, but you will not win her forward on her voyage. No; not this way--not by any such method can the ship be set free to prosecute her voyage. How, then? Let the tide rise, and the ship with it: now you may heave off your hawsers and send home your steamers. Hoist the sail, and the ship will herself move away like a bird on the wing. It is thus that a soul may be set free to bound forward on the path of obedience. Dragging will not do it. A soul cleaving to the dust is like a ship aground--it cannot go forward until it be lifted up; but when it is lifted up, it will go forward without any violent drawing. Further: the soul cleaving to the dust is lifted, as the ship was, by a secret but mighty attraction in the far-off heaven. Elevated by a winning from above, it courses over life with freedom. I will run in the way of Thy commandments, when Thou hast enlarged my heart. (W. Arnot.)
Freedom aided by God
Three hundred years ago, in Holland, about one million of people stood for Protestantism and freedom in opposition to the mightiest empire of that age, whose banners the Pope had blessed. William, the Prince of Orange, a man who feared God, was the champion of the righteous cause. In the heat of the struggle, when the young republic seemed about to be overwhelmed, William received a missive from one of his generals, then in command of an important post, inquiring, among other things, if he had succeeded in effecting a treaty with any foreign power, as France or England, such as would secure aid. His reply was, You ask me if I have made a treaty for aid with any great foreign power; and I answer, that, before I undertook the cause of the oppressed Christians in these provinces, I made a close alliance with the King of kings; and I doubt not that He will give us the victory. And so it proved.
Freedom and responsibility
Every man because he is free has the responsibility laid upon him by the hand of God of using His freedom in finding out the truth of duty, the obligations of conduct, the conditions of character. It is not enough to reject the authority of the Church; it is not enough to reject the authority of the minister; it is not enough to rail at the past; it is not enough to separate yourself from sects. You are to exercise this prerogative of liberty, not for the sake of forming systematic views, but for the sake of so shaping your life as to prepare yourselves for your eternal destiny. I lay that responsibility upon your liberty. Use, then, your liberty of judgment and conscience, but in Gods name I enjoin you to use it for your salvation. (H. W. Beecher.)
Bondage and deliverance
Take your stand on the margin of the ocean, on the western coast of this island, where the shore is a bold rugged rock, and when a long blue ground swell is rolling towards the land. I know not any aspect of merely inanimate nature that tends so strongly to make ones heart sad. I have stood and gazed upon it until I was beguiled into a painfully tender sympathy with a mute struggling captive. Slowly, meekly, but withal mightily, the sea wave comes on in long, regular array, and striking with its extended front at all points simultaneously against the pitiless rock, is broken into white fragments and thrown on its back all thrilling and hissing with expiring agony. Sullen and sore the broken remnants of the first rank steal away to the rear, and hide themselves in the capacious bosom of the mother sea. Again, you perceive another long blue wave gathering its strength at a distance; with gloomy, unhopeful brow, as if warned by the fate of its predecessor, and hurried onward to its own, it rushes forward and delivers another assault against the rocky shore. It shares the fortune of the last. Again, and yet again, the water wearily gathers up its huge bulk, and again strongly but despairingly launches itself upon its prison walls, to be again broken and thrown back in utter discomfiture. You weep for the great helpless prisoner, who cannot weep for himself year after year, century after century, era after era, that prisoner toils and strikes upon the walls of his prison, but never once succeeds in clearing the barrier and flowing across the continent free. That mighty creature, with its sublime strength, and dumb, patient, unceasing labour, never succeeds in breaking its bonds--never leaps into liberty. Here you find a picture, such as no artist could ever make, of a sinner, or a worldful of sinners in the aggregate, as they lie in their prison, ceaselessly striving for enlargement, but never attaining it. The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest. And can this water never get freedom? Is it doomed to lie weltering forever in its prison? Cannot the prisoner by any means be ever set free? The captive may be set at liberty; the captive is set at liberty day by day. Above the firmament are waters, as well as in the hollow which constitutes the oceans bed. They are higher up--nearer heaven--as you see, these aerial waters; but being high in heaven, they are therefore free to move across the earth. Nothing conveys a more lively idea of quick, soft, unimpeded motion, than a flying cloud. Here is none of the effort visible even in the flight of birds. Absolutely free they are; and sweetly swiftly do the free run on the errands of their Lord. In this respect there is a sublime contrast between these waters that have been made free and those that are still enslaved--held down by their own dead weight within their prison walls. It is thus that human spirits advance in fleet, gladsome obedience, when the weight is lifted off, and they are permitted to rise. It is when you are raised up into favour that you can go onward to serve. O Lord, truly I am Thy servant. That is a great attainment, David; how did you reach it? Hear him give the reason: Thou hast loosed my bonds (Psa_116:16). (W. Arnot, D. D.)
Spiritual liberty
What a thrifty, robust plant is the potato when out in the field it grows beneath the sun! Its leaf so coarse and green, its stem so stout and succulent, it is a pleasure to look upon a thing which seems so to take hold of all the elements of life. But when it has sprouted in the cellar, which has but one north window, half closed, it is a poor, cadaverous, etiolated, melancholy vine, growing up to that little flicker of light; sickly, blanched, and brittle. Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful. (H. W. Beecher.)
Glorious liberty
What a difference must a Christian and a minister feel, between the trammels of some systems of divinity and the advantage of Scripture freedom, the glorious liberty of the sons of God. The one is the horse standing in the street in harness, feeding indeed, but on the contents of a bag tossed up and down; the other, the same animal in a large, fine meadow, where he lies down in green pastures, and feeds beside the still waters. (W. Jay.)
Freeing the slave
In early British times the ceremony of freeing slaves was very striking. They were usually set free before the altar or in the church porch, and the gospel book bore written on its margins the record of their emancipation. Sometimes his lord placed him at the spot where four roads met, and bade him go whither he would. In the more solemn form of the law his master took him by the hand in full shire meeting, showed him open road and door, and gave him the lance and sword of the freeman.
Spiritual freedom a gift
A poor slave who has never seen any diamonds but those that are worn upon the breasts of his master, his mistress, and their family and friends, is sent to the mines. Working away there, he picks up a large stone, which looks as if it might be a diamond, if it was only bright; but the negro dont know what to think of it. He says it cant be a diamond; but a companion thinks that it is one. The slave takes it to his master, who seizes it with exclamations, and declares to the slave, You are a free man. There never before was such a diamond found in these mines! What, massa! says the trembling slave, in great trepidation and bewilderment of joy--for bad as freedom is for negroes, it always excites in them powerful emotions of pleasure--what, massa! dat dull stone a diamond? It dont look like what massa wear in his shirt bosom. But, dont you know, Sambo, that diamonds have always to be taken to the lapidary, and ground and polished, sometimes for two or three years, before they are ready to wear? This is a most valuable diamond; and you are, from this very moment, a free man. It is not so that spiritual freedom is obtained. It is in no sense earned or merited; it is Christs free gift.
Christ sets free the sinful
I have heard that a great English prince on one occasion went to visit a famous king of Spain. The prince was taken down to the galleys, to see the men who were chained to the oars, and doomed to be slaves for life. The King of Spain promised, in honour of the princes visit, that he would set free any one of these men that the prince might choose. So the prince went to one prisoner and said, My poor fellow, I am sorry to see you in this plight; how came you here? Ah! sire, he answered, false witnesses gave evidence against me; I am suffering wrongfully. Indeed! said the prince, and passed on to the next man. My poor fellow, I am sorry to see you here; how did it happen? Sire, I certainly did wrong, but not to any great extent. I ought not to be here. Indeed! said the prince, and he went on to others, who told him similar tales. At last he came to one prisoner, who said, Sire, I am often thankful that I am here; for I am sorry to own that if I had received my due I should have been executed. I am certainly guilty of all that was laid to my charge, and my severest punishment is just. The prince replied wittily to him, It is a pity that such a guilty wretch as you are should be chained among these innocent men, and therefore I will set you free. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
My Word hath no place in you.--Where the Word of Jesus ought at once to be received, it is often rejected. These Jews were Abrahams seed, but they had not Abrahams faith. Jesus knows where His Word is received, and where it has no place. He declares that all else is unavailing: it was in vain that they were of the favoured race if they did not admit the Saviours Word into their hearts. The practical result appeared in their lives: they sought to kill Jesus. Let us honestly consider
I. WHAT PLACE THE WORD SHOULD HAVE IN MENS HEARTS. The Word comes from Jesus, the appointed Messenger of God; it is true, weighty, saving; and therefore it must have a place among those who hear it. It ought to obtain and retain
1. An inside place: in the thoughts, the memory, the conscience, the affections. Thy Word have I hid in mine heart (Psa_119:11. See Jer_15:16; Col_3:16).
2. A place of honour: it should receive attention, reverence, faith, obedience (Joh_8:47; Luk_6:46; Mat_7:24-25).
3. A place of trust. We ought in all things to rely upon the sure Word of promise, since God will neither lie, nor err, nor change (Isa_7:9;1Sa_15:29; Tit_1:2).
4. A place of rule. The Word of Jesus is the law of a Christian.
5. A place of love. It should be prized above our daily food, and defended with our lives (Job_23:12; Jud_1:3).
6. A permanent place. It must so transform us as to abide in us.
II. WHY IT HAS NO PLACE IN MANY MEN. If any man be unconverted, let us help him to a reason applicable to his case.
1. You are too busy, and so you cannot admit it. There is no room for Jesus in the inn of your life. Think of it--You are too much occupied to be saved!
2. It does not come as a novelty, and therefore you refuse it. You are weary of the old, old story. Are you wearied of bread? of air? of water? of life?
3. Another occupies the place the Word of Jesus should have. You prefer the word of man, of superstition, of scepticism. Is this a wise preference?
4. You think Christs Word too holy, too spiritual. This fact should startle you, for it condemns you.
5. It is cold comfort to you, and so you give it no place. This shows that your nature is depraved; for the saints rejoice in it.
6. You are too wise, too cultured, too genteel, to yield yourself to the government of Jesus (Joh_5:44; Rom_1:22).
7. Is the reason of your rejection of the Word one of these--That you are not in earnest? that you are fond of sin? that you are greedy of evil gain? that you need a change of heart?
III. WHAT WILL COME OF THE WORD OF CHRIST HAVING NO PLACE IN YOU.
1. Every past rejection of that Word has involved you in sin.
2. The Word may cease to ask for a place in you.
3. You may yourself become hardened so as to decline even to outwardly hear that Word.
4. You may become the violent opponent of that Word, like these Jews.
5. That Word will condemn you at the last day (Joh_12:48). Conclusion: Let us reason with you.
1. Why do you not give place to it?
2. All that is asked of you is to give it a place. It will bring with it all that you need.
3. Open wide the door and bid it enter. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
No place for the Word
Only a short time ago a friend of mine was preaching in one of our cathedral churches. As he was going to select for his text a prominent passage in one of the portions for the day, he thought it expedient to inquire of the clerk, What did the Canon preach from this morning? The clerk became very pensive, seemed quite disposed to cudgel his brains for the proper answer; but, somehow or other, he really could not think of it just then. All the men of the choir were robing in the adjacent vestry, so he said that he would go and ask them. Accordingly, the question was passed round the choir, and produced the same perplexity. At length the sagacious clerk returned, with the highly explicit answer, It was upon the Christian religion, sir! I think those good people must have needed a reminder as to how we should hear; dont you? (W. M. H. Aitken, M. A.)
The only reason why so many are against the Bible is because they know the Bible is against them. (G. S. Bowes.)
The effects of the rejection and the reception of the Word
The Bible has been expelled for centuries, by atheistic or sacerdotal hate, from the dwellings of many of the European nations. As a matter of course, the domestic virtues have declined; the conjugal relation is disparaged; deception and intrigue have supplanted mutual confidence; and Society has become diseased to its very core. The very best thing we can do--the only thing which will be efficient--to arrest these evils, is to restore to those nations the Word of God; to replace in their houses that Bible of which they have been robbed. Only do for France and Italy, Belgium and Spain, Portugal and Austria, what has been attempted, and to a great extent accomplished, for our country; put a Bible in every family, and a mightier change will pass over Europe than can be effected by all the diplomacy of her statesmen, or all the revolutions projected by her patriots. (The Leisure Hour.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv31–36 31. If ye continue in my word, then ye…
31. If ye continue in my word, then ye are my disciples indeed. They “believed on him,” but their faith was not yet made perfect by obedience. Hence he adds the condition of discipleship. Their belief must move them to accept his word and obey it. There is a condition, continue in my word; a promise, shall be my disciples.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv32, 34, 35 Joh 8:32-33. “You shall know the truth, and the…
EGREGIOUS BLINDNESS OF THE JEWS
Joh 8:32-33. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They responded to Him, We are the seed of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one; how do You say, That you shall be free?” This illustrates the alarming fact that even religious people may become so hallucinated by the devil as to tell falsehoods with unblushing effrontery and amazing volubility, and at the same time not know it, but think they are preaching the truth. Not only had these Jews been in bondage to the Egyptians two hundred and fifteen years, but at that very moment they were in bondage to the Romans, and, worst of all, to the devil.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v33
John
‘NEVER IN BONDAGE’
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Joh 8:33.
‘Never in bondage to any man’? Then what about Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Syria? Was there not a Roman garrison looking down from the castle into the very Temple courts where this boastful falsehood was uttered? It required some hardihood to say, ‘Never in bondage to any man,’ in the face of such a history, and such a present. But was it not just an instance of the strange power which we all have and exercise, of ignoring disagreeable facts, and by ingenious manipulation taking the wrinkles out of the photograph? The Jews were perhaps not misunderstanding Jesus Christ quite so much as these words may suggest. If He had been promising, as they chose to assume, political and external liberty, I fancy they would have risen to the bait a little more eagerly than they did to His words.
But be that as it may, this strange answer of theirs suggests that power of ignoring what we do not want to see, not only in the way in which I have suggested, but also in another. For if they had any inkling of what Jesus meant by slavery and freedom, they, by such words as these, put away from themselves the thought that they were, in any deep and inward sense, bondsmen, and that a message of liberty had any application to them. Ah, dear friends! there was a great deal of human nature in these men, who thus put up a screen between them and the penetrating words of our Lord. Were they not doing just what many of us-all of us to some extent-do: ignoring the facts of their own necessities, of their own spiritual condition, denying the plain lessons of experience? Like them, are not we too often refusing to look in the face the fact that we all, apart from Him, are really in bondage? Because we do not realise the slavery, are we not indifferent to the offer of freedom? ‘We were never in bondage’; consequently we add, ‘How sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?’ So then, my text brings us to think of three things: our bondage, our ignorance of our bondage, our consequent indifference to Christ’s offer of liberty. Let me say a word or two about each of these.
First as to-
I. Our bondage.
Christ follows the vain boast in the text, with the calm, grave, profound explanation of what He meant: ‘Whoso committeth sin is the slave of sin.’ That is true in two ways. By the act of sinning a man shows that he is the slave of an alien power that has captured him; and in the act of sinning, he rivets the chains and increases the tyranny. He is a slave, or he would not obey sin. He is more a slave because he has again obeyed it. Now, do not let us run away with the idea that when Jesus speaks of sin and its bondage, He is thinking only, or mainly, of gross outrages and contradictions of the plain law of morality and decency, that He is thinking only of external acts which all men brand as being wrong, or of those which law qualifies as crimes. We have to go far deeper than that, and into a far more inward region of life than that, before we come to apprehend the inwardness and the depth of the Christian conception of what sin is. We have to bring our whole life close up against God, and then to judge its deeds thereby. Therefore, though I know I am speaking to a mass of respectable, law-abiding people, very few of you having any knowledge of the grosser and uglier forms of transgression, and I dare say none of you having any experience of what it is to sin against human law, though I do not charge you-God forbid!-with vices, and still less with crimes, I bring to each man’s conscience a far more searching word than either of these two, when I say, ‘We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ This declaration of the universality and reality of the bondage of sin is only the turning into plain words of a fact which is of universal experience, though it may be of a very much less universal consciousness. We may not be aware of the fact, because, as I have to show you, we do not direct our attention to it. But there it is; and the truth is that every man, however noble his aspirations sometimes, however pure and high his convictions, and however honest in the main may be his attempts to do what is right, when he deals honestly with himself, becomes more or less conscious of just that experience which a great expert in soul analysis and self-examination made: ‘I find a law’-an influence working upon my heart with the inevitableness and certainty of law-’that when I would do good, evil is present with me.’
We all know that, whether we regard it as we ought or no. We all say Amen to that, when it is forced upon our attention. There is something in us that thwarts aspiration towards good, and inclines to evil.
‘What will but felt the fleshly screen?’
And it is not only a screen. It not only prevents us from rising as high as we would, but it sinks us so low as to do deeds that something within us recoils from and brands as evil. Jesus teaches us that he who commits sin is the slave of sin; that is to say, that an alien power has captured and is coercing the wrongdoer. That teaching does not destroy responsibility, but it kindles hope. A foreign foe, who has invaded the land, may be driven out of the land, and all his prisoners set free, if a stronger than he comes against him. Christianity is called gloomy and stern, because it preaches the corruption of man’s heart. Is it not a gospel to draw a distinction between the evil that a man does, and the self that a man may be? Is it not better, more hopeful, more of a true evangel, to say to a man, ‘Sin dwelleth in you,’ than to say, ‘What is called sin is only the necessary action of human nature’? To believe that their present condition is not slavery makes men hopeless of ever gaining freedom, and the true gospel of the emancipation of humanity rests on the Christian doctrine of the bondage of sin.
Let me remind you that freedom consists not in the absence of external constraints, but in the animal in us being governed by the will, for when the flesh is free the man is a slave. And it means that the will should be governed by the conscience; and it means that the conscience should be governed by God. These are the stages. Men are built in three stories, so to speak. Down at the bottom, and to be kept there, are inclinations, passions, lust, desires, all which are but blind aimings after their appropriate satisfaction, without any question as to whether the satisfaction is right or wrong; and above that a dominant will which is meant to control, and above that a conscience. That is the public men are more and more abasing themselves to the degradation of ministering to the supposed wishes instead of cutting dead against the grain of the wishes, if necessary, in order to meet the true wants, of the people. Wherever some one strong man stands up to oppose the wild current of popular desires, he may make up his mind that the charge of being ‘a bad citizen, unpatriotic, a lover of the enemies of the people,’ will be flung at him. You Christian men and women have to face the same calumnies as your Master had. The rotten eggs flung at the objects of popular execration-if I might use a somewhat violent figure-turn to roses in their flight. The praises of good men and the scoffs of loose-living and godless ones are equally valuable certificates of character. The Church which does not earn the same sort of opprobrium which attended its Master has probably failed of its duty. It is good to be called ‘gloomy’ and ‘sour-visaged’ by those whose only notion of pleasure is effervescent immorality; and it is good to be called intolerant by the crowd that desires us to be tolerant of vice. So, my friends, I want you to understand that you, too, have to tread in the Master’s steps. The ‘imitation of Jesus’ does not consist merely in the sanctities and secrecies of communion, and the blessings of a meek and quiet heart, but includes standing where He stood, in avowed and active opposition to widespread evils, and, if need be, in the protesting opposition to popular error. And if you are called nicknames, never mind! Remember what the Master said, ‘They shall bring you before kings and magistrates’-the tribunal of the many-headed is a more formidable judgment-bench than that of any king-’and it shall turn to a testimony for you.’
II. Now, secondly, this name is the witness to what I venture to call, for want of a better term, the originality of Jesus Christ.
It bears witness to the dim feeling which onlookers had that in Him was a new phenomenon, not to be accounted for by birth and descent, by training and education, or by the whole of what people nowadays call environment. He did not come out of these circumstances. This is not a regulation pattern type of Jew. He is ‘a Samaritan.’ That is to say, He is unlike the people among whom He dwells; and betrays that other influences than those which shaped them have gone to the making of Him.
That is one of the most marked, outstanding, and important features in the teaching and in the character of Jesus Christ, that it is absolutely independent of, and incapable of being accounted for by, anything that He derived from the circumstances in which He lived. He was a Jew, and yet He was not a Jew. He was not a Samaritan, and yet He was a Samaritan. He was not a Greek, and yet He was one. He was not a Roman, nor an Englishman, nor a Hindoo, nor an Asiatic, nor an African; and yet He had all the characteristics of these races within Himself, and held them all in the ample sweep of His perfect Manhood.
If we turn to His teaching we find that, whilst no doubt to some extent it is influenced in its forms by the necessities of its adaptation to the first listeners, there is a certain element in it far beyond anything that came from Rabbis, or even from prophets and psalmists. Modern Christian scholarship has busied itself very much in these days with studying Jewish literature, so far as it is available, in order to ascertain how far it formed the teaching, or mind, of Jesus the Carpenter of Nazareth. There is a likeness, but the likeness only serves to make the unlikeness more conspicuous. And I, for my part, venture to assert that, whilst the form of our Lord’s teaching may largely be traced to the influences under which He was brought up, and whilst the substance of some parts of it may have been anticipated by earlier Rabbis of His nation, the crowd that listened to Him on the mountain top had laid their fingers upon the more important fact when they ‘wondered at His teaching,’ and found the characteristic difference between it, and that of the men to whom they had listened, in the note of authority with which He spoke. Jesus never argues, He asserts; He claims; and in lieu of all arguments He gives you His own ‘Verily! verily! I say unto you.’
Thus not only in its form, but in its substance, in its lofty morality, in its spiritual religion, in its revelation of the Father and the Fatherhood for all men, Christ’s teaching as teaching stands absolutely alone.
If we turn to His character, the one thing that strikes us is that about it there is nothing of the limitations of time or race which stamp all other men. He is not good after the fashion of His age, or of any other age; He is simply embodied and perfect Goodness. This Tree has shot up high above the fences that enclose the grove in which it grows, and its leaf lasts for ever.
Run over, in your mind, other great names of heroes, saints, thinkers, poets; they all bear the stamp of their age and circumstances, and the type of goodness or the manner of thought which belonged to these. Jesus Christ alone stands before men absolutely free from any of the limitations which are essential in the case of every human excellence and teacher. And so He comes to us with a strange freshness, with a strange closeness; and nineteen centuries have not made Him fit less accurately to our needs than He did to those of the generation amidst which He condescended to live. Thickening mists of oblivion wrap all other great names as they recede into the past; and about the loftiest of them we have to say, ‘This man, having served his generation, fell on sleep, and saw corruption.’ But Jesus Christ lasts, because there is nothing local or temporary about His teaching or His character.
Now this peculiar originality, as I venture to call it, of Christ’s character is a very strong argument for the truthful accuracy of the picture drawn of Him in these four Gospels. Where did these four men get their Christ? Was it from imagination? Was it from myth? Was it from the accidental confluence of a multitude of traditions? There is an old story about a painter who, in despair of producing a certain effect of storm upon the sea, at last flung his wet sponge at the canvas, and to his astonishment found that it had done the very thing he wanted. But wet sponges cannot draw likenesses; and to allege that these four men drew such a picture, in such compass, without anybody sitting for it, seems to me about the most desperate hypothesis that ever was invented. If there were no Christ, or if the Christ that was, was not like what the Gospels paint Him as being, then the authors of these little booklets are consummate geniuses, and their works stand at the very top of the imaginative literature of the world. It is more difficult to account for the Gospels, if they are not histories, than it is to account for the Christ whom they tell us of if they are.
And then, further, there is only one key to the mystery of this originality. Christ is perfect man, high above limitations, and owing nothing to environment, because He is the Son of God. I would as soon believe that grass roots, which for years, in some meadow, had brought forth, season after season, nothing but humble green blades, shot up suddenly into a palm tree, as I would believe that simple natural descent brought all at once into the middle of the dull succession of commonplace and sinful men this radiant and unique Figure. Account for Christ, all you unbelievers! The question of to-day, round which all the battle is being fought, is the person of Jesus Christ. If He be what the Gospels tell us that He is, there is nothing left for the unbeliever worth a struggle. ‘What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?’ The Jews said, ‘Thou art a Samaritan!’ We say, ‘Thou art the Christ; the Son of the living God!’
III. Lastly, the name bears witness to Christ’s universality.
I presume that, in addition to what seemed His hostility to what was taken to be true Judaism, another set of facts underlay the name-viz. those which indicated His kindly relations with the people whom it was every good Jew’s pleasant duty to hate with all his heart. The story of the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel, the parable of the good Samaritan, the incident of the grateful leper, who was a Samaritan, the refusal to allow the eager Apostles to bring down fire from heaven to consume inhospitable churls in a Samaritan village, were but outstanding specimens of what must have been a characteristic of His whole career not unknown to His enemies. So they argued, ‘If you love our enemies you must hate us; and you must be one of them,’ thereby distorting, but yet presenting, what is the great glory of Christ’s Gospel, and of Christ Himself, that He belongs to the world; and that His salvation, the sweep of His love, and the power of His Cross, are meant for all mankind.
That universality largely arises from the absence of the limitations of which I have already spoken sufficiently. Because He belongs to no one period as regards His character, He is available for all periods as regards His efficacy. Because His teaching is not dyed in the hues of any school or of any age or of any cast of thought, it suits for all mankind. This water comes clear from the eternal rock, and has no taint of any soil through which it has flowed. Therefore the thirsty lips of a world may be glued to it, and drink and be satisfied. His one sacrifice avails for the whole world.
But let me remind you that universality means also individuality, and that Jesus Christ is the Christ for all men because He is each man’s Christ. The tree of life stands in the middle of the garden that all may have equal access to it. Is this universal Christ yours; thine? That is the question. Make Him so by putting out your hand and claiming your share in Him, by casting your soul upon Him, by trusting your all to Him, by listening to His word, by obeying His commands, by drinking in the fulness of His blessing. You can do so if you will. If you do not, the universal Christ is nothing to you. Make Him thine, and be sure that the sweep of His love and the efficacy of His sacrifice embrace and include thee. He is the universal Christ; therefore He is the only Christ; ‘neither is there salvation in any other.’ Through Him all men, each man, thou, must be saved. Without Him all men, every man, thou, can not be saved. Take Him for yours, and you will find that each who possesses Him, possesses Him altogether, and none hinders the other in his full enjoyment of ‘the bread of God which came down from heaven.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v34 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sin
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv31, 34 The True Liberty of the Gospel. Joh 8:31-59
The True Liberty of the Gospel. Joh 8:31-59
Bondage and liberty:
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v. 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed;
v. 32. and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
v. 33. They answered Him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?
Many of the Jews had indeed come to faith, but their minds were still held in the bondage of a carnal understanding. Their idea of discipleship was that of an external adherence to Christ, of professing allegiance to Him as their Leader. They were caught in the meshes of the same delusion which to this day holds the minds of so many so-called Christians captive. The continuing or remaining in the Word of Christ is the characteristic of the true disciples of Christ, the adhering strictly to the Word which He has left for our instruction in the gospels and epistles. There we find Jesus revealed, and through the understanding of Jesus as the Christ we have true knowledge, the knowledge of the truth; and that knowledge is the only factor which will give Us true liberty. Without Christ, all men are servants, slaves of sin, Rom 6:17-20. But in Christ there is deliverance from sin, true freedom. Only those men are truly free that have accepted the salvation of Jesus; only they have a will which is interested in good works and able to perform them. That is the wonderful liberty of the Christian of which Luther wrote in such powerful words. But the Jews thought the Lord spoke of the liberty of the body from the tyranny of an earthly despot. They resented the inference as though they had ever been in bondage: Children of Abraham we are, and to no man have we ever been in bondage, in slavery. They forgot, for the moment, that they were subject to the Romans; they forgot also that their fathers had been in the power of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Syrian, and Roman conquerors. Since Abraham had received the promise of a descendant that should rule all nations, the Jews proudly called themselves children of kings. They resented even the idea as though they needed to be emancipated, to be set free. This answer of the Jews shows that they had quickly extinguished the small flame of faith which had been kindled in their hearts. Their Jewish pride would not accept such a statement from Jesus. The pride of the human heart has driven many a person away from the church to which he professed allegiance, because he resented the plain talk of the Bible regarding the depravity of the human heart.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv31, 34 remain in my word
remain in my word
This is an idiom that means "to obey Jesus." AT: "obey what I have said" (See: Idiom)
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my disciples
"my followers"
the truth will set you free
This is personification. Jesus speaks of "the truth" as if it were a person. AT: "if you obey the truth, God will set you free" (See: Personification)
the truth
This refers to what Jesus reveals about God. AT: "what is true about God"
how can you say, 'You will be set free'?
This remark appears in the form of a question to express the Jewish leaders' shock at what Jesus has said. AT: "We do not need to be set free!" (See: Rhetorical Question)
translationWords
believe
disciple
true
free
Abraham
servant
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv31, 33, 35 8:31-32 Discipleship is more than knowing who Jesus is.…
8:31-32 Discipleship is more than knowing who Jesus is. It is also about obeying his teachings (3:36; 14:15, 21, 23; 15:10). • Because Jesus is the truth (14:6), knowing him brings discernment of what is true and what is false. • set you free: The truth brings freedom from darkness, falsehood, and sin.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.