1,2. AFTER this there was a feast of the Jews: and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep market, a pool, which is called in the Hebrew 3 tongue, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, 4 of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. 5, 6 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith 7 unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, an- 8 other steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and 9 walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: 10 and on the same day was the sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was

11 cured, It is the sabbath-day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. 12 Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? 13 And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made 15 whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told 16 the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath-day.

WEARILY did he watch the pool, but no angel came, or came not for him. Yet, thinking it his only chance, he waited still, and knew not that there was one near him whose word could heal him in a moment. Many are in the same plight; they are waiting for some singular emotion, remarkable impression, or celestial vision. Tens of thousands are now waiting in the use of means and ordinances and vows and resolutions, and have so waited time out of mind, in vain, utterly in vain. Meanwhile these poor souls forget the present Saviour, who bids them look unto him and be saved. He could heal them at once, but they prefer to wait for an angel and a wonder. To trust him is a sure way to every blessing, and he is worthy of the most implicit confidence; but unbelief makes them prefer the cold porches of Bethesda to the warm bosom of his love. Spurgeon.

Blessed be God, there is open a fountain for sin and uncleanness, by whose brink none need wait in longing, anxious expectancy; for its waters are ever endued with life-giving power; the Angel of the Covenant abides there always with his healing presence; every sin-discased soul may seek its health-restoring waters at all times. However many receive of its cleansing virtue, none of its power is diminished—its efficacy is ever the same. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. An.

1. Matthew, Mark, and Luke record only our Lord’s doings in Galilee; if we put aside a few days before the Passion, we find that they never mention his visiting Jerusalem. John, on the other hand, while he records some acts in Galilee, devotes the chief part of his gospel to the transactions in Judea. But when the supplemental character of John’s gospel is borne in mind, there is little difficulty in explaining this. The three Evangelists do not profess to give a chronology of the ministry, but rather a picture of it: notes of time are not frequent in their narrative. And as they chiefly confined themselves to Galilee, where the Redeemer’s chief acts were done, they might naturally omit to mention the feasts, which, being passed by our Lord at Jerusalem, added nothing to the materials for his Galilean ministry. John, on the other hand, writing later, and giving an account of the Redeemer’s life which is still less complete as a history (for more than one-half of the fourth gospel is occupied with the last three months of the ministry, and seven chapters out of twenty-one are filled with the account of the few days of the Passion), vindicates his historical claim by supplying several precise notes of time. In the occurrences after the baptism of Jesus, days and even hours are specified (John 1: 29, 35, 39, 43; 2: 1); the first miracle is mentioned, and the time at which it was wrought (John 2: 1-11). He mentions not only the Passover (John 2: 13, 23; 6: 4; 13: 1, and perhaps 5: 1), but also the feast of Tabernacles (John 7: 2) and of Dedication (John 10: 22): and thus it is ordered that the Evangelist who goes over the least part of the ground of our Lord’s ministry is yet the same who fixes for us its duration, and enables us to arrange the facts for the rest more exactly in their historical places. S.

On the phrase “a feast [festival] of the Jews” (John 5: 1) turns mainly the question as to the duration of our Lord’s public ministry. John notes distinctly three Passovers: John 2: 13; 6: 4; 12: 1. If now this festival be another Passover, then our Lord’s public labors continued during three and a half years. It does most probably thus stand for a Passover, viz., the second in our Lord’s public ministry. R.—It is unlikely that Christ, who had already roused the prejudices of the Pharisees against him, should have gone to the Purim feast, where he would have had to contend with them alone in Jerusalem, instead of continuing his labors undisturbed in Galilee until Passover. John’s omission to say more of Christ’s ministry up to the time of the next Passover (6: 4) may be accounted for on the ground that it was not his purpose to recount his labors in Galilee, which were preserved in the circle of the ordinary traditions. The first two verses of chap. 5 show how summary his account is. N.

The second year of the public life of Christ opened, as the first, with his attendance at the Passover. He appeared again amid the assembled populace of the whole race of Israel, in the place where by common consent the real Messiah was to assume his office, and to claim the allegiance of the favored and chosen people of God. The first year the only public demonstration of his superiority had been the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the temple, and his ambiguous and misinterpreted speech about that sacred edifice. During his second visit, however, at the same solemn period of national assemblage, Jesus gave a new cause of astonishment to his followers, and of offence to his adversaries, by an act which could not but excite the highest wonder and the strongest animadversion. This was no less than an assumption of authority to dispense with the (prescribed) observance of the Sabbath. H. M.

3,4. The words which complete the third verse lie under strong suspicion, as the fourth verse has undoubtedly no right to a place in the text. That fourth verse the most important Greek and Latin copies are alike without, and most of the early versions. In other MSS. which retain this verse, the obelus which hints suspicion, or the asterisk which marks rejection, is attached to it. At first probably a marginal note, expressing the popular notion of the Jewish Christians concerning the origin of the healing power which from time to time these waters possessed, by degrees it assumed the shape in which we now have it: for there are marks of growth about it, betraying themselves in a great variety of readings—some copies omitting one part and some another of the verse—all which is generally the sign of a later addition. T.—It contains in the short compass of a few lines no less than seven words not found elsewhere in the New Testament, or only found with a different sense. It relates a most startling fact, one wholly unlike anything else in Scripture, one not alluded to by a single other writer, Jewish or heathen, and one which, had there been the slightest ground for believing in its truth, would certainly not have been passed over in silence by Josephus. Its insertion (to explain the word troubled in verse 7) is easily accounted for; its omission, had it been in the original text, is quite inconceivable. F.

The legend of the angel (which, according to the best criticism, does not belong to John, but is a later gloss) could not have arisen unless the spring and its phenomena really existed. Robinson thinks that he found in the irregular movement of the water in the “Fountain of the Virgin” phenomena similar to those recorded of the pool of Bethesda, and contributing to explain them. N.—The pool of Bethesda has been, in all probability, identified; an intermitting fountain, which explains the popular legend.—Recent Explorations. Whatever may have been the general belief about the cause, the fact that the water was found at certain intervals to be impregnated with gases which gave it a strengthening property, was sufficient to attract many sufferers. F.

Natural explanations of ordinary phenomena were unknown in these simple times, for there was no such thing as science. Among the Jews, as among other races, everything was attributed to the direct action of supernatural beings. In the book of Jubilees, which shows the popular ideas of Christ’s day, there are angels of fire, wind, clouds, hail, thunder, lightning, of “all things in the heavens and earth; of darkness, of light, of dawn, and of evening.” The healing powers of the Bethesda waters were, hence, ascribed to periodical visits of an angel, who “troubled the water.” G.—The doubts that have been cast upon the prodigy do not in the least detract from the use made of it by Christ. On the contrary, the supposition of its being a delusion sets the truth of his miracle in a more striking light, as being the reality of that power which was there vainly sought. In any case, the miracle itself displayed the power, which Jesus claimed in the subsequent discourse, of exercising authority both over the laws of nature and the positive institutions of religion. S.

6. To rekindle the dying hope, to fix the man’s attention on himself, Jesus bends over the bed on which he lies, looks down at him, and says, “Wilt thou be made whole?” H.—It was something to persuade him that this stranger pitied him, was interested in his case, would help him if he could. So persuading him to believe in his love, he prepared him to believe also in his might. Our Lord was giving him now the faith, which presently he was about to demand of him. T.

7. I have no man.** We do not read that the Divine Healer here wrought a miracle for any more than this single invalid. No one else at that pool of mercy was so pitifully undefriended. This poor forsaken creature had lain there a long time, and been tantalized by seeing other and nimbler patients reach the healing waters before he could creep in. Others had friends to help them; but this man had no one to assist him into the pool. Suffering often makes people selfish. Perhaps then the loving Lord intended to rebuke the selfishness of the neglectful, as well as to show his sympathy for the neglected by curing this one friendless cripple on the spot. There is a beautiful lesson here for us. Beside every pool of privilege or mercy in human life there are one or more unbefriended sufferers whose trials are aggravated by seeing others relieved, but no relief comes to them. Jesus teaches us to look after those who have nobody to care for them. T. L. C.

8. Take up thy bed, and walk.** What a command to a man who had for nearly forty years lain in that forlorn condition, during which his poor limbs had forgotten what walking meant! K.—Christ commands him to rise and bear his bed, and thus practically evince not only his own completed recovery, but the true lordship of the Son of man over sabbatical restrictions and ceremonial rest. He that a year before had shown that he was Lord of the temple, now shows that he is Lord also of the Sabbath. E.

10. The Jews.** Not the general community, but some of the ecclesiastical heads and rulers of the people. Jesus had only to meet their prejudices by doing nothing. But he did not choose to be thus silent and acquiescent. No less than seven miracles are recorded as wrought by him on the Sabbath-day, some of them among the most conspicuous and memorable in his ministry. He might have chosen another day rather than the Sabbath to walk through the crowded porches of Bethesda. The impotent man had lain too long there to make a day earlier or a day later of much moment to him. It was the same with the blind beggar of Jerusalem; and these were the two instances of cures upon the Sabbath-day which drew most public notice, and were attended with the most important results. But Jesus was not content with simply relieving the sufferers on these occasions. He did himself, or he bade his patients do, what he was well aware would attract the eye and draw down upon it the condemnation of the priesthood. H.

12. One would think that, in astonishment at such a miracle, their question would have been,

“What man is he who healed thee?” and that they would have lost in that all thought of the man’s bed. But it was the miracle they overlooked and thrust aside, regardful only of the alleged infraction of the Sabbath-day. K.

14. And now our Lord, whose purpose it ever was to build upon the healing of the body the better healing of the soul, suffers not this matter to conclude without a word of solemn warning, a word which showed that all the past life of the sufferer lay open and manifest before him; even things done more than thirty-eight years ago, that is, before his own earthly life had commenced: Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee—a worse thing than those thirty and eight years of pain and infirmity! words which give us an awful glimpse of the severity of God’s judgments. This infirmity had found him a youth and left him an old man; it had withered up all his manhood, and yet a worse thing even than this is threatened him, should he sin again. T.

15. Who had made him whole.** His mind dwelling exclusively on that part of the case which they had put out of sight. He thought only of the healing: they only of the bed being carried on the Sabbath-day. K.

16. Here, then, were two deadly charges ready at hand against this prophet of Nazareth: He was a breaker of their Sabbath; he was a blasphemer of their God. The first crime was sufficient cause for opposition and persecution; the second an ample justification of persistent and active endeavors to bring about his death. F.—Having given them this handle, on purpose to raise the first public controversy with them, and thus open a fitting opportunity of laying his claims before them, he rises at once to the whole height of them, in a statement which for grandeur and terseness exceeds almost anything that ever afterward fell from him, at least to his enemies. B.

Section 31.—“My Father worketh, and I work.”

Jerusalem.

17,18. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also, that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

19. Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he

20 doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works than these,

21 that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; 22 even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man; but hath 23 committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. 24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed 25 from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. 26 For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in him- 27 self; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of 28 man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the 29 graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. 30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; be- cause I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

Ir takes his greatness with his limitations—his strength and his weakness—his divinity and his humanity, to affect us most. On his one side he is human—a man and brother—coming all the way down to us, entering into our feelings, our experiences—seeing men and things out of our eyes, that heart of his bending to our griefs, and swelling with our joys. We put our heart to his, and his answers it beat for beat. We would not miss that bending down to us, that standing side by side with us, and that thought that now to-day in heaven, he retains, as written upon an iron leaf, all that he was and felt.

But then we want more—not in another, but in him; if we can have it, we want the divine also—the human to know, to think with, and feel with; the divine, to be utterly incomprehensible, to encompass us, to overarch us, to flow into our weakness, to seize us and bear us aloft as upon eagles’ wings. We want a being that shall come down to our sympathies, and so stand on the same plane with us; with the tides of feeling flowing through us both; and, at the same time, one before whom we shall bow with reverence and awe—the very being that we have in Christ, one whose thoughts and feelings span that mighty void between God and man. The Bible gives us Christ—the God-with-us—the Man-divine—that being who towers above our reason, but grasps and holds our hearts. J. D.

17-30. Nowhere else in the gospels do we find our Lord making such a formal, systematic statement of his own unity with the Father, his divine commission and authority, and the proofs of his Messiahship, as we find in this discourse. J. C. R.—In this first part of his discourse, the Lord reveals to us the glorious secret of his works; their power springs from the mystery of his person. His working is simply the working of God; for the Son and the Father, two persons, are of one divine essence; the original life of the Father is the like original life of the Son, and the life of the Son becomes the life of those who believe on him. The Father not without the Son, the Son not without the Father; this is the ever-resounding key-note of this discourse, in which the secret is plainly revealed of the eternal Word, who was with God, and was God, and who became flesh. R. B.

17. In his justification, Christ struck at the root of the first error, viz., the carnal notion that the sanctity of the Sabbath was founded solely upon God’s resting after the work of creation, as if his creative labors were then commenced and enfiled; and points out, on the other hand, the ever-continuing activity of God as the ground of all being—my Father worketh hitherto, and I work. “As He never ceases to work, so do I work unceasingly for the salvation of men.” N.—Christ claims as his own the same works which God doeth—works not only of benevolence, but of almighty power: “So I work.” He thus avowedly makes himself equal with the Father, partly in regard to the works performed, and partly in regard to the manner of doing them: he works the same works, he works perpetually, as the Father. As this perpetual working is not reprehensible in the Father, so neither, says Jesus, is it reprehensible in me. C. C. T.

18. The Jews cannot be accused of misinterpreting his words. In those words Jesus had put himself on an equality with God in dignity, in the point of being above the Mosaic law of the Sabbath, and of having the right to do all that his Father was doing. H. C.—18-23. Instead of disowning the inference, our Saviour joins issue upon its truth. Pointing to his works as a proof of the perfect unity of power between his Father and himself, he claims the highest attribute of God, the power to confer spiritual life; and he declares, as a practical appeal to his opponents, that now was the season for its exercise. Their indignation at this new blasphemy is met, as on other occasions, by the remonstrance, “Marvel not at this,” as the preface to new wonders; for this power to give spiritual life, arising from the divine life which the Son had in himself, would soon be proved by his power to awake the dead, and to call them before his own judgment-seat. For to him alone was committed the divine attribute of judgment, because with him alone were the eternal principles of justice. S.

19. Because his opponents charged him with claiming, by his words, divine dignity and authority, he strengthened his assertions, taking care only to guard against their being perverted into a depreciation of the Father’s dignity, by declaring that he labored in unity with the Father, and in dependence upon him. “The Son,” said he, “can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” (He would have to deny himself as the Son of God before he could act contrary to the will and example of the Father.) N.—That the Son can do nothing of himself, says Bengel, “is a feature of glory, not of imperfection; such declarations proceeded from his intimate sense of unity, by nature and by love, with the Father.” The Son can do nothing of himself, not because he is wanting in power, or inferior and dependent in his nature, but because his being is inseparable from that of the Father. J. P. T.—The same things, and whatever things the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son, and doeth them in the very same manner, by the exercise of the same power, for the furtherance of the same ends. H.

The discourse is a wonderful setting forth of the person and office of the Son of God in his ministrations as the Word of the Father. In this verse he states that he cannot work any but the works of God: cannot by this very relationship to the Father, by the very nature and necessity of the case—the “of himself” being an impossible supposition, and purposely set here to express one—the Son cannot work of himself, because he is the Son. His very person presupposes the Father’s will and counsel as his will and counsel, and his perfect knowledge of that will and counsel. And this, because every creature may abuse its freedom, and may will contrary to God: but THE SON, standing in essential unity with God, cannot, even when become man, commit sin—break the Sabbath—for his whole being and working is in and of God. A.

20. Christ proceeds to declare that the Father will show him greater works than these, i. e., than reviving the dead limbs of the paralytic. And what were these “greater works?” Without doubt, that work which Christ always describes as his greatest—as the aim of his whole life—the awakening of divine life in the spiritually dead humanity; a work which nothing but the creative efficiency of God could accomplish. N.

21, 22. Life and Judgment, Stier beautifully calls God’s Regalia. Yet these, Christ says, the Father and he do in common; he not only doing the divine act, but doing it as the result of his own will, even as the Father does it. B.—Surely he who had in his hand the mighty prerogatives of giving life and judging the world, had a right to speak of himself as equal with God. J. C. R.

23. Whoever does not honor the Son with equal honor to that which he pays to the Father, however he may imagine that he honors or approaches God, does not honor him at all; because he can only be known by us as “the Father who sent his Son.” A.—24. Believeth on him that sent me. The belief spoken of is a believing on God in Christ—a believing on God as the God who sent Christ to save sinners. He that rightly believes on Christ as his Saviour, with the same faith believes in God as his reconciled Father. J. C. R.—A parallelism in verses 24, 25, should be noticed: “He that heareth my word” in the one, answers to “the dead shall hear” in the other. It is a kind of hearing which awakens to life, one accompanied by “believing on him that sent me.” And this last is not barely “him who sent me,” but him, the very essence of belief in whom is in this, THAT HE SENT ME. The “believeth” and the “hath eternal life” are commensurate: where the faith is, the possession of eternal life is. But here the faith is set before us as an enduring faith, and its effects described in their completion. A.

Here we are amid the clear shining of the sweet light which so unceasingly streams forth from John’s gospel—Word, Faith, Life; upon these three thoughts hinges everything that John had heard from the lips of the Son of God, and here makes known to us. Faith can boldly reverse the words of the saying, and sing, “Even in the midst of death we are in life.” For he who believes has eternal life, because he is joined as a member to the Lord and possessor of life, and comes not into condemnation, because he has come out of the judgment of death and passed into the life, the life in which the Son of God, the prince of life, triumphs forever over death and hell. “There is therefore now no condemnation,” etc. (Rom. 8: 1). R. B.

25. This verse continues to refer to spiritual awakening from the dead. His voice. His call to awake—by his own preaching, by his apostles, etc. A.—26. Their persons, though distinct, are of one substance, for the Father and Son have alike originally life in themselves. R. B.—In this alone are they distinct from each other, that one is the Father, and the other the Son. Chrys.—Why does the Lord reveal to us these depths of the Godhead? “These things I say, that ye might be saved” (verse 34), is his own answer. It is not as if we could comprehend such mysteries with our understanding, but our faith is to apprehend and lay hold on the consolation which is rooted in the true Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our hope is to cast her anchor upon ground deep and immovable. R. B.

27. Son of man. There was in him no national peculiarity or individual idiosyncrasy. He was not the Son of the Jew, nor the Son of the carpenter; nor the offspring of the modes of living and thinking of that particular century. As if the life-blood of every nation were in his veins, and that which is best and truest in every man, and that which is tenderest, and gentlest, and purest in every woman, in his character. He is emphatically the Son of man. F. W. R.

Because he is the Son of man. The fact of the incarnation is made the reason for committing all judgment to Jesus, and especially the final judgment of the race. Having loved this fallen world so deeply, so tenderly, that he could consent to assume our very nature and suffer in it even unto death, who throughout all the universe will ever doubt his compassion, his pity, his heart, to save whosoever will meet his revealed conditions and put himself within the possible reach of mercy? With infinite confidence will all the intelligent universe trust him forever to administer the final judgment in the truest sympathy for our race, and never with undue severity—inflicting never one pang of suffering in excess of what justice must demand. H. C.—The Father gave him authority, “because he is the Son of man.” For the same reason Christians render him homage. As the Son he redeemed us, and therefore we love him. As the Son he offers us salvation, and we believe on him. As the Son he is to receive us to glory, and we hope in him. As the Son he is our strength and life, and we rejoice in him. As the Son he is our king and head, and we obey and adore him. These emotions, moreover, are supreme. They constitute all that we have to offer—love, and fear, and joy; adoration, obedience, and praise. J. A.

The man through whom God has determined to judge the world with righteousness (Acts 17:31), is our righteousness. The judgment which Christ endured for us, will not let us come into the judgment which he executes. Our process with him who hath the power of death has been long ago gained; the sentence of life has been already made out for us: at the last day it will be revealed only. This is the consolation which believers derive from this passage. But for unbelievers, of all the horrors of judgment the greatest horror is this, that he who shall execute it is the Son of man. R. B.

28,29. The hour cometh, but not “now is” (as in verse 25), because he is now speaking of the great day of the resurrection, when not merely the dead but all who are in their graves shall hear his voice. “They who hear” are not specified, because all shall hear in the fullest sense. Olshausen observes that this and Acts 24:15 are the only direct declaration in the New Testament of a bodily resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just. It is implied in some places: Matt. 10:28, and less plainly in Matt. 25:34; Rev. 20:5, 12; and directly asserted in Dan. 12:2. In 1 Cor. 15—as the object was to convince believers in Christ of the truth of the resurrection of their bodies—no allusion is made to those who are not believers. A.

His hearers, who saw him before their eyes in human form, were startled, doubtless, by these declarations. They looked for Messiah to establish a visible kingdom, with unearthly splendors, expecting it to be attended by an outward judgment; and Christ’s announcement of a spiritual agency, that was to be coeval with the world’s history, was beyond their apprehension. He referred them, therefore, to the final aim of the course which he was laying out for the human race, the final Messianic work of the judgment and the general resurrection; a work in itself, indeed, more familiar to them, but which, as ascribed to him, must have still more raised their wonder. 30. Having thus unfolded his whole Messianic agency, embracing both the present and the future, Christ returns to the general proposition with which he had commenced (in verse 19). As he had applied his unity of action with the Father to his whole course, so now he applies it specifically to his judgment, which must, therefore, be just and true. N.—Here begins the testimony by which these things were substantiated, and which they ought to have received. The discourse here passes into the first person which was understood before, because he had called himself the Son of God. A.

His ministry in Judea was now about to close. Aware of the design against his life which had now been formed, and wishing to baffle it for a season, he retires to Galilee. But he will not leave Jerusalem till he has given one full and public testimony as to who and what he is, so that the Jews in continuing to reject him, shall not have it in their power to say that he has not revealed his own character, nor expressed to them the real grounds upon which their opposition to him is based. Such was the special drift and bearing of the address of Jesus to the Jews. H.

Section 32.—Proofs of his Divine Sonship.

Jerusalem.

31,32. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man; but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have a greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40, 41 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. I receive not honour from men. 42, 43 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

JESUS submitted himself, his character, his works, his claims, to the judgment of men. He honored the reason of his hearers by submitting to them the evidences of his mission; he honored their religious sentiment by referring to their own Scriptures for testimony concerning himself. But pride and ambition, leading them to look for the pomp and power of earthly royalty in their Messiah, closed their eyes to the evidences alike of the works and the word of God. J. P. T.

The loss of man’s soul is always attributed in Scripture to man’s own want of will to be saved. It is not any decree of God. It is not God’s unwillingness to receive. It is not any limitation of Christ’s redeeming work and atonement. It is not any want of wide, free, full invitations to repent and believe. It is simply and entirely man’s own fault—his want of will. Forever let us cleave to this doctrine. Man’s salvation, if saved, is entirely of God. Man’s ruin, if lost, is entirely of himself. He “loves darkness rather than light.” He will have his own way. J. C. R.

HAVING unfolded the great truth of the unity of will, purpose, and action, between the Father and the Son, Jesus proceeds to speak in the first person, of the testimonies that had been borne to him; that of the Father, that of John, that of his own works, that of the Holy Scriptures, all of which these Jews had wilfully rejected. H.—Thus far the Lord, in answer to the accusations of the Jews, has vindicated his working as being the actual working of God: he works as the Father does, because he is as the Father. The divine life reveals itself in divine deeds, both in love and in wrath, both in quickening and in judging. But in the second part of this discourse the Lord now accuses the Jews. He brings before their eyes the witnesses which had been vouchsafed to them, in order that they might see the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, now present before them, while also he rebukes their unbelief: “and ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” All particular witnesses concerning the nature of the Son and concerning his working in the power of the Father, are included in one general witness—in the Father’s witness of his Son (verse 32). Through Christ’s immediate forerunner John (verses 33-35), through the works of Christ, which announced him as the Saviour (verse 36), and through the Scriptures (verses 37-39, 45-47)—through all these the Father witnesses of the Son. R. B.

31. If I witness of myself. “Separate and apart from the Father asserting any claim of power or authority, such claim would be untrue. But I do not and cannot stand thus alone.” 35. A shining light. Rather lamp or torch that is kindled and so burns and shines. Christ is the light that kindles but was never kindled. J. G. B.—36. All his works—as well the public “signs and wonders,” as the silent manifestation of his “Jesus name” in the inward life of sinners saved through him; as well the teaching full of grace of his holy life, as the life full of grace of his holy words—whatever he did as physician of body and soul, whatever he suffered as Lamb, whatever he said as Shepherd: they all combine to form one bright revelation of his glory. They are the works of Jesus Christ appertaining to his proper vocation, the works of God’s Anointed One. R. B.—37. Not seen his shape. The same truth we find elsewhere, that the Father is invisible, and has never been seen by mortal man. He who appeared to Abraham was the Second Person of the Trinity, and not the Father. Paul says distinctly of the Father, “whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” J. C. R.

38,39. It was precisely through the works, Christ told them (verses 36, 37), that the Father had testified to him. “But,” continued he, in effect, “it is no wonder that you ask another testimony of me, seeing that you are destitute of the spiritual capacity to perceive this one. It cannot be perceived with the senses; you have never heard with your ears the voice of the Father, nor seen with your eyes his form. God does not reveal himself to the fleshly sense; and in you no other sense is developed. And for this reason you cannot understand the testimony of the Scriptures. The word of God, which you ought to have received within you from the Scriptures, dwells not in you; it has remained for you simply outward. Hence your

‘searching of the Scriptures’ is a lifeless thing. Thinking that, in the letter of the word, you have eternal life, you will not come unto him who alone imparts that life, and to whom the Scriptures were only intended to lead.” N.—“In the Scriptures ye find your charter of eternal life; go search them then, and you will find that I am the great burden of their testimony; yet ye will not come to me for that life eternal which you profess to find there and of which they tell you I am the appointed dispenser.” B.—They would not! Scripture urged them to come to Jesus, that they might believe and receive life from him; but life through Jesus, the lowly Lamb of God, was what they would not have, because they would not acknowledge their own life to be death. He who does not in Scripture find his death as a sinner under the curse of the law, will never find there his life as a sinner under grace through the gospel. Verses 31-39 say that they can—verses 40-47 say that they will not. R. B.

Search the Scriptures. A true faith in the Scriptures must have its strength in the Scriptures themselves. This would seem to be a proposition of the clearest reason. If the Bible be the Word of God with a human voice, then must it speak to the human soul directly as no other word, no other voice, can speak. T. L.—42. They had counted the very letters of them; yet they were rejecting him of whom the Scriptures testified. Was it not clear that they—the righteous, the religious leaders of their nation—yet had not the love of God in them, if they thus rejected his prophet, his word, his works, his Son? F.

43. Ye receive me not. Despite of the Father’s indorsement, by miracles and by the testimony of your own Scriptures, sustaining my claims, ye yet reject me. There could only be collision and repellency between the meek, spotless Jesus, and the bigoted, covetous, self-seeking, sanctimonious Pharisees. H. C.—If another shall come. How strikingly has this been verified in the history of the Jews! “From the time of the true Christ to our time, sixty-four false Christs have been reckoned by whom they have been deceived.” B.

44. How can ye believe? He spake to them calmly, but with most searching scrutiny and appalling truthfulness, of the reason why they could not believe; of that passion for the honor coming from men which made them utterly blind and dead to the claims of the Son of God. H. C.—Christ looked upon it as morally impossible for persons infinitely proud and ambitious impartially to consider a religion that taught nothing but self-denial and the cross; that counted humility honor; and that the higher men climbed the farther they were from heaven. The true cause of the Pharisees’ disbelief of Christ’s doctrine was the predominance over their will of the two great vices, covetousness and ambition. R. S.—From God only. Rather, from the only God, in contradistinction to the idolatry of the natural heart, which is ever setting up for itself other sources of honor, worshiping man or self or even Satan instead of God. These words form the point of passage to the next verses, in which the Jews are accused of not believing the writings of Moses, the very pith and kernel of which was the unity of God and the having no other Gods but him.

46. Moses: Here put for the law, the basis of the O. T. Scriptures. This is an important testimony to the subject of the whole Pentateuch: it is of me. It witnesses also to the fact of Moses having written those books, which were then and are still known by his name. Moses leads to Christ: is one of the witnesses by which the Father hath testified of him. A.—Moses’s highest calling was to prepare the way for Messiah. Both by the whole stage which he occupied in the development of the divine kingdom, and by individual prophetic intimations (like Deut. 18: 15; Gen. 3: 15, in their spiritual meaning), he had pointed out the Messiah. N.—Want of evidence could not be the cause that the Jews rejected and disbelieved the gospel, since they embraced and believed the law, upon the credit of miracles that were less evident. For those of Christ they knew by sight and sense; those of Moses only by tradition. They believed and assented to things neither evident nor certain, nor yet so much as probable, but actually false and fallacious. Whereas they rejected Christ and his doctrine, though every tittle of it came enforced with miracle, and the best arguments that heaven and earth could back it with. R. S.

47. If Scripture had been inscribed with genuine characters in the memory of their hearts, the words of Christ would have rendered those characters bright and clear. R. B.—They did not believe Moses in his account of the patriarchs and their faith; otherwise they would have walked in Abraham’s steps. They did not believe in the holy, heart-searching severity of the law delivered by Moses; otherwise their pharisaical righteousness by works would have been annihilated. They did not believe him, when the whole of his priestly and sacrificial institution brought to their minds the continual remembrance of their sins, and, as a shadow, pointed to a future real fulfilment; for otherwise they would have already become through Moses what John the Baptist had further wished to make them—a people prepared and ready for the Lord, and, like Simeon, joyfully laying hold on his salvation. Stier.—In proportion as the inner power and meaning of a religion are dead, in that proportion very often is an exaggerated import attached to its outer forms. It was so with Judaism in the days of Christ. Its living and burning enthusiasm was quenched; its lofty and noble faith had died away; its prophets had ceased to prophesy; its poets had ceased to sing; its priests were no longer clothed with righteousness; its saints were few. And thus it was that the observance of the Sabbath, which had been intended to secure for weary men a rest full of love and peace and mercy, had become a barren custom fenced in with the most frivolous and senseless restrictions. It was in answer to the charge, “because he did such things on the Sabbath-day,” that he delivered the divine and lofty discourse preserved for us in the fifth chapter of John. The great rabbis and chief priests had brought him before them in order to warn, and the warnings fell on them. They tremble and gnash their teeth, though they dare not act, while, with words like a flame of fire piercing into the very joints and marrow—with words more full of wisdom and majesty than those which came among the thunders of Sinai—he assumes the awful dignity of the Son of God. F.

Thus closes this wonderful discourse. In the high standpoint of its defence against the charge of Sabbath desecration; in the calm and solemn majesty of its tone; in the conscious dignity with which Jesus set forth his relation to the Father; in the pertinence and moral force of his presentation of himself—first, as giving spiritual life to spiritually dead souls; and next, as one day to give life from the dead to all who are in their graves—revealing himself thus as the Infinite Arbiter of all human destiny, the Great Judge of quick and dead—this discourse has no parallel in human language. H. C.

From this time the ruling Pharisaic party persecuted Christ as a most dangerous enemy, who exposed their sentiments with a power of truth not to be controverted. “Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy” were the pretexts on which they sought his condemnation. N.—And under such circumstances it was useless, and worse than useless, for him to remain in Judea, where every day was a day of peril from these angry and powerful conspirators. F.

Section 33.—Justifies plucking of Corn, and healing, on the Sabbath.

Galilee.