1,2. JESUS went unto the mount of Olives: and early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down and taught them.

3. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery: and 4 when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in 5 adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be 6 stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as 7 though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8,9. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even 10 unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, 11 where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She saith, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

12. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that fol- 13 loweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Pharisees 14 therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go: but ye cannot tell whence I come, and

15, 16 whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh, I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judg- 17 ment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. It is also written 18 in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of 19 myself; and the Father that sent me, beareth witness of me. Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

20. These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come.

THE Son of God, standing in human form on the earth, standing in the courts of his Father’s house among the worshippers at the feast of Tabernacles, uses this sublime, this magnificent figure, to express that which he came to do for, and to be to, the universe of his moral creation: “I am the light of the world.” Once God said, when he created all things by Jesus Christ, “Let there be light.” It was the first act of that mighty drama, of which the curtain rose on chaos, and fell on paradise. Now God speaks again—thousands of years lying between—and says once more, “Let there be light;” and, this time, the light is a man: One like ourselves in all that makes the infirmities and the sorrows and the sufferings of mortal being; and yet within that despised, that rejected Person, there “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” V.

He that followeth me shall have the light of life. Jesus was more than a teacher of truth; for he not only gave light, but was the Light: more than the guide to life; for he was the Light of life. As Augustine has said, “Light which brings other things to view, brings itself to view. Light furnishes its own testimony: it opens healthy eyes, and itself is a witness to itself.” Jesus announced himself as the Light, not of one city or people only, but of the whole world. This light had come, not to search men out for judgment, but to guide them to salvation; but, for that very reason, so much the greater must be the condemnation to those who should reject it. Not to come forth and walk in the light is to abide in darkness; not to come to the Saviour will be to die in sin; and to die in sin, rejecting Jesus who alone can save from sin, will be to die without hope, and to perish without remedy. J. P. T.

1,2. The return of the people to the quiet of their dwellings at the close of the feast (verse 53 of previous section) is designedly contrasted with our Lord’s homeless way of spending the short night, who is early in the morning on the scene again. It might have been the Lord’s ordinary custom to leave the brilliant misery of the city every night, that so he might compose his sorrowful and interceding heart, and collect his energies for new labors of love: preferring for his resting-place the Mount of Olives, the scene thus consecrated by many preparatory prayers for his final humiliation and exaltation. Stier.—It would appear that our Lord, during his visits to Jerusalem, never spent a night in the city. Sometimes he walked to Bethany, but usually made the Mount of Olives his home. It appears, moreover, that there was one particular “place” (J. 18: 2, etc.) on the mount, “a garden,” “a place called Gethsemane,” to which he was accustomed to go, and in which to stay. There is a strong probability too that this was that “certain place” mentioned by Luke (11: 1), where Jesus taught them (again) the Lord’s Prayer. It may have been to this very place that Nicodemus came by night. Here then we have a spot closely connected with the private life of Jesus. That the Son of man should have his house in a garden—that he should be forced to rest, and sleep, and pray on the hill-side, under the open canopy of heaven—must seem to many strange. But those familiar with Eastern life will easily understand it. During a great part of the year nearly all the inhabitants sleep in the open air; on the house-top or in garden or field. There is no rain, and no dew; the ground is dry and the air fresh and balmy. Moreover, in the East one can have no privacy in a house, night or day. The one apartment is open to all comers. The garden on Olivet most probably belonged to some secret friend; and Christ’s followers knew it well. J. L. P.

3-11. This narrative is not found in some of the MSS., but it was circulated in various texts as early, perhaps, as the second, certainly as the third, century. There can be no doubt that it is a genuine fragment of evangelical history, derived from some source which we do not now exactly know, and there needs be no hesitation in adopting it as the narrative of an incident in the life of Jesus. For a full statement of the overwhelming evidence in its favor, I would refer to the remarks of Meyer, and of Lücke and Rosenmüller. G.

3. Defeated in their effort to meet him in argument, or to apprehend him in the absence of any legal charge, they tried next to entrap him into committing himself in some way. J. C. R.—A large number of people had already gathered round Jesus in the women’s court, where he had sat down to teach. A woman of the humbler class had been guilty of immorality, and the scribes, on the moment, saw in her sin a possible snare for the hated Galilean. It was not their business, but that of her husband, to accuse her; nor could she be legally punished, except by divorce, if he himself were not a man of pure life. It was the custom, however, in cases of difficulty, to consult a famous rabbi; and advantage was taken of this to entrap Jesus, if possible, by asking him to adjudicate on the case. G.

5,6. Either he must decide against the law, and appear at once a blasphemer of Moses and a partisan of gross sin, or incur popular odium [because the offence was common] by condemning the culprit to death. S.—They said in themselves, If he shall bid stone her, he will not have the repute of gentleness; if he give sentence to let her go, he will not keep righteousness. Aug.—They came not to learn, but to tempt; and to tempt, that they might accuse. Fain would these adversaries draw Christ to contradict Moses, that they might take advantage of his contradiction. They saw his inclination to mercy and commiseration, so far as to neglect even some circumstances of the law, as to touch the leper, to heal on the Sabbath, to eat with known sinners, to dismiss an infamous but penitent offender, to select and countenance two noted publicans; and hereupon they might perhaps think that his compassion might draw him to cross this Mosaical institution. Bp. H.—To make her, with total disregard to her own sufferings, the mere passive instrument of their hatred against Jesus; and to do all this, not under the pressure of moral indignation, but in order to gratify a calculating malice, showed on their parts a graceless, pitiless, barbarous brutality of heart and conscience, which could not but prove revolting and hateful to one who alone was infinitely tender, because he alone was infinitely pure. F.

7. Jesus declined delivering a legal sentence, treated the case more as a matter of conscience, and pronounced upon it in an exclusively moral point of view, according to which the accusers appeared no less guilty than the accused. To this point of view he intended to lead them even by his silence, in verse 6. But as he did not succeed, he openly says at verse 7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” C. B.—It was not any abrogation of the Mosaic law; it was, on the contrary, an admission of its justice, and doubtless it must have sunk heavily as a death-warrant upon the woman’s heart. But it acted in a manner wholly unexpected. The terrible law stood written; it was not the time, it was not his will, to rescind it. But, on the other hand, they themselves, by referring the whole question to him as though it needed a new solution, had practically confessed that the law had fallen into desuetude, and that even with his authority they had no intention of carrying it into action. Since, therefore, the whole proceeding was on their part illegal and irregular, he transfers it by these words from the forum of law to that of conscience. F.—He answers in effect, “The law is just, but let just men execute the law;” which answer was just and gentle; let this sinner be punished, but not by sinners. Aug.

7-9. Christ well knew how to repel such attacks by an appeal to higher principles, which at once justified his conduct and condemned his assailants. The same law which adjudged the guilty to death required the witnesses to cast the first stones, in token of their abhorrence of the crime. But who dared do this, if conscious that his guilt was the same? And such was the prevalent corruption, that all the accusers were in this case. S.—Went out one by one. Once more, their schemes had only turned to their own shame. He had given no opinion for the obsolete law, or against it: their own consciences had set the offender free. G.—Thus does the Lord leave the law in its honor and in its condemning clearness; ay, and here, as ever, he sharpens its slaying edge, so that it cannot but penetrate even into the conscience of a Pharisee, while he sends accusers as well as accused to the one same sinner’s dock. But not as one appointed to carry out the punishment of the law does he speak. R. B.

The repeated instances in which, without a moment’s hesitation, he foiled the crafty designs of his enemies, and in foiling them taught forever some eternal principle of thought and action, are among the most unique and decisive proofs of his more than human wisdom; and yet not one of those gleams of sacred light which were struck from him by collision with the malice or hate of man was brighter or more beautiful than this. . . . They were “such” as the woman they had condemned, and they dared not stay. He would not add to their shame and confusion of face by watching them: he had no wish further to reveal his knowledge of the impure secrets of their hearts; he would not tempt them to brazen it out before him, and to lie against the testimony of their own memories; he had stooped down once more, and was writing on the ground. F.—Two plain inferences from this transaction deserve notice. The tacit confession of gross sin by the scribes and Pharisees does away with the idea that they were honest though mistaken enthusiasts for what they deemed truth and righteousness; and the fact that Christ does not disclaim the authority to judge the case—nay, assumes it in his last words—gives another proof of his divinity. S.

10,11. Then at last, face to face with that guilty one whom he had delivered from the human vengeance, he brought her into that truer and higher court, for which they, the human accusers, had cared nothing, and in the very act of absolving, added also the highest of all motives for reformation, when he said, “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” He who thus dealt with guilt was in deed and in truth the sinner’s friend. V.—His look, the most terrible of all to meet, because it was the only look that fell on her from a soul robbed in a stainless innocence, was at the same time the most gentle and the most forgiving. Her stay was a sign of her penitence; her penitence, let us trust, a certain pledge of her future forgiveness. “Two things,” as Augustine finely says, “were here left alone together—misery and mercy.” F.—Go and sin no more. With these words he condemns the sin and saves the sinner. R. B.—In all his intercourse with men, Christ displayed the utmost tenderness to those who had found out that they were sinners—all that ran to him in penitence. His woes and threatenings and judgments were for those that were sinners without confessing it. F. D. H.

The judge, being the representative but of one side of the divine character, of the divine justice, does not pardon, but only condemns or acquits. The king, however, is a larger mirror of the divine perfections, of grace no less than of justice; he, therefore, after the condemnation, is free to pardon. It was this, the kingly function, which our Lord exercised when he bade the woman taken in adultery to go free. He did not thereby act against his own law, given by Moses, which had said that such should be stoned: he only completed it. The idea upon which her pardon, upon which every pardon pronounced by the monarch as the fountain of grace in the land, properly rests, is that this will bring about in him who is its object a truer righteousness than the payment of the extreme penalty would have done; for there is something in him which promises that the end which punishment was to reach will more surely be attained by the method of grace. Were it otherwise, the true love would be to suffer the punishment to take its course. So that here, too, justice and grace appear as identical—as love, manifesting itself now at one pole, now at the other. T.

Pure and inflexible interpreter of the divine law, he knows and understands man’s nature, and judges it with that equitable severity which nothing escapes, the excuse as little as the fault. Faith, sincerity, humanity, sorrow, repentance, touch him, without biasing the charity and the justice of his conclusions; and he expresses blame or announces pardon with the same calm serenity of authority, certain that his eye has read the depths of the heart to which his words will penetrate. F. G.

His ground is charity, not liberality; and the two are as wide apart in their practical implications, as adhering to all truth, and being loose in all. Charity holds fast the minutest atoms of truth, as being precious and divine, offended by even so much as a thought of laxity. Liberality loosens the terms of truth; permitting easily and with careless magnanimity variations from it; consenting, as it were, in its own sovereignty, to overlook or allow them; and subsiding thus, ere long, into a licentious indifference to all truth, and a general defect of responsibility in regard to it. Charity extends allowance to men; liberality, to falsities themselves. Charity takes the truth to be sacred and immovable; liberality allows it to be marred and maimed at pleasure. How different the manner of Jesus in this respect from that irreverent, feeble laxity, that lets the errors be as good as the truths, and takes it for a sign of intellectual eminence, that one can be floated comfortably in the abysses of liberalism! “Judge not,” he says, in holy charity, “that ye be not judged;” and again, in holy exactness, “whosoever shall break, or teach to break, one of these least commandments, shall be least in the kingdom of God.” And again, “these things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone”—once more, too, in the same way, “he that is without sin, let him cast the first stone;” and again, “go, and sin no more.” So magnificent and sublime, so plainly divine, is the balance of Jesus. Nothing throws him off the centre on which truth rests; no prejudice, no opposition, no attempt to right a mistake, or rectify a delusion, or reform a practice. H. B.

12. I am the light of the world.** He was seated at that moment in the treasury, which contained the thirteen chests with trumpet-shaped openings, into which the people, and especially the Pharisees, used to cast their gifts. F.—It stood at the north side of the court of the women, which lay outside the temple properly so called, and in which, on all the great annual festivals, crowds were wont daily to assemble. In the centre of this court, at the feast of Tabernacles, two tall stands were placed, each supporting four large branching candelabra. As at the time of the morning sacrifice, the procession wound its way up from the fountain of Siloam, and the water was poured out from the golden pitcher to remind the people of the supply of water that had been made for their forefathers during the desert wanderings; so after the evening sacrifice all the lights in these candelabra were kindled, the flame broad and brilliant enough to illuminate the whole city, to remind the people of the pillar of light by which their marchings through the wilderness were guided. And still freer and heartier than the morning jubilations which attended on the libation of the water, were the evening ones, which accompanied the kindling of the lights. It was with allusion to the one ceremony that Jesus said, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” It was with allusion to the other, of which both he and those around him were reminded by the stately chandeliers which stood at the time before their eyes, that he said, “I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” In uttering both these sayings, Jesus placed himself in a singular and elevated relationship to the whole human family. In the one he invited the entire multitude of human thirsters to come to him to have their thirst assuaged. In the other, he claimed to be the one central source of light and life to the whole world. H.

He proclaims, “I am the light of the world"—plainly in the most absolute sense. For though he gives his disciples the same title, they are only “light in the Lord,” and though he calls the Baptist “the burning and shining light” (or “lamp” of his day), yet “he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man.” Under this magnificent title Messiah was promised of old (Isaiah 42: 6). B.—They wanted him to announce himself as the Messiah, and so become their temporal deliverer; but he will only tell them the far deeper, more eternal truths, that he is the light, and the life, and the living water, and that he came from the Father—as they, too, should know when they had lifted him up upon the cross. They were looking solely for the Messiah of the Jews: he would have them know him as the Redeemer of the world, the Saviour of their souls. F.

Followeth me. As a disciple, servant, traveller, soldier, or sheep. What the teacher is to the scholar, the master to the servant, the guide to the traveller, the captain to the soldier, the shepherd to the sheep, that is Christ to true Christians. Following is the same as believing. Light of life. The light that Christ gives is independent of time or place—is not affected by sickness or death—burns on forever. He that has it shall feel light within his mind, heart, conscience—shall have light shining round him, guiding him in his journey through life, and shall reflect light by his conduct and conversation. J. C. R.—Through all the realms of organic nature light is the nourisher of life, “indispensable to a healthy development and a persistent vitality.” The chemistry of the sun transmutes inorganic matter into the substances of vegetable growth, distils the fertilizing showers, vitalizes the myriad tribes of insects, evokes the songs of birds, develops in man the red blood-cells which give body to his muscle, marrow to his bones, and thought to his brain, colors the infant’s cheek with the glow of healthy organization, cheers the sick man with healing mercy; in short, the continuance of the physical creation, like its beginning, depends upon the word, Let there be light. And here the analogy of the spiritual world at once suggests itself—that Christ, in bringing to the soul light upon whatever concerns its existence, state, recovery, destiny, as the offspring of God, fallen, redeemed, immortal, brings to it a quickening power, the light of life. J. P. T.

15,16. He guards against the notion that judgment is the object of his witness. Not for judgment, but for salvation, does he bear witness of himself as the light, and this witness only falls as a judgment upon him whose love of darkness deserves that incapacity of being saved, to which he is given over. And this judgment is a judgment of God. R. B.

18. Our Saviour must not be understood here to distinguish himself from his Father in respect of his divine being, for so he and his Father are one; but in respect of his office, as he was sent, and his Father was he who sent him. Poole.—His testimony and judgment were true, because not given by himself as a man of himself, but by him with the Father. Thus there were two witnesses: his own testimony, infallible because of his communion with the Father; and the testimony of the Father himself, given in his manifestation and ministry as a whole. N.—19. “But ye neither know me, nor my Father; for to know the one is to know the other—to remain ignorant of the one is to remain ignorant of the other. It is your want of all true knowledge of me that keeps you from knowing God. It is the want of all true knowledge of God that keeps you from knowing me. Had you known me, you would have known him; had you known him, you would have known me.”

So fared it with our Lord’s declaration that he was the light of the world, as it was at first spoken in the temple; so ended the first brief colloquy with the Jews to which its utterance gave birth. H.

Section 87.—Severe Denunciation of the Jews.

The Temple.

21. THEN said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in 22 your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? 23 because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from 24 beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in 25 your sins. Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even 26 the same that I said unto you from the beginning. I have many things to say, and to judge of you: but he that sent me, is true; and I speak to the world those things which 27 I have heard of him. They understood not that he spake to them of the Father. 28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught 29 me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. 30, 31 As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews 32 which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 33 and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest 34 thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto 35 you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth 36 not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make 37 you free, ye shall be free indeed. I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to 38 kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with 39 my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s 40 children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that 41 hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we 42 have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he 43 sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my 44 word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth; because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and 45, 46 the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you 47 convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God, heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

THE test of discipleship is constancy in obedience. Truth itself is rendered intelligible by the spirit of obedience. The appreciative knowledge of truth dispels error, and, by showing the evil and danger of sin, delivers the soul from its bondage and power. Sin is a hard taskmaster; and they who begin by yielding to its pleasures, must end by paying its penalties. Christ alone can free us from such bondage; and to enter into union with him by faith is to receive that spirit of life which is the sense of true freedom. The Jews, who prided themselves upon being the children of God through the calling and covenant of Abraham, had enslaved themselves to formalism, to hypocrisy, to the spirit of darkness, to the powers of this world. Resenting the tyranny of the Romans with a hatred that never died, they yet lived under bondage to a spiritual power more degrading and more unrelenting than this hated foreign yoke. Christ came to announce the year of jubilee, the day of redemption, the salvation of God; and, by striking at the root of sin in the heart, to deliver all who would hear him. His religion is not a yoke of rules, a bondage of forms, but the perfect law of liberty: for its life is truth; and its spirit, love. J. P. T.

21. Shall die in your sins.** In the expressive form of the Greek—“In your sin ye shall die!” In your one, all-comprehensive, and fatal sin of unbelief, ye must die forever! With mournful and solemn emphasis we must suppose these words fell from those blessed lips, suggested by the contrast between his future and theirs—himself going so soon to dwell with the Father in blessedness perfect and eternal; they “going to their own place” to meet the doom of the guilty and the lost! H. C.—The sins of believers go to the grave bebefore them; sin dieth while they live. The sins of unbelievers go to the grave with them. They that die in their sins shall rise in their sins, and stand before Christ in their sins. Burkitt.

23,24. A gulf was already fixed between these children of the world and the Lord from heaven, the gulf between beneath and above, between darkness and light, between death and life—a gulf which was impassable to them unless they would yet believe. Christ, and with Christ Christians, go above, to heaven, because they are from above; they die not with this dying world, because they are not of this world; but the servants of sin and the devil go beneath, because they are from beneath; they die with this death-doomed world, because they are of this world. R. B.

25. He does not say explicitly that he is the Christ. His questioners were well aware what kind of person their Messiah was generally expected to be, how different from all that Jesus was. They would provoke him to make a claim which they knew would be generally disallowed. He will not do it. When they say, “Who art thou?” he contents himself by saying, “I am essentially that which I speak; my sayings reveal myself, and tell who and what I am.” In this, as in so many other instances of his dealing with those opposed to him at Jerusalem, his sayings were confined to assertions or revelations, not of his Messiahship, but of his unity of nature, will, and purpose with the Father. H.—Had he not then told them who he was? Yes, indeed, but they believed not that he was what he spoke, that in his words he revealed his being, as he at once both is and speaks the eternal Word of God. R. B.—Even the same. The sentence must be rendered thus: “Essentially that which I also discourse unto you.” He is the Word; his discourses are the revelation of himself. When Moses asked the name of God, “I am that which I AM,” was the mysterious answer; the hidden essence of the yet unrevealed One could only be expressed by self-comprehension; but when God manifest in the flesh is asked the same question, it is “I am that which I SPEAK;” what he reveals himself to be, that he is. A.

28. When ye have lifted up.** The plainest intimation he had yet given in public of the manner and the authors of his death. B.—Ye shall know. At his death new and more impressive proofs of his true Messiahship would appear. His resurrection would bring yet other confirmations of his mission, and the descent of the Spirit would bear home these new testimonies to many hearts. H. C.—Some would know by the power of the Holy Spirit, to their own salvation; others by the judgments which were to follow ere long, and to their own dismay and ruin. A.—Nothing of myself. “I do nothing of my own independent authority.” The reference is to the perfect union between the Son and the Father. J. C. R.

29. He that sent me is with me.** He simply speaks of God and spiritual things as one who has come out from him, to tell us what he knows. And his simple telling brings us the reality; proves it to us in its own sublime self-evidence; awakens even the consciousness of it in our own bosom. Indeed, he makes even the world luminous by his words—fills it with an immediate and new sense of God, which nothing has ever been able to expel. H. B.—Jesus was evidently unique in his spiritual individuality—in his constant and conscious communion with God; in his consciousness of sinlessness, of divinity, and of the grandest of missions; in the universality, completeness, and unapproachable greatness of his manhood, attained and manifested by him without apparent cause and without conscious effort; in the entire unselfishness and boundless self-sacrifice of his life, and in the sublime devotion of it to God and humanity; in his faith in God and truth, and in his calm assurance of the triumph of his kingdom on earth. In all these he was absolutely alone among men. D. S. G.

31,32. By continuing in Christ’s word, his disciples will indeed know the truth; so proceeds our Lord’s discourse. By virtue of the knowledge of the truth they shall live, they shall share the life of Christ, who is truth and life, for they shall become free from sin and from all that has come upon them in consequence of sin. R. B.—In the simple economy of God, truth always blesses, liberates, and cleanses him that holds it, by the same law that error curses, cramps, and destroys. F. D. H.—If ye continue in my word. Our Lord teaches the great principle that steady continuance is the only real safe proof of discipleship. No perseverance, no grace! No continuance in the word, no real faith and conversion! J. C. R.—To come to Christ is no one transient act, to be done once in a man’s life. What he calls “coming to him,” he elsewhere expresses by “abiding in him,” and here by continuing in his word. Beveridge.—Ye shall know the truth. The truth concerning myself, my nature, my mission, my gospel. Steady continuance in my service shall lead to clear knowledge. It is a parallel saying to J. 7 : 17. J. C. R.

33. The unbelieving party of the Jews protested against his assumption, that they still needed to be made free, and plumed themselves on their descent from Abraham. In his reply he destroys, first, their boast of freedom, and, secondly, their triumph in their patriarchal lineage. C. B.—Never in bondage to any. A monstrous fiction, dear to the national vanity, but which might have been sufficiently disproved by the helmets of the Roman soldiers in the adjoining tower of Antonia. K.—The seed of Abraham were in bondage to the Egyptians and Babylonians for many years, to say nothing of the frequent bondages to other nations. Even now they were in subjection to the Romans.

34-36. Our Lord shows what kind of freedom he had meant, by showing the kind of slavery from which he wished them to be delivered. The man that lived wilfully in habits of sin was acknowledged by all to be the slave of sin. Even heathen philosophers admitted it. J. C. R.—Going far deeper than freedom in the political sense, he insists that every sinner is a slave. In committing sin he yields to a master; he surrenders himself to do the will of the devil; his own lusts overpower his better judgment and reason. He is absolutely in bondage—a bondage at once tyrannous, humiliating, disgraceful. Then, recurring to the figure of servitude, he contrasts the state of the slave in the household with that of the son. The slave has no permanent home there; no rights of home; may be ejected at any time. The son is the heir, and is at home there with no limit of time. If now the Son of man gives you the rights of freemen in God’s house ye are indeed free—not otherwise. H. C.

37. My word hath no place in you.** The word in the original which is rendered by hath place, expresses the powerful operation of the living word of God (Heb. 4 : 12) when, fastening upon the heart, it forces itself in, and, pushing forward, establishes for itself a place therein. “Man must abide in the word, the word lay hold in the man” (Bengel). But it cannot lay hold, it cannot push forward in the heart, if man obstinately locks up the way against it. And that the Jews did in their hatred to Jesus. R. B.

37-40. Jesus admits that they are the seed, but denies that they are children of Abraham. They were unquestionably born in his lineage, but, as unquestionably, were aliens in spirit and character; utterly far from being children of Abraham in the sense of bearing his image and inheriting his virtues. In every point they were totally unlike Abraham; children of another father. H. C.—They boasted without reason, he told them, of being Abraham’s children. By attempting the life of one who was offering them the truth, and thus acting as enemies to the truth, they showed themselves children of Satan rather than of Abraham; their disposition and actions savored more of the father of lies than the Father of the faithful. The cause of their unbelief, therefore, was precisely this, that their disposition of heart was the reverse of Abraham’s. Him, whom Abraham longed for, they sought to destroy. N.—42. If they really were children of God the Father, they would love him as the Father’s Son, the Father’s messenger, the Father’s promised Messiah. Not loving him, they gave the plainest proof that they were not God’s children. J. C. R.

43. Why do ye not understand?** They were continually misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and stumbling at, the expressions he used in teaching them. By “bread” they thought he meant literal bread. By “freedom,” political freedom. Having no will to listen to and receive his doctrine, they were ready at every step to misconstrue the words and figures under which it was conveyed and placed before them. J. C. R.—If God were their Father, and they God’s children and house-mates, must they not have known the speech of their home, their mother-tongue? So strange is the Son of God to his Father’s lost children, that they do not even understand his speech! And why not? He himself gives the answer: “Even because ye cannot hear my word.” They had no inward ear for the truth which Jesus was speaking to them, therefore also in his speech they recognized not the speech of God. R. B.

44. Ye are of the devil.** This is one of the most decisive testimonies to the objective (outward) personality of the devil. It is quite impossible to suppose an accommodation to Jewish views, or a metaphorical form of speech, in so solemn an assertion as this. A.—Christ teaches that all wickedness, and all evil in its connection with wickedness, must be traced back to a spirit that first rebelled against God, to an original sin, which gave birth to the first germ of wickedness. . . . Christ gives a perfectly defined conception of Satan; he designates him as “the spirit alienated from truth and goodness (for, according to John’s usage, truth involves both the true and the good); in whom falsehood and wickedness have become a second nature; who can find no abiding-place in the truth.” The revelation of truth which the spirits were to receive from communion with the Father of spirits passes by him unheeded; he cannot receive and hold it fast, because he has no susceptibility for its impressions. Christ tells the Pharisees that they, serving the spirit of lies, and living in communion with him, showed themselves, by the spirit which their actions manifested, to be children of Satan, rather than of Abraham and God. N.—The account Josephus gives of the wickedness of the Jews at this period, abundantly vindicates this assertion of our Lord from any appearance of undue severity. D.

Your father the devil. Thus does the Lord Jesus at length name the father to whom, by willing to do his lusts, they had given themselves up to be children. There is a fearful severity in Jesus’ words; but they are yet full of goodness; for they paint before the eyes of sinners the image of the original, personal author of sin, if perchance sinners might recognize in this mirror their own sinful likeness thereto, and be terrified at themselves, at the depravation of their own being. He wishes to inspire the inmost heart of his present and all future hearers with fear and trembling, lest they should perish by walking in the way of that great murderer and liar. The murderer from the beginning is also now in activity, endeavoring to destroy life. R. B.—The great battle of the world and of all time is with sin; not with suffering so much, as with that which is the cause of all suffering—with moral evil, the root and source of physical evil. The gospels are distinguished by the frequent and vivid representation of sin as a deep and deadly evil in the heart, as voluntary departure from rectitude, from purity, from truth, from love—in one word, from God, separation from him in thought, affection, and will. In the teaching of Christ, sin is an undoubted and awful reality, the bitter cause of all that afflicts and crushes the world, the death of the human body, the perdition of the human soul.

44. One of the most marked features of Christ’s spirit and manner in public was the terrible severity with which, although seldom, he exposed and denounced evil. Friendless and powerless as he seemed to be—as in his earthly relations he certainly was—he did not repress on necessary occasion a burning indignation. But the objects of deepest aversion and abhorrence to Jesus were the Pharisees, lawyers, and scribes, the leaders of the chief sect in that day, the transcribers and interpreters of the Bible. He was strikingly more patient with the Sadducees, the freethinkers of Judea, although he decisively condemned their principles. Even to the convicted and gross violator of the laws of morality, he spoke with wondrous gentleness. But his severity was consuming, when he turned to the high religious professors, the admired but unworthy champions of Judaism. Hypocrisy, pretence, hollow semblance, were of old, and they are still, unutterably abhorrent to Christ; and nothing was, or now is, so dear to him as simplicity and sincerity.

46. Here is a being who was always calmly, perfectly conscious of faultlessness. “I do always those things which please the Father.” “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” “If I say the truth why do you then not believe?” Y.—In one who had already passed through unparalleled complications, and had continually to deal with friends and foes of every sort and degree, such a challenge thrown wide among his bitterest enemies, can amount to nothing short of a claim to absolute sinlessness. B.—In proof of the stainless purity of his nature and his life, Jesus appealed to earth, to hell, to heaven; and earth, hell, and heaven each gave its answer back. Jesus appealed to earth when, looking round upon those men who with the keen eye of jealousy and hatred had been watching him from the beginning to see what flaws they could detect in him, he calmly and confidently said, “Which of you convinceth me of sin, of any sin, the slightest transgression?” And earth gave her answer when these men stood speechless before him. He appealed to hell—to that devil of whom he spoke so plainly as the father of all liars and all murderers. “The prince of this world cometh and findeth nothing in me”—nothing of his own, nothing that he can claim, no falsehood, no malice, no selfishness, no unholiness in me. And hell gave its answer when the devil, whom Christ’s word of power drove forth from his human habitation, was heard to say, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.” H.—The question was put nearly two thousand years ago, and the response is yet awaited. Skeptic after skeptic has glared into the character of Christ, searching for a flaw; and skeptic after skeptic has recoiled with the confession that, whatever Christianity might be, this Jesus of Nazareth was honest and pure. No character known to history has been subjected to scrutiny so piercing as that of Jesus Christ; and there is no character known to history, except his, of which moral perfection could for a moment be maintained. P. S.—Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the faintest trace of self-seeking in his motives; sensuality shrinks abashed from his celestial purity; falsehood can leave no stain on him who is incarnate truth; injustice is forgotten beside his errorless equity; the very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in his benignity and love; the very idea of ambition is lost in his divine wisdom and divine self-abnegation. Bayne.

Section 88.—The Jews attempt to stone Him.

The Temple.

48. THEN answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samari- 49 tan, and hast a devil? Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, 50 and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh 51 and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never 52 see death. Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never

53 taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the 54 prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, if I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my father that honoureth me, of whom ye say, that he is 55 your God: yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know 56 him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying. Your 57 father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the 58 Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. 59 Then took they 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.

IF Christ made his followers free, then were they free indeed. And into what a glorious liberty should they thus be introduced! freedom from the law, its curse and condemnation; from the yoke of Jewish and all other ceremonialism; from the fear of guilt and the bondage of corruption; freedom to serve God willingly and lovingly—to be all, do all, suffer all which his will requires—this was the liberty wherewith Christ was ready to make free. This freedom was to be tasted in imperfect measure on earth, for to the end the old tyrant would be making his presence and power felt; still onward to the end, while the mind was serving the law of God, a law would be in the members warring against the law of the mind. But the hour of complete emancipation was to come at death. Death! it looked to nature like the stop- page of all life, the breaking of all ties, the quenching of all freedom and all joy. Not such was it to be to him who shared the life that Jesus breathes into the soul. To him it was to be the scattering of every cloud, the breaking of every fetter, the deliverance from every foe, the setting of the spirit forever free to soar with unchecked wing, up to the fountain-head of all life and blessedness, to bask in the sunshine forever. “Verily, verily, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” H.

CHRIST spoke to futurity, and presupposed a spiritual illumination not yet bestowed. He would evince the necessity of a divine interpreter to unfold and explain his own words; and therefore he speaks —truths indeed, but truths whose deep purport he knew those whom he addressed were wholly unable to penetrate. What are the topics of this solemn discourse? Truth—freedom—life—death—all in- telligible terms, but, in their spiritual import, to the unspiritualized mind dark as the counsels of God, fathomless as eternity! W. A. B.

What strikes us most forcibly in the long and painful interviews which Jesus had to sustain with the Jews of Jerusalem, is not the unshaken firmness with which he maintains his title before those who accused him of blasphemy; it is not even the severi- ty with which he treats those enemies of whose power he was aware; it is the calm serenity, the unalterable patience which he preserved in the midst of opponents whose smallest concern was for the truth, and of the base emissaries who sought only to prepare for him one snare after another. R. C.

48. Of not one sin could the Jews convince the Holy One of God; but because they were not of God, but were children of the devil, they now began to revile and blaspheme him. R. B.—Say we not well? This angry question arose from what our Lord had said, that they were ignorant of God, and were the children, not of Abraham, but of the devil. D.—By the Jews the Samaritans had been subjected to every form of excommunication; by the incommunicable name of Jehovah; by the tables of the law, and by the heavenly and earthly syna- gogues. The very name became a reproach. G. —When Christ came to interpret and reduce the moral law to its inward vigor and spirituality, they, whose soul was of so gross a make that it was scarce a spirit, defied him as a Samaritan and an impostor. R. S.

52. If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Partly vindicating his lofty claims, as Lord of the kingdom of life everlast- ing; and, at the same time, holding out even to his revilers the sceptre of grace. The word “keep” is in harmony with verse 31, “If ye continue in my word,” expressing the permanency, as a living and paramount principle, of that faith to which he re- ferred. B.—He who embraces and keeps Christ’s word in faith, embraces and retains Christ himself, the true substance of his word; and he who becomes partaker of Christ’s life is passed from death unto life—shall never see death. Christ means, that he who keeps his word shall, though in the midst of death, neither feel nor see death, as he says: He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. R. B.—Thus is every believing child of God, no matter in what earthly bondage groaning, in what earthly misery sunk, bound by a chain of adamant to the very throne of the ever-blessed Trinity. There is that in him which hath its birthplace in the bosom of the “high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.” The life of him who bids the universe live is enshrined in his inmost spirit! He shall never see death, for he is one with him who cannot die! W. A. B.—The death from which our Lord came to deliver us was the second death, eternal death, the death of damnation with the devil and his angels. This is indeed death; for this death of ours is only a migration. Aug.

54. Your God.** It is your own God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who has put such honor on me, that life or death turn upon keeping my sayings, and believing on me. J. C. R.—55. He meets the question, “Whom makest thou thyself?” in perfect humility, as the Son who honored his Father, and obediently kept his Father’s word. R. B.—First he says: I know him, and then: I keep his saying. Thus it is with the Son; but with believers it is different, for first they keep his word, being taught by him, and through that they get to know him. Beng.

56. The honor which the Jews refused to render to the Son of God, was rendered and is rendered to him by Abraham, “their Father,” whose works they renounce; for Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ. The very thing that gave him joy, to them was displeasing. Then, Abraham’s salvation also is in Christ alone. To the patriarch’s longing eyes the day seemed already present when his promised seed of blessing should shine as the light of the world, for the illumination of all the nations of the earth. Holding fast the word of promise and comforting himself therewith, he did not see eternal death; though dead, he yet lives. R. B.—He saw my day—surely while he lived. He seems to refer to the familiar intercourse which Abraham had with God, who is once and again in the history called “the angel of the Lord;” and whom Christ here identifies with himself. On those occasions Abraham saw me! O.—57. He had said Abraham saw him, as being his peculiar privilege. They give the opposite turn to it—“Hast thou seen Abraham!”—as an honor too great for him to pretend to.

58. Abraham was, I am.** The words rendered “was” and “am” are quite different. The one clause means, “Abraham was brought into being;” the other, “I exist.” The statement therefore is not that Christ came into existence before Abraham did, but that he never came into being, but existed before Abraham had a being; in other words, existed before creation, or eternally. In that sense the Jews plainly understood him, since “then took they up stones to cast at him,” just as they had before done when they saw that he made himself equal with God. B.—This was the very language of him who dwelt in the bush. They understood Christ, and rightly understood him, to assert that he had a being above time and succession. Eddy.—There could be no more distinct assertion of his divine nature. Those who deny this must either prove that he never spoke those words, or must believe that he—the most lowly and meek-hearted of men—was guilty of a colossal and almost frenetic intoxication of vanity and arrogance. For the Jews, more intensely than any other nation which the world has ever known, recognized the infinite transcendence of God; and therefore for a Jew, being merely man, to claim divinity, would not only be inconsistent with ordinary sense and virtue, but inconsistent with anything but sheer blasphemous insanity. F.

Not simply a declaration of a being before Abraham, but a taking to himself the great, the incommunicable name, carrying with it the assertion of self-existence, of supreme divinity. So they understood it, who instantly took up stones to stone him as a blasphemer. And so let us understand it, lifting up hearts and hands together to crown him Lord of all. H.—Before the Word became flesh, ay, before Abraham came into being to long for the incarnation of the Word, the uncreated, eternal Word was—even he at whose feet lie not only eighteen hundred years, but all created time, during all which while he says: “I AM”—that is, from everlasting to everlasting (Is. 43 : 13). Because, then, he is the eternal Word and the personal eternal Life manifest in the flesh, because in him the eternal Godhead has taken to itself our perishable humanity, and indissolubly united it with itself, making one I AM—therefore he can truly give us eternal life, and yea and amen shall abide his promise—“If a man keep my saying he shall never taste of death.” R. B.

59. The thoughtful reader of this chapter must be impressed with the hopeless moral hardihood of these captious Jews. The efforts of Jesus to convict their consciences of sin, to lead them into truth, and to bring them to a docile, honest faith in himself, were utterly powerless as toward these results. Every fresh point in his progressive argument only maddened them the more. When they reached the point where they could say, “Thou hast a devil,” there must have been, it would seem, an end of hope in their case. We have no further occasion to wonder that they rushed madly on to plot and to take his life; or that the nation, following such religious leaders, waxed more and more corrupt, infatuated and desperate in guilt, till the judgments of heaven fell on their city and nation, and “there was no remedy.” H. C.

Section 89.—The Seventy return. The Good Samaritan.

Near Jerusalem.