The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

Having thus unfolded his whole Messianic agency, embracing both the present and the future, Christ returns (v.30) to the general proposition with which he had commenced (in v.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: "I can of mine own self do nothing; as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just."

His decision against his opponents must, therefore, be just and true also. They need not say (he told them) that his testimony was not trustworthy, because given of himself (v.31), It was another that bore witness of him, whose testimony he knew to be unimpeachable (v.32). He did not allude to John, whose light, which had been to them, as to children, a source of transitory [381] pleasure, they had not followed to the point whither it ought to have guided them; he did not allude to John's, nor, indeed, to any man's testimony, but to a greater, viz., the works themselves, which the Father had given him to accomplish, and which formed the objective testimony to the Divinity of his labours: "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" [382] (v.36, 37).