John 9

John 9:1-10

Section 2. (John 9:1-41; John 10:1-42.)The Going forth out of the Fold with Christ: Salvation, Freedom, Sustenance. We have seen thus on God’s part the sanctuary opened, God revealed in Christ in grace and truth, -the Life the Light of men. We have not yet seen the response to it on man’s side. We have not seen the Light received, and Christ become as the result of this the Object for the heart. We find this in the present section; and the power of the revelation, by which henceforth the walk is with and in obedience to Him. But this involves in other respects also a complete change. For Judaism as a legal system implies throughout a shut up heaven, the veil which in it hung before the face of God.

To Moses himself is said, “Thou canst not see My Face.” Thus the soul brought to God is necessarily, by that fact, outside of Judaism. As the epistle to the Hebrews teaches us, to be “inside the veil” means therefore, of necessity, to be “outside the camp.” God also not being revealed, the light not having come, Judaism is but a fold in which the sheep meantime are shut up in the darkness. This is their safeguard indeed, until the expected Guide and Shepherd comes, though not giving the security of the Shepherd’s presence. Thus also there is bondage yet, not liberty; and, though they may be fed in the fold, it is not the place of pasture. So, when the Shepherd comes, it is to lead out of the fold, and this section is a true Exodus. It is the going forth which we shall find actually accomplished in the history of the Acts, the Exodus of the New Testament. Here we have it in its principles; and the Gospel of John in this once more displays its character as anticipative of Christianity. It is, in fact, that “beginning” from which John dates in his first epistle; Christ Himself being the Root necessarily out of which all things spring; and here anticipatively with His work accomplished, the Prophet of the new era now at hand.

1. The historical basis here is given at length: an instructive example of one to whom light is communicated, not less spiritually than physically. His simplicity and firm adherence to the truth so far as he knows it are beautiful, spite of the opposition of the leaders of the people, over whom his straightforward honesty of heart gains a manifest victory. He is given the privilege of being cast out for Christ’s name, even before he knows the glory of Him for whom he suffers. Cast out, he receives the revelation of the Son of God and worships; the first of the many to form the flock of the good Shepherd, outside the fold. As a follower of the Light, he walks no more in darkness, but has the light of life. (1) Passing on out of the hands of His persecutors, the pitiable condition of a man blind from birth arrests the Lord’s attention; and the disciples (of whom we now hear for the first time during His present visit to Jerusalem) inquire as to a matter full of perplexity to such as believed with the Rabbis in every physical evil as the result of some specific sin. Was this man so born for sin committed even before birth? or was it for the sin of his parents? Neither explanation of it seems to satisfy them; and indeed, looked at, as they contemplate it, as mere punishment, it must be ever hard to satisfy oneself as to the inequalities of it that seem upon the face of the things. The Lord lets in the light of a higher purpose, as applicable to any other as to the man then before Him, -“that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Of course, the sin which has come into the world has been the cause of all the evil in it; and, of course, there is very commonly specific punishment for specific sin. With this the heart can have no rest, however, until we realize that God is manifesting Himself in all human history; for this cannot be in mere righteousness only, but in love as well. We have a whole book in the Old Testament devoted to the working out of this problem of the mission of evil, which in Job’s case was mistaken by his friends in the same fashion as the disciples, question would indicate here.

But if the manifestation of God in His works be the great overruling purpose everywhere, then not only must there be in general love as well as righteousness, but in every one of His works there must be love. Where love is not, there God is not: if “God is love.” And here the miracle (or as Scripture would speak of it from its having this very character of manifesting God, the “sign”) is only a special manifestation of Him who everywhere is the same God. The Lord adds that the day for His activity as Man upon the earth is hastening to a close. For Him also, in that sense, the night is coming; and for the world also, from which He, the Light of it, is soon to be taken. This is not in contradiction to the truth that Christianity, with its wondrous blessings, was to follow His ascension to heaven: for Christianity is not the “light of the world,” but the taking out of it a people, whose place is to be with Christ where He is, and whose blessings are “spiritual blessings in heavenly places.” This is in perfect keeping with what is the doctrine now before us, the abandonment of the Jewish fold, and the gathering of Jews and Gentiles into one, outside it. For Christians it is the night that is passing, not the day; but a night in which we see far into heaven. The Lord now spits upon the ground, and making clay with the spittle anoints the eyes of the blind man with the clay. That might seem as if it would rather confirm his blindness than remove it, and the typical significance speaks in the same way: for out of the ground man was made, and the spittle, connected so often with humiliation and reproach, adds such thoughts to the lowly condition which manhood in itself implied for Him. Thus with Christ the very grace which brought Him down so low was misunderstood and cavilled at by the pride and self-righteousness of scribes and Pharisees, and seemed, in fact, but to make the blind eyes blinder. The plain fact of His humanity became for them an unanswerable argument against His claim of divinity, as we find shortly here. But there is a remedy which will change all: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,” says the Lord; and then that we may recognize the spiritual meaning of this, the interpretation of the name is added, “Sent.” These interpretations (found in the Gospel of John alone) are in themselves significant, as we have seen already (John 1:41-42), of the going over of spiritual blessing to the Gentiles, and the present one is again perfectly in keeping with the subject here. The water is the type of the Spirit, and the spring gushing from the temple-mount, where normally rested the cloud of the divine presence, the place of the “Father’s house,” was an apt figure of Him in His gracious working, who was to come after the Lord’s ascension, “sent” to declare the Rejected One. How differently does this poverty now appear when it is seen as the self-abasement of divine Love in quest of men, the poverty by which they are to be made rich! And how does the application of. Him thus open the eyes indeed to all other things! “He went away therefore, and washed, and came seeing.” (2) Immediately the conflict begins; and first as to the man himself. So different is he with the light in those blank and sightless eyes, that they cannot at first believe it is the same. Then comes the question, what has made this change; and he refers it to the “man called Jesus.” There is as yet little knowledge indeed of the One who has had compassion upon Him. Still it has taken hold, and a little germ of faith, scarcely to be distinguished as that at first, increases amid opposition, even by means of it, until, having learned to own Him as a prophet, the glory of the Son of God is finally revealed. The picture of hierarchic pretension with its blindness and hostility to the truth is complete. The Pharisees question the man, the parents, the man again. That the unbribed power of God has acted they have no wish to take into their argument. If He has, let Him have the praise of it: that hinders nothing the condemnation of Him with whom God has chosen to ally Himself, for His share in the matter. Did He not make the clay upon the Sabbath-day? The man with clearer insight affirms that God does not hear sinners: if He were not of God He would not be owned of God after this manner. They have no argument to meet this; all the more earnestly do they denounce it. A man wholly born in sins, -for was not his blindness proof enough of that? -to be teaching them! So they cast him out of the synagogue: they have before decided that if any should confess that the Worker of these mighty deeds was Christ, he should be cast out. Thus the open rupture with the disciples of Christ has begun on the part of the synagogue. (3) He is cast out; but cast only in this way into the company of Christ at whom all this is aimed. Nor will he be long left without the blessedness of such companionship. Again Jesus finds him, as before He found him, now to complete the work which He had then begun. “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” He asks; and he, though not knowing Him in that glory which is His, yet with full confidence in his Guide, inquires, “And who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?” He is following on in the track of the light that is come to him, and now has reached the Source of it. “Jesus said to him, Thou hast even seen Him, and He that speaketh to thee is He.” At which, with the straightforward simplicity that had baffled the Pharisees, and now yields itself with complete conviction to the completing truth, he answers, I believe, Lord;" and worships. He has not found merely a creed: he is brought to God. That which we did not apprehend in the woman is now unmistakably seen in the once blind man: he is morally and spiritually, as well as physically enlightened; he is in the light, and the light also is in him. And the Lord, who came not into the world for the purpose of judging it, but for its salvation, nevertheless by the fact of His presence in it, has brought judgment into it. The necessary effect is found that the (consciously) blind -the seekers therefore of light -are brought to see-, while the pretentious seers -the men of this world’s wisdom -are made blind. The Pharisees ask where they are to be classed -with the blind or with the seeing. The Lord answers them that they have classed themselves: they say, “we see,” Had they been blind, the sin that now was theirs would not have remained to them. 2. By the will of the Jews themselves therefore, the flock of Christ are now outside the fold. From His own side the Lord now confirms this: for He had come as the Shepherd into it, to lead out His sheep into a larger place. The principle of the fold is now to be given up: restraint is now to be exchanged for freedom, -a freedom made safe by an Object for the heart, controlling it by its affections, and by a living guidance which is realized as that of perfect wisdom, indissolubly united to as perfect love. (1) That Israel were the sheep of Jehovah had been the theme of the prophets of old. He who came into this fold to exercise authority must do so under the plain warrant of Jehovah Himself. And Ezekiel had prophesied in His Name that He would raise up for them “one Shepherd” who should feed them, even His “servant David” (Ezekiel 34:23): that Greater one of David’s line, of whom that king had only been the fore-runner and type. This was, of course, Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed; and every mark that pointed out the Anointed pointed out the Shepherd of Israel also. These marks combined constituted the “door,” or way of entrance by which the true claimant of such prerogative would come. All else were but thieves and robbers: men seeking their own gain in ways of treachery and violence.

The entrance by the door was possible but to One, -the true Shepherd, -to whom the porter would open. He, so coming, would call His own sheep by name and lead them out. The interpretation that would apply all this to the New Testament ministry in general, is so forced and really arrogant in its assumption, as scarcely to need notice. The one expression, “His own sheep” can apply to no under-shepherd; and who but He could call them by name, and lead them out? To Him alone every thing applies in the simplest and fullest way. Coming at the time definitely predicted by Daniel, confessedly of David’s line, born at Bethlehem, displaying the signs that none other eves did, and that unique character which could not permit confounding Him with any other, -He came through the door manifestly. And the Spirit of God in the prophesyings at His birth, at His presentation in the temple, in the testimony of the Baptist, and the visible anointing which preceded this, opened the door of the fold. Now the sheep were beginning to hearken to His voice, calling them each by his name with a knowledge which individualized them all, with perfect and tender knowledge.

These were His own sheep, but not all the sheep in the Jewish fold; and this is the strange thing that now becomes manifest, that though He who has come is the Shepherd of Israel, it is not Israel as a whole that knows His voice. Like many of the eastern folds, this one is found to have other sheep than His sheep. The call is an appeal to faith which not all have; and by it is wrought a separation, which sets them outside of the fold of Judaism altogether. He “leadeth them out:” -stronger still in the next sentence: “when He has put forth all His own.” For the principle of the fold is now to be abandoned. The law is not of faith;" and faith is the sole productive energy in man for God: “faith, if it have not works, is dead,” so necessarily productive is it, as surely as it is living: and “faith worketh by love.” But law is a system of prohibition, whose inspiring principles are self-interest and fear; while “there is no fear in love.” “Love seeketh not her own.” The law was a prohibitory fence thrown around men, the curb upon a will which was naturally lawless, which it could not change, and which fretted against it. Hence it was bondage and not liberty: under which the very children of God were as servants, and not sons (Galatians 4:1; Galatians 4:3; Galatians 4:7); and which therefore did not yield for the Father’s heart that which would satisfy Him. Every way the fold must go: Christ must put forth all His sheep; the putting forth implying however the strange power that a legal system yet may have even over true believers. How needful indeed this putting forth, and the history of the resistance to it, the Acts with the book of Revelation will by and by declare to us. As we know, they were not all His sheep that lay in that Jewish fold; and His presence in it was that which tested this, and drew the line of separation. His sheep were they who recognized the Shepherd’s voice; not merely knew Him by external testimony, but in the response of their hearts to what appealed to them as no other. Hence they were drawn, and followed Him in that wondrous path in which they found Him ever before them, in the track of light His footsteps left. And the Shepherd adds with regard to them, in the deep satisfaction of His own heart, “A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.” They are not obliged to know whose voice it is, nor to be learned in theological disquisitions. There is but one Voice for which they have ear or heart; and from another voice they flee; for from any who would simulate that Voice, or claim authority over them beside, they do right in suspecting evil. For the sheep ordinarily, apart from what may appeal to them in the need of others, their best safety is in flight. (2) But those to whom He is speaking understand nothing of what He is saying; the Lord therefore repeats and emphasizes His claim as the Shepherd of the sheep; dwelling upon their happiness with Him, in contrast with those who would make them a prey, or at least follow their own interests and leave them as a prey to others. He as the Good Shepherd would lay down His life for them; and that as the expression of the Father’s love. He begins with the assertion of His being the door of the sheep. It is not a question of the fold any more: there is no longer a fold; His sheep were in it, but are now ideally outside it altogether. The flock is His, and in His hand; and He is the only way of entrance into it. He receives into the fellowship of His people. Others that had come before Him were only thieves and robbers, with no title, and seeking no interests but their own; but His true sheep had never been deceived; and amid the multitudinous voices now, His voice, so unlike all others, rings out still, clear and distinct in its appeal to those in consciousness of their need and guilt. Where is there another who could propose to meet all the unrest in human hearts for every one who should come to Him? and who but He has done it? Again He declares: “I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” Salvation -a strange thing in this sense to the Jew -here lies at the very beginning of the blessings belonging to the flock of Christ; not as a possible attainment, but as a gift of unconditional grace, never therefore to be revoked. This positive assured security of His people tells at once that He and they are outside the legal fold. So the liberty that is associated with this speaks also: “He shall go in and out;” that is, the fold is no longer a place of confinement for him. He may in New Testament liberty go back to find in the Old Testament what God has given of Christ in it; but he belongs to it no more. Then also “he shall find pasture”: the true place of it is certainly outside the fold. All here combines to tell his blessing, and where he now belongs. The assurance of all blessing lies in this that he is in the care of the Good Shepherd. Wisdom and love are His; with power also that can lack no resources. The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. He on the contrary comes to give life, and that abundantly. Here a power beyond all creature power is seen; a need which is beyond all that the figure would imply. The theme of John’s Gospel discloses itself once more: life, which is eternal and His gift, without whose work none could have it.

This, of course, looks backward as well as forward: life for any, at any time, could be but the result of His coming; which waited not for its effectuation to bring forth its fruit; or else, of necessity, every mercy shown to man must have waited likewise. But we know without any peradventure it was not so. Manifested, however, the life was not, until the personal Life had come. It was possessed, as we have seen, new birth -without which none could see the Kingdom of God -involving its possession: but it was possessed in the midst of hindrances of the most effectual kind to manifestation. This is a question of the condition of the life, and not of the life itself. The babe does not yet manifest what the man is; and yet it has the life and nature of the man. In the Son come into the world, the eternal life was first and fully manifested. It was seen in Him in that knowledge of and communion with the Father, which was in Him perfect, and never clouded for a moment. And by Him it was revealed as the portion of those who in faith received Him; for, now that He had come, there was no faith that did not receive Him. He that believed on the Son had eternal life; and he that was not subject to the Son did not see life, but the wrath of God abode upon him. Nor did this wait for redemption to be accomplished. “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. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” Thus already was He quickening dead souls with the life that was in Him; and in His prayer to the Father in which He declares that “this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent,” He declares also that this knowledge they already had: “they have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me.” Thus the eternal life communicated to men was already exhibiting itself in its true character; already men knew the Father and the Son. But this was not yet the life in its full abundance; of which the Lord here speaks. Its character was manifested as a life of divine acquaintance and communion; but for this communion to be enjoyed aright, it needed to be freed from many great and terrible hindrances: the Cross had to be accomplished; the resurrection of Christ from the dead must give the answer on God’s part to the claim of righteousness there made good, that now as risen with Christ we might be possessors of a life triumphant over death, and justified from all that had brought in death, in a recognized place of nearness to God unknown before. There in the place of sons with God, and with the Spirit of sonship to give the enjoyment of the place, the life eternal would at last have its true abundance. This is what the Lord here looks forward to: the development of it awaits us in the portion of the Gospel soon to come before us, with the Epistle to the Romans for the results in known justification, and the believer’s place in Christ, and the Epistle of John for the practical results in the life down here. He is come then to give life: as the Good Shepherd, by laying down His own: yet it is not so much doctrine that is here, as the insistence upon a love proved at whatever cost. The hireling cares but for his wages: the sheep are not his Own, and he is not personally concerned about them: when the wolf appears, he leaves the sheep and flees; alas, no suppositious case, but what has been abundantly seen in history. The wolf in consequence, the open adversary, catches them and scatters them. The hireling acts in character: nothing better could be expected of him. On the contrary, between the Good Shepherd and His own exists a bond of the most tender intimacy. “I know My own, and they know Me; even as My Father knoweth Me, and I know My Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep.” “The world knew Him not:” there was the strangeness resulting from contrasted natures. His sheep know Him: for they have received His life and nature, and have thus been brought into communion; and this is the same kind of knowledge as exists (however much more perfectly) between the Father and the Son. The love implied in it is manifested in this, that He lays down His life for the sheep. But His sheep as thus defined have no longer any relationship with the Jewish fold, still less can be limited to those who have such. Law could not give this gift of eternal life, nor have, therefore, any control over it. In the fold itself there had been those that were not His own; and there are sheep of His not of that fold at all, but Gentiles, far enough off, to be brought nigh and made to hear His voice. Then there shall be one flock, one Shepherd. There is no fold any more: the fold was Jewish and legal, and is gone. In Christ is neither Jew nor Gentile. That wondrous act of self-devotion by which all blessing is effected and justified for men gives to the Father’s heart a new reason for the love wherewith He loves even His well-beloved Son. “Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again.” He does not lay it down, as giving up that humanity which He has taken to accomplish the work, -the earthen vessel in which alone the bird of heaven could die. Nay, He takes up again, though in changed condition, the life He has laid down, -takes it to lay it down no more. His death is neither the exhaustion of His love, nor the limit of His work for man. He has served in the lowest deep of suffering on earth; He serves on the Throne of glory still. And the Father’s love, which thus rests upon Him as Man continually, embraces as well the fruits of His work, -the men for whom He has toiled, and suffered, and won. This is all fully told out in the epistles of Paul specially; but John, though in some respects the very opposite of Paul, has many connecting links of doctrine with him; beyond the rest of the inspired writers; and this is true even as compared with Luke, whose Gospel has been even styled Paul’s Gospel.

We shall soon be called to realize this, which here begins to dawn on us. Our acceptance in the Beloved, of which Paul speaks (Ephesians 1:6), roots itself in this peculiar love of the Father to the Son. But the Lord goes further than this, and shows us the Father’s purpose in that which He is executing, the Father’s commandment entrusted to Him to execute. Not by constraint but freely He lays down His life: “No one taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself: I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” For as Man, He will not dispose of His own life without the Father’s sanction; but that is not all: “this commandment have I received of My Father.” Thus throughout He is the obedient servant of the divine counsels: one with the Father in what He has in hand to do; the Word, in all things the expression of the Divine Mind; and still “we behold His glory, -glory as of an Only-begotten with the Father, full of grace and truth.” So “there was a division again among the Jews on account of these words.” On the one hand they repeat the old blasphemy, that He had a demon, and was raving. Others object to such a sentence, and yet seem to go no further than perplexity. In sorrowful indecision only, the matter for the present ends. (3) The feast of the dedication of the temple occurred two months later than the previous narrative; the connection of it with it is, however, manifest. The dedication commemorated was not that of Solomon’s, but the re-dedication by Judas Maccabaeus, after its profanation by Antiochus. Yet the Lord walking in Solomon’s porch (or colonnade) is surely significant in this way, as carrying us back to that first dedication, if only by way of contrast. The massive foundations of Solomon’s structure remained, but only in ruin, which, however sought to be repaired, witnessed to what had come in the way of failure and ruin. How much this second temple, again renewed with great magnificence by the bloody hands of the Edomite Herod, lacked of what the old possessed! As it stood, it was the very witness of their pretentious legalism, covering up the decay and desolation underneath.

The Glory was departed, the Living Voice that had once spoken to them was silent now. The Ark and Mercy-seat, where the covering blood should have been sprinkled, the Throne of the divine Inhabitant, was gone. All went on now, not upon the old basis, but only as permitted by long-suffering patience, still pleading, still abused. Yet the Maccabaean outburst of loyalty to God had for awhile seemed to argue better things in the near future for the returned remnant of a people already scattered. Alas, it was but the convulsive leap of a flame that for a moment sought the heavens, and then died down to its now cold ashes. On man’s part, what hope more? In a few souls God’s mercy kept hope still; but the fulfilment of it lingered long. And now there was a new Voice in Solomon’s porch: a Voice that did not ignore the ruin, did not accord with the Pharisaism which the people followed, did not ring with the trumpet-tones of the warlike zealotry which would seize its triumph out of the reluctant hand of time; and yet thrilled heart and conscience, as if all the being of man were in His hand and answered to His summons. The Light shone; and the depths within were penetrated by it. For in fact the Glory had returned, and the Voice long silent had again awakened. It had proclaimed itself in the temple and synagogue, as well as in the places of daily concourse, and in the quiet homes of men. Here was He for whom they had dedicated and re-dedicated the temple, the fitting completion to their celebration of it now. But the fervor of enthusiasm around Him was not for Him: already He had been rejected, vilified and blasphemed; and the few who really listened had to take as outcasts their place with Him. But He was leading them out; and the hand that led them sheltered them; the glory of His presence shone around them: they are hidden in the Sanctuary of it from all that would injure them; for none shall pluck them out of His hand. The Jews come round about Him in Solomon’s porch, and urge Him not to leave them longer in suspense, but tell them plainly if He is the Christ. He answers that He has already told them without effect; and that the works He was doing in His Father’s Name bore witness of Him. They believed not because they were not of His sheep, who heard His voice. These sheep of His He knew, and they followed Him. He had said this before; but He now adds: “And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall in no wise ever perish,” (it is the strongest possible affirmation,) “nor shall any one pluck them out of My hand.” The absolute security of the sheep of Christ could hardly be more fully affirmed. For, first of all; they have a nature which, as divine, is truly everlasting; it has become truly their own nature, although it is true that they have yet also in them a fleshly nature which is not in conformity, but in contradiction to it. This, which seems to many a strange doctrine, is nevertheless the true experience of every child of God. Yet in face of it the apostle can say, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit,” or “practise,” “sin: for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” The character of the divine life in him is such that it masters the evil; not, in final result, is mastered by it. It abides; it is eternal life. But the Lord does not leave us to any inference, even the surest: He goes on to say: “And they shall in no wise ever perish.” The consequence is developed, and the negation faces every way: think of what danger you may, that “in no wise ever perish” meets it all. The weakness of the creature, its mutability, with the sad history of change that lies against it, all is met by such an assurance. But the Lord goes even further: He looks at the question of the world against these poor sheep of His, -the world, and Satan the prince of it, -and He seals His assurance with a double seal: They are Mine, He says: “No one shall seize them out of My hand. My Father who gave them to Me is greater than all; and no one is able to seize them out of the Father’s hand.” The Cloud is opening now to let out the enfolded Glory; now it shines fully out: “I and the Father are one.” The meaning of this last assertion has nevertheless been disputed. It is plain how those who heard Him took it, and how, instead of expressing alarm and grief at so great a mistake, He confirms finally their interpretation. Schaff well shows the argument, which I can do no better than insert in this place. He says (Lange’s Commentary on John): — “The neuter hen, (one) denotes, according to the connection and for the purpose of the argument, unity of will and power; which rests on the unity of essence or nature: for power is one of the divine attributes, which are not outside of the divine essence, but constitute it. Even if we confine hen to dynamic unity, we have here one of the strongest arguments for the strict divinity of Christ. It is implied even more in esmen (we are) than in hen. No creature could possibly thus associate himself in one common plural with God Almighty without shocking blasphemy or downright madness. In this brief sentence we have, as Augustine and Bengel observe, a refutation both of Arianism and Sabellianism: hen refutes the former by asserting the dynamic (and, by implication, the essential) unity of the Father and the Son. ‘I and the Father’ and ‘we are’ refute the latter by asserting the personal distinction. Sabellianism would require the masculine eis, instead of the neuter; and this would be inconsistent with ‘We are,’ and the self-conscious ‘I.’” The Jews understand well enough, and take up stones to stone Him: but the might of His presence stills them. He calmly appeals to them: “Many good works have I shown you from the Father: for which of these good works do ye stone Me?” They could not deny the power or the goodness, but the grace which had brought the Son of God among them in such lowly guise, they could not believe: “For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy; and because Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Thus His words seemed against His works, and for His words they condemned Him; in His reply, therefore, He appeals to their own Scriptures, their “Law,” as they themselves called the whole of them, but the spirit of which their unsubject hearts had so little entered into. Was it not written in their law, “I said, Ye are gods”? Thus the title of “gods” had been given to mere men; but who by the word of God that came to them, the commission by which they, the judges in Israel, acted, became His representatives. “If those who in so acting had received an indirect commission, were gods, the very representatives of God, could it be blasphemy when He claimed to be the Son of God, who had received, not authority through a word transmitted through long centuries, but direct personal command to do the Father’s work; had been directly and personally consecrated to it by the Father, and directly and personally sent by Him not to say, but to do the work of the Father? Was it not rather the true and necessary inference from these premises?” (Edersheim.) The Lord here doubtless refers, not to that of which He Himself alone could have the consciousness, but to His open anointing by the Spirit in bodily form, and the Father’s attesting words, when after His baptism by John He went forth to His ministry. John had borne witness to Him in connection with this, as the “Son of God.” Was it not suitable that, if men by God’s commission could represent Him so, He, sent openly among men in such a manner, should be in fact such a Representative as only the true Son could ever be? The works of His Father done by Him confirmed all this in the fullest way. They implied this abiding of the Father in Him, in the power displayed, His abiding in the Father in intimacy of communion. Thus there was sufficient witness to the truth of His claims; and if they believed not His words, they might at least believe His works. The seal which the Lord puts upon the perfection of Scripture is as plain as possible. “Scripture cannot be broken.” The fact of its being Scripture guarantees the absolute inspiration of the very words used. The term He builds upon might seem to be at least somewhat extreme as applied to men; yet He takes it as an example of a rule of the most universal character, to which no exception at all can be made. Not only this or that statement which it makes can be demonstrated as true, but the mere fact of its being in Scripture sufficiently vouches for it. The highest Critic that can be never criticizes Scripture, but affirms the truth of all of it; and the futility of all men’s efforts to break it in pieces. They are doomed of necessity to defeat and dishonor, as is all the rebellion of the creature against God. But Israel rejected the testimony of His words and works together. Again they sought to take Him, -a thing impossible until His own time came. He went forth out of their midst unharmed, and went to where formerly John had baptized, where, the soil having been broken up, the seed of His word took root. “John,” they said, “did himself no miracle; but all that John spake of this Man was true. And many believed on Him there.”