John 8

John 8:1

They shall all be taught of God. Thus God “draws”, and those who have “heard” and “learned”, come to Christ.

John 8:2

Not that any man hath seen the Father. They are drawn by hearing the word, not by seeing.

John 8:6

May eat thereof, and not die. Eternally. The Bread of Life, our Crucified Lord, is appropriated (“eaten”, made our own) by faith.

John 8:9

Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood. Appropriate these by faith. Whosoever by faith trusts in the death of Christ and is “baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3), spiritually partakes of the body and blood of Christ. So does he also who eats in loving remembrance of him the emblems that represent his body and blood. John 6:63 shows that his words must be taken in a spiritual rather than a literal sense.

John 8:11

My flesh is meat indeed. For the soul, hence partaken of by faith.

John 8:12

Dwelleth in me. See Romans 6:1-8.

John 8:13

The living Father. Who is the fountain of all life.

John 8:14

This is that bread. Himself. He probably laid his hand upon himself as he spoke.

John 8:15

These things said he in the synagogue. In the ruins, called Tel Hum, supposed to be those of Capernaum, are found those of a synagogue known to have been erected in the Herodian period by its style of architecture. There is ground for believing that this is the one erected by the centurion that “loveth our nation” (Lu 7:5), and in which Christ spoke.

John 8:16

This is an hard saying. About eating and drinking his flesh and blood. They could not comprehend.

John 8:18

[What] if ye shall see the Son of man ascend? He points forward to a greater marvel than the one that now staggered before them, the Ascension of the Son of man.

John 8:19

It is the spirit that quickeneth. We may paraphrase this verse thus: I shall ascend to heaven so that my body cannot be literally eaten; the flesh literally profits nothing. It is the spirit that makes alive. The spirits of men must feed upon me by faith, that they may be made alive. My words are spirit and life. He who feeds upon them will be made alive.

John 8:21

No man can come unto me. See note John 6:44,45.

John 8:22

Many of his disciples went back. They stumbled over the remarkable declarations of this chapter. They had no genuine faith.

John 8:24

To whom shall we go? If we should turn from Christ, to whom should we go? Peter’s confession here is of the same purport as that a Caesarea Philippi.

John 8:26

One of you is a devil. A demon, in the original; diabolical, or under the influence of the evil one. Notice in this remarkable discourse the progressive thought: (1) The Lord announces the Bread of God that giveth life to the world (John 6:33). (2) He declares that he is the Bread of Life (John 6:48,50). (3) The Bread of life must be eaten by partaking of his flesh and blood (John 6:51-56). (4) This is done spiritually, by the spirit feeding upon his life and words (John 6:63).

John 8:29

Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles SUMMARY OF JOHN 7: The Unbelief of the Brethren of Jesus. He Goes to the Feast of Tabernacles. He Teaches in the Temple. The Discussions Among the People. The Pharisees Send Officers to Take Him. The Last Day of the Feast. The Report to the Officers. After these things. The events narrated in the last chapter. About six months of the ministry in Galilee intervened between the feeding of the Five Thousand and the Feast of Tabernacles. During this interval the Lord kept away from Judea on account of the enmity of the authorities there.

John 8:30

Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand. It fell in the month Tizri, covering part of September and of October, and lasted for a week. It was one of the three feasts that all Jews were expected to attend.

John 8:31

His brethren therefore said unto him. His brothers. See PNT John 2:12. Depart hence, and go into Judaea. A long time had passed since he had been at Jerusalem, and these brethren wished him to show his mighty powers there.

John 8:32

If thou do these things. These brethren still were doubters. He differed so from their idea of the Christ that they could not understand him, and they hoped that at Jerusalem he would be made manifest. They afterwards became believers.

John 8:34

My time is not yet come. For the full manifestation of himself. This require his death and resurrection.

John 8:35

The world cannot hate you. Because then it would hate its own, but it hated him because he rebuked his sins. They were of the world; he was not.

John 8:36

I go not yet. He does not say that he will not go, but he will not go “yet”. He did not wish to go in the great multitude of pilgrims that were en route, as there were reasons why he should go quietly.

John 8:38

But as it were in secret. After the crowds had gone, so that he could travel privately. The multitudes hung upon him and had sought to make him a king. In Galilee he was very popular at this time. His popularity intensified the enmity of “the Jews”.

John 8:39

The Jews sought him. “The Jews” in John almost always means the ruling class at Jerusalem.

John 8:40

The people means the masses of the Jewish nation. The people were divided in opinion, but dared not express themselves openly until they saw what course “the Jews” would take.

John 8:42

About the midst of the feast. The middle. It lasted eight days in all. Jesus seems to have appeared unexpectedly in the temple, engaged in teaching.

John 8:43

How knoweth, etc.? The Jewish rulers were astonished at his learning, since he had never attended the great schools of their doctors.

John 8:44

My doctrine is not mine. This is an answer to the question of Joh 7:15. His knowledge came not from man, but from God.

John 8:45

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. The Common Version is ambiguous. The Revised Version is clear: “If any man willeth to do”, etc. The difficulty is in the way of the Jews recognizing the teaching of Jesus as divine, was that they were not willing to do God’s will. This spirit of disobedience is the source of most, if not all, skepticism. Unbelief is due, not to the head, but to the heart.

He who in his heart says, “Thy will be done, give me light and I will walk in it”, will find that Christ is just the teacher demanded by his soul, and that the gospel meets his soul’s want. Jesus will so meet the wants of his soul that he will be satisfied and will know the doctrine, that it comes from him who made the soul. The great German poet, Heine, was a scoffer until old and tortured with chronic disease. Then he said: ``I have discarded my proud philosophy and learned to trust in the consolations of religion.’’ He had no more outward evidence than before, but his heart had changed.

John 8:47

Did not Moses give you the law? Yet they were seeking to kill him in violation of the law which they professed to keep.

John 8:48

The people answered. Not “the Jews”, but the masses. They did not then know that the rulers were seeking his death, and hence rebukes such a suggestion. Thou hast a devil. Such a mistake must be due to the whisper of a demon, they thought.

John 8:49

I have done one work. He goes back to the cause of the enmity of the rulers, the healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath day, about eighteen months before. See John 5:16.

John 8:51

If a man on the sabbath, etc.? The argument is this: You blame me for healing an impotent man on the Sabbath; yet you break the Sabbath to circumcise a child if the eighth day after its birth falls on the Sabbath. You say that the law of circumcision was given to Abraham, is older than the Sabbath law, and must be kept if the Sabbath is to be broken. Now the law of love and mercy is older than Moses; why find fault if it is kept on the Sabbath? They should judge righteously, instead of by outward appearance.

John 8:53

Some of them of Jerusalem. Citizens who understood the purposes of the rulers, of which the visitors were ignorant.

John 8:54

Do the rulers know, etc.? As they did not seize him according to their purpose, the question arose what had changed the mind of the rulers. Had they found out that he was the Christ?

John 8:55

Howbeit we know this man whence he is. The Jews had an idea, due probably to Daniel 7:13, that when the Messiah came no one would know from whence he came.

John 8:56

Ye know whence I am. This is a reply to their assertion that they did. If they really did they would know that he came from God. They did not even know God, or they would know him whom God sent.

John 8:58

They sought to take him. “They of Jerusalem” angered because he said they did not know God. This was the attempt of a mob, not an official act.

John 8:59

Many of the people believed. Not intelligently, but that he was a teacher sent from God, and possibly the Christ. Compare John 3:1,2.