Which had believed him ( ). Articular perfect active participle of with dative (trusted him) rather than (on him) in verse 30. They believed him (cf. 6:30) as to his claims to being the Messiah with their own interpretation (6:15), but they did not commit themselves to him and may represent only one element of those in verse 30, but see 2:23 for there.

If ye abide in my word ( ). Third-class condition with and first aorist (constative) active subjunctive.

Are ye truly my disciples ( ). Your future loyalty to my teaching will prove the reality of your present profession. So the conclusion of this future condition is put in the present tense. As then, so now. We accept church members on profession of trust in Christ. Continuance in the word (teaching) proves the sincerity or insincerity of the profession. It is the acid test of life.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Believed on Him [ ] . Note the different phrase, distinguishing the Jews from the mixed company in ver. 30. Rev., rightly, believed Him.

If ye continue [ ] . The emphasis is on the ye, addressed to those whose faith was rudimentary; who believed Him, but did not yet believe on Him. Rev., abide.

In my word [ ] . Literally, in the word which is mine : peculiarly mine, characteristic of me. The expression is intentionally stronger than my word. Compare my love (xv. 9).

Indeed [] . Literally, truly; as Rev. As those who believe on me, not as those who are moved by temporary excitement to admit my claims.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Then said Jesus to those which believed on him,” (elegen oun ho lesous pros tous pepisteukotas auto loudaious) “Therefore Jesus said to those Jews who had believed on him,” or trusted in Him, Pro 3:5-6.

2) “If ye continue in my word,” (ean humeis meinete en to logo to emo) “if you will continue or remain in my word, in the way you live morally, and the things you do ethically, that are in harmony with what I have taught you, Mar 8:34, Luk 9:23; Eph 2:10.

3) “Then are ye my disciples indeed; (alethos mathetai mou este) “You are or truly exist as my disciples,” or you all are genuine disciples, learners, not fakes. For by deeds the tree or vine is known, Mat 7:15-18; Jas 1:22. By love’s deeds in service all may know who are the real, the genuine, the true disciples of Jesus, Joh 14:15; Joh 15:14; Joh 13:34-35.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

31. If you continue in my word. Here Christ warns them, in the first place, that it is not enough for any one to have begun well, if their progress to the end do not correspond to it; and for this reason he exhorts to perseverance in the faith those who have tasted of his doctrine. When he says that they who are firmly rooted in his word, so as to continue in him, will truly be his disciples, he means that many profess to be disciples who yet are not so in reality, and have no right to be accounted such. He distinguishes his followers from hypocrites by this mark, that they who falsely boasted of faith give way as soon as they have entered into the course, or at least in the middle of it; but believers persevere constantly to the end. If, therefore, we wish that Christ should reckon us to be his disciples, we must endeavor to persevere.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

TRUTH BRINGS FREEDOM

Text 8:31-36

31

Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed him, If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples;

32

and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

33

They answered unto him, We are Abrahams seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

34

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.

35

And the bondservant abideth not in the house forever: the son abideth for ever.

36

If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Queries

a.

How does the truth make a person free?

b.

How does sin enslave?

c.

What does Jesus mean, the bondservant abideth not in the house forever?

Paraphrase

So Jesus said to those Jews who had said they believed in Him, If you are living and dwelling in My word, then you are beyond doubt My followers, and you will apprehend and experience the truth and the truth will liberate and emancipate you. They answered Him, We are the descendants of Abraham, a chosen people above all that are upon the face of the earth, and we have never given ourselves into bondage to anyoneGod alone is our Master. How can you dare to say, You will be set free from bondage? Jesus answered them, I assure you most solemnly, Whosoever continually practices sin is the prisoner and slave of sin. Now those who are slaves may enjoy the privileges of the household temporarily, but not permanently, but the son remains forever. If, therefore, the son liberates the slave and he is adopted into a family relationship, then you are really and unquestionably free.

Summary

Abiding in the doctrine of Christ constitutes genuine discipleship. All else is enslavement to sin. Servitude to Christ brings genuine freedom. The Jews, by their sin, have become slave and have no permanent dwelling place within the kingdom. They must be set free through the authority of the Son in order to have a permanent place within Gods household.

Comment

It is very evident that Jesus is addressing His remarks to a group of the Jews here at the Feast of Tabernacles who had, in some way, manifested a superficial belief in Him. They wanted to believe in a Messiah, but not the Messiah. They were willing to follow, fight or die for a temporal King, but they would have none of a spiritual King who demanded sovereignty over their motives and deeds. They would gladly serve Him with their lips, but not their hearts.

And in Joh. 8:31 Jesus plainly declares the requirements for genuine discipleship to the true Messiah. To abide in His word is to make it ones dwelling placeto live by it as the Bread of Life (see our comments on Joh. 6:56, Vol. I, page 250). His word is the only source of life (cf. Joh. 6:63) and to abide in it is to keep it stedfastly (cf. 1Co. 15:58; Act. 2:42; Col. 1:23; 2Jn. 1:9). In Joh. 13:35 Jesus tells how we are to witness our discipleship to the worldby loving one another as He has loved us.

Now in Joh. 8:32 comes the beautiful paradox, To become really and absolutely free, every man must submit himself to servitude to Christs word. Much more than intellectual recognition is involved in knowing the truth as Jesus means it. To know the truth is also to do it, to experience it (cf. Joh. 7:17; Psa. 1:1-6). There are those who are aware of the truth but do not know it, because they refuse to live according to precepts of truth (cf. Joh. 3:19, see our comments, Vol, I, page 114).

When Jesus says truth He means all that is embodied in the Life He manifested and the doctrines He taughtboth in His Incarnation and by the Holy Spirit through the apostles (cf. Joh. 1:14; Joh. 1:17; Joh. 14:6; Joh. 16:13; Joh. 17:17). That which is truth is that which is real, genuine and veritable. The truth is not a philosophical abstraction which is reached by the reasoning of the human mind. It is not relative to time, change or feeling. Truth, all truth, originates in God and is divine and everlasting fact. See also these references: Psa. 25:10; Psa. 119:142; Psa. 119:151; Psa. 119:160; Eph. 4:21. The truth which Jesus brings and wishes men to trust in is the eternal verities of God which are in contradistinction to things which are temporal (cf. 2Co. 4:18 to 2Co. 5:7; Joh. 6:27; Heb. 12:27; 1Jn. 2:15-17; Psa. 102:25-26). But the truth of God abides forever and is unchangeable (cf. 1Pe. 1:22-25; Heb. 13:8).

Those who abide in these eternal verities and walk by faith and not by sight are those who are unquestionably free. The man who depends entirely upon human wisdom certainly cannot be free for He is imprisoned by the very limitations of human reason! That the mind of the flesh cannot possibly plumb the depths of wisdom is evident from Romans, the first chapter, and from I Corinthians, chapters one through three. The truth that is found in Christ gives men freedom in at least three ways: (a) Freedom from the habits and enslavements of the flesh can come only through knowledge and obedience of the truth; (b) freedom from spiritual lies, falsehoods, deceptions and prejudices which evil men use to enslave the minds and souls of men and women through their perversions of the truth; (c) freedom from sin and all its consequencesguilt, fear of death, penalty and sentence of sin which is eternal death.
Freedom or victory through the truth of God is the theme of the great apostle Pauls eighth chapter of Romans, Galatian epistle, and eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of First Corinthians. We like the way Hendriksen says it: N. T. Commentary, Gospel of John, Vol. II, page 5, One is free, therefore, not when he can do what he wishes to do, but when he wishes to do and can do what he should do.

Religiously the Jews enjoyed a unique position among all the peoples of the earth until after Christ brought truth and salvation to the Gentiles. They alone were the repositories of Gods revealed will for men. An illustrious remnant of Israel had never been, enslaved to idolatry or philosophical schemes of religion. Especially would the Pharisees claim to be free of all the passions and failures of the flesh common to other men for they, by their tradition-enforced asceticism remained aloof from the more sensual indulgences of the flesh. One commentator has paraphrased their reply in Joh. 8:33 like this: If the truth you speak of is good only for slaves, do not trouble us, Abrahams seed, with it! We are a freeborn, royal nation and acknowledge no one as our master save God. To him we belong as children and to no one else. This is the truth which makes us free! (cf. Exo. 19:5-6; Deu. 7:6; Amo. 3:2; Joh. 8:41). They wanted to be sure that they were not connected with the other line of descendants of Abrahamnamely, Ishmael, the son of the handmaid who was cast out (cf. Gen. 21:10; Gal. 4:21-31). Remember, also, that Abraham was in the line of Shem and it was prophesied that the descendants of Ham would be servants of Shems offspring (cf. Gen. 9:25-26). Although they had been politically subservient for hundreds of years to many different rulers (excepting brief periods of temporary freedom) within their hearts burned a fierce freedom of spirit and worship of the One True Jehovah-God. Many Jews through the ages had spilled their very lifes blood defending this religious freedom. Even during the Roman rule hundreds were beheaded for refusal to worship the Roman emperor or heathen idols.

Little did they realize, however, that they were slaves to the most binding of all masters, sin! Joh. 8:34 is Jesus answer to the Jews. When He says committeth sin, He uses the present participle, ho paion (the one doing), which indicates not merely a single sin, but to live a life of continual sin (cf. 1Jn. 3:6; 1Jn. 3:8-9). This bondage to sin is true of every man who has not been freed from sin by belief and obedience to the Gospel. The libertine is indeed the most wretched of slavesenslaved to passions and controlled by his flesh. His very soul is a prisoner mastered by his appetites and sensory organs. He allows his will and reason to be controlled by lust. Any man who allows himself to be dominated and led about by sinful habit is a slave, Such a man does not do what he likes, but he does what sin likes! He has allowed a pleasure to master him so completely that he cannot do without it, That man is a slave to sin and ignorance of the truth who allows himself to be deluded and duped by false doctrines and perversions of the truth. Paul had to fight and battle constantly for his own freedom in Christ and the freedom of the Gentile Christians against the Judaizers. The church has had to wage a constant war for freedom from evil men who would bring men into bondage by prejudice, perversion of the truth and going beyond the things that are written. Men who do not know the truth soon become slaves to their sinful ignorance (cf. Rom. 8:2; Gal. 5:1). Finally, sin enslaves man by guilt, fear of death, and penalty or sentence pronounced. It is this guilt and burden of condemnation which keeps sinners from realizing joy, peace and fulfillment in their hearts. Every man has some conscience and feels some sense of guilt and condemnation through it (cf. Rom. 2:14-16). All men are guilty (cf. Rom. 3:19; Jas. 2:10). Men were in bondage to the fear of death until Jesus came and conquered death (cf. Heb. 2:14-15). That men in sin are men in bondage is evident from these Scriptures: Pro. 5:22; Act. 8:23; Rom. 6:16-23; Rom. 7:23; 2Ti. 2:26; 2Pe. 2:19. Praise be to God, the Truth was manifested in the flesh to bring sight to the blind, release to the captives and to set at liberty the bruised (cf. Luk. 4:18). Freedom from sin means, on one hand, deliverance from all created forces that would prevent men from serving and enjoying their Creator, and on the other, the positive happiness of living in fellowship with God in the place where He is pleased to bless. Christian liberty is precisely freedom to love and serve to the fullest extent, and is therefore abused when it is made an excuse for loveless license (Gal. 5:13; 1Pe. 2:16; 2Pe. 2:19; 1Co. 8:9-12).

Men in bondage to sin cannot be sons of God; they are slaves to the devil. A slave may remain within the house, but he is not a permanent member of the household and has no inheritance or can claim no rights. The slave may be driven out or sold at any time (cf. Hagar and her son). Thus Jesus gives a solemn warning to these Jews who could not see their need for regeneration. They were not children of God, but slaves of sin, and unless they become sons of God by adoptionthrough faith in Jesus Christthey were in danger of being cast out. He had warned them before that they could not follow Him to Heaven because they were unregenerate (Joh. 8:21-24). This is the same warning couched in different language. If they expect to be carried to Abrahams bosom in paradise they must become true sons of Abraham by faith and regenerate obedience (cf. Joh. 8:39-40).

The Son is the rightful heir and abides forever in the house. If by his authority the slave is set free, he shall be free indeed. The indeed in this case means more than mere freedom. When a man is freed from his slavery to sin by the Son of God, the former slave is not only pardoned and freed from his shackles, but he is adopted into the family and given the place of a fellow-heir (cf. Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 3:29; Gal. 4:1-7).

Quiz

1.

What is required to become truly a disciple of Jesus?

2.

What is involved in knowing the truth?

3.

What is truth?

4.

Name the three freedoms which come from knowing the truth.

5.

How could the Jews claim freedom from bondage?

6.

What brings every man into bondage? How?

7.

Explain the figure of slave and Son abiding in the household.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(31) Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him.Better, to those Jews who had believed Him. The act of faith is mentioned in the previous verse. They are here placed among the believers, with an expression of contrast mixed with, perhaps, something of wonderJews and yet believers.

If ye continue in my word.Or, If ye abide in My word. Comp. Note on Joh. 15:7, where we have the opposite form of the thought, If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you. See also for this idea of abiding, Notes on Joh. 5:37-38. His word was the expression of the eternal truth of God, and He therefore was the one great Teacher. Every other must sit as a disciple at His feet, and continue in daily learning and in daily living to grasp the truth which, in that word and that word only, was revealed to man.

Here, as very frequently, part of the force of the sentence is expressed in the emphasis of the pronoun, If ye continue in My word. Ye, on your part, ye who now believe, but have not the courage to rank yourselves openly among My disciples.

Then are ye my disciples indeed.The insertion of then does not improve the renderingIf ye continue in My word, ye are My disciples indeed. The words imply that He who reads the heart has no confidence in this momentary conviction, which will not stand the test of true discipleship, and all that this includes. (Comp. Notes on Joh. 2:23-25; Joh. 6:66.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

31. If ye continue Theirs was one of the cases which, founded on false suppositions, would fail as soon as the supposition was dissipated. Perseverance is not always a test of the reality of faith; for real faith does often diminish and disappear. But faith based upon mistake must cease when the mistake is corrected.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Jesus therefore said to those Judaisers who had believed in him, “If you dwell in my word then are you my disciples indeed, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free”.’

Jesus then spoke a word to some of the Judaisers who had showed some response to Him, ‘If you persevere in and meditate on my teaching, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’. It was a glorious promise of hope. The truth was now open to them, and if they will but know and receive that truth it will make them truly free. But there is only one test of true faith and that is perseverance and continuance. By such perseverance those who receive His teaching (‘word’) will come into a fuller understanding of truth, especially the truth about Him, and will thus find freedom from sin and its power. And then they will find true freedom, not the freedom from the tyranny of Rome which they have previously longed for, but a greater freedom, a freedom from the tyranny of that greatest despot of all, sin.

So even though some of the Judaisers have made some kind of response of faith towards accepting Him as from God, Jesus cannot rest satisfied until that faith is deeply rooted in the truth about Him, a truth that is in fact found in Himself (Joh 14:6).

There is an important lesson here. The only final basis of assurance of salvation for anyone is continuance in responding to the truth. A ‘saved’ man can backslide, but he can have no assurance while in his backsliding, and, if it is permanent, abundant Scriptures testify to the fact that it indicates that he was not really saved. When the Saviour saves it is effective, even though there may be the occasional blip. He does not fail in His work.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Children of Abraham and the Children of the Devil ( Joh 8:31-47 ).

Note how the argument is presented in stages as the case builds up against he Scribes and Pharisees. It had begun with the revelation of Himself as the Light of the world, a light which they had failed to see and respond to (Joh 8:12-20). It had continued with the fact that He was the One Who had come from above, One Whom they had failed to discern and listen to (Joh 8:21-30). Now the accusation becomes more blatant. The reason that they have failed to see Him and to know Him is because ‘their father is the Devil’, in other words, it is because they are following in the Devil’s ways and behaving like him. In the words of Paul, ‘the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not, lest the light of the good news of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God, should shine unto them’ (2Co 4:4-5)

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The True Liberty of the Gospel. Joh 8:31-59

Bondage and liberty:

v. 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed;

v. 32. and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

v. 33. They answered Him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?

Many of the Jews had indeed come to faith, but their minds were still held in the bondage of a carnal understanding. Their idea of discipleship was that of an external adherence to Christ, of professing allegiance to Him as their Leader. They were caught in the meshes of the same delusion which to this day holds the minds of so many so-called Christians captive. The continuing or remaining in the Word of Christ is the characteristic of the true disciples of Christ, the adhering strictly to the Word which He has left for our instruction in the gospels and epistles. There we find Jesus revealed, and through the understanding of Jesus as the Christ we have true knowledge, the knowledge of the truth; and that knowledge is the only factor which will give Us true liberty. Without Christ, all men are servants, slaves of sin, Rom 6:17-20. But in Christ there is deliverance from sin, true freedom. Only those men are truly free that have accepted the salvation of Jesus; only they have a will which is interested in good works and able to perform them. That is the wonderful liberty of the Christian of which Luther wrote in such powerful words. But the Jews thought the Lord spoke of the liberty of the body from the tyranny of an earthly despot. They resented the inference as though they had ever been in bondage: Children of Abraham we are, and to no man have we ever been in bondage, in slavery. They forgot, for the moment, that they were subject to the Romans; they forgot also that their fathers had been in the power of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Syrian, and Roman conquerors. Since Abraham had received the promise of a descendant that should rule all nations, the Jews proudly called themselves children of kings. They resented even the idea as though they needed to be emancipated, to be set free. This answer of the Jews shows that they had quickly extinguished the small flame of faith which had been kindled in their hearts. Their Jewish pride would not accept such a statement from Jesus. The pride of the human heart has driven many a person away from the church to which he professed allegiance, because he resented the plain talk of the Bible regarding the depravity of the human heart.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Joh 8:31-32. If ye continue in my word, &c. “If you persevere in the belief and practice of my word, you are really my disciples, and have a just title to that honourable appellation. Moreover, you shall be fully instructed in every doctrine of the gospel, called here and elsewhere, by way of eminence, Truth; see Ch. Joh 1:17 and so being related to me as my disciples, and experimentally understanding my gospel, you shall be made free, not only from the slavery of sin, and all its consequences, but from the ceremonial observances enjoined by Moses; nay, you shall be fixed in that state of glorious liberty, that constant access to God, and that free and continual enjoyment of his favour and love, which is the privilege of my disciples alone

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

IV

Christ The Liberator, As Son Of The House In Opposition To Servants; The One Sent From God, As Against The Agents Of The Devil; The Eternal And The Hope Of Abraham As Against The Bodily Seed Or Abraham. Or: The Liberator Of Israel, The Adversary Of Satan, The Hope Of Abraham. A Great Swinging From Faith To Unbelief. Attempted Stoning

Joh 8:31-59

(Joh 8:46-59, the Pericope for Judica Sunday.)

31Then said Jesus [Jesus therefore said] to those Jews which believed on him [who had believed him]. If ye continue in my word, then are ye [ye are] my45 disciples indeed; 32And ye shall [will] know the truth, and the truth shall [will] make you free. 33They answered him, We be [are] Abrahams seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall [will] be made free? 34Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [a bondman, a slave] of sin.46 35And the servant [the bondman] abideth not in the house for ever: but [omit but] the Son [son] abideth ever.47 36If the Son therefore shall make you [If then the Son make you] free, ye shall [will] be free indeed. 37I know that ye are Abrahams seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place 38[maketh no progress] in you. I speak that which I have seen with my [the] Father: and ye [likewise]48 do that which ye have seen with your father.49 39They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were [are]50 Abrahams children, ye would51 do the works of Abraham. 40But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you [spoken to you] the truth, which I have heard of [I heard from] God: this [the like of this] did not Abraham. 41Ye do the deeds [works] of your father. Then said they [They said] to him, We be [were] not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came [am come] from God; [for] neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43Why do ye not understand my speech? even because52 ye cannot hear my word. 44Ye are of your father [of the father who is] the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will [ye desire to] do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not [doth not stand] in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he53 speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own [from his own nature]: for [because] he is a liar, and the father of 45it [thereof]. And [But] because I tell you [speak] the truth, ye believe me not. 46Which of you convinceth [convicteth] me of sin? And [omit And] if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? 47He that is of God heareth Gods words: ye therefore hear them not [for this cause ye do not hear], because ye are not of God.

48Then answered the Jews [The Jews answered], and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil [demon]? 49Jesus answered, I have 50not a devil [demon]; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And 51[But] I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying [my word]54 he shall [will] never see death.

52Then55 said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil [demon]. Abraham is dead [died], and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying 53[my word], he shall [will] never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead [who died]? and the prophets are dead [the prophets also 54died]: whom makest thou [dost thou make] thyself? Jesus answered; If I honour [glorify] 56 myself my honour [glory] is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth 55[glorifieth] me; of whom ye say, that he is your [our]57 God: Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall [should] 56be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying [word]. Your58 father Abraham rejoiced to see [that he should see, ] my day: and he saw it, and was glad. 57Then said the Jews [The Jews therefore said] unto him, Thou art not yet fifty59 years old, and hast thou seen60 Abraham? 58Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was [was made, or, born, ] I am [].

59Then took they up [Therefore they took 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 [omit goingby].61

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

[The last discourse had made an impression on many, and brought them to the door of a superficial discipleship (Joh 8:30), while yet their heart was full of prejudice. These half converts the Lord now addresses and warns them not to be satisfied with a passing excitement of feeling, but to become true and steady disciples. Then they would know the truth, and the truth would give them true freedom from the degrading bondage of sin and error. Knowledge appears here as the fruit of faith, and freedom as the fruit of knowledge. This earnest exhortation brings out the latent hatred of the Jews, whereupon the Lord, with fearful severity, exposes the diabolical nature of their opposition to Him, while He at the same time reveals His divine nature as the destroyer of death and the One who was before Abraham was born. This address, in the lively form of dialogue, unites the character of a testimony concerning Himself and a judgment of the Jews, and rises to the summit of moral force.P. S.]

Joh 8:31. If ye continue in my word.That is, here, not merely: continue to believe, but believe according to the spirit of the word, and in obedience to the word, which He spoke. Working towards an exposure of their misapprehension of His wordsYe are my disciples indeed.This, therefore, must first appear. [There is a latent antithesis between and . It was one thing to believe in Jesus, quite another to be disciples, learners. Tue one could be a momentary impulse; the other required constant study and obedience?] True discipleship is the condition and guaranty of their knowing the truth; and then this knowledge carries the blessing, that the truth should make them free. Freedom is the very thing they were bent upon all along; but a political, theocratic freedom, as pictured by a chiliastic mind. Christ opens to them the prospect of a higher freedom which, if they should be true disciples, they would owe to the liberating effect of the truth, the living knowledge of God; He opens the prospect of freedom from sin.

Joh 8:32. Ye shall know the truth more and more. [Hengstenberg: A difference of degree of knowledge is put in the form of knowledge itself as opposed to ignorance, because in comparison with future attainments of knowledge in the path of fidelity, the present knowledge would be quite insignificant. The truth is not merely something thought; it has taken flesh and blood in Christ, who says, I am the truth. By a deeper and deeper knowing of Christ they would know also the truth, after which, as after freedom, every man who is not utterly lost has a deep constitutional longing, and this living truth would make them free from the bondage of sin and error; while the truth considered merely as a thought of the mind would be utterly powerless. The same liberating effect which is here ascribed to the truth, is in Joh 8:36 ascribed to Christ.E. D. Y.]

[The truth will make you free, . Comp. Joh 8:36 : If the Son make you free, ye will be free indeed, . Christ associates liberty always with the truth, which He is Himself, and presents the truth as the cause, and liberty as the effect. So also Paul speaks of liberty always in this positive, highest and noblest sense, liberty in Christ, the glorious liberty of the children of God, liberty from the bondage of sin and error, comp. Rom 8:21; 2Co 3:17; Gal 2:4; Gal 5:1; Gal 5:13; Jam 1:25; 1Pe 2:12. Man is truly free when he is released from abnormal foreign restraints and moves in harmony with the mind and will of God as his proper element. Deo service vera libertas est.P. S.]

Joh 8:33. They answered him, We are Abrahams seed (or, offspring).Here comes the turning-point. Christ has openly told them that He would redeem them spiritually from sin by the truth, and in this sense make them free; and now they see their misapprehension of His former words. But in bitter vexation they plunge into a new mistake, supposing that Christ had their political bondage in view, and would require them to console themselves under their political oppression with the enjoyment of spiritual truth. Hence, instead of explaining: Thou shouldst free us from the domination of the Romans, they explain with insulted pride, that they are already free; they have never been any mans slaves. This answer contains (1) an unbelieving denial of their spiritual servitude; for they studiously avoid the spiritual meaning of the words of Jesus; (2) a revolutionary, chiliastic protest against the idea that they acknowledged the dominion of the Romans, or that they could, as the words of Jesus implied, console themselves under it with spiritual elevation. This breaks again the scarcely formed union with Christ. This sharp contrast in the same Jews between a great demonstration of submission to Jesus and a hostility ready to stone Him,this reaction of sentiment, coming the moment they were undeceived concerning their chiliastic expectations, appears repeatedly in the Gospel of John in significant gradations. It has already come distinctly to view Joh 6:30 (comp. Joh 8:15); and in Joh 10:31 (comp. Joh 8:24) it is still more glaring than here.

If these historical points are not duly considered, it must seem strange that the same Jews who had just believed in a mass, should so soon relapse into the bitterest unbelief. Hence many have supposed that here other Jews of the mass, quite distinct from those believing ones, now come forward and take up the conversation (Augustine, Calovius, etc., Lcke et al.). Tholuck: It is far more likely that the same adversaries who have hitherto been in view, the , are the subject of . Before the believing hearers speak, some of the rulers interpose, to repel the supposed slander upon the whole people. This would imply an inaccuracy of expression. On the contrary, according to the narrative of the evangelist, they are manifestly the same to whom Jesus had spoken, and cannot be translated: it was answered. Justly, therefore, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Bengel, and others, have taken them to be the same. Chrysostom gave the sufficient interpretation: . [Their belief immediately gave way; and that because of their eagerness after worldly things.] It seems transparent (1) that Jesus in His reply, Joh 8:34, to those who speak in Joh 8:33, simply pursues the discourse He had begun in Joh 8:31-32; and (2) that His suggestion of the need of being made free, Joh 8:32, was intended to test the sincerity, or provoke the latent insincerity, of the faith of the persons of Joh 8:30-31. Contrary to Dr. Tholucks remark above, the evangelist has here very accurately designated the interlocutors, Joh 8:31, as Jesus and those Jews who believed on Him. Meyer suggests that the , Joh 8:30, are many among the hearers in general; among these many were some hierarchical Jews, and to these Jesus speaks in Joh 8:31. There probably was this difference among the believing many; but it is hardly in Johns view here. Hengstenberg, who agrees on this point with Tholuck, thinks John was quite too much intent upon reality than to ascribe faith to such murderous enemies of Christ as these, on the ground of a mere fleeting emotion. But this very consideration might work the other way: the Evangelist would take even a transient and impure faith for what it is worth as faith for the time. This great relapse from a flash of faith into deepened darkness of unbelief may be just the reality on which John is intent. [Of recent expositors Olshausen, Meyer, Stier, Alford, Ellicott (Life of Christ), J. J. Owen, and others, take the same view with Dr. Lange.E. D. Y.]

Ibid. We are Abrahams seed.These words are put as the foundation of what follows: And were never in bondage (never yielded ourselves as bond-servants). Because they were Abrahams seed (on the strength of many Old Testament passages like Gen 22:17; Gen 17:16), they claimed, according to Jewish theology, not only freedom, but even dominion over the nations. As includes the whole past, these words can only mean: Often as we have been under oppression (under Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians), we have never acknowledged any oppressor as master, but have always submitted only from necessity, reserving our right to freedom, and striving after it. This reservation carried the spirit and design of revolution, and afterwards, in the Jewish war, acted it out in the Zealots and Sicarii (Joseph. De bello Jud., VII. 8, 6).

This extremely simple state of the case many interpreters have lost sight of, failing to distinguish between a bondage de facto and a bondage de jure; hence a list of mistaken explanations (specified by Tholuck, p. 250). Tholuck, referring to my Leben Jesu, II. 2, John 968: They were as far from acknowledging subjection to Rome, as modern Rome is from acknowledging secular relations which contradict its hierarchical consciousness. Only as a domination de facto, and not de jure, does even Josephus represent to them the Roman domination, on the prudential principle of yielding to superior force (De bello Jud. V. 9, 3). And to this day it stands among the fifteen benedictions which should be said every morning: Blessed art Thou, that Thou hast not made me a slave. Schlchan Aruch. tr. Orach Chajim, fol. 10, John 3. The meanest laborer who is of the seed of Abraham, is like a king, says the Talmud.62

Joh 8:34. Whosoever committeth sin [ , living in the practice of sin], is a slave of sin.A solemn declaration, enforced with: Verily, verily. In these words Jesus utterly expels the political question from His scope. He states first the principle, then the application. The committing of sin is to be taken with emphasis; He whose tendency and habit is to commit sin;63 which may be applied in a wide sense to every man born of the flesh (Rom 7:14), in the narrower sense to the evil propension of the earthly-minded (Joh 3:20; 1Jn 3:8). He is the servant, the slave, of sin; fallen into the worst conceivable bondage, or rather the only real bondage; the man being even at heart a slave, whereas in other sorts of servitude the man may himself be free within, though in outward bonds. And the application was obvious. Jesus implied that they, not only for being born of the flesh, but for being carnally-minded and practically hostile to the truth, committed sin. The hint that they were therefore in the hardest slavery, and in the utmost need of liberation by the truth which they despised, the Lord in the sequel turns gradually into a decided opinion. Comp. Rom 6:17; Rom 7:14, if. Analogous instances from the classics see in Wetstein; from Philo, in Lsner, p. 149. Meyer. [The mere moral sentiment of which this is the moral expression, was common among the Greek and Roman philosophers. Alford.P. S.]

Joh 8:35. And the bondman abideth not in the house for ever.The thought takes its turn from the legal relations of civil life

The bond-servant is not an organic member of the household, has no inheritance, and can be expelled or sold, Gen 21:10; Gal 4:30. According to the law of Moses the Hebrew servant must be set free in the seventh year, if he desire; but even if he wishes to remain servant of the house, he does not thereby become a member of the family, Exo 21:1 ff. To this legal status of the servant, however, as not a permanent member of the household, Jesus gives an allegorical meaning. And in so doing He goes upon a presumption, where expositors readily incline to see a jump. He who is the servant of sin, is, under the dispensation of the law, an involuntary subject of the law; therefore a slave of the letter; and he who is such a slave of the letter, is a slave of sin. Paul also goes on this presumption in Gal 3:10. The slave of the letter, therefore, being a slave of sin, abides not in the house of God, the theocracy. The application is obvious: In the kingdom of God there have been hitherto children and servants (Gal 3:22; Gal 4:1); the servants at this time are the unbelieving Jews; they are one day driven out (Mat 8:12; Rom 9:31; Gal 4:30). Not all Israel, but only the unbelieving portion; of these, who treat the law as a mere statute, a slavery to the letter, which corresponds with the bondage of sin, it is declared that they hold no relation of affinity and sonship to the master of the house. The reference of the servant to Moses, propounded by Chrysostom and Euthymius, belongs to a different train of thought and a different aspect of the servant, Heb 3:5.64 The house; typically denoting the royal family of the Lord, the household of God, Psa 23:6; Psa 27:4.

The son abideth forever [viz., in the house.]He is by blood one with the house and heir of the house. This point of law is also a similitude, expressing the perpetual dwelling and ruling of Christ in the kingdom of God. As the son is spoken of in the singular, the word cannot be taken to imply a class of men who are morally and religiously free. And in fact the children of the house themselves, under the Old Testament economy, not having attained their maturity, are put under the same law with the proper alien slaves.65

[The contrast is here between bondage to sin and a freedom to which even the children of the house of God could attain only in a new stage, a manhood, of spiritual life; and into this new stage of full-grown sonship they, and much more those who had let themselves down into servitude, could come only in Christ, the Son of God. There were no sons, whose position would afford, except prospectively, a general maxim of the kind here before us. Even the children differed not yet from servants, though they were not servants of sin. While, therefore, the word son not directly denoting Christ, but being used generically, might properly be printed both here and in the verse following without a capital, Dr. J. J. Owens remark upon it in this verse is unwarrantable, and in the next inconsistent: The word son improperly commences with a capital in our common version, as though it referred to the Son of God. It stands here opposed to servant, and is generically put for all those born to a state of freedom, and consequently heirs to the paternal inheritance and privileges. In the next verse the word Son is properly capitalized.E. D. Y.].

Joh 8:36. If then the Son make yon free.66A new legal principle is here again presupposed by this expression. The son can give servants their freedom; and he can receive them to membership in the house, as adopted brothers, and to participation in his inheritance. The spiritual application which Jesus makes of this principle stops with the first point. The house of God has its son; and this son must make the servants in the house of God free, before any true freedom can be spoken of among you.

Note, that He speaks primarily only of the son of the house, not of the Son of God, and that He does not designate Himself as the son (comp. John 5). But His meaning, that He is the son of the house, and as such the Son of God, the only one who is spiritually free and can give spiritual freedom, stands out clearly enough. The sentence is so framed, that it may be taken as containing at once the condition of the true freedom for Israel, a prophecy concerning the believing portion of Israel, and a warning and threatening for the unbelieving portion.

Ye will be free indeed [].As opposed to their visionary, fanatical effort after external, political freedom in their spiritual bondage. Without the real freedom they could neither attain, nor maintain, nor enjoy the outward; while the inward freedom must ultimately bring about the outward. The fact that the son appears as the liberator, instead of the lord of the house himself, agrees with the figure; all depends in this case on what he is willing to do in regard to his hereditary right in the servants. Comp. Joh 10:26-27.

Joh 8:37. I know that ye are Abrahams seed; but ye seek to kill me.The acknowledgment of their claim to natural descent from Abraham serves only to strengthen the reproof that follows. What a contrast: Abrahams seed, murderers of Christ! Christ can charge them with seeking to kill Him: (1) because they are already turned into an apostasy from Him, which cannot stop short of deadly enmity; (2) because they are impelled by the chiliastic idea of Christ, which leads in the end to the crucifixion of Christ; (3) because they go back to the hierarchical opposition, which has already determined His death.

Because my word maketh no progress in you.: to make way, go through, encompass. Metaphorically: to come to something, to succeed, to make progress. The last meaning is the most probable here. These adversaries are the persons in view; hence cannot mean among you (does not take effect: Luther; has no success: Lcke). In you: (a) Finds no room, gains no ground in you. Origen, Chrysostom, Beza, et al. Meyer says, it cannot mean this; Tholuck favors this meaning; and Origen and Chrysostom ought to have known the admissible use of the word. Yet this thought must then be reduced to: (b) Finds no entrance into you (Nonnus, Grotius, Luthardt, Tholuck). But then the accusative [or ] would be expected. Better, therefore, De Dieu and Meyer: It makes no progress in you. It does not thrive in you. This, in fact, Christ has just had experience of with them. They have first misunderstood His word, then loose hold of it again. This then turns into an opposition, which by the strength of its spirit and its reaction (he that is not with Me, &c.) must pass into deadly enmity.

Joh 8:38. I speak what I have seen with the (my) Father.The contrast between Him and them is threefold: 1. My Father, your father (though the verbal antithesis here is critically doubtful; see the Text. and Gram. Notes.) 2. He acts according to what He has clearly seen with His Father; they act according to what they have indistinctly heard from their father (and a further antithesis between the perfect and the aorist .) Yet to limit , with Meyer, to the pre-existent state of Christ, is partial.67 3. His way towards them is to speak openly () what He has known to be the will and decree of the Father; they, on the contrary, true to the manner of their father, even in moral concerns, go right on to malicious dealing. (In there is a sad irony.Meyer.) It is the contrast, therefore, of a moral parentage, a moral instruction, a moral way, which in Christ issues in a purely spiritual witness-bearing, and one which in the Jews issues in a fanatical, murderous falling upon Christ. He speaks Gods judgment respecting them; they put Him on Satanic trial for death. The other result of Christs seeing: His doing what He sees His Father do, does not here come into view. His doing is all a doing good, and for this a susceptibility is prerequisite. But to His adversaries He says how it stands with them before the law and judgment of God. Who His Father is, and who is theirs, they must for the present forebode. Meyer: He means, however, the devil, whose children in the ethical view they are, whereas He is in the metaphysical view and in reality the Son of God. But the ethical view is also included. On the one hand, clear impression, free compliance, calm declaration; on the other, dark, sullen impulse, forced obedience, malignant practice. : constant conduct; including the seeking to kill, but not exclusively denoting that. Meyer.

Joh 8:39. Abraham is our father.The distinction between true children of Abraham and spurious children who therefore, as to their moral nature, must have another father, Christ has introduced by the foregoing sentence. They suspect the stinging point of His distinction; hence their proud assertion, which calls forth the Lords denial: If ye were Abrahams children. In the spiritual sense [children in moral character and habits, as distinct from seed or mere natural descent, Joh 8:37.P. S.] Ye would do the works of Abraham, works of faith, above all the work of faith. [ and are correlative.] Abraham had a longing for the coming of Christ, Joh 8:56. Just as Paul does in Rom 9:8, Jesus here distinguishes the ethical posterity as from the physical as . Tholuck. [So also Meyer and Alford.P. S.] , seed, is rather used to designate Abrahams posterity as a unit, Gal 3:16.

Joh 8:40. But now ye seek to kill me.The very opposite of Abrahams spirit. The Lord does not yet characterize their murderous plot as a killing of the Christ; this alone condemns them, that they wished to kill in Him a man, and a man who had spoken to them the truth, who did nothing more but told the truth which He had heard from God, and therefore stood as a prophet.68 The counterpart is Abraham with his benevolent spirit in general, with his homage for Melohizedek, and with his sparing of Isaac when God interposed.

[A man, , with reference to . This self-designation of Christ as a man, a human being, implies all that is essential to our nature. It occurs nowhere else, but instead of it the frequent title the Son of Man, with the definite article, which at the same time elevates Him above the ordinary level of humanity, , the first person, according to Greek rule, see Buttmann, N. T. Gr. p. 241. This did not Abraham. Litotes, , fecit (not fecisset), a statement of fact all the more stinging. A reference to Abrahams treatment of the Angel of Jehovah, Genesis 18 (Lampe, Hengstenberg), is not clear.P. S.]

Joh 8:41. Ye do the works of your father.Thus much is now perfectly manifest: They have, in respect to moral character, some other father than Abraham, who is exactly the opposite of them in spirit. The deeds of that father they do; that is, they do according to his deeds, and they do according to his bidding; they do his deeds in his service.

We were not born of fornication.They seem to suspect the spiritual intent of Christs words, yet they avoid it by at first standing upon the literal interpretation of them, that they may then immediately save themselves by a bold spring to the spiritual. In the first instance, therefore, they say: We are not bastards fathered upon Abraham, but genuine offspring of Abraham (bastards were excluded from the congregation, Deu 23:2). But they intend thereby at the same time to say; We are not idolaters (Grotius, Lampe, Lcke); as is evident from their next words: We have one Father, God.Their genuine descent from Abraham, is supposed to involve their having God for their Father, in the spiritual sense; and when they speak of Him as the one Father, the is also emphatic.

Accordingly they intend to say: We (, with proud emphasis) are not like the heathen, who are born of whoredom, in apostasy from God (Hos 2:4; [Eze 20:30; Isa 57:3]), and have many gods for their spiritual fathers (as they charged especially the Samaritans); bodily and spiritually we are free from the reproach of adulterous birth.69 Children of Abraham, children of God, Deu 32:6; Isa 63:16; Mal 2:10; Rom 4:16; Gal 4:23. The position: God is our father, is therefore in no opposition to the paternity of Abraham. The reference of Euthymius Zigabenus to the contrast of Isaac and Ishmael is unwarrantable. [For the Jews would not call Abrahams connection with Hagar one of , which implies several fathers, but one mother.] It is obvious that with their appeal to the fatherhood of God they wish to crowd Jesus from His position; whether they at the same time intended an allusion to the birth of Jesus (Wetstein and others) is doubtful. In their monotheistic pride they could boast of being the children of God, even while the accusations of the prophets, that Israel was of Gentile whoredom (Eze 16:3; see Tholuck, p. 254), were in their mind; and we already know how little the Jewish fanaticism felt bound by the Scriptures.

Joh 8:42. If God were your father, ye would love me.Emphatic: Ye would have (long ago) learned to love Me;70 that is, being kindred in spirit and life. Luthardt: This would be the ethical test. From the fact, therefore, that they do not love Him [the Son of God, the Beloved of the Father], He can infer with certainty their ungodly mind and nature. Proof: For I () proceeded forth and am come from God.His consciousness is the clear mirror, the true standard. He is certain (1) that He proceeded forth in His essence and in His personality from God, ontologically and ethically; (2) that also, in His appearance and mission among them, in His coming like a prophet to them, He came from God.71 But again, He is certain of this because He came not of Himself, i. e. because He knew Himself to be pure from all egotistic motives (love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power; see the history of the temptation, Matthew 4); and because He was conscious of being sent by God, i.e. of being actuated by divine motives. Nothing but this alternative was conceivable: from Himself, or from God, (Joh 7:18; Joh 7:28); no third origin (Meyer) is supposable.

Joh 8:43. Why do ye not understand my speech?, in distinction from ; the personal language, the mode of speech, the familiar tone and sound of the words, in distinction from their meaning [Joh 12:48 : ; comp. Php 1:14; Heb 13:7]. From its original idea of talk, babble, 72 here preserves the element of vividness, warmth, familiarity. It is the , the tone of spirituality and tone of love in the shepherd-voice of Christ.73 They are so far from recognizing this loving tone, that they are incapable of even listening to the substance of His words with a pure, undistracted, spiritual ear. Fanaticism is characterized by false hearing and words; primarily by false hearing. Our Lord means unprejudiced, kindly-disposed hearing and attention; something more therefore, even here, than the general power to understand, which is expressed by , and, in the first instance, something less than the willing hearing which is the beginning of faith itself. To take and as equivalent, and to lay stress on , and make it the condition precedent to (as Origen and others do), in the first place ignores the distinction of the two meanings of and , which distinctly runs through this Gospel, and in the second place it overlooks the language: . The point here is an ability to hear the , to which the recognition of the is the condition precedent. We therefore, with Calvin, take the as inferential, equivalent to , not with Luther as meaning for. Manifestly is to be understood ethically, not, with Hilgenfeld, in a Gnostic, fatalistic sense (see Tholuck). The lively emotion in the painful interrogatory utterance of these words introduced the solemn declaration following.

Joh 8:44. Ye are of the father who is the devil.[Of the (spiritual or moral) fatherhood or paternity of the devil, . This is the most important doctrinal statement of Christ concerning the devil, teaching soberly and solemnly without figure of speech: (1) the objective personality of the devil; (2) his agency in the fall of the human race, and his connection with the whole history of sin as the father of murder and falsehood; (3) his own apostasy from a previous normal state in which he was created; (4) the connection of bad men with the devil. with great emphasis, ye who boastfully claim to be lineal children of Abraham and spiritual children of God, are children of His great adversary, the devil. is in apposition to .P. S.] Not: Of the father of devils (plural : Grotius); nor the Gnostic absurdity: of the father of the devil [the demiurge], that is the God of the Jews [Hilgenfeld, Volkmar]; also not: of your father, the devil (Lcke, [De Wette, E. V., Alford74, Wordsworth]); but: of a father who is the devil (Meyer). The idea is clearly confined to ethical fatherhood by the placing of father first; so that John could not have written simply . And the lusts []Plural; primarily meaning not merely thirst for blood [but this is included]. According to Matthew 4, these are of three main classes [love of pleasure, love of honor, love of power.P. S.]. These lusts of the devil are the main springs of the life of his like-minded children, who, with their captive propensity, desire () to do them.75

He was a murderer [lit. a manslayer] from the beginning [ ].With special reference to their hatred of the Messiah issuing in blood-thirstiness and falsehood, hardened adherence to delusion and calumnious persecution of the truth and the evilness of it. The devil was a murderer of men from the very beginning (not of his existence, but) of human history (comp. Mat 19:4, where likewise stands for the beginning of human history).76 How so? Different interpretations.

(1) The devil is a murderer as the author of the fall of Adam, by which death came on man (Genesis 3; Rom 5:12). So Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, and most in modern times. [Schleierm., Thol., Olsh., Luth., Meyer, Ewald, Hengstenb., Godet, Alford, Wordsworth.P. S.] This interpretation is supported by the expression: from the beginning; and by Wis 2:24; Rev 12:9; Revelation 20;77 comp. also Ev. Nicod.: where the devil is called [and , the beginning of death, and the root of sin.P. S.]

(2) As the author of Cains murder of his brother. Cyril, Nitzsch, Lcke, and others. [So also De Wette, Kling, Reuss, Bumlein, Owen. The arguments for this interpretation are its appropriateness in view of the design of the literal murder of Christ entertained by the Jews, and especially the apparent parallel passage, 1Jn 3:12 : Cain was of the wicked one (i.e. a child of the devil, like other sinners, 1Jn 3:8) and slew his brother, comp. Joh 8:15 : Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. But neither here nor in Genesis 4 is the Satanic agency in the murder of Abel expressly mentioned, as it is in the history of temptation (Genesis 3), although it stands out prominently in the Bible as the first glaring consequence of the fall and as the type of bloodshed and violence that have since in unbroken succession desecrated the earth (comp. besides 1Jn 3:12, also Mat 23:35; Luk 11:51; Judges 11). Moreover, Cains deed itself presupposes the previous agency of the devil, when by the successful temptation of our first parents, he introduced first spiritual and then temporal murder and death into the world. The fall is the beginning of history, and of universal significance as the virtual fall of the whole race, and the fruitful source of sin in general and murder in particular. There the devil, in the shape of a serpent, proved himself both a murderer and a liar, as he is here described. To it therefore the passage must chiefly refer. 1Jn 3:8 ( , ) which all commentators refer to the history of the fall, is the real parallel to our passage, and not 1Jn 3:12.P. S.]

(3) He is quite generally described as a murderer, without any special reference. Baumgarten-Crusius, Brckner.
(4) Evidently the thing intended is the murderous work of Satan in all history, aiming to complete itself in the killing of Christ, but having signalized itself in the beginning in the temptation of man and the lie against God, which afterwards bore their full fruit in Cains murder of his brother (Theodoret, Heracleon, Euthymius).

We therefore consider that there is properly no question here between Adam and Cain, 1Jn 3:15-16. Yet the chief stress plainly lies on the temptation of Adam; for the devil, by his spiritual murder of man, brought man himself also to murder; and he is described pre-eminently as a liar. From that beginning he was a murderer of man from time to time.

And doeth not stand [ ] in the truth.Interpretations:

(1) He did not continue in the truth. Augustine (Vulg.: stetit), Luther, Martensen [Dogmatik, 108], Delitzsch [Psychol. p. 62]. This makes the word refer to the fall of the devil according to 2Pe 2:4; Jude Joh 8:6. Against this interpretation see Lcke and Meyer. It would require the pluperfect , stood. The perfect means, I have placed myself, I stand [comp. Joh 1:26; Joh 3:29; Mat 12:47; Mat 20:6, etc.]

(2) He does not stand in the truth. He has taken no stand and he holds no ground in it. In an emphatic sense he does not take a position; he has not honorably planted himself and valiantly stood. Euthymius: , ; Lcke: He is perpetually in the act of apostasy from the truth, De Wette, Meyer: Falsehood is the sphere in which he stands; in it he is in his proper element, in it he has his station. Correct, except that there can be no standing or fixedness, and no station in falsehood. Perpetual restlessness and going to and fro are his element, Job 2:2. Hence he is the spirit or devil of endless toil, and the number of his representative, as antichrist, is 666 (Rev 13:18). Compare the description of Lokke, his deceptions and his flights, in the Scandinavian mythology. He denies his own existence, as he denies all truth and reality.78 But he is the perpetual rover, because he is the deceiver.

[The passage then does not teach expressly the fall of the devil, but it presupposes it. has the force of the present and indicates the permanent character of the devil, but this status is the result of an act of a previous apostacy, as much as the sinful state of man is brought about by the fall of Adam. God made all things, without exception, through the Logos (Joh 1:3), and made the rational beings, both men and angels, pure and sinless, yet liable to temptation and fall. As to the time of the creation and fall of Satan and the bad angels, the Scriptures give us no light.P. S.]

Because there is no truth in him.Because falsehood is in him as the maxim of his life, he is in falsehood; because he keeps no position with himself, he keeps no position in reality. As he deceives himself, so he deceives the world. For internal truth is the centre of gravity which causes a moral being in the sphere of truth to stand firm as a pillar in the world. [Mark the absence of the article before , subjective truth, truthfulness, while in the preceding clause has the article and means objective truth, the truth of God. Comp. De Wette and Meyer.P. S.]

When he speaketh [] a lie.[ is generic, but the English language requires here the indefinite article, while it retains the definite article in the phrase to speak the truth. See Alford in loc.P. S.] Through the devil falsehood comes to its manifestation, thorough his familiar way, his persuasion, his whispering, his insinuation (). But then he always speaketh of his own [, out of his own resources], from his own nature; himself revealing his own truthless and loveless mind (The devil has a half-charred heart); revealing himself to his own condemnation, Mat 12:34 [ . His are to be taken ethically. Yet the description of a lie as that which is the devils own, includes the idea that it originates from his own will, and that, being only for his own sake, it remained a thing of his own, having no ground in the foundation of truth, in God.

For he is a liar and the father thereof [ ].That which he says proceeds indeed from within himself, and what he is within himself as devil, in his of Satanic egoism, that he puts forth continually in his own work and in the work of his child as its father. Different interpretations of :

(1) The father of the lie, , Origen, Euthymius, et al., Lcke. [With reference to the first lie recorded in history, by which the devil seduced Eve: Ye shall not surely die, Gen 3:4.P. S.] Observe, on the contrary, that Christ intends to speak here not merely of the author of the lie, but also concretely of the father of the liars, to whom he returns. Therefore,

(2) Father of the liar [ = . Consequently he is your father, and ye are his children, see beginning of the verse being singular the pronoun is attracted into the singular .P. S.] Bengel, Baumgarten-Crusius, Luthardt, Meyer [Tholuck, Stier, Alford, Hengstenberg]. Then we must of course take first as a general predicate of the wicked personality. The devil is a liar in himself, and is father of the liar in abominable self-propagation through the delusion of the children of wickedness (2 Thessalonians 2)

The ancient Gnostic [and Manichean] interpretation, taking the demiurge as father of the devil, re-applied to the Gospel by Hilgenfeld [and Volkmar], is disposed of by Meyer [p. 359].79 Meyer justly observes that in this passage the fall of the devil is presupposed; but it is by no means presupposed that the devil always was wicked (Hilgenfeld and others). It should be added that this description of the devil always suggests the causes of his fall: selfishness, falsehood, envy, hatred. The devil, the beginner of wickedness, 1Jn 3:8; 1Jn 3:12; the founder of wickedness, the spirit of the wicked. In the temptation of Adam (Wis 2:24; Heb 2:14; Rev 12:9)80 as well as in Cains fratricide, that twofold nature of selfishness showed itself: hatred of truth and love of murder, which culminated in the crucifixion of Christ.81 There is, however, here no opposition of formal truth and formal falsehood, but the full extent of both ideas is kept in view (Luthardt, Tholuck); this is evident from the nature of the completed opposition itself, when speaking the truth turns life itself into truth, and in like manner lying makes life itself a lie. So the external murder of Abel which Satan effected through Cain is inconceivable without the spiritual murder performed in Adam, which became the cause of the literal murder.

Joh 8:45. But Ibecause I speak the truth, ye believe me not.The is forcibly put first, not so much in opposition to the devil (Tholuck, Meyer), as in opposition to the Jews as the spiritual children of the devil. After telling them what they are, the last word of the explanation, what He is, hovers on His lips. Jesus characterizes His Ego to the extent of their present need: (1) He is the witness or the prophet of truth, in opposition to the arch-liar and his children; 2) The sinless one, in opposition to their lust of murder, intending to kill Him; 3) Coming from God, with the word of God, in opposition to their diabolic nature. This however is the great obstacle of His full self-revelation, or rather the Messianic designation of His full self-revelation, that in their hardened lying disposition they are opposed to His spirit of truth; that they do not believe Him for the very reason of His telling them the truth. [Alford: This implies a charge of wilful striving against known and recognized truth.] Euthymius [filling up the context]: , , [If I should speak a lie, you would believe Me as speaking what properly belongs to your father].

Joh 8:46. Which of you convicteth me of sin? [ .]Different explanations of sin.

1) Because the truth in speaking is previously mentioned, must here mean error or intellectual defect. Origenes, Cyril, Erasmus and others. Against this speaks a) that in the New Testament throughout designates sin, and even with the classics it does not mean error, deceit, unless with a defining addition, e.g., . [Comp. Meyer, p. 360 f.P. S.] b) Jesus would in this case make the examination of truth an object of intellectual reflection, we might say, of theological disputation, while otherwise He represents it as a moral and religious process, c) The truth of His word is authenticated by the truthfulness and sinlessness of His life, see Joh 7:17-18.

2) Sin in speech, untruth, falsehood. Melancthon, Calvin [false doctrine], Hofmann [Snde des Wortes], Tholuck. Against this: Either this interpretation amounts to the same as the first, or it must include the idea of intentional delusion, of sinful and wicked speech, or all this together (wicked delusion, Fritzsche, Baumgarten-Crusius). But for this the expression is too general.

3) Sin, the moral offence. [This is the uniform usage of in the New Testament.P. S.] Lcke, Stier, Luthardt,82 etc. Jesus speaks from the fundamental conception that the intellectual life is inseparably connected with the ethical (Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 99). There is no reason in this explanation (with Tholuck) to miss a connecting link, or to assume a defect in the narrative. Meantime this declaration is also differently interpreted: a) The sinless one is the purest and safest organ of the perception and communication of truth (Lcke), or the knowledge of the truth rests upon purity of the will (De Wette). b) Meyer against this: this would be discursive, or at least imply that Jesus acquired the knowledge of the truth in the discursive way, and only in His human state, while, according to John especially, He knew the truth by intuition and from His pre-existent state, and in His earthly state by virtue of His unbroken communion with God. His reasoning is: If I am without sinand none of you can prove the contraryI am also without error, consequently I say the truth, and ye, on your part have no reason to disbelieve Me. But Jesus could exhibit His morally pure self-consciousness only by His life. Hence c) the word is to be understood according to the historical connection of the reproach of theocratic sin, They tried to make Him a sinner in the sense of the Jewish regulation with regard to excommunication, but they do not venture to accuse Him publicly, still less can they convict Him. But this consciousness of His legal irreproachableness implies at the same time the consciousness of the moral infallibility of His life and the sinlessness of His character and being, as He on His part recognizes no merely legal righteousness. Our expression is therefore certainly a solemn declaration of the Lord in regard to His sinlessness, which indeed is indirectly implied also in other testimonies concerning Himself, as for instance in Joh 8:29. The circumstance, that the divine-human sinlessness of Christ had to develop and prove itself in a human way, affords no reason to call it (with Meyer) relative in opposition to the absolute sinlessness of God according to Heb 5:8.

[This is a most important passage, teaching clearly the sinlessness, or (to use the positive term) the moral perfection, of Christ. He here presents Himself as the living impersonation of holiness and truth in inseparable union, in opposition to the devil as the author and instigator of sin and error. The sinlessness of Jesus is implied in His whole mission and character as the Saviour of sinners from sin and death; for the least transgression or moral defect would have annihilated His fitness to redeem and to judge. It is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist (Mat 3:14; Joh 1:15; Joh 3:31), and the apostles (Act 3:14; 1Pe 1:19; 1Pe 2:22; 1Pe 3:18; 2Co 5:21; 1Jn 2:29; 1Jn 3:5; 1Jn 3:7; Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26). Christ challenged His enemies to convict Him of sin, in the absolute certainty of freedom from sin. This agrees with His whole conduct, with the entire absence of everything like repentance or regret in His life. He never asked God forgiveness for any thought or word or deed of His; He stood far above the need of regeneration, conversion or reform. No other man could ask such a question as this without obvious hypocrisy or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, while from the mouth of Jesus we hear it without surprise, as the unanswerable self-vindication of one who always speaks the truth, who is the Truth itself, and is beyond the reach of impeachment or suspicion. If Jesus had been a sinner, He must have been conscious of it like all other sinners, and could not have thus challenged His enemies, and conducted Himself throughout on the assumption of entire personal freedom from sin without a degree of hypocrisy which would be the greatest moral monstrosity ever conceived and absolutely irreconcilable with any principle of virtue. But if Christ was truly sinless, He forms an absolute exception to a universal rule and stands out the greatest moral miracle in midst of a fallen and ruined world, challenging our belief in all His astounding claims concerning His divine origin, character and mission.The sinlessness of Jesus must not be confounded with the sinlessness of God: it is the sinlessness of the man Jesus, which implied, during His earthly life, peccability (the possibility of sinning, posse-peccare), temptability and actual temptation, while the sinlessness of God is an eternal attribute above the reach of conflict. If we view Christ merely in His human nature, we may say that His sinlessness was at first relative (impeccabilitas minor, posse non peccare) and, like Adams innocence in paradise, liable to fall (though such fall was made impossible by the indwelling divine Logos); nevertheless it was complete at every stage of His life in accordance with the character of each, i.e., He was sinless and perfect as. a child, perfect as a boy, perfect as a youth, and perfect as a man; there being different degrees of perfection. Sinless holiness grew with Him, and, by successfully overcoming temptation in all its forms, it became absolute impeccability or impossibility of sinning (impeccabilitas major, non posse peccare). Hence it is said that He learned obedience, Heb 5:8.The historical fact of the sinlessness of Jesus overthrows the pantheistic notion of the necessity of sin for the moral development of man.P. S.]

Joh 8:46. I speak the truth, why do ye not believe me.Luther co-ordinates this word with the former; Christ asking the reason why they did not believe in Him, since they could censure neither His life nor His doctrine. My life is pure, for none of you can convict Me of sin, My doctrine also, for I tell you nothing but the truth. But cannot be [illigible words found] co-ordinate to the question. The connection is [illigible words found]rather this: Sinlessness is the truth of life; he who acts out the truth in a blameless life, must be admitted also to speak the truth and to be [illigible words found] worthy of faith. Purity of life guarantees purity [illigible words found] f doctrine, as vice versa, Jam 3:2.

Joh 8:47. He that is of God heareth Gods word.A syllogism; but not with this conclusion: I now speak Gods words (De Wette), but: you are not of God. That Jesus speaks the word of God is pre-supposed in the foregoing. An attentive hearing and reception of the word of God is meant. This is conditioned by being from God, by moral relationship with God; for only kindred can know kindred. The being of God has above been more particularly characterized as a being drawn by God (Joh 4:44), being taught by Him (Joh 8:45), as showing itself by doing truth in God, Joh 3:21.

Explanations of he that is of God ( ): a) of divine essence and origin, in the dualistic, Manichean sense of two originally different classes of men (Hilgenfeld); b) elect, predestinated (Augustine, Piscator); c) born again (Lutheran and recent Reformed interpreters). In reference to the third interpretation it is to be assumed, that to be of God and to manifest it by hearing His word, is the beginning of the new birth; in reference to the second, that hereby true election comes to light, in reference to the first, that the antagonism between the children of God and the children of the devil is not metaphysical or ontological, but ethical, and is so defined in the New Testament, especially in John. On both sides self-determination is pre-supposed, but a direction and change of life is hereby expressed, which on the one side appears more and more as freedom and resemblance to God, on the other as demoniacal slavery (See Joh 8:24; Joh 8:34).

Joh 8:48. Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon.Malicious refusal of, and reply to, His reproach. A Samaritan is doubless the designation of a heretic; but also with the secondary meaning of a spurious origin (from a mongrel nation), and an adversary of orthodox Judaism. (Paulus).83 Samaritan is meant to be a retort to His reproach: You are no spiritual children of Abraham. But His reproach: You are of the devil, they answer with the insult: Thou hast a demon, here in the more definite sense of being possessed of a Satanic spirit. To His two ethical reproaches they oppose two insults, by which they expect triumphantly to silence Him. Hence the self-complacent expression: ; Are we not right? Did we not hit it? The form of the expression betrays, that they do not utter these words for the first time. Perhaps the reproach: Thou art a Samaritan, was hinted at already in Joh 8:19; at all events the other reproach: Thou hast a demon, in a milder form, was made by the people on a previous occasion (Joh 7:20); but here we must remember the fact, that the Pharisees had already formerly slanderously charged Him with casting out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils (Mat 9:34; comp. Joh 10:25; Joh 12:24). It is significant that in their view demoniacal possession and a voluntary demoniacal working are the same thing, or rather that they consider the former condition the higher degree of devilish life.

Joh 8:49. I have not a demon.Jesus, with, sublime self-control and calmness, ignores the first reproach (especially as He cannot recognize the designation of Samaritan either as a title of abuse or a verdict of rejection, because He had already believers among the Samaritans, and He therefore did not hesitate in the parable of the good Samaritan to represent Himself under the symbol of a Samaritan. Lampe). Yet He answers this reproach, while answering the second. He does this first with a simple refusal or protest, but then by the positive declaration: I honor my Father. This furnishes at the same time the counter-proof that He is no Samaritan and has no demon. No Samaritan: He proves it by word and life that God is His Father; not a demon: He proves it, that He is not possessed of a dark spirit, but full of the Spirit of the Father, and glorifying Him. This explains the character of their reproaches: they insult and blaspheme; they insult in Him the representative of Gods glory, therefore indirectly the glory of God itself. With this wickedness the matter cannot rest, because God reigns as the God of truth and righteousness. His obscured by their , must face them in higher brilliancy as . But it is not His business to aspire to this arbitrarily (Joh 5:41); He leaves this to the Father with the confidence: that as surely as He seeks the of His Father, so surely will the Father, by His guidance, seek His. He knows that this is even a constant direction of the divine guidance; God is in this respect , and brings the case to a decision as , in opposition to those who restrain the truth.

Joh 8:51. If a man keep my saying, he will never see death.The announcement of Gods judgment, includes the announcement of death. This announcement Jesus could not make unconditionally to a Jewish audience, for 1) there might be some among them and there were some who really kept His word; and 2) He could not yet withdraw from His adversaries the invitation to salvation; 3) the thought of the terrible judgment always awakened in Him an impulse of pity and mercy (comp. Mat 23:27). It is therefore incorrect to assume (with Calvin, De Wette) that these words after a pause were addressed to believers only, or to connect them (with Lcke) with Joh 8:31, instead of Joh 8:50. Meyer justly points out the antithesis to the reference to the judgment. His word will carry the believers safely through judgment and death, or rather beyond judgment and death, as the Christians afterwards really experienced at the destruction of Jerusalem. Generally the expression is equal to the similar one: to hear the word, to remain in the word; yet in this keeping the probation in trials and dangers of apostasy is especially emphasized in the (Mat 13:21; Joh 15:20; Joh 17:6). He will never see death (not: he will not die for ever); a promise, that his life shall pass entirely safe through the whole succession of judgments, and will not see death even in the final judgment.

Joh 8:52. Now we know that thou hast a demon.The answer of blind enmity to His enticing call of mercy. If they understand the word of Jesus of His natural death, it is probably an intentional misunderstanding in order to escape the force of His thoughts. They argue thus: He who promises to others bodily immortality, must Himself possess it in a still higher degree. But since Abraham and the Prophets died, it is a senseless and demoniacal self-exaltation if you claim for yourself freedom from death. It seems to be a characteristic part of their speech when they say: Now we know that Thou hast, etc, i.e., Now at last we know positively what we have before accused you of; and when they further change (Joh 8:51) into (Joh 8:52), and the expression into: , though the latter expression is also used by the Lord in a different connection, Mat 16:28. The is a usual expression among the Rabbins (Schttgen, Wetstein), probably not merely in general a picture of experience, but a figure of the drinking from the cup of death; in any case it denotes ironically the antithesis to every enjoyment of life. While the expression: not to see death, denotes the objective side of the believers experience, according to which death is changed into a metamorphosis of life, the phrase: not to taste death, means the subjective emancipation from the guilty sinners dread and horror of death.

Joh 8:53. Whom dost thou make thyself?With more than half-feigned shudder before the word of self-exaltation, which He is about to utter, they manifest at the same time a demoniacal curiosity to know the last word of His self-designation. Thus the form of the excited questions is explained by the mixture of their fanatical and chiliastic emotions.

Joh 8:54. If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.At first a protest against the reproach of self-exaltation. He makes nothing of Himself from His own will, but suffers Himself to become everything through the guidance of God. He does not answer their question directly, because every word referring to the true greatness of His would only be to them unintelligible and cause error and offence. The full majesty of the divine-human Son of God must as a new fact be accompanied by the new idea, a new name, Php 2:9. The accomplishment of this fact, however, belongs to the government of the Father. Therefore He cannot arbitrarily anticipate His glorification, without contradicting His real , which is just a fruit of self-humiliation and perfect patience, Php 2:6. But for this very reason the Father is active as the one that glorifieth Him ( ), of whom they say that He is their God ( ). To them it is the strongest reproach, that He is the same, whom they with spiritual pride point out as their God, and which is true in a historical, though not in a spiritual sense, to their own condemnation. The whole force of the contrast between their and His knowledge of God lies in this, that He can say: it is My Father, who glorifies Me, the same one whom you unjustly call your God, as you do not even know Him. That they do not know Him, they prove by their not recognizing His revelation in Christ, and their persecuting and insulting Him unto death.

Joh 8:55. Ye know him not, but I know him.Commentators are apt to ignore the contrast between the and the threefold [see, however, Meyer, footnote, p. 366]. In any case it means: you have not even indirectly made His acquaintance, but I have made His acquaintance directly; I. have looked at Him and know Him by intention. We choose from the different shades of the idea, the expression: I know Him.I should be a liar like you. The child-like expression of the sublime self-consciousness of Christ. Were He to deny this unique and constant experience of God as His Father (Mat 11:27), He would, if this were possible, through mistaken and cowardly modesty become a liar like them. They are liars and hypocrites while pretending to know God (comp. Joh 8:44); He would fall into the opposite kind of hypocrisy, if He were to deny His consciousness.The addition: But I know him and keep his word, is an ultimatum, a declaration of war against the whole hell: the word of God confided to Him, which is one with His own consciousness, He will not permit to be torn out of His heart by the storm of the cross.

Joh 8:56. Abraham your father84 rejoiced that He should see [ ]. The object of His joy is represented as its purpose and aim. Abraham rejoiced, that he should see, and that he might see. His belief in the word of promise (Gen 15:4; Gen 17:17; Gen 18:10) was the cause of his joy,this the reason of the rejuvenating of his life, and this again the condition of his patriarchal paternity, Heb 11:11-12; comp. Joh 1:13. The birth of Isaac was mediated by inspiration of faith (Rom 4:19; Gal 4:23), and is therefore a type of that complete inspiration of faith, with which the Virgin conceived the promised Saviour by the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost. The laughing of Abraham, Gen 17:17, forms only an incident in this cheerful elevation of life, and so far as it is connected with a doubt of Abraham, it can be only regarded as a symbol of rejoicing, not, according to Philo, as a pure expression of his hope.85

That he should see my day.The expression of all the immeasurable hopes of Abraham united in their central point of aim. The hope for the heirfor the heirsfor the inheritance (Hebrews 11) was a hope whose aim and centre appeared on the day of the Divine Heir who embraces all other heirs and the whole inheritance. The day of Christ is therefore also the whole time of the New Testament, as it reaches beyond the last day into the eternal day of His glory. Not the passion-time (Chrysostom),86 not the time of the parusia (Bengel), not the birth-day (Schleusner),87 but the time of the appearance of Christ, as in the plural, Luk 17:23, in the singular, Joh 8:24. Tholuck. On the worthlessness of the hypothetical shape of the sentence with the Socinians, see Lcke and Tholuck, p. 267. In reference to a similar longing of the theocratic pious kings, see Luk 10:24. The connection with the previous: 1) Chrysostom, Calvin: Ille me absentem desideravit, vos prsentem aspernamini. 2) De Wette: Now Jesus really places Himself above Abraham, by representing Himself as the object of Abrahams highest desire. 3) Baumgarten-Crusius: As the Giver of life He could raise Himself above Abraham, for Abraham himself had in joyful anticipation expected and received life from Him. Origen also finds in the a definite refutation of the . , maintained by the Jews (Tholuck). In answering their question whether He was greater than Abraham who had died, Christ asserts two points: 1) Abraham did not die in their cheerless sense of death; 2) He did not raise Himself above Abraham, but Abraham subordinated himself to Him; comp. the parallel word on David, Mat 22:45.

And he saw it and rejoiced.Different explanations:

1) He foresaw the day of Christ in faith [on the ground of the Messianic promises made to him during his earthly life, Genesis 12; Genesis 15; Genesis 17; Genesis 18; Genesis 22; Romans 4; Gal 3:6 ff.P. S.] So Calvin, Melanchthon and older Protestant commentators [also Bengel: Vidit diem Christi, qui in semine, quod stellarum instar futurum erat, sidus maximum est et fulgidissimum.P. S.].

2) He saw it in types: the three angels [one of them being the Logos, Genesis 18; so Hengstenberg], especially the sacrifice of Isaac [as foreshadowing the vicarious death and resurrection of Christ]. So Chrysostom, Theophyl., Roman commentators, Erasmus, Grotius.

3) In prophetical vision. So Jerome, Olshausen [who refers to Isaiahs vision of the glory of Christ, Joh 12:41], etc.

4) In the celebration of the birth and meaning of Isaac. Hofmann. [So also Wordsworth, fancifully: The name Isaac (laughing), Gen 17:17, had a reference to the of Abraham; for in Isaac, the promised seed, he had a vision of Christ, in whom all rejoice.P. S.]

5) Visio in limbo patrum. Este, etc.88

6) As one living in paradise in the other world [comp. Luk 16:22; Luk 16:25], like the angels, 1Pe 1:12; Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, Mat 17:4; Luk 9:31. So Origen [Lampe], Lcke, De Wette [Meyer, Stier, Luthardt, Alford, Bumlein, Godet] and different others.89 Doubtless the proper sense: therefore His living Abraham in opposition to their dead one. [Abraham saw the day of Christ as an actual witness from the higher world, like the angels who sang the anthem over the plains of Bethlehem.P. S.]

And rejoiced.Indication of changes in the realm of death, wrought by the appearance of Christ.90 The calm joy of the blessed, , in opposition to the excited joy of anxious desire, . According to rabbinical traditions God showed to Abraham in prophetic vision the building, the destruction and re-construction of the temple, and even the succession of empires (see Lcke, the note on p. 363). These traditions represent the dark shadow of the light which the word of Christ casts into Hades.

Joh 8:57. Thou art not yet fifty years old.The sensual, half imbecile and half malicious and intentional misunderstanding grows more and more in its folly. The fiftieth year was the full age of a man, Num 4:3. Tholuck: From this passage arose the misunderstanding of Irenus that Jesus had gone through all the ages of human life. [Irenus inferred from this passage that Jesus was not quite, but nearly fifty years of age, Adv. hr. II. 22, 6 (ed. Stieren I. p. 360). E. V. Bunsen (a son of the celebrated statesman and scholar) defends this view, and infers from Joh 2:20 f., that Christ was forty-six years of age (The Hidden Wisdom of Christ, Lond. 1865, II p. 461 ff.). Keim also is inclined to extend the earthly life of Christ to forty years, but confines His public ministry to one year and a few months, (Geschichtl. Christus, p. 235, Gesch. Jesu von Nazara, I 469 f. note). It is obvious that no clear inference as to the age of our Lord can be drawn from this indefinite estimate of the Jews, and Irenus was influenced by a dogmatic consideration, viz., that Christ must have passed through all the stages of human life, including old age (senior in senioribus), in order to redeem thorn all. But the idea of declining life is incompatible with the true idea of the Saviour. He died and lives for ever in the memory of His people in the unbroken vigor of early manhood.P. S.]

Joh 8:58. Verily, verily Before Abraham became I am.91 Over against the completely hardened stupidity of spiritual death flashes up the perfect mystery of eternal life. not was (Tholuck [De Wette, Ewald,]), or born (Erasmus), but became (Augustine); the antithesis of the created and the eternal, which implies at the same time the antithesis of the temporal and the eternal. expresses the pre-existence (after the fathers), yet not only as the divine pre-existence, but that which reflects itself in Christs divine-human consciousness of eternity and extends to the present and the future as well as the past, or that form of existence which makes Him the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is the propelling principle and centre of the times. We distinguish, therefore, a threefold mode of existence: 1) The divine, timeless or pre-temporal existence of the Logos; 2) the divine-human principial existence of the Logos as the foundation of humanity and the world; 3) the divine-human existence of the coming and appearing Christ through the succession of times. This implies at the same time the ethical elevation of the feeling of eternity above the times. The principial and dynamic pre-existence must be understood in a sense analogous to the pre-existence of Christ before John, Joh 1:15; Joh 1:17. To the Jews this sense was most obvious: Abrahams existence presupposes Mine, not Mine that of Abraham; he depends for his very existence on Me, not I on him. We have then here again a revelation of His essential Messianic consciousness, His primitive feeling of eternity over and above all time. Comp. Joh 6:63; Joh 8:25; Joh 8:42; Joh 13:3; Joh 16:28; Joh 17:5.

Socinus explains according to his system: Antequam Abraham fiat Abraham, i.e., pater multorum gentium, ego sum Messias, lux mundi. The interpretation of Baumgarten-Crusius: I was in the predestination of God, does not suffice, but is not incorrect, as Tholuck thinks; it denotes the principial aspect of pre-existence. In a similar sense the Rabbins boasted that Israel and the laws existed before the world.

[The passage most clearly teaches the essential and personal pre-existence of Christ before Abraham, in other words, before the world (Joh 17:5), and before time (Joh 1:1), which was made with the world, and implies His eternity, and consequently His deity, for God alone is eternal. This the Jews well understood, and hence they raised stones to punish the supposed blasphemer. The same doctrine is taught, Joh 1:1; Joh 1:18; Joh 6:62; Joh 17:5; Col 1:17; Heb 1:2. Alt attempts of ancient and modern Socinians and Rationalists to explain away the pre-existence, or to turn it into a merely ideal pre-existence in the mind and will of God (which would constitute no difference between Christ and Abraham), are little better than dishonest quibbles (Alford). I add Meyers explanation which is clear and satisfactory. Before Abraham became (ward, not war), I am; older than Abrahams becoming, is my being. Since Abraham had not pre-existed, but by his birth came into existence, the verb is used, while denotes being as such (das Sein an sich), which in the case of Christ who, according to His divine essence, was before time itself, does not include a previous or coming into existence. Comp. Joh 1:1; Joh 1:6, and Chrysostom. The present tense denotes that which continues from the past, i.e., here from the pre-temporal existence (Joh 1:1; Joh 17:5). Comp. LXX., Psa 90:2; Jer 1:5. But the is neither an ideal existence (De Wette) nor the Messianic existence (Scholten), and must not be found in the counsel of God (Sam. Crell, Grotius, Paulus, Baumgarten-Crusius), which is made impossible by the present tense; nor is it (with Beyschlag) to be conceived of as the existence of the real image of God, nor is the expression a momentary vision of prophetic elevation (Weizscker), but it essentially corresponds with Christs permanent consciousness of personal pre-existence which in John meets us everywhere. Comp. Joh 17:5; Joh 6:46; Joh 6:62. It is not an intuitive, retrospective conclusion (Rckschluss),. but a retrospective look (Rckblick) of the consciousness of Jesus. In other words, Christ, did not, in a moment of higher inspiration, infer that He existed before Abraham and the world (Beyschlag), but He calmly declared His knowledge and conviction, or revealed His personal consciousness concerning His superhuman origin and pre-temporal existence.P. S.]

Joh 8:59. Then took they up stones.The clear sound of the word concerning His eternity sounds to the Jews like blasphemy. They get ready, therefore, to execute theocratic judgment as zealots of the law (comp. Joh 10:31). A summary stoning in the temple is related by Josephus, Antiq. XVII. 9, 3. The stones were probably the building-stones in the vestibule, see Light-foot, p. 1048 (Meyer), Considering the frequent attempts of the Jews to stone Jesus, it must appear the more providential, that He nevertheless found His death on the cross, and the more divine that He foresaw it with certainty.

But Jesus hid himself (withdrew Himself), . A vanishing out of sight ( ), as in Luk 24:31 (Augustine, Luthardt [Wordsworth]), is hardly to be thought of: to become invisible is not a withdrawal, a hiding, and Jesus was not yet transfigured. He hid Himself while disappearing among the multitude of the people, especially His adherents. Therefore also not quite so , as if He had fled (Chrysost.). The doubtful addition: , etc. [see Text. Notes], does not express a miraculous disappearance, but rather that He secured His safety in virtue of His majesty, just by breaking through the midst of the group of His enemies. Meyer, therefore, has no good reason to say that this occurrence is quite different from the one related, Luk 4:30. The conjecture of a docetic view (Hilgenfeld, Baur) is arbitrarily put in. Also in these details we see how the crisis thickens and the storm is gathering.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The grand decisive turning point in the position of the Jews in Jerusalem towards the Lord, or the falling away from the beginnings of faith, a consequence of His exposition of true discipleship (in antithesis to false): (1) Real faith, true orthodoxy: continuance in His word, faithful obedience in contrast to arbitrary perversion of His word. (2) The fruit of faith, true philosophy: knowledge and recognition of divine truth in antithesis to the delusions of error. (3) The blessing of truth: true freedom, liberation from the service of sin, in antithesis to a spurious freedom or mock freedom, contemning the spiritual conditions of external freedom. The truth shall make you free. Afterwards: the Son maketh free. Truth is personal in Christ, Christ is universal in truth. Truth is the light, freedom the might of life. Truth is the enlightenment of the reason, liberty the redemption of the will. Truth is the harmony of the contrasts of life, having its central point in the life and work of Christ, its source in God, its rays in all fragments of knowledge: liberty the harmony of man in his true self-destination in accordance with his abilities and the reality of God. Truth corresponds to revelation, liberty to redemption.

2. Causes of the falling away: (1) Pride (Abrahams seed); (2) self-delusion (not slaves); (3) carnal aspirations (outward rebellion); (4) evil fellowship, or party spirit (we, we, etc.).

3. Antithesis of true freedom and true servitude.Servitude: (1) Beginning of servitude (the commission of sin); (2) state of servitude (the slave of sin); (3) result (only an unfree bond servant in the house of God, over whom expulsion is impending).The servant (also the servile spirit) abideth not in the house of God (in the communion of the kingdom) forever. This has been first fulfilled in the case of unbelieving Israel.

4. The Son of the house, as the real Freeman, also the true Liberator.

5. The contrast between Christ and His adversaries: (1) In disposition. He estimates them impartially (Abrahams seed); He woos them with His word. They, on the other hand, do not suffer His word to spring up in them, therefore hatred to Christ buds within them (they change the savor of life unto life into a savor of death unto death). (2) In the impulses of life. The Father of Christ, the father of the Jews; the seeing of Christ, the hearing of the Jews; the witnessing of Christ, the doing of the Jews. (3) In conduct: Israelitish, anti-Israelitish (if Abraham were your father); prophetic (a man that telleth you the truth), murderously anti-prophetic (ye seek to kill Me); divine-human, anti-Christian. (4) In origin: Of God, of the devil.

6. I am from above. This answer to the intimation: He is about to descend far below as a suicide, contains the idea of His ascent. To the Jews death was in general a going downward. In the Old Testament the germ of the opposite hope was implanted. Gen 5:24; Gen 28:12, in the holy mountain-ascents of Moses (Exodus 19; Deu 34:4), in Elijahs ascension to heaven, in expressions such as Pro 15:24. Christ here makes the idea of the heavenly abode appear more clearly (comp. Joh 7:34); at a later period, chap. 14, He reveals it openly to His disciples in order to confirm it by His ascension.

7. The doctrine of Jesus concerning the devil. See the Exegetical Notes. Comp. Com. on Mat 4:1; Mat 12:26 [pp. 81, 223, Am. ed.]. Comp. the Dogmatik of the author (Die Lehre vom Teufel).

8. Characteristics of the devil and his children: (1) Lusts, passions; (2) murder, hate; (3) falsehood; (4) contagion and seduction. Starke: A seed is figuratively ascribed to the devil, Gen 3:15. By this are commonly understood not only the fallen angels but also all malignant sinners (1Jn 3:10; Mat 13:38-39); partly because the first origin of the evil was the first sin of the devil, partly because all wicked people fulfil his will with filial obedience and hence bear his image. means properly a slanderer, calumniator, because Satan is (1) a slanderer who belies (slanders) and defames God to men (Gen 3:3; Gen 3:5), in that he suggests to believers hard thoughts of God, and tells them that He is angry with them, whilst in reality He is reconciled to them through Christ, but persuades the wicked that God is favorable to them and unmindful of their iniquities. He also accuses and calumniates men to God, Job 1:9; Rev 12:17. (2) An adversary of Christ and the faithful, Gen 3:15; Zec 3:1; 1Pe 5:8; Rev 12:9. (3) A deceiver and seducer of men, 2Co 11:3; 2Co 11:14, etc.; he is the chief seducer, and then also all evil spirits who are under him as their head.

9. The Sinlessness of Jesus. Comp. Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus [7th ed., 1863] and Schaff on the Person of Christ[Germ. ed. Gotha, 1865, revised ed. New York, 1870, Engl. ed. Boston, 1865, pp. 50 ff. The sinlessness of Jesus is strongly asserted even by divines who are by no means orthodox, (Schleiermacher, Hase, Keim, Bushnell) and has been assailed only by a few writers of any note (such as Strauss, Pecaut, Theo. Parker, Renan), and even these are forced to admit that He made a nearer approach to moral perfection than any other man. But the only logical alternative is between absolute sinlessness or absolute hypocrisy; and to admit the former is virtually to admit the whole Christian system.P. S.]

10. Unbelief the uniform characteristic of the devilish mind: (1) Unbelief of the truth of Christ because it is truth, (2) because it is the effluence of His holiness, (3) because it is divine. Or (1) the lack of a sense of truth, proneness to falsehood, (2) the want of appreciation of the purity of life, (3) the lack of affinity to God, of obedience to the voice of God in the breast.

11. A Samaritan.The insulting and abusive retort to the calm sentence of truth contains the life-picture of fanaticism, which has first boldly chicaned (Joh 8:13), then quibbled and sneered (Joh 8:19), after this uttered taunts (Joh 8:22); then with eager longing for a chiliastic mystery and mystical proceeding has drawn Him out (Joh 8:25), and worshipped Him (Joh 8:30). Turning round again it grows rancorous (Joh 8:33), boasts (Joh 8:39), and arrogantly and abusively contradicts (Joh 8:41). Here it stands in its fullest development. It slanders while it reviles and reviles as it slanders.

12. The wonderful proof of Christs self-command, patience and freedom of spirit exhibited throughout the chapter. His frankness, His prudence, His wisdom, His incorruptibleness (Joh 8:30-31), the most diverse virtues of the Lord prove superior to the most difficult situation and the severest temptations. From the midst of the solemnly moving serenity with which He proclaims judgment, His mercy bursts forth again as a flaming beacon of deliverance, Joh 8:51. The declaration in Joh 8:51 reverts to that contained in Joh 8:31.

13. Christ and Abraham in antithesis to the previously depicted relation of the Jews to Abraham. On the feeling of life and the feeling of death. Between the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ and the doctrine of the anticipatory joy of Abraham in the Messiah and his celebration of the Messianic day in the other world, there exists the closest connection; similarly, the comfortless speech of the Jews with regard to the death of Abraham and the prophets is connected with their witless estimation of the duration of the life of Christ. (And thus the Evangelical Church was reproached with her three centuries and the Evangelical Alliance with its three decennaries under the misapprehension of the eternity of the Evangel and the primitiveness of the fellowship of faith.)

14. Abrahams exultation in this world, Abrahams joy in the other world, or the excited celebration (of the Messianic day) of the mortal, and the calm, peaceful celebration of the glorified one. The anticipatory joy of the ancients was not without painful longing, their longing not devoid of rapturous glimpses of the future.

15. Isaac, the son of faith, also in this a type of Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of Mary, the Virgin.
16. Christs proffer of everlasting life answered by the Jews with an attempt to stone and kill Him.
17. As Christ, ever more gloriously escaped from the Jews, thus too shall the Church of Christ in her evangelical confession and spiritual life ever more gloriously escape the persecutions of the legalists.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The uprightness of Christ.How the Lord by His heavenly uprightness gradually enchains the true disciples, gradually alienates the false ones (see Joh 3:6; Joh 9:1).How He does not captivate the false disciples: 1. Will not captivate them; 2. cannot captivate them.The true profitable conduct of disciples towards the word of Jesus: 1. The conduct; (a) to suffer themselves to be kept by the word (to continue in it, the obedience of faith, Joh 8:31); (b) to keep the word in temptation as a guiding star through the darkness of judgments (the loyalty of faith, Joh 8:51). 2. Whereunto this is profitable: knowledge of the truth and freedom from sin. (life in brightness and freedom from death).Continuance in the word of Jesus the condition of true spirit-life: 1. Of true knowledge of God, 2. of true moral freedom.Through truth to freedom.Through inner freedom to outer freedom.The false confidence of legal saints in their freedom (religious, ecclesiastical, political freedom): 1. They are enslaved outwardly by the world (the Jews by Rome); 2. enslaved at home by the letter of the law; 3. enslaved within and without by sin.Domestic right in the house of God: 1. The Song of Solomon , 2. the bond-servants, 3. the freedmen.The true children of Abraham, Romans 4Where the word of Christ can not grow in the heart, enmity against Christ flourishes, Joh 8:37.How man can by spiritual pride turn inherited blessings, even ecclesiastical ones, into a curse (as here the boast, about being Abrahams seed).The prudence of Christ in antithesis to the temerity of sinners, Joh 8:38 : 1. He speaks that which He has seen of God. 2. The evil that they have faintly heard, they do.The trial of the Jews, instituted by the Lord, as to whether they are genuine heirs of the spirit and faith of Abraham: 1. The trial, (a)after the works of Abraham, (b) after their susceptibility of Gods words. 2. The result, Joh 8:44.

Abrahams seed (consecrated children of God by circumcision; called regenerate), and yet of their father the devil. So, too, one may be called a Christian, an evangelical Christian, etc., and yet be of ones father, the devil.

The devil a person who, by murder and lying continually, calls in question his personality and all personality.Christs severe words concerning the devil (here, Matthew 13, Matthew 4 and elsewhere).The fundamental traits of the devilish nature. How they are embraced in the One fundamental trait of unbelief (or of apostasy).Falsehood and hate cognate: 1. Falsehood a murder of truth, of ideal reality. 2. Murder falsehood against life (denial of God, of love, sullying of the right).How all threads of human falsehood and hatred and murder unite in the murder of Christ, the crucifixion.How love and loyalty to all truth shine inseparable and pristine in the Crucified One.The majesty of Jesus in His testimony to the devil and his children, etc. 44.Hatred of truth.Unbelief as a hatred of truth resting upon the love of sin.

The Gospel for Judica [fifth Sunday in Lent], Joh 8:46-59.The two-fold judgment in the separation between Christ and His adversaries: 1. The false judgment of the world, resulting in the justification of Christ; 2. Christs true judgment of the world, that shall lead to the justification of sinners.Christ, the Prophet of everlasting life, considered in relation to the prophets of death: 1. Wherefore He is the Prophet of life, and why they are prophets of death, (a) He is the Holy One, the Sinless One, the publisher of the Word of God, and Himself the Word; existing from eternity, in respect of His essenceas respects His works, the Saviour of life, in time; (b) they are the sinners, enemies of the word, lost in temporalness, killing life with the fatal letter. 2. How He proclaims everlasting life, but they can preach of nothing but death, (a) Of His eternal life, of the eternal life of Abraham; (b) they of the death of Abraham and the Prophets. 3. How He offers them eternal life (Joh 8:5), whilst they, in return, wish to kill Him, Joh 8:59. 4. How He is proved to be the Ever-Living One, while they have gone the way of death, Joh 8:54-55.As error is connected with sin, so is truth with innocence and righteousness.

The sinlessness of Jesus corroborated by challenging the testimony of His enemies.The testimony of the world and of Christs enemies to the innocence of Jesus (Pilate, Judas, the high-priests and elders themselves, Mat 27:43).The innocence of Christ in respect of its complete revelation: 1. Founded upon divine impeccability, 2. approved in human sinlessness.The voice of Jesus, from the mere fact of its being the voice of the Holy Man, should receive the consideration of the whole world. 1. In its uniqueness, 2. in its credibility, 3. in its revelations.He that is of God heareth Gods words.

Joh 8:48. The answer of the Jews a historically stereotype reply of the spirit of the law to the preaching of the gospel.How religious testimony is turned into invectives in the mouth of fanaticism, Joh 8:48.The calmness of the Lord in contrast to the railing excitement of His enemies.Peter imitates Him in this composure (Acts 2); so likewise do all faithful witnesses for the truth.The cry of grief with which the Lord again offers salvation even to self-hardeners and blasphemers.The New Testament word of everlasting life decried as a word of the devil by the false servants of the Old Testament.

Joh 8:55. And if I should say. The fidelity of the Lord to truth in the faithfulness of His self-consciousness and knowledge of God.

Joh 8:57. The length of true life, 1. measured by earthly-mindedness, 2. measured by godly-mindedness.The Jews as accountants and reckoners opposed to the Lord and His numbers.How the everlasting To-day of the Father (Psalms 2) is re-echoed in the everlasting I am of the Son,

Joh 8:59. The ever repeated and ever vain attempt of Christs enemies to stone Him.They were able in the end to crucify Him and they thus contributed to His glorification, but to consign Him to oblivion beneath a heap of stones was beyond their power.How Christ always passes gloriously through the midst of His enemies.

Starke: It is not enough to make a good beginning in Christianity if one do not end well (continue and persevere).Make free, Rom 6:18; Gal 5:1; 1Pe 2:10. From the bondage of sin, Joh 8:34, and of eternal death, Joh 8:51; Luk 1:77; by remission of guilt and punishment and by communication of the Spirit of adoption and of faith.That only is real and sound truth which can sanctify and save.Osiander: Believers are not free from external servitude and civil burdens; their freedom is far more glorious, for they are free from sin, death, the devil and hell, and can bid defiance to all enemies, Rom 6:22.Zeisius: Of what avail is it to have pious parents and ancestors, and not to be pious ourselves? To be of noble blood, but ignoble in soul, &c.Ibid.: Oh wretched liberty whose companion is thraldom under sin and the devil!Canstein: If sin but play the master and have dominion over a man, it obtains right and might to plunge him into sundry and greater sins.He who will be forever with God must not be a slave but a son; and this is the highest good, this is true felicityto dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psa 23:6.Zeisius: Priceless liberty of the children of God; but beware that thou abuse not such liberty by making it an occasion of security!

Joh 8:41. The sinner who is forever vindicating himself does but entangle himself the more.It is the way of the flesh to be always intent upon evasions.Nova Bibl. Tub.: He who loves not Jesus, is not born of God but of the devil.Jesus proceeded from the Father to seek us; should not we then go forth from ourselves and the whole world to meet Him?The Can Not Joh 8:43 : A wicked, unruly will lay at the bottom of this.Zeisius: Execrable as falsehood is because it is the offspring of the devil, just so base is it, alas! But O insolvent nobility of liars!Ibid.: It is the old way of the world to love and to hearken to the devils lies, hypocrisy and flattery rather than truth.As long as man can not endure truth he is incapable of faith.

Joh 8:46. Against him who can ground his defence upon a good conscience the harshest invectives and abuse of his enemies will accomplish nothing.A Christian is bound to appeal to his good conscience when his enemies revile and slander him without a cause.

Joh 8:47. Zeisius: Infallible test of those who belong to God: who truly love Gods word, &c.When wicked men are convinced of their wickedness and have nothing to answer, they resort to abuse, invective, and calumny, Act 6:10-11,Lampe: To call upright witnesses for the truth heretics and enthusiasts, moreover to persecute them, and to boast of ones own orthodoxy on the other handare characteristics of antichristian spirits, 1Pe 3:9.

Joh 8:49. The more we honor God, the more the world will dishonor us. But courage! God will honor us in return.Perverse world! It honors what is despicable, and despises what is honorable.

Joh 8:50. It is honor enough for believers that they are the children of God. God, moreover, will defend them.The godly find what they do not seek, but the wicked attain not that for which they strive.

Joh 8:52, The wicked trample the most precious promises under foot and draw only poison from the fairest flowers of the divine word.Cramer: The devil is a sophist.

Joh 8:54. Vanity and folly make a great boast of themselves! Consider the Saviour and follow His example.

Joh 8:56. The most pious parents often leave descendants who do not possess their faith, piety and virtue.Believers see what is invisible, and believe that which is incredible, and rejoice with all their hearts.Christians existed before the birth of Christ and were saved through Him, Heb 13:8.Canstein: Truth always comes off conqueror.

Gerlach: The truth, the revelation in Christ, 1Jn 1:6; 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 2:21; Heb 10:26. This truth makes free, for only that being is free that develops in accordance with its God-created nature.The first sinner in Gods creation, the devil, fell from the truth; he fell out of God, as the eternal source and vital element of all created beings. Thus he became a living contradiction in himself, a lie.

Joh 8:47; 1Jn 5:20.Recognize Him they would not, refute Him they could not, therefore they reviled Him.

Joh 8:52. All the Jews at that time believed that the Messiah would raise the dead and judge the world, even in the carnal, literal sense; hence the language of Jesus might well have excited their astonishment if they had not been inclined to receive Him as the Messiah: bitter enmity however prompted their treatment of His words, and the utter contempt which they entertained for Him is visible in their reply. (Be it observed only that they were also offended because He asserted His possession of this power without publicly presenting Himself as the Messiah.)He strengthens the impression of mysterious majesty about His person, in that He, by virtue of His glance into the higher spirit-world, affirms that of Abraham which a mere man could not know.

Braune: Continuance, 1Jn 2:28.Blessed is he that endureth unto the end.A real delirium of liberty had seized the Jews.Bondage, 2Pe 2:19.Emancipation, Rom 8:2.When a man takes offence at the expression of Jesus, he is not in harmony with the thoughts and mind of Jesus.The evil will is the tool of Satan, the true devilish momentum.Thus the devils nature is not naturally evil; but wickedness made it evil. It is not I that is evil but egotism. Without the I there were no love in which I learns thou and says we.To his haughtiness humility is servility, dependence on God slavery; to his false serpent-wisdom simplicity and honesty seem stupidity, and his egotism holds love to be foolish sensibility; his pride finds contrition, repentance and petitions for mercy an insufferable humiliation. The struggle for autocratic likeness to God delusively causes his aspirations and efforts to seem grand to him, his non-subjection to God sublime (Sartorius).There is cause for fear when he deceives and lies rather than when he rages.Why did they say fifty years old? The fiftieth year is the close of manhood, and hence formed the period of the Levites time of service. Jesus was not as old as this, but they mention this age, as though they magnanimously granted more than could be demanded, in order to give an appearance of absurdity to His language.

Heubner: Christ distinguishes between real and false, firm and wavering disciples.The slave of sin does not so much as know that he lacks freedom. One does not perceive that until one begins to see clearly. That is already the beginning of freedom.Man is blinded by many things so that he thinks himself perfectly free. Here it is a religious species of pride of ancestry, &c. But besides family pride there are a number of other considerations which exert a delusive power: external refinement, rank, authority, proficiency in business, commendation, a varnish of morality, art, science.Why servant? when he says: it is my own will. Answer: Because the sinner never can say that his choice is the result of full and sober-minded conviction. He is reproved by conscience.God will have no slaves, no unwilling servants by compulsion and for hire; He wants children, free, loving children. Their supreme right is: to abide in the Fathers house.Mans destiny: either adoption into the paternal house of God or exclusion from it.The Son has broken the chains forged by Satan. He is the Redeemer of the human race.Fictitious freedom.The remembrance of pious ancestors should be a mighty impulse to good.Christ has a unique speech.The devil abode not. Hence the earliest fathers of the Church called the devil an apostate ().Apostasy from truth leads to the entire loss of truth. Be it observed, moreover, that as early as in the apocryphal Predicatio Pauli the sinlessness of Jesus is denied.Good men can be understood only by the like-minded. Christ teaches us equanimity in reference to worldly honor.What is true honor?The difference between honor with God and honor with the world.That no slander can strip us of our true honor.

Joh 8:52. The words of Christ seem presumptuous because virtue often has the appearance of presumption. He who is morally good really makes the highest claims without immodesty or presumption; on the other hand presumption is to be found in the world.Living among wicked and perverse people the severest trial of holy men.What strengthens the pious in this life? 1. The consciousness of their lofty and intimate fellowship with the devout of all ages; 2. The prospect of everlasting blessedness, from eternity prepared for believers, through Christ.

Gossner: The world falsely declares itself free when it is over head and ears in slavery.This is the tyranny of the devil, which he exercises over natural men to such an extent, that Paul rightly calls him the god of this world, who hath his work in the children of unbelief, Eph 2:2; 2Co 4:4.From the Son of God all the children of God derive their birth, their life, their freedom, their redemption, their right of sonship and heirship.What He is, that He also communicates to His people and makes them kings, prophets and priests. They have the honor of bearing His unction, seal and name.Infidels believe the devil, while denying his existence.92A man may try himself whether he be a child of God or of the devil.Lying is his proper character.Christ would not die in the temple because He was to be sacrificed not alone for the Jewish nation, but for the whole world; for this another altar was requisite, whereon He might be offered up in the sight of all the world, as upon Golgotha.What a judgment, to cast out Jesus! What a void in the heart, the temple of the Church, where Jesus must hide Himself and give way to blind zeal, pride, ambition, falsehood, selfishnessbefore all which He must flee!

Schleiermacher: Their belief (Joh 8:30-31) was in itself utterly imperfect, because expectations were mingled with it which did not correspond with the real purpose of God, that He would accomplish in Christ. Now so long as these expectations exist, it is possible that when a man begins to doubt their truth and yet still clings to them at heart, he will forsake the faith. But just that clinging of the heart to something incompatible with true and living faith in the Redeemer is at the same time a non-continuance in His word and a cherishing of another word in the heart, 2Co 3:15.There is no other way for us all to be filled and penetrated with the truth than by gazing into His holy image and suffering ourselves to be purified through Him from all falseness.

Besser: Joh 8:32. Something of this was known also to the heathen; Cicero says: The wise man alone is free. But they comprehended the nature neither of divine wisdom nor of divine liberty.No thraldom, says Seneca, is worse than the thraldom of the passions. Plato calls the infamous lusts the hardest tyrants. Epictetus says: Liberty is the name of virtue, slavery the name of vice. The Brahmin sages call the natural state of man: Bondage.Schmalz: The rage for heretical accusation: 1. It makes invectives take the place of convincing arguments; 2. it craftily distorts the plainest utterances of others; 3. it casts suspicion on the heart of others; 4. to combat them it grasps at unlawful and violent means.Rambach: Jesus the sublimest pattern of meekness.J. C. E. Schwarz: Falsehood: 1. in respect to its nature (apostasy from God, rebellion against His kingdom, pollution of His image in ourselves and others); 2. in respect to its fruits (self-belying, mischief, impulse to new sin).J. Mueller: The holiness of Jesus Christ is proof of the truth of His testimony about His divine dignity.Schnur: Why truth is so hated: 1. Because it sees too deeply; 2. because it speaks too openly; 3. because it judges too severely.Rautenberg: Truth and its lot upon earth: 1. It is rejected but does not keep silence; 2. it is reviled but wearies not; 3. it is persecuted but does not succumb.

Footnotes:

[45]Joh 8:31.[Cod. Sin. omits the , so generalizing the idea of disciple.E. D. Y.]

[46]Joh 8:34. is wanting in Cod. D., Iren., Hil., etc. [Cod. Sin., with most of the leading authorities, has it]. The omission has been caused by the general expression following.

[47]Joh 8:35.[This whole clause is wanting in Cod. Sin. Otherwise it is unquestioned. The omission is probably an effort to strip the , Joh 8:34, of that generalness which seemed to others to require the omission of the before it.E. D. Y.]

[48]Joh 8:38.[ after is disputed in the Greek text, and should be translated therefore or accordingly or likewise or by the same rule. Meyer: In liegt eine schmerzliche Ironie.P. S.]

[49]Joh 8:38.Instead of , we should read, according to decisive authorities (B. C. K.): . [An ironical allusion to the devil.] and are probably exegetical interpolations. [Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford omit them. . D. have them. They also support Lachmann and Tischendorf in reading instead of , in the first clause. But in the second it reads: . Nothing in the nature of the case would seem to require here rather than the . which is used of Christ in His relation to the Father; for in Joh 8:40 the hearing is applied to Christ, and in Joh 8:41 the seeing is implied in the case of the Jews.Y.]

[50]Joh 8:39.B. D. L. [] , [instead of , were, text, rec.] to which, however, the does not correspond. [Meyer: The apparent want of grammatical correspondence between the two members has occasioned the change now of into , now of into (Vulg., Aug.). Meyer, with Griesbach and Lachmann, prefers , and is supported by Cod. Sin.Y.]

[51]Ibid.The is not sufficiently accredited.

[52]Joh 8:43.[Dr. Lange translates this as belonging to the question, not as an answer; takes =: Why do ye not understand my speech, so that ye cannot hear my word? See the Exegesis.Y.]

[53]Joh 8:44.[The reading is untenable.]

[54]Joh 8:51. . The reading is exegetical. [Lachmann and Tischendorf read , and Meyer thinks the balance of authority in favor of that reading. Hahn, Stier and Theile, etc., prefer the other, and Cod. Sin. supports it. Cod. Sin. also has the weaker futures and , instead of the subjunctives and . But in Joh 8:52 it agrees with all the great authorities in , against the future of the Text. RecY.]

[55]Joh 8:52.[Cod. Sin. supports Lachmann and Tischendorf in omitting .Y.]

[56]Joh 8:54.According to B. C.* D. [Cod. Sin.], etc., . [Rec.: .]

[57]Ibid.[The Recepta, and therefore the English Version, are supported by the Cod. Sin.: but A. B.2 C. al. read , direct discourse. J. J. Owen: Some critics connect the succeeding clause with this, and translate of whom ye say he is our God, and know him not. But this presents less forcibly the contrast between their arrogant claims and real ignorance of God. The conjunction is simply . The main contrast also would seem to lie between the Jews ignorance and Christs knowledge of God.Y.]

[58]Joh 8:56.The authorities waver between (our father) and (your father). The first reading is more probable. [There is probably a mistake here. Lachmann indeed quotes Origen in favor of , but Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort mention no such reading in this verse, while in Joh 8:55 the authorities are divided between and .P. S.]

[59]Joh 8:57.The reading , in Chrysostom and others is exegetical.

[60]Ibid.[Cod. Sin.1 ; hath Abraham seen thee? to conform their question to Christs assertion, Joh 8:56.Y.]

[61]Joh 8:59.The words from to the end are wanting in B.D., Vulgate, and seem to have been transferred from Luk 4:30 by way of exegesis. [Wanting also in Cod. Sin.Y.]

[62][Meyers interpretation that the Jews here in an excited state of mind, confine their view to their own time, and then make earnest of the show of freedom allowed them by the Romans (Joseph. vi. 6, 2), by no means excludes Dr. Langes, which Meyer thinks unnecessary. Indeed the constitutional and traditional temper of the Jews, as Lange here finely analyzes it, would be just the source of such excited exaggeration as Dr. Meyer finds in these words. And conversely, Langes view might well include Meyers; for the Jews are here not so much stating a refined political doctrine, as venting a passionate jealousy supported by it. Nor need even the still less qualified view of Dr. J. J. Owen De left out: to refer their reply to the loose and inconsiderate manner of speaking which characterizes persons in a state of high excitement, such as that into which these persons were thrown by the answer of Jesus. Y.]

[63][Comp. Mat 8:23, .]

[64][Alford, with Bengel, Stier, Ebrard, assumes here a reference to Ishmael and Isaac, the bond and the free sons of the same Abraham, but the bondwoman and her son are cast out. Meyer objects; the sentence being general.P. S.]

[65][Meyer: . , namely, . is likewise a general sentence, but with the intended application of the to Christ, who as the Son of God forever retains His position and power in the house of God, i.e. in the theocracy, comp. Hebrews 3 ff.P. S.]

[66][Grotius: Tribuitur hic filio quod modo (Joh 8:32) veritati, quia eam profert filius.P. S.]

[67][Dr. Lange, it will be observed, adopts the reading: Ye do that which ye heard with your father. See the Text Note. This reading seems, indeed, to be doubtful. But here (from your father), in distinction from the . (with, my Father) in the former clause, is less doubtful, and warrants substantially Dr. Langes second antithesis.Y.]

[68][Godet: Remarque la gradation: 1, Faire mourir un homme: 2, un homme organe de la verite; 3, de la vrit qui vient de Dieu.P. S.]

[69][Meyer denies all reference to idolatry, as defended by Lange with Lampe, Lcke, De Wette, Tholuck, Stier, Hengstenberg, Bumlein, Alford. Bengel aptly characterizes this objection of the Jews as a novus importunitatis Judaic paroxysmus.P. S.]

[70][Dr. Lange presses the imperfect , but this is conditioned by the in the protasis, and is better rendered: Ye would love Me, than: Ye would have loved Me. The sentence belongs to the fourth class of hypothetical sentences mentioned by Winer, p. 273 and 285, where the condition of the protasis is supposed not to exist: in these cases is used with the imperf. indic., and followed in the apodosis by a prterit with the same force; comp. Joh 8:39 : . , . if ye were Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham; Joh 5:46 : , , if ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me; Joh 9:41 : , , if ye were blind, ye would not have sin; Joh 15:19 : , if ye were of the world, the world would love its own; Joh 18:36; Luk 7:39 : , , if he were a prophet, he would know, etc.P. S.]

[71][Meyer refers to Christs incarnation, and to His presence. It is the result of , and still belonging to . .P. S.]

[72][In classical Greek, but in Hellenistic Greek and with later writers it often is sermo, speech, without any contemptuous meaning. refers to the delivery or manner and form, to the matter or substance, of His discourses.P. S.]

[73][Alford: The spiritual idiom in which He spoke, and which can only be spiritually understood.P. S.]

[74][Alford defends the rendering of the E. V. on account of the definite article before . But Meyer objects that this would require .P. S.]

[75][The force of , ye are willing, ready, desirous, ye love, to do, is obliterated in the E. V. Comp. on this use of Joh 4:21; Act 10:10; Php 2:13; Philem. Joh 8:14. Alford: It indicates, as in Joh 8:40, the freedom of the human will, as the foundation of the condemnation of the sinner. Godet: Le verb est contraire lide dune dpendance fataliste que Hilgenfeld attribue Jean; il exprime lassentiment volontaire, labondance de sympathie, avec laquelle ils se mettent a luvre pour satisfaire les appetils de leur pr.P. S.]

[76][ is relative and must be defined by the connection, here by which implies the existence of man.P. S.]

[77][Add Heb 2:14, where Satan is called the prince of death, . The rabbinical writings prove that the agency of the devil in the fall was the universal belief of the Jews.P. S.]

[78] [Mephistopheles, in Gthes Faust, characterizes himself as the persistent denier and enemy of all existence:

Jch bin der Geist der stets verneint,
Und das mit Recht, denn was eutsteht,

Ist werth, dass es zu Grunde geht.

D rum besser wars, dass nichts entstnde.

So ist denn alles, was ihr Snde,

Zerstrung, kurz, das Bse nennt,

Mein eigentliches Element.P. S.]

[79][This interpretation refers to the devil and to the demiurge: He (the devil) is a liar, and his father (the demiurge) also; or, He is a liar like his father (hence the old reading and instead of ). This translation would require before , and implies the unscriptural doctrine that the devil has a father. Another interpretation even more absurd and untenable is that of so sensible and learned a man as Bishop Middleton who, according to Alford in loc., proposed this rendering of the passage: When (any of you) speaks that which is false, he speaks after the manner of his kindred ( !), for he is a liar, and so also is his father, i.e. the devil. Middleton stumbled at the article before , which on the contrary is emphatic and necessary. There is but one father of lies and liars, that is the devil. The kingdom of darkness is a monarchy as well as the kingdom of light.P. S.]

[80]Comp. the passage from Sohar Chadash: The children of that old serpent who has slain Adam and all his posterity. Tholuck, p. 257 [Krauths trans. p. 236].

[81][In the midst of this sentence the translation of my dear, departed friend, Dr. Yeomans, was interrupted by disease, never to be resumed. Yalepia anima!P. S.]

[82][So also Meyer, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson, Owen. (Wordsworth says nothing of this important verse.) I quote the remarks of Alford, which are to the point: here is strictly sin: not error in argument, or falsehood. These two latter meanings are found in classical Greek, but never in the Now Testament or LXX. And besides, they would introduce in this most solemn part of our Lords discourse a vapid tautology. The question is an appeal to His sinlessness of life, as evident to them all,as a pledge for His truthfulness of word: which word asserted, be it remembered, that He was sent from God. And when we recollect that He who challenges men to convict Him of sin, never would have upheld outward spotlessness merely (see Mat 23:26-28), the words amount to a declaration of His absolute sinlessness, in thought, word, and deed.P. S.]

[83][So also Meyer: ein kelzerischer Widersacher des reinen Gottesvolkts.]

[84][Dr. Lunge reads our father, and adds the remark: Our father is here full of meaning. But he seems to have had in view Joh 8:54. where the authorities are divided between (oratio directa) and . . In Joh 8:56 the text, rec. , is adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles and Alford, and is not even mentioned by them in their apparatus of variations (except by Lachmann). As to the meaning, your father is rather more forcible with reference to Joh 8:39, and shows the antagonism of their claim with the true spirit of Abraham.P. S.]

[85][See the passage in Lcke, p. 363, likewise a similar passage from the Sohar.]

[86][In the offering of Isaac as a type of the vicarious sacrifice on he cross. So also Theophylact and Wordsworth.P. S.]

[87][So also Meyer (p. 366, note), who insists that the singular means the specific day of the birth of Christ when . But the day of Christ is no more to be contracted in this way, than the day of grace, and the day of judgment.P. S.]

[88][The limbus patrum, like the limbus infantum, is one of the border regions of Sheol or Hades in the supernatural geography of Romanism; it was the abode of the Old Testament saints before Christ, but when He descended into Hades and proclaimed the redemption and deliverance to them, they were transferred to heaven. The limbus patrum, therefore, is empty now, while the limbus infantum is still the receptacle of all unbaptized children who die in infancy and are excluded from heaven, yet not actually suffering the pain of damnation.P. S.]

[89][Meyer, p. 368, quotes from the apocryphal fiction of the Testamentum Levi, p. 586 sq., where it is said after the Messiah Himself opens the gates of Paradise and feeds the believers from the tree of life: then will Abraham rejoice ( .), and Isaac and Jacob, and I shall be glad and all the saints shall put on gladness.P. S.]

[90][The descent of Christ into the region of the departed spirits changed the gloom of the Old Testament Sheol into the light of the New Testament Paradise; Luk 23:43; Heb 11:39-40.P. S.]

[91][The E. V. (Before Abraham was, I am) obliterates the important distinction between , to become, to begin to be, to be born, to be made, which can be said of creatures only, and , to be, which applies to the uncreated God as well. This distinction clearly appears already in the Prologue where the Evangelist predicates the and of the eternal existence of the Logos, of the man John; comp. Joh 1:1; Joh 1:6 and the notes there. The present I am, for I was, should also be noticed. It denotes His perpetual divine existence independent of all time. He identifies Himself with Jehovah. See Chrysostom.P. S.]

[92][A free rendering of the German: Sie glauben IHM (dem Teufel), ohne IHN (den T.) zu glauben.P. S.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed: (32) And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (33) They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? (34) Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. (35) And the servant abideth not in the house forever: but the Son abideth ever. (36) If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (37) I know that ye are Abraham’s seed: but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. (38) I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your Father. (39) They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. (40) But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. (41) Ye do the deeds of your Father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication: we have one Father even God. (42) 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 sent me.

In this part of our Lord’s discourse, we have a subject equally interesting with the former; but Jesus takes another form, by way of discriminating his people from the world. He adopts a beautiful figure, of an house, and family; in order to shew the striking difference. He represents the image of that fallen state of Adam, by reason of sin, as a servant; and shews, that everyone who committeth sin, is the servant of sin. And the similitude is just. Every son and daughter of Adam, by transgression hath forfeited all right of inheritance; and is in bondage to sin and Satan. The Lord calls his people, the lawful captives of the mighty; and the prey of the terrible. Isa 49:25 . And the Lord represents the children of his kingdom as his, by virtue of his adoption; and shews, that by his abiding in his own house, as a Son forever, he preserves them, and makes them free. Whereas the servant, having no inheritance, is shortly turned to the door.

This forms a beautiful illustration of the subject. As the whole Adam-race, were all alike involved in the ruin of the fall; they all come forth from the womb of nature in the same natural bondage of sin; all alike serving divers lusts, and pleasures; all under the guilt of sin, the curse of sin, the dominion of sin, the punishment due to sin; the wrath of God, and the terrors of his justice. It is only such as the Son of God makes free, that are free indeed! The carnal Jews could not brook this pointed discourse of Christ. Priding themselves on being lineally descended from Abraham, they thought that they were entitled to all Abraham’s privileges. But Jesus taught, that freedom was only in himself. It was not Abraham’s seed in nature, which gave a right and title to Abraham’s inheritance; but Abraham’s seed in grace. He saith not and to seeds as of many, but as of one; and to thy seed which is Christ. Gal 3:16 . Hence all the natural children of Abraham only, (and he had many,) were servants in the family, and no other; and had no part, nor lot, in the promises. But the charter of grace ran in these words: In Isaac shall thy seed be called. Rom 9:7 .

I beseech the Reader to pause over our Lord’s own illustration of this subject, as here set forth. Nothing can be more plain, nothing more evident, in proof of that everlasting and irreconcileable separation, between the Church and the world; between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent. Both the one, and the other; the Israel after the flesh and the Israel after the Spirit, possess for a time, as servants and children in the same family, apparently the same privileges. In respect of ordinances, and means of grace, they sit down under the same. And like those Pharisees, who never believed in Christ, and those true disciples of Jesus who did; the same discourses were delivered before all. But by and by, when the Lord comes to take account, the Ishmaels, and the Isaacs, are found to be of very different stock; and an everlasting separation takes place. For what saith the scripture; Cast out the bond woman and her son; for the son of the bond woman shall not be here with the son of the free woman. Reader! learn to estimate the vast distinction. See whether you can enter into a relish of the Apostle’s conclusion, when he, saith: So then brethren, we are not children of the bond woman, but of the free. Gal 4:22 to the end.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

Ver. 31. If ye continue in my word ] Non quaeruntur in Christianis initia, sed finis, said Jerome. And that which is but almost done is not done, saith Basil. a It is the evening that crowns the day, and the last act that commends the whole scene. Temporary flashings are but like conduits running with wine at the coronation, that will not hold; or like a land flood, that seems to be a great sea, but comes to nothing.

a , .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

31. ] . = , ch. Joh 15:7 , though that perhaps is spoken of a deeper entrance into the state of union with Christ. Remaining in His word is not merely obeying His teaching , but is the inner conviction of the truth of that revelation of Himself, which is his or .

, for probably they had given some outward token of believing on Him, e.g. that of ranging themselves among His disciples.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Joh 8:31-59 . Discussion between Jesus and the Jews regarding their paternity .

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Joh 8:31 . To those who have just been described as believing on Him Jesus went on to say, . “If you” emphasised in distinction from those who had not believed “abide in my word” not content with making this first step towards faith and obedience “then” but not till then “are ye really my disciples.”

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Joh 8:31-33

31So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

Joh 8:31 “If you abide” This is a third class conditional sentence which means potential action. This emphasis on continuing faith is also expressed clearly in John 15. This is the missing element in evangelical gospel proclamation. The word is to be believed (cf. Joh 5:24), obeyed, and abided in. See Special Topic: Abiding at 1Jn 2:10.

SPECIAL TOPIC: THE NEED TO PERSEVERE

“in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine” Jesus emphasized lifestyle obedience (to His commands, cf. Joh 8:51-52; Joh 8:55; Joh 14:15; Joh 14:21; Joh 14:23-24; Joh 15:10; Joh 15:20; Joh 17:6; Luk 6:46; 2Jn 1:9). In a sense this verse reflects the shema, a Hebrew word that means “to hear so as to do” (i.e., Deu 6:4-6).

Joh 8:32 “you will know” This is used in the OT sense of “know,” which meant “personal relationship,” not in the sense of “cognitive truth” (cf. Gen 4:1; Jer 1:5). Truth is a person! This verse, which is so often found on institutions of learning, does not refer to accumulated human knowledge. That has proved to divide and bind, not free, humans. The “truth” spoken of here is the gospel and person of Jesus Christ. There is no truth, peace, or hope apart from Him!

Joh 8:32; Joh 8:40; Joh 8:44-46 “the truth” This is the key concept of the context. This term has two connotations.

1. trustworthiness

2. truth versus falsehood

Both connotations are true of the life and ministry of Jesus. He is both the content and goal of the gospel. Truth is primarily a person! Jesus reveals the personal Father. This verse is often taken out of context and used in educational settings. Facts, even true facts, even lots of true facts, do not set one free (cf. Ecc 1:18). See Special Topic on Truth at Joh 6:55; Joh 17:3.

Joh 8:32 “make you free” Believers are free from legalism, ritualism, and performance oriented, human religiosity. Yet free believers bind themselves for the sake of the gospel (cf. Rom 14:1 to Rom 15:6; 1 Corinthians 8-10).

Joh 8:33 “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone” It is amazing how blind racial pride can be. What about Egypt, Syria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Syria, and Rome?

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

said = spake, as in Joh 8:27, Joh 8:28.

to. Greek pros, App-104.

believed on = had believed. App-160. Thus distinguishing these Jews from the true believers of Joh 8:30. Note the emphatic word “ye” in next clause.

continue = abide. See note on Joh 1:32.

My word = the word which is Mine. Greek. logos. See note on Mar 9:32.

are ye = ye are.

indeed = truly. Greek. alethos, See note on Joh 1:47.

Trusting in Him, not merely admitting His claims.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

31.] . = , ch. Joh 15:7, though that perhaps is spoken of a deeper entrance into the state of union with Christ. Remaining in His word is not merely obeying His teaching, but is the inner conviction of the truth of that revelation of Himself, which is his or .

, for probably they had given some outward token of believing on Him, e.g. that of ranging themselves among His disciples.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 8:31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

For there were many, in Christs day, coming to him for a while, and then going away from him; professing to believe, and then stumbling when Christ proclaimed some doctrine which struck them as being strange and hard to receive. Our Lord Jesus tells them that constancy is necessary to true discipleship. It is of no use to start running in the race unless we continue in the course till the prize is won. We are not true pilgrims to heaven merely because we cross the threshold of our door; we must keep on, and on, and on, till we reach the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.

Joh 8:32. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

That is the result of being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. With Christ, who is the truth, to be our Teacher, and the Holy Spirit to bless his words, we come to know the truth; and the operation of the truth upon the heart is to deliver us from the bondage of sin and of error.

Joh 8:33. They answered him, We be Abrahams seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

What a falsehood this was of theirs! They were at that very time in bondage to the Romans; they had been subdued and conquered: and, a little while after, they themselves confessed that they had no king but Cesar. Men are not very chary about telling falsehoods when they wish to resist Christ: they will do anything rather than believe on him.

Joh 8:34. Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

The man who habitually lives in sin is not a free man, for he is still a slave to sin. If he finds pleasure and delight in disobeying God, he has no right to talk about being a free man. His chains are rattling on his wrists; what can he know about freedom?

Joh 8:35. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth even.

A servant may be dismissed from the household, but a son may not. If we were only servants of God, we might fall from grace, and perish; but if we are the sons of God, we never shall. If we ever did, in truth, call God Father, we shall always be able to use that blessed title, for the relationship of fatherhood is not a temporary one, sad cannot come to an end.

Joh 8:36. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

If you have the freedom of sonship, you are free indeed. There are none so free in our Fathers house as his children are.

Joh 8:37-39. I know that ye are Abrahams seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with 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 Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham.

The real descendants of the father of the faithful are themselves faithful; that is, believers. The father of believers has believers for his children: If ye were Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham. Our Lord had admitted that these Jews were Abrahams seed according to the flesh; but he proved that they were not Abrahams seed in the high and spiritual sense, since they were not like him whom they claimed for a father.

Joh 8:40-41. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father.

He had not told them who that father was; but as it is a standing rule that men do the deeds of their father, the genuineness of the descent which they claimed could be tested by their likeness to their father.

Joh 8:41-42. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me:

Any man who is born of God must love Jesus Christ. The purity of his motives, the loveliness of his character, the charms of his person, would all be sure to win the heart of a man who was truly born of God.

Joh 8:42-43. For I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.

You are dull of comprehension, you are hardened in heart, you are proud in spirit, you are just the opposite of everything that is good, and therefore you cannot hear my word, saith Christ; and this is proof positive that you do not love God, and that you are not the children of God.

Joh 8:44. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.

Remember from whose lips these words fell, even from the lips of the gentle Jesus. Honest speech is the surest token of a loving heart; but, nowadays, if a man preaches the truth plainly and faithfully, men say that he is hard and unkind; but if a man glosses over the truth, and alters it according to his own idea of what will please men, then they say, He is a kindly-disposed and large-hearted man. I should be disposed to doubt whether he has any heart at all, if he will sooner see sinners damned than offend them by proclaiming the truth. I thank God that some of us care little about offending those who offend God. If men will not yield themselves unto the Lord, we want not their friendship, but we will strive to make them uneasy in their rebellion, and if they resolve to be lost, we will at least be clear of their blood.

Joh 8:44. 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 the father of it.

Falsehood is his natural element. When Satan deceives, he only acts according to his nature, which is blackened with falsehood through and through.

Joh 8:45-46. And because I tell you the truth, ye Believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin?

What a grand challenge! None of us can speak like that, except in a very modified sense; but Christ, standing before his enemies, who gnashed their teeth at him, and would have given their eyes to be able to fix come fault upon him, yet boldly says to them, Which of you convinceth me of sin?

Joh 8:46-51. And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth Gods words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

This statement quite staggered them; yet it is true. To believers, It is not death to die; they simply pass out of this world into a larger and yet more glorious life. They descend not to death, but they rise to immortality.

Joh 8:52-53. 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 taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?

What dost thou pretend to be? Someone greater than Abraham and the prophets?

Joh 8:54-56. Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is our God: yet ye have not knownt him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying. Your father Abraham

As ye call him

Joh 8:56-57. Rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?

They allowed a wide margin in specking of our Saviours age, for he was only thirty-three years old. It may be true that the sorrows of his life had so marred his countenance that he looked more like a man of fifty than one of three-and-thirty. I cannot tell, nor do I know whether that is what they meant; but it is singular that they should have said to him, Thou art not yet fifty years old.

Joh 8:58. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

They had asked him, Whom makest thou thyself? and now they have his answer: Before Abraham was, I am, saith Christ. It is the very name by which God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush, I AM. Yet Jesus takes this title to himself: Before Abraham was, not, I was; notice that; but, I am; as if his life was one continued present existence, as indeed it is, for with God there is no past or future, but all things are ever-present to his infinite mind. When Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I am, he claimed the Godhead, he declared that he was certainly God, self-existent from all eternity.

Joh 8:59. Then took they up stones to cast at him:

They counted him a blasphemer, and so he was if he was not all he claimed to be. I have heard of some who reverence Christ, but do not believe him to be God; but how can that be? He evidently made himself out to be God, and this was the great charge the Jews brought against him. For this, indeed, they put him to death, because he made himself equal with God. If he was not equal with God, if he was not really God, he led men to think that he was; and if this was false, it was a great sin not consistent with the holy character of Christ. If he was not God, he was the grossest impostor who ever visited this world. But he was God, and nothing less; yet because he claimed this, the Jews took up stones to cast at him.

Joh 8:59. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

Glory be to his holy name for ever and ever!

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

Joh 8:31. , ye) who have begun to believe, although the rest believe not.-, ye will continue) Act 13:43, Many proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas; who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.-, indeed) It is not enough to have begun. So , in deed; Joh 8:36, Ye shall be free indeed.-) ye are so already: only see that you continue so.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 8:31

Joh 8:31

Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed him, If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples;-The continuance in his will is the only test of true discipleship. This shows that to accept the truth and not follow it up by continuing to obey it will not save. One act of obedience does not free from sin, but a continuance in the words of God alone can free from sin and its direful results. It is a great mistake to think that one act frees us from sin. When we show our faith in God by compliance with his prescribed conditions of forgiveness he remits the penalties of past sins and places us in a condition to go forward in his service and thus secure freedom from the dominion and effects of sin; but it is only the persistent walk in keeping the words of Jesus that can free us from the bondage and condemnation of sin and fit us for companionship with God and his children in his own blessed home. Without this there can be no salvation with God. It is the continuance in the words of Jesus Christ that fits for salvation.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

the Source of True Liberty

Joh 8:31-38

Sin is not a necessary part of our being. The servant abideth not in the house for ever. Your child is an integral part of the household; he has become one with it. However far he travels, he can never break the link of indissoluble connection. But it is different with a servant, especially under the provisions of the Levitical law. In like manner, a man may have served sin, but, though tightly held, it has no necessary rights over him. The trumpet of Jubilee may sound, and he may go free. It is not freedom to do as we like. Jesus sets us free from the trap and the bird-lime, that is, from the unnatural conditions fastening and confining us from being what God meant us to be. The swallow would not thank you to be freed to live on carrion, but only to mount again into the sunny air.

Jesus frees us by the truth. The slave-girl will no longer serve in the house of her cruel oppressor, when she learns that the act of emancipation has passed and he has no longer any claim upon her. When we understand that we are accepted and triumphant because of our union with Christ, we begin to exercise our privilege and to draw upon the grace which he has made available. Thus we become free.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

If: Joh 6:66-71, Joh 15:4-9, 1Sa 12:14, Mat 24:13, Act 13:43, Act 14:22, Act 26:22, Rom 2:7, Rom 11:22, Col 1:23, 1Ti 2:15, 1Ti 4:16, 2Ti 3:14, Heb 3:14, Heb 8:9, Heb 10:38, Heb 10:39, Jam 1:25, 1Jo 2:19, 1Jo 2:24

my disciples: Joh 8:36, Joh 1:47, Joh 6:55, Joh 15:8, 1Ti 5:3-5

Reciprocal: Num 29:25 – General Job 23:12 – Neither Job 24:13 – nor abide Psa 25:5 – Lead Psa 25:12 – him Psa 50:23 – to him Psa 106:12 – General Psa 119:31 – stuck Pro 3:21 – let Pro 8:34 – watching Mar 4:17 – have Luk 22:28 – General Joh 2:23 – many Joh 6:60 – of his Joh 7:17 – General Joh 17:6 – they Act 2:42 – they Act 8:13 – believed Act 11:23 – and exhorted 1Co 15:2 – unless Gal 2:4 – liberty Gal 4:3 – in Phi 4:1 – so 1Th 3:8 – if 1Th 5:21 – hold 1Ti 4:3 – believe 1Jo 2:10 – that loveth 1Jo 2:14 – the word 1Jo 2:27 – ye shall Rev 2:26 – keepeth

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

DISCIPLESHIP

Then are ye My disciples indeed.

Joh 8:31

It was in the early days of the Church that the disciples were called Christians (Act 11:26); but in these later days there is much need that the Christians should come to be called disciples. For it seems to have passed out of the ordinary estimate of Christianity, that Christian and disciple are meant to be interchangeable terms; and that those who lay claim to the former title should naturally vindicate their claim by the witness of the latter title as stamped upon their lives. Note

I. Christian and disciple ought to be manifestly combined titles for every believer.

II. Discipleship is in reality such an absorbing thing, that it demands personal consecration for its realisation.

III. Our Lord attaches to discipleship three great principles, without which it is not a working reality.

(a) Permanent continuance in the Masters teaching.

(b) Obedience to the command that disciples love one another.

(c) Much fruitfulness to Gods glory, through prevailing prayer.

IV. To each principle particular rewards are attached, present results of blessing inseparable from discipleship.

Rev. Hubert Brooke.

Illustration

Face this principle of discipleship honestly. Here is obedience commanded, and the law to be obeyed is delivered. Then let each one ask himself, What is my position with regard to it? Is this reflection of the Masters conduct apparent in my own life? Do I love fellow-disciples as He loved me? And if not, am I a disciple at all? We may not push it off as a lesson for far-advanced disciples. It comes at the outset; it is the B of the Gospel alphabet, as faith in Christ is the A.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

1

A mere profession of belief is not enough to satisfy the Lord. That profession must be followed up with adherence to his teaching.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

THESE verses show us, for one thing, the importance of steady perseverance in Christ’s service. There were many, it seems, at this particular period, who professed to believe on our Lord, and expressed a desire to become His disciples. There is nothing to show that they had true faith. They appear to have acted under the influence of temporary excitement, without considering what they were doing. And to them our Lord addresses this instructive warning,-“If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed.”

This sentence contains a mine of wisdom. To make a beginning in religious life is comparatively easy. Not a few mixed motives assist us. The love of novelty, the praise of well-meaning but indiscreet professors, the secret self-satisfaction of feeling “how good I am,” the universal excitement attending a new position,-all these things combine to aid the young beginner. Aided by them he begins to run the race that leads to heaven, lays aside many bad habits, takes up many good ones, has many comfortable frames and feelings, and gets on swimmingly for a time. But when the newness of his position is past and gone, when the freshness of his feelings is rubbed off and lost, when the world and the devil begin to pull hard at him, when the weakness of his own heart begins to appear,-then it is that he finds out the real difficulties of vital Christianity. Then it is that he discovers the deep wisdom of our Lord’s saying now before us. It is not beginning, but “continuing” a religious profession, that is the test of true grace.

We should remember these things in forming our estimate of other people’s religion. No doubt we ought to be thankful when we see any one ceasing to do evil and learning to do well. We must not “despise the day of small things.” (Zec 4:10.) But we must not forget that to begin is one thing, and to go on is quite another. Patient continuance in well-doing is the only sure evidence of grace. Not he that runs fast and furiously at first, but he that keeps up his speed, is he that “runs so as to obtain.” By all means let us be hopeful when we see anything like conversion. But let us not make too sure that it is real conversion, until time has set its seal upon it. Time and wear test metals, and prove whether they are solid or plated. Time and wear, in like manner, are the surest tests of a man’s religion. Where there is spiritual life there will be continuance and steady perseverance. It is the man who goes on as well as begins, that is “the disciple indeed.”

These verses show us, for another thing, the nature of true slavery. The Jews were fond of boasting, though without any just cause, that they were politically free, and were not in bondage to any foreign power. Our Lord reminds them that there was another bondage to which they were giving no heed, although enslaved by it.-“He that commiteth sin is the servant of sin.”

How true that is! How many on every side are thorough slaves, although they do not acknowledge it! They are led captive by their besetting corruptions and infirmities, and seem to have no power to get free. Ambition, the love of money, the passion for drink, the craving for pleasure and excitement, gambling, gluttony, illicit connections,-all these are so many tyrants among men. Each and all have crowds of unhappy prisoners bound hand and foot in their chains. The wretched prisoners will not allow their bondage. They will even boast sometimes that they are eminently free. But many of them know better. There are times when the iron enters into their souls, and they feel bitterly that they are slaves.

There is no slavery like this. Sin is indeed the hardest of all taskmasters. Misery and disappointment by the way, despair and hell in the end,-these are the only wages that sin pays to its servants. To deliver men from this bondage, is the grand object of the Gospel. To awaken people to a sense of their degradation, to show them their chains, to make them arise and struggle to be free,-this is the great end for which Christ sent forth His ministers. Happy is he who has opened his eyes and found out his danger. To know that we are being led captive, is the very first step toward deliverance.

These verses, show us, lastly, the nature of true liberty. Our Lord declares this to the Jews in one comprehensive sentence. He says, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

Liberty, most Englishmen know, is rightly esteemed one of the highest temporal blessings. Freedom from foreign dominion, a free constitution, free trade, a free press, civil and religious liberty,-what a world of meaning lies beneath these phrases! How many would sacrifice life and fortune to maintain the things which they represent! Yet, after all our boasting, there are many so-called freemen who are nothing better than slaves. There are many who are totally ignorant of the highest, purest form of liberty. The noblest liberty is that which is the property of the true Christian. Those only are perfectly free people whom the Son of God “makes free.” All else will sooner or later be found slaves.

Wherein does the liberty of true Christians consist? Of what is their freedom made up?-They are freed from the guilt and consequences of sin by the blood of Christ. Justified, pardoned, forgiven, they can look forward boldly to the day of judgment, and cry “Who shall lay anything to our charge? Who is he that condemneth?”-They are freed from the power of sin by the grace of Christ’s Spirit. Sin has no longer dominion over them. Renewed, converted, sanctified, they mortify and tread down sin, and are no longer led captive by it.-Liberty, like this, is the portion of all true Christians in the day that they flee to Christ by faith, and commit their souls to Him. That day they become free men. Liberty, like this, is their portion for evermore. Death cannot stop it. The grave cannot even hold their bodies for more than a little season. Those whom Christ makes free are free to all eternity.

Let us never rest till we have some personal experience of this freedom ourselves. Without it all other freedom is a worthless privilege. Free speech, free laws, political freedom, commercial freedom, national freedom,-all these cannot smooth down a dying pillow, or disarm death of his sting, or fill our consciences with peace. Nothing can do that but the freedom which Christ alone bestows. He gives it freely to all who seek it humbly. Then let us never rest till it is our own.

==================

Notes-

v31.-[Then Jesus said…Jews…believed…Him.] It is clear, I think, from the tone of the conversation that runs from this verse uninterruptedly to the end of the chapter, that this “believing” was not faith of the heart. These Jews only “believed” that our Lord was One sent from heaven, and deserved attention. But they were the same Jews to whom He says by and by, “Ye are of your father the devil.”

[If ye continue…my word…disciples indeed.] This sentence does not mean that these Jews had really begun to receive Christ’s word into their hearts. Such a sense would be contradictory to the context. It must mean: “If you take up a firm stand on that Gospel and Word of Truth which I have come to proclaim, and go on sticking firmly to it in your hearts and lives, not merely convinced and wishing, but actually following Me, then you are truly My disciples.”-The word rendered “indeed” is more literally, “truly.” The converse throws light on our Lord’s meaning: “You are not truly disciples, unless you continue steadfast in My doctrine.”

Our Lord teaches the great principle, that steady continuance is the only real and safe proof of discipleship. No perseverance, no grace! No continuance in the word, no real faith and conversion! This is one of the meeting-points between Calvinist and Arminian. He that has true grace will not fall away. He that falls away has no true grace, and must not flatter himself he is a disciple.

Let us note that it is not the “word continuing in us,” but “our continuing in the word,” which makes us true disciples. The distinction is very important. The word “might continue in us,” and not be seen. If we “continue in the word,” our lives will show it. In Joh 15:7 we have both expressions together: “If ye abide in Me, and my words abide in you.”

v32.-[And ye shall know the truth.] The expression, “the truth,” here cannot, I think, mean the Personal Truth, the Messiah. It must be the whole doctrinal truth concerning Myself, My nature, My mission, and My Gospel. Steady continuance in My service shall lead to clear knowledge. It is a parallel saying to the sentence, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” (Joh 7:17.) Honest obedience and steady perseverance in acting up to our light, and doing what we learn, are one grand secret of obtaining more knowledge.

Chrysostom however thinks that our Lord means by “truth,” Himself. “Ye shall know Me, for I am the truth.” So also Augustine, Theophylact, Euthymius, and Lampe.

[The truth shall make you free.] This freedom can only mean spiritual freedom,-freedom from the guilt, burden, and dominion of sin,-freedom from the heavy yoke of Pharisaism, under which many Jews were laboring and heavy laden. (Mat 11:28.) “The Gospel I preach, and its good news, shall deliver you from spiritual bondage, and make you feel like men set at liberty.”

I think these words must have been spoken with special reference to the bondage and spiritual slavery in which the Jews were kept by their principal teachers, when our Lord came among them. In the synagogue at Nazareth He had said, that He came “to preach deliverance to the captives.” (Luk 4:18.) This, however, is the first place in the Gospels where He openly declares that His Gospel will give men freedom.

Until truth comes into a man’s heart, he never really knows what it is to feel true spiritual liberty.

Augustine says, “To Christ let us all flee. Against sin let us call on God to interpose as our Liberator. Let us ask to be taken on sale, that we may be redeemed by His blood.”

v33.-[They answered, We be Abraham’s seed.] Here we see the usual pride of carnal descent coming out in the Jewish mind. It is just what John the Baptist told them when he preached, “Think not to say that we have Abraham to our father.” (Mat 3:9.)

[And were never in bondage to any man.] This is the blindness of pride in its strongest form. The seed of Abraham were in bondage to the Egyptians and Babylonians for many years, to say nothing of the frequent bondages to Philistines, and other nations, as recorded in the book of Judges. Even now, while they spoke, they were in subjection to the Romans. The power of self-deception in unconverted man is infinite. These Jews were not more unreasonable than many now-a-days, who say, “We are not dead in sin,-we have grace, we have faith, we are regenerate, we have the Spirit,” while their lives show plainly that they are totally mistaken.

[How sayest thou…made free?] This question was partly asked in anger and resentment, and partly in curiosity. Angry as the Jews were at the idea of being subject to any one, they yet caught at the expression “be made free.” It made them think of the glorious kingdom of Messiah, foretold in the Prophets.-“Art Thou going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Art Thou going to set us free from the Romans?”

We should observe here, as elsewhere, the readiness of our Lord’s hearers to put a carnal sense on spiritual language. Nicodemus misunderstanding the new birth, the Samaritan woman and the living waters, the Capernaites and the bread from heaven, are all illustrations of what I mean. (See Joh 3:4; Joh 4:11; Joh 6:34.)

Pearce thinks the Jews here spoke of themselves individually, and not of the Jewish nation. Yet surely, even when they spoke, they were subject to the Romans.

Henry observes: “Carnal hearts are sensible of no other grievances than those that molest the body and injure their secular affairs. Talk to them of encroachments on their civil liberty and property,-tell of waste committed on their lands, or damage done to their houses, and they understand you very well, and can give you a sensible answer: the thing touches and affects them. But discourse to them of the bondage of sin, or captivity to Satan, and a liberty by Christ,-tell them of wrong done to their souls, and you bring strange things to them.”

v34.-[Jesus answered, etc.] In this verse our Lord shows His hearers what kind of freedom He had meant, by showing the kind of slavery from which He wished them to be delivered. Did they ask in what sense He meant they should be made free? Let them know, first of all, that in their present state of mind, wicked, worldly, and unbelieving, they were in a state of bondage. Living in habitual sin they were the “servants of sin.” This was a general proposition which they themselves must admit. The man that lived wilfully in habits of sin was acknowledged by all to be the slave of sin. Sin ruled over him, and he was its servant. This was an axiom in religion which they could not dispute, for even heathen philosophers admitted it. (See Rom 6:16-20; 2Pe 2:19.)

“Committeth,” we must remember here, does not mean “commits an act of sin,” but habitually lives in the commission of sin. It is in this sense that John says, “He that committeth sin is of the devil,” and “He that is born of God doth not commit sin.” (1Jn 3:8-9.)

v35.-[And the servant abideth not, etc.] This is a difficult, because a very elliptical verse. The leading object in our Lord’s mind seems to be to show the Jews the servile and slavish condition in which they were, so long as they rejected Him, the true Messiah, and the free and elevated position which they would occupy if they would believe in Him and become His disciples.-“At present, living under the bondage of the ceremonial law, and content with it and Pharisaic traditions, you are no better than slaves and servants, liable, like Hagar and Ishmael, to be cast out of God’s favor and presence at any moment.-Receiving Me, and believing on Me as the Messiah, you would at once be lifted to the position of sons, and would abide for ever in God’s favor, as adopted children and dear sons and daughters.-You know yourselves that the servant has no certain tenure in the house, and may be cast out at any time; while the son is heir to the father, and has a certain tenure in the house forever.-Know that I wish you to be raised from the relation of servants to that of sons. Now, under the bondage you are in, you are like slaves. Receiving Me and My Gospel you would become children and free.”

Something like this seems the leading idea in our Lord’s mind. But it is vain to deny that it is a dark and difficult sentence, and requires much filling up and paraphrasing to complete its meaning. The simplest plan is to take it as a parenthesis. It then becomes a comment on the word “servant,” which to a Jew, familiar with the story of Hagar and Ishmael, would be very instructive, and would convey the latent thought that our Lord wished them to be not servants but sons. I cannot for a moment think that “the Son” in the last clause means the Son of God, or that the whole clause was meant to teach His eternity.

It is certainly possible that a deep mystical sense may lie under the words “servant” and “son” in this verse. “Servant” may mean the Jew, content with the inferior and servile religion of Moses. “Son” may mean the believer in Christ, who receives the adoption and enjoys Gospel liberty. He that is content with Judaism will find his system and religion soon pass away. He that enters into Christ’s service will find himself a son for ever. But this is at best only conjectural, and a somewhat questionable interpretation.

One thing, at any rate, is very clear to my mind. The latent thought in our Lord’s mind is a reference to the story of Hagar and her son Ishmael being cast out as bond-servants, while Isaac the son and heir abode in the house. He wished to impress on His hearers’ minds, that he desired them, like Isaac, to have the privilege of sons forever, and to be free to all eternity. Keeping this thought in view, and regarding the verse as a parenthesis, its difficulties are not insuperable.

Chrysostom says: ” ‘Abideth not’ means ‘hath not power to grant favors, as not being master of the house;’ but the son is master of the house.” The Jewish priests were the servants, and Christ was the Son. The priests had no power to set free; the Son of God had. Theophylact and Euthymius take the same view.

Maldonatus calls attention to the expression in Hebrews, where Moses and Christ are put in contrast, and each in connection with the word “house,” Moses as a servant, Christ as a Son. Paul certainly seems there to refer to this passage. (Heb 3:2, Heb 3:5-6.)

v36.-[If the Son shall make you free, etc.] In this verse our Lord explains what He had meant by freedom. It was a freedom from sin, its guilt, and power, and consequences, which believers in Him were to receive. “If I, the Son of man, make you free, in the sense of delivering you from the burden of sin, then you will be free indeed!” This was the freedom that He wished them to obtain. Here, as elsewhere, our Lord carefully avoids saying anything to bring on Himself the charge of rebelling against constituted authorities, and of heading a popular rise for liberty.

The word rendered “indeed” here is not the word so rendered at Joh 8:31. Here it means “really, in reality,” from the participle of the verb “to be.” There it means “truly.”

Let us not forget in these days that the only liberty which is truly valuable in God’s sight is that which Christ gives. All political liberty, however useful for many purposes, is worthless, unless we are children of God, and heirs of the kingdom, by faith in Jesus. He only is perfectly free who is free from sin. All beside are slaves. He that would be free in this fashion has only to apply to Christ for freedom. It is the peculiar office and privilege of the Lord Jesus, to enfranchise forever all who come to Him.

Augustine carries the freedom here promised far into the future. He remarks, “When shall there be full and perfect liberty? When there shall be no enemies, when the last enemy shall be destroyed, even death.”

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Joh 8:31. Jesus said therefore to the Jews which had believed him. The word therefore closely joins this section with the last. Are we then to regard the Jews of this verse as included in the many of the last? Certainly not, because of the essential difference between the expressions used in the two verses,believed in him and believed him. The former denotes a true faith in Jesus, such an acceptance of Him as includes a surrender of the heart, the self, to Him; the latter, an acceptance of His words as true. Those who believed Him were in the way towards the higher faith, but yet might be very far from the attainment of that goal. The impression produced by the last words spoken by Jesus appears to have been very great, bringing many to the position of full discipleship, and even convincing some of the hostile Jews themselves that they had been opposing one whose words were true, and whose claims on their obedience were just and right. These men stand between the two companies,the Jews with whom they had been associated, and the believers who had joined themselves to the Lord. Will they draw nearer to Him and believe in him, or will they return to His enemies? The words which Jesus now speaks, to instruct and to encourage, prove to be the test of their faith.

If ye shall abide in my word, ye are truly my disciples. They believed His word; if they abide in this word of His,clinging to it, continuing under its influence, the word will be to them a revelation of Jesus, and will assert its power. Note the significance ever attached in this Gospel to the word of Jesus. As He, the Word, reveals the Father, and leads to the Father, so His own word reveals Himself, and draws men to Himself through (so teaches the fuller revelation) the power of the Spirit of Truth.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Joh 8:31-59. Controversy with the Jews who Believed.Many are convinced by this appeal. The following section summarises the teaching by which Jesus tried to bring the more favourably disposed of the Jewish party to a fuller faith. If they will make Christs teaching a real part of their lives, they will gain the truth which sets men free. They take offence. If they have had to submit to foreign power, they have never been reduced to slavery. Sin is slavery, Jesus replies, and the slave has no secure place in the house as the son has. The author adds that true freedom is the gift of the Son. Jesus admits their physical descent from Abraham (Joh 8:37). But their conduct does not correspond to their parentage. They do not dissociate themselves from their partys policy of trying to get rid of one whose teaching is unacceptable. He follows His Fathers example. Let them follow the example of theirs. They again assert their parentage. He replies that their deeds disprove it, and point to other parentage. They are no bastards, they answer, but Gods children. If that were so, He tells them, they would love Gods Messenger. Their murderous intent proves their kinship with the devil, the murderer from the beginning. He could not stand in the truth, lies are his own, for he is the father of them. (Many commentators insist that Joh 8:44 b must be translated, For a liar is also his father, and. suggest a reference to the father of the devil, or alter the beginning of the verse into Ye are of your father Cain, cf. 1Jn 3:12. Neither expedient is satisfactory.) They refuse to believe because He speaks the truth. No one has convicted Him of sin. Their refusal to hear shows that they are not of God. His words convince the Jews that He is an enemy of the race, and mad. No madman, He answers, could honour God as He does. They dishonour Him by such an accusation. But His honour is in higher hands. If a man keeps His word, he will gain true life and never see death. To the Jews this assertion proves His madness. How can His word confer a privilege not granted to Abraham or the Prophets? He answers that what He claims comes from the Father. Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing the glory of the Messianic times, and from his abode in Paradise he has seen it and is glad. Apocryphal writings show that, according to Jewish tradition, the Messianic glories were revealed to Abraham during his earthly life, and speak of the joy shown by him. Cf. 4 Esd. 3:14, Unto him didst thou reveal the end of the times secretly; Apoc. Bar 4:4, the heavenly Jerusalem shown to A. by night; Jubilees (15:17 and Charles Pseudep., p. 36 n.), Abraham rejoiced. The Jews are scornful, referring what is said to the earthly life of Abraham. How can one not yet fifty years old have seen Abraham? In answer Jesus asserts His priority to Abraham in terms which, whatever may have been their original form and meaning, are used by the author in the sense of pre-existence, and seem to His hearers blasphemous. Again in this chapter it is almost impossible to separate speech and comment. But it adds a chapter to the real history of the ministry, showing how in Jerusalem, as in Galilee, those whom His teaching attracted were alienated when He refused to promise political freedom, and spoke of the slavery of sin, attempting to teach His higher views by distinguishing between physical and spiritual kinship to Abraham and to God. Though told in the terms of Johannine theology, it is a real stage in the controversy with His people that is interpreted.

[Joh 8:48. Behind the word Samaritan may he the Aramaic Shomroni, i.e. son of Shomron, the father of Ashmedai, prince of demons, otherwise Samml or Satan.

Joh 8:57. , Syr. Sin., and the Sahidic read has Abraham seen thee?A. J. G.]

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 31

If ye continue. Many, who had for a time believed on him, afterwards left him, and went away, as is stated John 6:66.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

8:31 {12} Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, [then] are ye my disciples indeed;

(12) The true disciples of Christ continue in his doctrine, that profiting more and more in the knowledge of the truth they may be delivered from the most grievous burden of sin, into the true liberty of righteousness and life.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The challenge to professing believers 8:31-47

Jesus next addressed those in His audience who had expressed some faith in Him (Joh 8:30).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

The mark of a true disciple is continuation in the instructions of his or her teacher. A disciple is by definition a learner, not necessarily a believer in the born again sense. A disciple remains a disciple as long as he or she continues to follow the instruction of his or her teacher. When that one stops following faithfully, he or she ceases to be a disciple. He or she does not lose his or her salvation, which comes as a gift from God. Genuine believers can continue to be disciples of Jesus or they can cease to be His disciples temporarily or permanently. God never forces believers to continue following Him, though He urges us to do so (cf. Joh 21:15-23).

The disciples in this context appear to have believed that Jesus was a prophet or the Messiah as the Jews popularly regarded Messiah. They apparently did not believe that He was God (cf. Joh 7:39-41). They appear to have been unsaved in view of what Jesus proceeded to say about them. This then is another of the many passages in the Gospels in which Jesus taught the conditions of discipleship.

Some interpreters have sought to differentiate two types of believers in Joh 8:30-31. The first, they say, were genuine believers, which the Greek phrase pisteuo eis plus the accusative ("believe in Him" or "put their faith in Him") identifies. The second group was only professors, which the Greek phrase pisteuo plus the dative ("believed Him") in Joh 8:31 identifies. This linguistic distinction does not hold up, however. The first construction allegedly describing genuine faith describes spurious faith in Joh 2:23, and the second construction that supposedly always describes superficial faith describes genuine faith in Joh 5:24.

Other interpreters see Joh 8:31 as introducing Judaizing Christians, Jewish believers who genuinely believed in Jesus as their Savior but also believed that Christians need to obey the Mosaic Law (cf. Gal 1:6-9). However there is nothing in the context to support this view. It deals primarily with Jesus’ identity, not the place of the Mosaic Law in the believer’s life.

Still others believe that Jesus was teaching that perseverance is the mark of true faith, that genuine believers will inevitably continue to follow Jesus as His disciples. [Note: E.g., John Murray, Redemption-Accomplished and Applied, p. 152.] This view contradicts the teaching of other Scriptures that view true believers as capable of not following Jesus faithfully. Many Scriptural injunctions urge believers to follow the Lord faithfully rather than turning aside and dropping out of the Christian race (e.g., 1Ti 1:18-20; 1 Timothy 4; 1Ti 6:11-21; 2Ti 1:6; 2Ti 1:13; 2Ti 2:3-7; 2Ti 2:12-13; 2Ti 2:15-26; 2Ti 3:14-17; 2Ti 4:1-8; Tit 3:8). This verse is talking about discipleship, not salvation, and rewards, not regeneration.

This last view misunderstands the teaching of Scripture regarding perseverance. The Bible consistently teaches that it is the Holy Spirit who perseveres within the believer keeping him or her securely saved. It does not teach that believers inevitably persevere in the faith but that believers can defect from the faith while remaining saved (e.g., 1Ti 1:20; 2Ti 1:15; 2Ti 4:10; 2Ti 4:16). It is the Savior who perseveres with the saints, not necessarily the saints who persevere with the Savior (2Ti 2:13). [Note: See Dillow, pp. 7-23.]

This view also incorrectly reads "believer" for "disciple" in the text. These are two different terms describing two different groups of people in relation to Jesus. Disciples may or may not be genuine believers, and believers may or may not be genuine disciples. Today we sometimes describe a believer who is also a disciple as a growing Christian and a believer who is not a disciple as a backslidden Christian.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)