I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your Father
The marks of Divine and diabolic relationship
Christ had admitted (Joh_8:37) that the Jews were the seed of Abraham: He now proceeds to show that they had another Father.
Those who degenerate from a virtuous stock forfeit the honours of their race. “These are your forefathers if you show yourselves worthy of them.”
I. THE MARKS OF THE CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL.
1. Hatred of the truth (Joh_8:40; Joh_8:44-47). This was the real ground of their unbelief. They disliked Christ’s doctrines. Had He spoken so as to gratify their pride, they might have been disposed to accept Him. The same principle operates in all opponents of the gospel. The tendency of Christ’s truth is still to humble, and so it is still hated. The Jews said, “We are Abraham’s seed; we are no idolaters.” And so many think it sufficient to belong to a pure Church, to be outwardly moral; hence where the necessity of Christ and His salvation?
2. Enmity against God and His people. The Jews were not content with rejecting Christ; they went about to kill Him. In every age he who is born after the flesh persecutes him who is born after the Spirit. Stephen asked the Jews which of the prophets their fathers had not persecuted. They themselves murdered the Just One; and as they treated the Master so they treated His servants. The heathen followed their example, and these, again, were succeeded by the persecutors of Popery. And in spite of the Reformation, the offence of the Cross has not ceased. Godly persons in the nineteenth century find foes in their own households, and that their religion stands in the way of worldly advancement.
II. THE MARKS OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD.
1. Hearing the Word of God. This the Jews could not do, because they were prejudiced against it. But those who are born of God do not dictate to Him what He should say; but, conscious of their own ignorance, they gladly listen to and learn from Divine teaching.
2. Doing the works of Abraham. His distinguishing work was faith. He believed God, and it was counted to Him for righteousness. And what a practical faith it was! Obedient, he left his father’s house and offered his only son. Faith expressed in obedience is the special characteristic of the child of God.
3. Loving Christ
(1) Because the Father loves Him. Can the children of God do otherwise than love whom their Father loves.
(2) For what He is in Himself--the altogether lovely. (J. Fawcett, M. A.)
Abraham is our father If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham
The works of Abraham and the works of the Jews
Abraham believed God; they disbelieved God’s testimony on behalf of Christ. Abraham was just and merciful; they strove to compass the death of One whose only offence was that He told them the truth. Abraham honoured Melchisedec; they insulted, rejected, and killed Him of whom Melchisedec was a type. Abraham interceded for Sodom; they shut the kingdom of God against men.
Hereditary and spiritual interest in the covenant
The Jew was to have a double being in the covenant, an hereditary, a possessary; the hereditary was nothing but the birthright, which gave him jus ad rem; he, that lineally descended from Abraham, might claim to be admitted into the covenant which God made with him. The possessary consisted in his personal grace, which gave him jus in re, when he did not only descend from Abraham, according to the flesh, but communicated also with him in the graces of the Spirit. These two beings in the covenant were to concur in every Jew; and they could not be severed without danger, danger not to the covenant, but to the Jew (Rom_2:25-29; Gal_3:9; Gal_3:29). (Bp. Lake.)
The true children of God
We have our spiritual affinities, and these determine our true relations and standing. The Jews were not the children of Abraham’s good qualities; they were not the children of faith and love; they were the children of the spirit of untruth and murder. These were qualities of the devil and not of Abraham. The devil is the father of untruth. He lied to Eve in the garden of Eden and to Christ on the mountain of temptation. The devil is the father of the spirit of murder. He tried to murder the whole human race spiritually. The disposition which the Jews manifested toward Christ was altogether un-Abrahamic; it was Satanic, and Christ told them so. He traced their pedigree back to Satan and then He offered them freedom from the Satanic. True family likeness consists in character and in actions, not in bearing the same name. Sometimes descendants are a spiritual burlesque upon ancestors. The life which they live makes the name which they bear a laughable farce. Think of a puny sickly dwarf bearing the name of Goliath! Think of a man bearing the name of Jonathan Edwards writing an exultant treatise upon the decline of Calvinism and sending it broadcast through New England! Think of a man bearing the honoured name of Stephen or Paul or James, men who died for the Church, and yet living outside of the Church and despising it! We often burlesque the names we wear; by our lives and principles and characters we often slander the men whom we delight to call our fathers. We are often un-Abrahamic, while we boast that we are the children of Abraham. Let me ask a practical question at this point. Just what is the liberty which Christ gives men through the truth? Paul may be chosen as an answer to the question. As we become acquainted with Paul’s life through his words, we find it full to overflowing with the spirit of freedom. He had freedom from false theologies, and from the condemnation of the law, and from the fear of death, and from anxieties with regard to the things of this life, and from caste prejudices, and from the tyranny of the world, and from the power of evil habits, and from low and carnal views of the Christian’s privileges and of the Christian’s Christ. Now this is not picture painting, this is not declamation, this is simply the assertion of fact taken from the life of Paul. Here is the life of Paul, full and broad and manly, built up after magnificent ideals, replete with the peace of God, beautiful with the reproduction of Christly characteristics, and magnificent with noble sacrifices for the elevation of the human race. The Jews thought that they were already free, they were not. This is the mistake which many in the Christian Church make. Are you free? Your Christian profession says, Yes. But what does your life say? How do you perform the duties of the Christian life? To the free Christian, everything is a privilege; church going, Bible reading, prayer, religious contributing. There is a great difference between doing things under compulsion and doing the same things because they are privileges. Privileges are duties transfigured. (D. Gregg.)
The children of God and of Satan
I. THE CHILDREN OF GOD (Joh_8:31-36). What do these verses teach us concerning the children of God? God has His children in this world, and some of their traits are here presented to our notice.
1. They believe in Christ (Joh_8:3). To believe in Christ is more than simply to conclude in a general way that He is worthy of credence. It means belief, confidence, submission, obedience, all in one. This believing is the condition of all blessings under the gospel.
2. They abide in Christ’s word (Joh_8:31). They manifest their faith by their fidelity. There is no “six weeks’ religion” during a warm revival, dropping into coldness and deadness when the meetings cease. It is a continued service proceeding from a constant faith.
3. They know the truth (Joh_8:32). The word in the original for “know” is the verb meaning “to have full knowledge.” He who learns the truth by fellowship with Christ receives it at fountainhead, and understands it thoroughly.
4. They have freedom (Joh_8:32-36). Every sinner is a slave, for a power outside of himself directs his action. The drunkard says, “I can’t help myself; an appetite drives me to drink.” The passionate man says, “I am not my own master when I get angry.” Are they not slaves to a power above their own will? The free man is the disciple of Christ.
II. THE CHILDREN OF SATAN. Then there is a devil who would make men believe that he is not, and that consequently they need not fear him. The Scriptures are as clear concerning the existence of Satan as they are concerning the existence of God. The traits of Satan’s children, as here set forth, are
1. They are slaves (Joh_8:33-36).
2. They are enemies of Christ (Joh_8:37). These slaves of Satan were ready to kill Christ.
3. They show a likeness to their father (Joh_8:39-44). These Jews claimed to be the children of Abraham. “Not so,” said Jesus. “If you were the children of Abraham, you would be like Abraham. But you show the traits of your true father, the devil.”
4. They have no affinity with God. (Joh_8:45-47). They do not like God’s truth (Joh_8:45); they will not hear God’s words (Joh_8:47). Just as oil and water will not mix, so the children of Satan have an aloofness of nature with respect to God. (J. L. Hurlbut, D. D.)
Pious relatives or friends cannot save us
It was poor comfort to Dives, in flames, that Abraham called him “son”; to Judas that Christ called him “friend”; or to the rebellious Jews that God called them His people. (J. Trapp.)
Now ye seek to kill Me.--Notice here the gradation.
1. To kill a man.
2. A man who is an organ of the truth.
3. Of the truth which comes from God. (F. Godet, D. D.)
The fate of the truth teller
When the Egyptians first conquered Nubia, a regiment perished thus: The desert was long, water failed, and men were half-mad with thirst. Then arose the mirage, looking like a beautiful lake. The troops were delighted, and started to reach the lake to slake their thirst in its delicious water; but the guide told them that it was all a delusion. Vainly he appealed to them and warned them. At last he threw himself in the way, and pointing with his finger in another direction, said, “That is the way to the water”; but they answered him with blows, and leaving him dead on the sand, rushed after the phantom lake. Eagerly they pressed on for several days, when their goal disappeared and mocked them. One by one they died--far from the path on which their faithful guide lay murdered.
Unregenerate souls do not love the truth
The nature of the soil must be changed before the heavenly plant will thrive. Plants grow not upon stones, nor this heavenly plant in a stony heart. A stone receives the rain upon it, not into it. It falls off or dries up, but a new heart, a heart of flesh, sucks in the dew of the Word, and grows thereby. (S. Charnock.)
Men hate the truth
As the friar wittily told the people that the truth he then preached unto them seemed to be like holy water, which everyone called for apace, yet when it came to be east upon them, they turned aside their faces as though they did not like it. Men love truth when it only pleads itself: they would have it shine out into all the world in its glory, but by no means so much as peep out to reprove their own errors. (Senhouse.)
The thief hates the break of day; not but that he naturally loves the light as well as other men, but his condition makes him dread and abhor that which, of all things, he knows to be the likeliest means of his discovery. (R. Smith.)
Noble minds welcome the truth
If Archimedes, upon the discovery of a mathematical truth, was so ravished that he cried out,” I have found it, I have found it!” what pleasure must the discovery of a Divine truth give to a sanctified soul! “Thy words wore found of me,” says Jeremiah, “and I did eat them; and Thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.”
Truth lies deep, as the rich veins of gold do: if we will get the treasure, we must not only beg, but dig also. (J. Fletcher.)
We be not born of fornication.--The Jews, having nothing effectual to object, take advantage of the moral sense in which Jesus had spoken of parentage, and try to cite it in their own favour: If Thou wilt have it so, we will leave off speaking of Abraham; for after all in that spiritual sphere, of which it seems Thou art thinking, God is our Father. To understand these words, which have been so variously interpreted, it must be remembered that marriage with a heathen woman was, after the return from Babylon (see Nahum and Malachi), regarded as impure, and the children of such marriage as illegitimate, as belonging through one parent to the family of Satan, the god of the heathen. The Jews, then, meant to say: “We were born under perfectly legal conditions; we have no idolatrous blood in our veins; we are Hebrews, born of Hebrews (Php_3:5), and are hence by our very birth protected from all pagan and diabolic affiliation.” As truly as they are pure descendants of Abraham, so certainly do they believe themselves to be descended, in a moral point of view, from God alone; and even when rising with our Lord to the moral point of view, they are incapable of freeing themselves from their own idea of natural parentage. (F. Godet, D. D.)
These words have been explained as signifying that the Jews were not descended, like Ishmael, from any secondary marriage like that of the patriarch with Hagar--which, however, could scarcely be called “fornication”--or from Sarah through another man than her lawful husband; but are probably to be understood as asserting that their pure Abrahamic descent had been corrupted by no admixture of heathen blood, or better, that their relation of sonship to Jehovah had not been rendered impure by the worship of false gods, in which case they had been “children of whoredom” (Hos_2:4), but that, as they were physically Abraham’s seed, so were they spiritually God’s children. This interpretation seems to be demanded by the next words: “We have one Father even God.” By this they signified, not that “God alone” in opposition to heathen divinities was their Father, but that spiritually as well as corporeally, they traced their descent back to one parentage, as in the latter case to Abraham, so in the former case to God (Mal_2:10). (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)
If God were your Father ye would love Me
Love to Jesus the great test
The order of salvation is first to believe in Christ. By this we become sons of God, and the proof of our sonship is loving what God loves--Christ.
I. LOVE TO CHRIST IS IN ITSELF ESSENTIAL. The absence of this love is
1. The loss of the greatest of spiritual pleasures. What a loss is that of the sense of taste and smell? The fairest rose cannot salute the nostrils with its perfume, nor the most dainty flavour delight the palate. But it is infinitely more terrible not to perceive the fragrance of the name of Jesus, and to taste the richness of the bread and wine of heaven.
2. A sign of very grievous degradation. It is the mark of an animal that it cannot enter into intellectual pursuits, and when man loses the power to love his God he sinks to a level with the brutes. We greatly pity those poor creatures who cannot reason, but what shall we think of these who cannot love? Yet not to love Jesus reveals a moral imbecility far worse than mental incapacity, because it is wilful and involves a crime of the heart.
3. A clear proof that the whole manhood is out of order.
(1) The understanding, were it well balanced, would judge that Christ is before all, and give Him the preeminence.
(2) If the heart were what it should be it would love the good, the true, the beautiful, and nothing is more so than Jesus.
4. A sure token that we have no part in His salvation.
(1) The very first effect of salvation is love to Jesus.
(2) This love is the mainspring of the Spiritual life. It “constraineth us,” and is the grand power which keeps us back from evil and impels us towards holiness.
(3) Without this love we incur the heaviest condemnation--“If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ,” etc.
II. LOVE TO CHRIST IS THE TEST OF SONSHIP. Our Lord plainly declares that God is not the Father of those who do not love Him. The Jews were by nature and descent, if any were, the children of God. They were the seed of Abraham, God’s chosen, had observed God’s ceremonies, bore the mark of His covenant, were the only people who worshipped one God, and incurred the greatest obloquy in consequence--yet as they did not love Christ they were no sons of God.
1. The child of God loves Christ because he loves what his Father loves: his nature, descended from God, runs in the same channel, and since God loves Christ supremely so does he.
2. He sees God in Jesus--the express image of His Person.
3. He is like Christ. Every man loves what is like himself. If you are born of God you are holy and true and loving, and as He is all that you must love Him.
4. He is essentially divine. “I proceeded and came forth,” etc.
5. Of His mission
(1) We must love that which comes from God if we love God. It matters not how small the trifle, you prize it if it comes from someone you revere. How much more should we love Him who came from God; and came not as a relic or memorial, but as His living, loving voice.
(2) Remember the message Christ brought--a message of pardon, restoration, acceptance, eternal life and glory.
6. He came not of Himself. When a man lives only to serve himself our love dries up. But Jesus’ aims were entirely for the Father and for us--so our heart must go out towards Him.
III. THIS TEST IT IS IMPORTANT FOR US TO APPLY NOW. Do you love Him or no? If you do then, you will
1. Trust Him and lean on Him with all your weight. Have you any other hope besides that which springs from His Cross?
2. Keep His Word. How about your neglected Bible? How about those parts of Scripture you have never understood, because afraid they were different from the creed of your church and family?
3. Keep His commandments. Do you obey Christ? If His commands are of little importance, then your heart is not with Him.
4. Imitate Him. It is the nature of love to be imitative. Are you trying to be Christ-like?
5. Love His people--not because they are sweet in their tempers or belong to your denomination, but because they are His.
6. Sympathize with His objects. Whenever we love another we begin to love the things which he loves. He delights to save men, do you?
7. Serve His cause. Love that never leads to action is no love at all. Are you speaking for Him, giving to Him?
8. Desire to be with Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
If we love God we shall receive Christ
If a child were far away in India, and he had not heard from home for some time, and he at last received a letter, how sweet it would be! It comes from father. How pleased he is to get it! But suppose a messenger should come and say, “I come from your father,” why, he would at once feel the deepest interest in him. Would you shut your door against your father’s messenger? No: but you would say, “Come in, though it be in the middle of the night, I shall always have an ear for you.” Shall we not thus welcome Jesus? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Men ought to love Christ as coming from God
I know when I left the village where I was first pastor, and where I had loved the people much and they had loved me, I used to say that if I saw even a dog which came from that parish, I should be glad to see him for I felt a love to everybody and everything coming from that spot. How much more should we love Christ because He came from God! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I proceeded forth and came from God
The inner life of Christ
Notwithstanding the multitude of books written on the life of Christ we want one more. We have outward lives more than enough that tell us about places and date and occurrences. We want an inner “life” of thoughts, purposes, feelings. Until we study this inner life, all the outward life will be a plague to our intellect and a mortification to our heart. The inward always explains the outward.
1. Suppose we saw one of the miracles of Christ, the raising of the dead. Here is the dead man, there the living Christ, yonder the mourning friends; presently the dead man rises. But how? Is it trick or miracle--an illusion or a fact? I cannot determine, because my eyes have been so often deceived. I saw a man get up--but the conjuror comes along and says, “I will show you something equally deceiving.” I see his avowed trick; it does baffle me; and if then he says, “It was just the same with what you thought the raising of the dead,” he leaves me in a state of intellectual torment.
Then what am I to do? Leave the outward. Watch the miracle Worker--listen to Him. If His mental triumphs are equal to His physical miracles, then admire, trust, and love Him. Take the conjuror: when on the stage he seems to be working miracles, but when he comes off and talks on general subjects I feel my equality with him rising and asserting itself. So when I go to Christ as a mere stranger and see His miracles, I say, “This Man may be but the cleverest of the host.” But when He begins to speak His words are equal to His works. He is the same off the platform as on. I am bound to account fur this consistency. All other men have been manifestations of self-inequality. We know clever men who are fools, strong men who are weak, etc., and this want of self-consistency is a proof of their being merely men. But if I find a Man in whom this inequality does not exist, who says that if I could follow Him still higher I should find Him greater in thinking than is possible for any mere man to be in acting, then I have to account for this consistency, which I have found nowhere else, and listen to His explanation of it. “I proceeded forth and came from God.” That explanation alone will cover all the ground He permanently occupies.
2. It will be interesting to make ourselves as familiar with His thoughts as we are with His works. We shall then come to value His miracles as He did. Did He value them for their own sake? Sound a trumpet and convoke a mighty host to see them? Never. He regarded them as elementary and introductory--examples and symbols. Why? Because He was greater within than without. Had He performed them with His fingers only, He might have been proud of them, but when they fell out of the infinity of His thinking they were mere drops trembling on the bucket. We might as well follow some poor breathing of ours, and say, “How wonderful that sighing in the wind!” It is nothing because of the greater life. It is very remarkable that this Man once said, “Greater works than these shall ye do,” but never “Greater thoughts than these shall ye think.” Let us look at this inner life of Christ from two or three points.
I. I watch this man, struck with wonder at His power, and the question arises, WHAT IS THE IMPELLING SENSE OF HIS DUTY? He answers, “I must be about My Father’s business.” Never did prophet give that explanation before. In working from His Father’s point of view, He gives us His key. Put it where you like, the lock answers to it; and is no credit to be given to a speaker, who at twelve years of age, put the key into the hands of inquirers, and told them to go round the whole circle of His life with that key. Can he keep up that strain? Listen, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” Can He sustain that high key when He is in trouble? “Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.”
II. Arguing from that point, if this Man is about His Father’s business, WHAT IS HIS SUPREME FEELING? Concern for the dignity of the law? Jealousy for the righteousness of God! No; from beginning to end of His life He is “moved with compassion,” and when people come to Him they seemed to know this sympathetically, for they cried, “Have mercy on us.” He speaks like a Son and is thus faithful to His Father’s message. What explanation does He give of His own miracles, “Virtue hath gone out of Me.” He did not say “I have performed this with My fingers”--no trickster, but a mighty sympathizer. Whatever He did took something out of Him. Behold the difference between the artificial and the real. The healing of one poor sufferer took “Virtue out of Him.” What did the redemption of the world take out of Him when He said, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The last pulse is gone and He is self--consistent still.
III. TO WHAT ARE ALL HIS TRIUMPHS EVENTUALLY REFERRED? Not to intellectual ability, skill of finger or physical endurance, but to His soul--“He shall see of the travail of His soul,” etc. You know the meaning of the word in some degree. One man paints with paint, another with His soul. One man speaks with his tongue, another with his soul; they are the same words, but not the same, as the bush was not the same before the fire came into it. Thus Christ shall see the travail of His soul, etc. He was often wearied with journeying, when was He wearied with miracles? His bones were tired, when was His mind enfeebled--when did the word ever come with less than the old emphasis--the fiat that made the sun? (J. Parker, D. D.)
Christ’s claim
I. WHAT DID HE CLAIM FOR HIMSELF?
1. God announced Himself to Moses as “I AM”--a marvellous name, which seemed as if it were going to be a revelation; but suddenly it returned upon itself and finished with “THAT I AM,” as if the sun were just about to come from behind a great cloud, and suddenly, after one dazzling gleam, hide itself before one denser still--God’s “hour” was not yet. He had said “I am,” but what He did not say.
2. Does Jesus connect Himself with this mysterious name? We cannot read His life without constantly coming across it, but He adds to the name simple earthly words, everything that human fancy ever conceived concerning strength, beauty, sympathy, tenderness, and redemption--“I am the vine.” What a stoop! Could any but God have taken up that figure? Forget your familiarity with it and then consider that One has said without qualification, “I am the Vine,” “I am the Light.” We know what that is: it is here, there, everywhere--takes up no room, yet fills all space; warms the plants, yet does not crush a twig. The “I am” fell upon us like a mighty thundering, “I am the Light” came to us like a child’s lesson in our mother’s nursery. “I am the Door.” That is not a mean figure, if we interpret it aright, a door is more than a deal arrangement swinging on hinges. It is welcome, hospitality, home, honour, sonship. “I am the Bread, the Water, the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, the Life.” How any man could be a mere man, and yet take up these figures, it is impossible to believe. It is easier to say “My Lord and My God.”
II. WHAT DOES HE CLAIM FROM MAN? Everything. In mean moods I have wondered at His Divine voracity. Once a woman came to Him who had only one box of spikenard and He took it all. Would your humanity have allowed you to do it? Surely you would have said, “Part of it; I must not have it all.” And another woman--she might have touched His heart, for she wore widows’ weeds. I expected Him to say, “Poor soul, I can take nothing from you.” But He took her two mites--all that she had. He is doing the same to day. How many things has that only boy been in his father’s dreams! One day the mother feels that something is going to happen, and what does happen is a proposal that the boy should become a missionary! He must go. Humanity would have spared him--but Christ takes him.
III. HOW DID THE BETTER CLASS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES REGARD HIM. Here is a typical man--a man of letters and of local renown--who says, “Rabbi, Thou art a teacher come from God.” Evidence of that kind must not go for nothing. Send men of another type--shrewd, keen men of the world: what say they? “Never man spake like this Man.” Here are women coming back from having seen the Lord: what will they say? Never yet did women speak one word against the Son of God! Mothers, women of pure souls! sensitive as keenest life: what saw ye? “The holiness of God.” Pass Him on to a judge--cold, observant, not easily hoodwinked. What sayest thou? “I find no fault in Him.” What is that coming? A message from the judge’s wife, “Have thou nothing to do with this just person. Let Him go.”
Crucify Him; will anybody speak about Him now? The centurion, accustomed to this sight of blood, said, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Put these testimonies of observers, accumulate them into a complete appeal, and then say whether it be not easier for the imagination and judgment and heart to say, “My Lord and my God,” than to use meaner terms.
IV. FROM SUCH A MAN WHAT TEACHING MAY BE EXPECTED?
1. Extemporaneousness. He cannot want time to make His sermons, or He is not what He claims to be. Does He retire and compose elaborate sentences and come forth a literary artist, leaving the impression that He has wasted the midnight oil? No; His is simple graphic talk.
2. Instantaneousness of reply. God cannot want time to think what He will say? Does Christ? He answers immediately and finally. He had just thrown off the apron; rabbinical culture He had none, and yet there was an instantaneousness about Him to which there is no parallel but in the “Let there be light, and there was light.” Give every man credit for ability, and give this Man credit for having extorted from His enemies, “Never man spake like this Man.”
3. What do I find in Christ’s teaching? Incarnations of the Spiritual. He Himself was an incarnation. He had to embody the kingdom of God, and hence He said, “It is like unto”--To embody the bodiless was the all-culminating miracle of the Peasant of Galilee.
4. Christ’s is seminal teaching--that which survives all the changes of time. Where are the grand and stately sermons of the great Doctors? Gone into the stately past.
V. DID THIS MAN LIVE UP TO HIS own principles? Some people say that the teaching of Jesus conveyed high theories, but too romantic to be embodied in actual behaviour. What said He? “Bless them that persecute you.” Did He do it? “When He was reviled He reviled not again.” What said He? “Pray for them that despitefully use you.” Did He do it? “Father forgive them,” etc. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Ye are of your father the devil
The children of the devil
I. WHO IS THE DEVIL? With regard to that remarkable being termed elsewhere “Satan,” “the tempter,” “the old serpent,” “the destroyer,” our information, though limited, is distinct. He is a being of the angelic order, formed, like all intelligent beings, in a state of moral integrity, who, at a period anterior to the fall, in consequence of violating the Divine law, in a manner of which we are not particularly informed, was (along with a number of other spirits who, in consequence of being seduced by him, were partakers in his guilt) cast out of heaven, placed in a state of degradation and punishment, and reserved to deeper shame and fiercer pains, at the Judgment. Through his malignity and falsehood man, who was innocent, holy, and happy and immortal, became guilty, depraved, miserable and liable to death. Over the minds of the unregenerate he exercises a powerful, though not irresistible, influence, and hence is termed “the prince,” “the god of this world,” etc., who leads men captive at his will. He exerts himself, by his numerous agents, in counterworking the Divine plan for the salvation of men, throwing obstacles of various kinds in the way of their conversion, and spreading his snares for, and aiming his fiery darts at, those who have thrown off his yoke. Error, sin, and misery, in all their forms, are ultimately his works; and his leading object is to uphold and extend the empire of evil in the universe of God.
II. WHAT IS MEANT BY HIS BEING THE JEWS’ FATHER. The term is figurative. That being is, in a moral point of view, my father, under whose influence my character has been formed, and whose sentiments and feelings and conduct are the model after which mine are fashioned. These Jews instead of having a spiritual character formed under divine influence, had one formed under a diabolical influence; and instead of being formed in God’s likeness, or in the likeness of Abraham his friend, they resembled the grand enemy of God and man.
III. WHAT IS IT TO BE OF THE DEVIL? “Of” expresses a relation of property. To be “of the world,” is to be the world’s own. “The world loves its own “--those who are “of it.” To be “of God,” or “God’s,” is to belong to God,to be God’s property and possession. To be “of Christ,” or “Christ’s,” is to belong to Him. To be “of the devil,” or “the devil’s,” is to belong to him, to be, as it were, his property. All created beings are, and must be, in the most important sense, God’s property. The devil himself is God’s, subject to His control, and will be made to serve His purpose. But in another sense, the Jews, and all who possess the same character, are the property of the wicked one,| they practically renounce their dependence on God; they deny His proprietorship, and they practically surrender themselves to the wicked one, yielding themselves his slaves. It is as if our Lord had said, “Ye say that ye are God’s peculiar people, but ye are really the devil’s self-sold slaves.”
IV. WHAT ARE THE LUSTS OF THE DEVIL? “Lust” signifies not merely desire, properly so called, but the object of desire. “The lust of the eye” is a general name for those things which, contemplated by the eye, excite desire--what is splendid or beautiful. “The lusts of the devil” are to beunderstood in this way, not of his individual desires or longings--for how could the Jews do these?--but of the things which are the object of his desires--such as the establishment and permanence of error, vice, and misery among men--whatever is calculated to gratify his impious malignant mind, a mind of which, as Milton powerfully expresses it, “evil is the good.” To do the things which the devil desires is to oppose truth and to increase sin and misery. These things the Jews did--habitually did.
V. WHAT IS IT TO WILL THOSE LUSTS? The term “will” is not here the mere sign of futurition--it denotes disposition, determination, choice. “Ye will do the evil things which your infernal father wishes for.” It is a phrase of the same kind as: “If any man will be My disciple” (Joh_7:17). TheJews were not merely occasionally by strong temptation induced to do what is in accordance with the devil’s desires, but their desires were so habitually consentaneous with his, that in seeking to gratify themselves they produced the result which he desired. They were cheerful servants--voluntary slaves. (J. Brown, D. D.)
Children of the devil
It is said of Mr. Haynes, the coloured preacher, that, some time after the publication of his sermon on the text, “Ye shall not surely die,” two reckless young men having agreed together to try his wit, one of them said, “Father Haynes, have you heard the good news?” “No,” said Mr. Haynes, “what is it?” It is great news indeed, said the other; and, if true, your business is gone. What is it? again inquired Mr. Haynes. Why, said the first, the devil is dead.” In a moment the old gentleman replied, lifting up both hands, and placing them on the heads of the young men, and in a tone of solemn concern, “Oh, poor fatherless children! what will become of you?” (W. Baxendale.)
The devil a liar and a murderer
King Canute promised to make him the highest man in England who should kill King Edmund, his rival; which, when he had performed, and expected his reward, he commanded him to be hung on the highest tower in London. So Satan promises great things to people in pursuit of their lusts, but he puts them off with great mischief. The promised crown turns to a halter, the promised comfort to a torment, the promised honour into shame, the promised consolation into desolation, and the promised heaven turns into a hell. The lusts of your father ye will do.
It is a frightful “will,” and as frightful a “must,” which governs the soul of an ungodly man. Such a soul either is a slave of the “must,” or a free agent of the “will”; and the most fearful feature of all is that it is guilty as being a free agent, and the more guilty it is so much the more enslaved, and therefore the more it is free to will by so much the more enslaved. (Augustine.)
Satan hath no impulsive power; he may strike fire till he be weary (if his malice can weary); except man’s corruption brings the tinder, the match cannot be lighted (Act_5:4; Jam_1:13-16). (Thos. Fuller.)
He was a murderer from the beginning (comp. Wis_2:23-24; Rom_5:12).--The Fall was the murder of the human race; and it is in reference to this, of which the fratricide in the first family was a signal result, that the tempter is called a murderer from the beginning (comp. 1Jn_3:8-12, where the thought is expanded). The reference to the murderer is suggested here by the fact that the Jews had been seeking to kill our Lord (Joh_8:40). They are true to the nature which their father had from the beginning. (Archdeacon Watkins.)
He abode (Revised Version, “stood”) not in the truth because there is no truth in him
Standing in the truth
1. This chapter shows Jesus’ power of bringing men out of their fictions of life, and of discovering the essential thing in life. Here He discloses the condition under which it is possible for a created being to stand in the truth. It is no little thing to stand in the truth. You may have stood on some rare evening upon a mountain top. The mists had been lifted from the valleys, the villages, etc., were etched on the map before you; on the far horizon sea and sky met, the few lingering clouds showed their upper edges turned to gold, while the whole air seemed to have become some clear crystal to let the sun shine through. So it is to stand in the truth, and to do so were worth the effort of a lifetime. So without long climbing Jesus stood.
2. Thus more is meant than is suggested to us by “stand fast in the truth.” Men may only mean by that--Be obstinate on our side, standing steadfastly in some limited conception of truth; or merely to stand where we are without inquiring how the mind is to find its place, sure, serene, and sunny in the truth; or when men are debating it may be some battle call to fight for some truth at the expense of abiding in all truth.
3. Jesus shows the real thing to be desired in our anxiety to stand in the truth--the truth must be in us. Having no truthfulness within the Evil One lost his standing in the truth of God’s universe without. This extremest case illustrates the whole process of descent of some from truth.
I. THIS UNIVERSE IS A MORAL UNIVERSE AND A MAN TO STAND IN IT MUST BE MORALLY SOUND. An immoral man can have no permanent standing in a moral universe.
1. There is no untruthfulness, dishonesty, or vice in the constitution of things. Nature invariably gives the same answer. The creation made in truth continues in truth. The ocean tides keep true time and measure; the sun is steadfast; Nature throughout is one piece of honest work, and its veracity lies at the foundation of our industries. Every railroad is built upon it, and every man works in faith that earth and sky will keep their primal covenant.
2. Now when a man born to stand here takes up some lie into his soul, what happens? That fate which befell the father of lies. He cannot stand. Suppose a man conceives a fraudulent thought and says I will succeed in my business with that fraud in my mind, what is the end? Defaulters behind prison bars might answer. Defalcations always begin in a man himself, sometimes years, before they begin at the office. The fall began when he let some falsehood come into his life; when he sought to keep up an appearance that was not true. At last men were shocked to discover that he stood not in the truth because the truth was not in him.
3. Perhaps the end has not come yet, and men who are not truthful within seem to stand as though the universe were in their favour. Nevertheless, sooner or later, the end of inward untruthfulness is as certain as the law of gravitation. The moral universe can be relied upon to throw out eventually every immoral man. “Without is everyone that loveth and maketh a lie.” And we do not have to wait till the last day.
(1) A man cannot stand long in the world’s credit if the truth of personal integrity is not in him.
(2) A rich or popular man cannot stand always in good society if his heart is becoming rotten--in the end it must cast him out.
(3) Even in polities many a leader has not stood in the truth of the people’s final judgment because the truth was not in him.
(4) The same condition pertains to the realm of science. Nature wants character in her pupil even when teaching her laws of numbers. Clerk Maxwell’s character was part of his fitness for high scientific work.
(5) And certainly this same law has been confirmed over and over again in the history of literature. What a poet for the coming years Byron might have been, had there been in him higher and holier truth!
II. THE UNIVERSE IS A DIVINE UNIVERSE AND NO MAN CAN STAND IN ITS TRUTH WHO WISHES TO SAY IN HIS HEART, “THERE IS NO GOD.” There is some Divine reality behind all these shifting appearances of things. There is an expression of Divine intelligence playing over the face of Nature. And what is seen and touched is not half of the glory of the kingdom of God. Faith is standing in this Diviner glory. We would all like to stand in this truth, but John says, “If a man says, ‘I love God,’ and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” When a man is thinking a hateful thought, he does not then believe in God, though he be making an argument to prove one, and saying, “Lord, Lord!” And it is no avail for any of us to try and believe in God or the unseen universe simply by thinking about them or discussing their natural probabilities, unless we are first eager to have some truth of God in ourselves, and so by the truth within us find that we stand in the Divine truth of the world. Live like a brute, and believe like a son of God? Never. Does any man want to prove the existence of God? Let bin search the book of his life, and if he finds that he did some truth of God, then find God and worship Him.
III. THIS UNIVERSE IS A CHRISTIAN UNIVERSE, AND IF A MAN HAS NOT THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, HE CANNOT STAND IN ITS FULL, FINAL CHRISTIANITY. All things were made by Christ, and in Him all things consist. The universe is Christian because created for Christ, and reaching its consummation in Him; because God has shown Himself to be Christian in His eternal thought and purpose towards the world, and because its last great day shall be the Christian judgment. Hence if we would stand in this full and final truth, we must have some Christian truth in us which shall answer to the Christian character of the universe. If we should fail of this, how could we hope to stand when whatever is not Christian must eventually be cast out, for Christ must reign until all enemies be put under His feet. Sin must go, and death, and all uncharitableness, and all deceit, to make room for a new heaven and a new earth. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)
He is a liar and the father thereof.--Lying is well-nigh universal in the East. It is not only practised, but its wisdom is defended by Orientals generally. “Lying is the salt of a man,” say the Arabs. The Hindoos say that Brahma lied when there was no gain in lying; and so far they are ready to follow Brahma’s example. Yet Orientals recognize the truth that lying is essentially sinful, however necessary it may seem. The Arabs today will trust a Christian’s word when they would not believe each other. They also admit that a liar cannot long prosper. And the Hindoos have a saying that the telling of a lie is a greater sin than the killing of a Brahman. It was an appeal to the innermost consciences of His Oriental hearers when Jesus charged them with showing in their practice that they were children of the father of lies. (S. S. Times.)
Because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not.--Generally, the reason why a man is believed is that he speaks the truth. But the experience of Jesus was, in the case of the Jews, the opposite. They were so ruled by the lies with which their father had blinded their hearts, that it was just because He spoke the truth that He obtained no credence from them. (F. Godet, D. D.)
The rationale of unbelief
I. REPUGNANCE TO THE TRUTH (Joh_8:45). Had He given them popular dogmas or speculative disquisitions, they might have believed Him; but He gave them truth that addressed itself with imperial force to their central being. They were living in falsehood, appearances, and shams, far away from the awful region of spiritual realities. The truth came in direct collision with their prepossessions, pride, interests, habits; and they would not have it. This repugnance
1. Reveals man’s abnormal condition. His soul is as truly organized for truth as his eyes for light. Truth is its natural atmosphere, scenery, food.
2. Suggests his awful future. The soul and truth will not always be kept apart. The time must come when the intervening falsehoods shall melt away and the interspacing gulfs bridged over, and when the soul shall feel itself in conscious contact with moral realities.
II. THE PURITY OF CHRIST (Joh_8:46). Christ is the Truth, and His invincible intolerance of all sin repels the depraved heart. “Men love darkness,” etc. The first beams of the morning are not half so repulsive to a burglar as the rays of Christ’s truth are to a depraved heart. Purity makes the hell of depravity.
III. ESTRANGEMENT FROM GOD (Joh_8:47). Divine filial sympathies are essential to true faith. The more a child loves his parent, the more he believes in his word. Unregenerate men have not this sympathy, hence their unbelief. They do not like to retain God in their thoughts. “He that loveth not knoweth not God.”
IV. PRIDE OF INTELLECT (Joh_8:48). They had said this before, and here they pride themselves on their sagacity. “Say we not well?” Are we not clever? What an insight we have into character! Infidels have ever been too scientific to believe in miracles, too philosophic to require a revelation, too independent to require Christ, too moral to need inward reformation. “Say we not well?” is their spirit. It comes out in their books, lectures, converse, daily life. “We are the wise men, and wisdom will die with us.” This pride is essentially inimical to true faith. “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child,” etc.
V. UNCHARITABLENESS OF DISPOSITION (Joh_8:48). Suppose He was a Samaritan, are they all bad? Yes, said they, and because thou art a Samaritan thou hast a devil. This uncharitable reasoning has ever characterized infidelity. All Christians are hypocrites, all preachers crafty mercenaries, all churches nurseries of superstition; hence we will have nothing to do with it. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Which of you convinceth Me of sin?
The Christ of history the revelation of the perfect man
This sinlessness of Jesus stands alone in history in that
I. JESUS CLAIMED IT FOR HIMSELF. Even those who have rejected His Divinity admit that He was preeminently holy; yet no ether man has ever claimed or had claimed for him this sinlessness. On the contrary, in proportion to a man’s saintliness he realizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is the guiltiest who do not feel guilt. The cry of the sin-wounded heart is wrung from a David, not from a Herod; from a Fenelon, not from a Richelieu. We hear its groaning in the poems of a Cowper, not of a Byron; in the writings of a Milton, not of a Voltaire. That Jesus should have claimed to be sinless, and to have acted all through on that assumption, can never be explained except upon the ground of His Godhead. Ii He were not sinless and Divine, He would be lower than His saints, for then He would have made false claims, and been guilty of presumptuous and dishonouring self-exaltation.
II. THIS CLAIM HAS NOT AND CANNOT BE IMPUGNED.
1. The Jews could not meet His challenge. It was not from want of desire. There is a vein of natural baseness in fallen natures which delights in dragging down the loftiest. Whom has not envy striven to wound? And has it not ever been at the very highest that the mud is thrown? Even Francis of Assisi, Vincent de Paul, Whitefield, did not escape the pestilent breath of slander. Yet, though Jesus lived in familiar intercourse with publicans and sinners, not even His deadliest enemies breathed the least suspicion of His spotless innocence. They said, in their coarse rage, “Thou art a Samaritan,” etc., but none said, “Thou art a sinner.” “Have nothing to do with that just Man,” exclaimed the Roman lady. “I find no fault in Him,” declared the bloodstained Pilate. “There is no harm in Him,” was the practical verdict of Herod. “This Man has done nothing amiss,” moaned the dying malefactor. “I have shed innocent blood,” shrieked the miserable Judas. His most eager accusers stammered into self-refuting lies; and the crowds around the cross, smiting on their breasts, assented to the cry of the heathen centurion, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
2. Subsequent ages have conceded this sinlessness. The fierce light of unbelief and anger has been turned upon His life, and the microscope of historical criticism and the spectrum analysis of psychological inquiry, without finding one speck on the white light of His holiness. The Talmud alludes to Him with intensest indignation, yet dares not invent the shadow of a crime. Outspoken modern rationalists seem as they gaze at Him in dubious wonder to fall unbidden at His feet. Spinoza sees in Him the best symbol of heavenly wisdom, Kant of ideal perfection, Hegel of union between the human and the Divine. Rousseau said that, if the death of Socrates was that of a sage, the death of Jesus was that of a God. His transcendent holiness moved the flippant soul of Voltaire. Strauss wrote whole volumes to disprove His Divinity, yet he calls Him “the highest object we can imagine with respect to religion; the Being without whose presence in the mind religion is impossible.” Comte tried to find a new religion, yet made a daily study of the “Imitation of Christ.” Renan has undermined the faith of thousands, yet admits “His beauty is eternal, and His reign will never end.” How can all this admiration be justified if He, of all God’s children, claimed a sinlessness which, if He were not Divine, was a sin to claim?
III. MIGHT NOT HIS VOICE ASK US ACROSS THE CENTURIES, “TO WHOM WILL YE LIKEN ME AND SHALL I BE EQUAL?” I do not ask what religion you would prefer to Christianity. Christianity is the true religion, or there is none. No man would dream of matching the best thoughts of the world’s greatest thinkers, or the highest truths of the best religion, with Christianity. Not, certainly, the senile proprieties of Confucianism, the dreary, negatious, and perverted bodily service of Buddhism, or the mere retrograde Judaism of the Moslem; and if not these, certainly no other.
1. But compare the founders of these religions with our Lord, The personality of Sakya Mouni is lost in a mass of monstrous traditions; but his ideal, as far as we can disentangle it, was impossible and unnatural. The life of Confucius is tainted with insincerity; and he not only repudiated perfection, but placed himself below other sages. Mohammed stands self-condemned of adultery and treachery. Socrates and Marcus Aurelius were the noblest characters of secular history, but those who know them best confess that the golden image stands on feet of clay.
2. If you turn to sacred history, which will you choose to compare with Him whom, in dim Messianic hope, they saw afar off? Adam? but he lost us Paradise. Moses? but he was not suffered to enter the promised land. David? but does not the ghost of Uriah rise again?
3. But are there not in the long Christian centuries some as sinless as He, since they have had His example to follow and His grace to help? Look up to the galaxy of Christian examples, and it is but full of stars, of which each one disclaims all glory save such as it derives from the sun. Many have caught some one bright colour, but in Him only you see the sevenfold perfection of undivided light. And none have been able to appreciate the many sided glory. All see in Him the one excellence they most admire. The knights saw in Him the model of all chivalry, the monks the model of all asceticism, the philosophers the source of all enlightenment. To Fenelon He was the most rapt of mystics, to Vincent de Paul the most practical of philanthropists, to an English poet “The first true gentleman that ever breathed.” His life was the copy over which was faintly traced the biography of all the greatest saints, but each of them presented but a pale image of His Divine humanity. The wisdom of apostles, the faith of martyrs, the self-conquest of hermits, were but parts of Him. In the tenderness of Francis, the thunderings of Savonarola, the strength of Luther, the sincerity of Wesley, the zeal of Whitefield, the self-devotion of Howard, we but catch the single gleams of His radiance. His life was not the type of any one excellence, but the consummation of all. No mind has been large enough to comprehend its glorious contradictions--its clinging friendship and its sublime independence; its tender patriotism and humanitarian breadth; its passionate emotion and unruffled peace; its unapproachable majesty and childlike sweetness.
IV. WE HAVE NOT FOUND HIS EQUAL--CAN WE IMAGINE OR INVENT IT? Has this ever been done? The greatest poets and thinkers have striven to picture characters faultlessly ideal. Have they--Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton--done so? No. Why? Because the ideal of every man must be stained more or less with his own individuality, and therefore imperfection. Had the evangelists invented the character of Jesus, it must have been so in their case, too. Christ transcends the utmost capacity of the combined apostles. In the apocryphal gospels invention and forgery were at work--and with what result? The “Imitatio Christi” is a precious and profound work, yet even that realizes but one phase of the Redeemer’s holiness. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
The perfect character of Jesus Christ
The persons thus challenged would have been glad enough to accept the challenge had the least hope existed of their being able to convict of sin, or even of fault, one whom they so thoroughly hated. Surely in no respect were the aged Simeon’s words more true respecting our Lord than this: Christ’s moral and religious character is “a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel.”
1. In the first place, we may notice its gradual even growths. Like the gentle unfolding the bud or blossom of a tree, even in spite of obstacles, Jesus went on from day to day, and year to year, showing more and more of that inward perfection of heart and mind which won for Him the approbation first of His earthly guardians, then of His Heavenly Father, and, in the end, of those who condemned and executed Him. What, we ask, was the one quality which marks every period of His life, and which secured this marvellous agreement in His praise and favour? It was innocence--simple, guileless, childlike innocence. He is everywhere, and at all times the same, “in malice a child,” “the Lamb of God,” gentle, pure, and innocent. But with this innocence, this simplicity, what strength, what manliness, what courage are combined! In word and deed, in teaching and in conduct, the tenderest soul that ever drew the breath of heaven, the man whom children loved, and the common people delighted to listen to, and the sick welcomed, and publicans and sinners were attracted by; was also forward and energetic in action, unceasing in labour, inured to hardship, bold in declaring truth, uncompromising in speech, fearless in opposing wrong. How are we to account for this remarkable union of qualities which general experience has shown to be so rare that men had come to think it incredible? Next to this comes another and a deeper aspect of this part of His character on the side of religion. For
2. whereas in all ordinary cases repentance forms a great part of religion, Jesus owns to no sin, breathes no word of repentance, and on no occasion expresses, however faintly, the least consciousness of imperfection in His relations and behaviour towards God His Father. Advancing a step, we shall be able to observe how there is exhibited in the person and character, the works and teaching of Jesus Christ, a kind of universality, which connects Him with mankind generally. By race He is a Jew, reared up in the traditions and hopes of Israel, bred up from infancy to Jewish customs, steeped in the spirit of Hebrew literature; nevertheless, He does not reflect the peculiar dispositions of the Jew. But in Him there blend all the common traits of humanity. The Gentile finds his true ideal in Jesus Christ equally with the Jew. And, what is more, the men of every race and clime, and of every degree of culture and civilization not only may, but have regarded and do regard Him as their own, recognize Him as their brother, and follow Him as their guide. Nor ought we to forget the words which Christ Himself has spoken respecting His proper relation to mankind in general; words which, while they give emphasis to that aspect of His moral character and teaching which I have dwelt upon, do in effect state claims of the widest extent (see Joh_6:51; Joh_8:12; Joh_12:32; Joh_14:6; Joh_16:28; Joh_17:3;Mat_10:37; Mat_11:28). Now these sayings, with many others of like nature, have a two-fold bearing. In the first place, they assert claims so exalted, so imperial, so exacting, that nothing short of the most literal and entire correspondence, in fact, can be admitted in justification of their being laid down. Either they are simply, literally, exactly, and absolutely true, or they must be regarded as the ravings of a maniac or the blasphemies of an impostor. They can only be true on condition that the utterer is truly a Divine person. On the other hand, such sayings, being at the time of their utterance entirely novel in themselves and admitted to be hard to accept, must certainly have excited in the minds of all who heard them a keen curiosity respecting the private life and character of Jesus, both amongst His disciples and His opponents. And both these classes enjoyed abundant opportunities for scrutiny. What, then, is the result? All the watching of His adversaries can detect no flaw in His life or conversation. The banquet hall and the synagogue, the mountain top and the seashore, the market and the
Temple, are searched in vain for a just record against Him. On the contrary, the better He is known by His friends, the more highly is He appreciated. That familiarity which scorches and shrivels so many reputations in the estimate of those who are admitted to close intimacy left His untouched with damage. No little weaknesses took off the edge of His grand public discourses. No infirmities of temper lowered His just claims to men’s admiring homage. He shared human pain but not human impatience. A calm evenness of soul accompanied Him everywhere, the offspring not so much of self-restraint as of a perpetual sunshine beaming with love and devotion. Hardship fails to ruffle Him. The most factious opposition provokes Him indeed to a holy severity, but a severity entirely free from personal resentment or bitterness. The terrible knowledge that one of His own chosen companions is ready to betray Him haunts and oppresses His spirit, but He has no threatenings. Even the tortures of the cross extracted no complaints from those sacred lips, but only prayers for His murderers, and the cry of His extreme desolation is blended with a holy confidence and subsides into hopeful resignation. Looking back upon this poor outline of the character of Jesus Christ, we are entitled to ask of all who admit the facts, How do you account for such a phenomena? under what classification will you bring it? Is it of the earth, earthy? or is it superhuman, supernatural, heav
