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Joh_3:19. The ἤδη κέκριται is now more minutely set forth, and this as to its moral character, as rejection of the light, i.e. of God’s saving truth,—the possessor and bringer in of which was Christ, who had come into the world,—and as love of darkness. “But herein consists the condemnation (as an inner moral fact which, according to Joh_3:18, had already occurred), that,” etc. ἡ κρίσις is the judgment in question, to be understood here also, agreeably to the whole connection, of condemnatory judgment. But in αὕτη … ὅτι (comp. 1Jn_5:11) we have not the reason (Chrysostom and his followers), but the characteristic nature of the judgment stated.
ὅτι τὸ φῶς , etc., καὶ ἠγάπησαν ] The first clause is not expressed in the dependent form ( ὅτι ὅτε τὸ φῶς , etc., or with Gen. abs.), but as an independent statement, in order to give emphatic prominence to the contrast setting forth the guilt. See Kühner, II. 416; Winer, p. 585 [E. T. pp. 785–6].
ἠγάπησαν ] after it had come. Jesus could now thus speak already from experience regarding His relations to mankind as a whole; the Aor. does not presuppose the consciousness of a later time. See Joh_2:23-24. For the rest, ἠγάπ . is put first with tragic emphasis, which object is also served by the simple καί (not and yet). The expression itself: they loved the darkness rather (potius, not magis, comp. Joh_12:43; 2Ti_3:4) than the light,
μᾶλλον belonging not to the verb, but to the noun, and ἤ comparing the two conceptions (Ellendt, Lex. Soph. II. p. 51; Bäuml. Partik. p. 136),—is a mournful meiosis; for they did not love the light at all, but hated it, Joh_3:20. The ground of this hatred, however, does not lie (comp. Joh_3:6; Joh_1:12) in a metaphysical opposition of principles (Baur, Hilgenfeld, Colani), but in the light-shunning demoralization into which men had sunk through their own free act (for they might also have done ἀλήθεια , Joh_3:21). The source of unbelief is immorality.
ἦν γὰρ αὐτῶν , κ . τ . λ .] The reason why “they loved the darkness rather,” etc. (see on Joh_1:5), was their immoral manner of life, in consequence of which they must shun the light, nay, even hate it (Joh_3:20). We may observe the growing emphasis from αὐτῶν onwards to πονηρά , for the works which they (in opposition to the individual lovers of the light) did were evil; which πονηρά does not in popular usage denote a higher degree of evil than φαῦλα , Joh_3:20 (Bengel), but answers to this as evil does to bad (worthless); Fritzsche ad Rom. p. 297. Comp. Joh_5:29; Rom_9:11; 2Co_5:10; Jam_3:16; φαῦλα ἔργα in Plat. Crat. p. 429 A.; 3Ma_3:22.