Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 4:49 - 4:50
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_4:49-50. Then follows a still more urgent entreaty of the father’s love, tried by the answer of Jesus; the τὸ παιδίον μου , my child, being in keeping with the father’s tender affection. Comp. Mar_5:23.
Jesus rewards his confidence with the short answer, Go thy way, thy son liveth; thus announcing the deliverance from death accomplished at that very moment by an act of His will through miraculous power operating at a distance (not by magnetic healing power, against Olshausen, Krabbe, Kern, thus resorting to a sphere as foreign to the miracles of healing as it is inadequate by way of an explanation). As little can Christ’s word be regarded as a medical prognosticon (Paulus, comp. Ammon). No more is there any trace in the text of an effect resulting from faith in general, and the spiritual movement of the masses (Weizsäcker). According to the text, Jesus speaks from a conscious knowledge of the crisis of the sickness, effected that moment at a distance by Himself: “Thy son is not dead, but liveth!”
ἐπιστ . τῷ λόγῳ ] Thus he now overleaps the limit of faith which supposed Christ’s presence necessary to the working of the cure; he believed the word, i.e. had confidence in its realization.