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17 because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also, that God was his 19 Father, making himself equal with God. Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can

superstitious, than in their observance of the Sabbath. Jesus, with the freedom of a reformer, and the authority of God, set at nought their fanatical observances, both in his doctrines and practices, being himself "Lord of the Sabbath."

17. My Father worketh, &c. Or, according to Norton, "My Father has been working hitherto as I am working. I am executing the works of God, to whom my relation is like that of a son to a father; and as the immediate works of God are not suspended in a regard to the rest of the Sabbath, neither is there reason that mine should be. The ultimate object of these words was to affirm, in a manner very striking, at once from its indirectness and its brevity, that he was acting as a minister of God, with his full approbation and authority."

18. Sought the more to kill him. The influence of bigotry and hypocrisy is illustrated in the furious zeal, with which the Jews contended for the outward institutions of religion, at the very moment they were ready to break every moral law of humanity and Heaven, and murder the Son of God.-Not only had broken the Sabbath, but said, &c. A new matter of anger and accusation had now sprung up. Besides violating the Sabbath, Jesus had called God his Father in a peculiar sense, and placed himself on a level or equality with God, as they understood his words; and they believed him, therefore, guilty of impiety.-Making himself equal with God. More correctly, according to Archbishop Newcome, like God. This was not the mean

ing of Jesus, or the opinion of the evangelist, but the perversion of the Jews. Our Lord placed himself on an equality with God, not as to his nature, which is the doctrine maintained by Trinitarians, but simply as to his works on the Sabbath day. He implied, "that he was no more bound by a regard to the law of the Sabbath, than God, by whose authority he acted." Nor, indeed, was it an assumed equality of nature with the Deity, of which the Jews accused Jesus, but merely of acting, as with the authority, and in the place of God. It can easily be imagined, with what horror they would have stood aghast, and how instantly they would have fallen upon and killed one, who claimed that he was himself God, as many theologians here suppose Jesus to do, when we consider how tenacious the Jews were of the strict unity of the Deity. Lightfoot, though a believer in the Trinity, has confessed that "they deny with obstinacy the Godhead of the Messiah; that they fear, if they should acknowledge the Messiah to be God, they should acknowledge more Gods than one; that they, therefore, every day, repeated in the recital of their phylacteries, 'Hear, O Israel, The Lord thy God is one Lord;' and that they are ignorant of and blind to the great mystery of the Trinity."

19. Here Jesus begins, what Milman calls, his second defence, not only in justification of what he had done on the Sabbath, but of the language he had used respecting God, as his Father, and his working the works of the Almighty. - Verily, verily. A solemn affirmation. - The

do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For 20the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and 21 quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man; but hath committed all judg- 22 ment unto the Son: that all men should honor the Son, even as 23

Son can do nothing of himself. To show the Jews that he did not, as they represented, put himself on an equality with God, as to his nature, or his inherent power, he here emphatically says, that of himself he could do nothing; that he derived all his miraculous power and divine authority from the Father, and that his works were to be referred to God for their justification. These also doeth the Son likewise. A general statement, to describe the resemblance of the Son's works to those of the Father.

20. For the Father loveth the Son, &c. Implying, that the love of God for his Son caused him to be endowed with miraculous power. It was unison of affection, not identity of nature, that bound them together. All things. A general expression, to be limited by the connexion in which it stands. Mark xiii. 32, and like passages, preclude the literal acceptation of such phrases as the present one. Greater works than these. Chap. i. 50, xiv. 12. What these greater works were, is an unsettled question. Some suppose them to be his miracles of raising the dead to life; or, that he alludes to his own resurrection and ascension; but others, with more reason, understand these greater works to be spiritual ones, ver. 21, 25, the calling of the dead to life, and, ver. 22, 27, the authority of establishing the laws and sanctions of the new dispensation, both here and hereafter. This was of more consequence than to work miracles.

- That ye may marvel. Or, to your astonishment. It is one of the objects of the miracles and declarations of Christ, to appeal to man's marvellousness, and to open in his insensible, earthly breast, the fountain of spiritual wonder and awe. When thus quickened, he is prepared to receive more mature ideas; he feels that he is a living soul; that Jesus is his Saviour from sin, man his brother, God his Father, and heaven his home.

21. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, &c. Norton paraphrases this verse as follows: "The Father raises the dead to a new and happy state of being; but in this work he has appointed the Son as his minister, who, by his religion, affords the means of securing this blessedness,. which will be conferred on all his followers without exception, as if by his act and will." The language of Jesus in this passage is very obscure, and has given rise to various interpretations. There is, in some clauses, a mingling of literal and figurative senses. But the general strain appears to be this: that as the Father possessed the inherent power of literally giving life, or of renovating mankind, and introducing them into that spiritual life or blessedness, which, commencing here, would not be interrupted by death, but continue hereafter; so the Son had received authority in himself to exercise the same godlike office.

22. But hath committed all judg ment unto the Son. So, likewise, in respect to the moral laws and sanc

they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth 24 not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; 25 but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you,

tions, Jesus Christ appeared as the Minister and Representative of Heaven, and revealed those principles of God's government, by which human conduct and character would be tried now and evermore. Hence the Father is represented as no longer judging mankind, but as having intrusted this prerogative to the Son, because his religion would be the standard of judgment. Comp. ver. 45, where the Father is represented, as still the ultimate Judge, and Christ and Moses in the light of witnesses before his tribunal; and, chap. xii. 47, 48, where our Lord's word or doctrine is represented as condemning, at the final consummation, those who rejected him.

23. That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. It is not to be forgotten, that the discourse upon which we are now engaged, is a vindication, against Jewish calumnies, of our Saviour's divine authority, not of his divine nature. The latter point did not come in the least into debate, and could not come into debate with the Jews, who held the most rigid belief of the absolute unity of God. But the question of Jesus' divine authority led him to remark, that the Son should be honored as is the Father; not meaning, of course, that there should be a literal equality of honor,- for as does not necessarily mean equal, but like, or similar, Col. iii. 13; Heb. xi. 12, but that the ambassador should be honored as is the king, by whom he is commissioned. Haynes forcibly presents the unreasonableness of the hypothesis, that Jesus here claims equal honors with the Father; "as if

a Son; a prophet; a person sent from God; a worshipper of God; obedient to the laws of God; who preached those laws; submitted his will to the will of God; owned his Father to be his and our only true God; died for his religion and the cause of God; was raised from the dead by God; sits on God's right hand; intercedes with God, could possibly be conceived to expect his disciples should honor him with the very same divine honors, as they offered, by his command and example, to his God and their God." He that honoreth not the Son, &c. By dishonoring the Son, the Jews set at nought the authority of him, by whom he was commissioned; in like manner as disrespect, shown to a foreign minister, is regarded as an insult to his sovereign, in whose name he acts.

24. Hath everlasting life, i. e. everlasting happiness or blessedness, for such is the idea generally conveyed by this phrase in the New Testament.

·Shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. This language is evidently figurative. As death is accounted the greatest punishment, and the greatest natural evil, of the present state, it is often used to signify condemnation and misery, as in the present instance, where it is contrasted with life or happiness, and the divine favor. Those who heard the doctrine of Christ, and believed on the Father that sent him, were delivered, not indeed from physical death, but from all that made physical death dreadful. Their eternal life was already begun; they would never die, chap. vi. 50, i. e. the sting was taken from death; the

The hour is coming, and voice of the Son of God:

now is, when the dead shall hear the and they that hear shall live. For as 26

the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to

mere disrobing of the spirit's garment of mortality, would cast scarcely a momentary shadow over the bright and boundless prospects of the virtuous soul. Others think that reference is made to those persons, who were raised from the dead by Jesus Christ, as Lazarus and others; in the performance of which wonderful works, he showed a power and authority emblematical of his raising men up to eternal life hereafter.

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25. The hour is coming, and now is. Chap. iv. 23. This phrase indicates that Jesus was speaking of something present, as well as future. When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. As death is terrible to man in his sins, "for the sting of death is sin," and as Jesus came to save him from that state, it is forcibly said, that he would arouse the dead to life; or, to adopt the language of Norton, "that those who lay exposed to death, with all its fearful consequences, the dead,' as they are figuratively called, would hear his voice, and that those who listened to it would be delivered from death as an evil, and have only to look forward to life and blessedness." -Our Lord appears not to make much account of death, as death, as the mere ceasing to breathe, as the dissolution of the body, but places the greatest emphasis upon that moral evil, which does more than any thing else to invest death with terrible associations to mankind, and which, therefore, he seems sometimes to call by the term death, as if it covered the whole idea of it. As the close of man's earthly probation, as the change of his relations, privileges, and opportunities, Jesus regarded death as of solemn moment; but the difficulty of interpreting much of his language

on the future resurrection and judgment, may be removed by recollecting, that he viewed the passage from time to eternity, only as a circumstance, a sleep between to-day and to-morrow, John xi. 11, a stage in existence, a ripple in the stream of unending being, while the great boundaries of good and evil, vice and virtue, in human character, continued unaltered.

26. So hath he given to the Son to have life, &c. Or, "as the Father is the source of life, so has he granted to the Son also to be the source of life." So explicit is the statement that the Son possesses no innate unborrowed being, but only that life which God bestowed upon him. Or, to take life in the sense of life-giving power, as the Father possesses this power, originally, so he has delegated it to his Son, for the salvation of mankind; he has made him to be a fountain of truth, love, and spiritual life, to all who come to him in faith.

-In passages like this, while all commentators are ready to allow the subordination of Christ to the Father, because it is declared in the clearest language, many, nevertheless, contend that this subordination is only official; that, in the office of Messiah, our Lord was acting under the direction of the Father, but was, at the same time, equal to the Father in his original nature and all his attributes. But, to use the words of another, this is cutting the knot which cannot be untied. For it is wholly an assumed principle, not declared in any passage of Scripture, or capable of fair inference, that Jesus possessed this twofold, or rather threefold, being – as man, subject to temptation and pain; as the Messiah, sent by the Father to save the world; and as God,

27 have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute 28 judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at

this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves 29 shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, 30 unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of mine own self do nothing as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath

the Infinite and Almighty Being. If the statement of such a view be not its own refutation, it is in vain to argue the matter.

27. Hath given him authority to execute judgment. Or, to execute the office of judging; or, in a more general sense, that of lawgiver or ruler. Because he is the Son of man. Or, THE MAN, the Messiah, as some construe it, referring to the great expected One; but others view it as containing an allusion to the fitness of our Lord being judge, since he was one of the human family, and could sympathize with their weaknesses. "There is something indescribably affecting in the disclosure which is thus made of the tenderness of our heavenly Father. Let, then, the timid and desponding disciple be comforted and at peace. Let the tempted and tried, the sorrowing and fearful, give way to no despair. For it is to him who bore our infirmities, and carried our sorrows, that judgment has been committed.". WARE.

28, 29. In the graves, i. e. the dead. There is no passage in the Bible where this phrase is used in that figurative sense which some claim for

it, as signifying the graves of sin, the darkness of ignorance and superstition. The object of our Saviour, in these verses, seems to be, to show the dignity of his office, and claim for it the reverence of the Jews, by declaring, in the most solemn manner, that men would be judged by the laws and sanctions of his re

ligion, even in the future and eternal world; the good being rewarded, and the wicked punished. To give greater vivacity and force to his language, he represents himself as standing over the graves of buried generations, and calling, with a mighty voice, upon the dead, and summoning them to his judgmentseat, there to receive blessedness or punishment, according as they had deserved in the present life. "They shall be judged by this standard, (my religion,) as if they were called from their sepulchres by my voice, to be judged in person by me." For, "it is a common figure in the New Testament to speak of Christ personally, when his religion, under some one of its aspects, effects, or relations, is intended." Col. ii. 6, 7; Eph. iv. 20, 21; Phil. iii. 8.-Resurrection of damnation. Or, condemnation. This is said as if, perhaps, to controvert the Pharisees, who held that the resurrection pertained only to the just, and that the wicked were excluded from it.

30. I can of mine own self do nothing. Throughout this discourse, Jesus constantly speaks of his derived nature, life, and authority, thus refuting the idea of his being himself God. My judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, &c. i. e. My motives are disinterested, and my judgment is therefore conformable to the justice of that Being, whose will I perform.

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