I told you, and ye believed not. — Better, and ye believe not, as all the best MSS. Here, as in John 8:25, where a similar direct question was put to Him, the answer is indirect. It could not be otherwise. Their misconception of the Messianic work had made the very word Messiah an impossible one for Him to utter to them. To have said He was the Messiah would have been to sanction their thought of Him as a temporal prince; to have said that He was not would have been to contradict the essential truth. He refers them, then, to His earlier words and deeds in proof of what He was. To inquirers of simpler hearts, as the woman of Samaria and the man born blind, He had used the word Messiah. To them He had again and again told the same truth, though the actual word had never crossed His lips while speaking to them.
The works that I do in my Father’s name. — Comp. Note on John 5:36. This appeal to His works, and the assertion that they were done in His Father’s name, is itself an answer in word and in deed that He was the Messiah.