John 5:38 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Abiding in you. — This striking thought of the word taking up its abode in the mind, and forming the mind in which it dwells, meets us only in St. John. (Comp. John 15:7; 1 John 2:14; 1 John 2:24; 1 John 3:9; 1 John 3:17; and Note on John 6:36.) They had, indeed, the word of God, but they had it not as a power ever living in them. They locked it up with sacred care in ark and synagogue, but it found no home in their inmost life, and had no real power on their practice. They could take it up and put it down. It was something outside themselves. Had it been in them, it would have produced in them a moral consciousness, which would have accepted, as of the same nature with itself, every fuller revelation from God. Their own spirits, moulded by the word of God dwelling in them, would have received the Word of God now among them. (Comp. Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word.) The fact that they believed not Him whom God sent (not “hath sent”) was itself the proof that they had not the abiding word.