John 8:30 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Many believed on him. — Wonder has often been expressed at the want of apprehension spoken of in John 8:27. There is surely no less room for wonder in the faith spoken of here. Those who believe are of the rulers (“those Jews,” John 8:31). The words which they now heard (John 8:28-29) contain nothing of what we commonly call proof. They are an appeal to the future which should prove them true, and to His own consciousness of perfect obedience to the Father’s will, and of unbroken realisation of the Father’s presence. They are indeed, in part, words which men have since dwelt upon to prove that He who uttered them did not claim to be divine. It was not so with those who heard Him. They are watching for a technical assertion of His divinity, and do not hear it; but they are convinced by the power of His words that He is divine. (Comp. Note on John 7:31.) These scribes and Pharisees feel, as their officers felt before, that “Never man spake like this Man.” Where was priest or Rabbi who could appeal to the spotless purity of a life? There is the irresistible power of truth in the appeal which carries conviction to the heart. We have already found in the case of Nicodemus an example, probably not a solitary one, of a faith among the rulers which dared not confess itself. (See also John 12:42.)