Ye are of your father the devil. — “Ye” is emphatic. “Ye who have claimed Abraham and God as your father. Ye are of the father, but that father is the devil.” The possessive pronoun (your) is not expressed in the Greek, and the form of the sentence is one which would have required it if it were included in the sense. The father who has been referred to in John 8:38; John 8:41 is now definitely named. The relation between father and son is maintained, but the father of the thoughts and acts of those to whom He speaks was not God, not Abraham, but the devil.
And the lusts of your father ye will do. — Better, ye desire to do, ye will to do. The verb is not an auxiliary, as it appears to be in our version, but expresses the determination of the will. (Comp. Notes on John 5:40; John 7:17.)
He was a murderer from the beginning. — Comp. Wis. 2:23-24, “For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity. Nevertheless, through envy of the devil came death into the world, and they that do hold of his side do find it.” So St. Paul, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Romans 5:12). The Fall was the murder of the human race; and it is in reference to this, of which the fratricide in the first family was a signal result, that the Tempter is called a murderer from the beginning (see Note on John 1:1). “Cain was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.” (Comp. Notes on 1 John 3:8-12, where the thought is expanded.) The reference to the murderer is suggested here by the fact that the Jews had been seeking to kill our Lord (John 8:40). They are true to the nature which their father had from the beginning.
And abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. — Better, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. The word is not that which we have before had in the sense of “abide” (see Note on John 5:38), and the tense of the verb is present in meaning. The words do not refer to the fall of the devil, which is here implied but not stated, but to his constant character. He has no place in the sphere of the truth; it is not the region of his action and outer life; and the result of this is that there is no truth in the sphere of his thought and inner life. Had he been true, he would have come to stand in the light and life of truth.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. — This is in contrast to the work of Christ (John 8:28; John 8:40) and to the work of the Holy Spirit (Note on John 16:13.) The Holy Spirit will not speak of Himself; He came to speak the truth which He heard from God. The devil speaketh a lie (comp. Genesis 3), and this is of his own (see Note on Matthew 12:35).
For he is a liar, and the father of it. — Better, and the father of the liar. This is probably the meaning of the Greek, and it can only be expressed in English by the repetition of the substantive. The verse ends as it begins, by a reference to the Jews whom He is addressing. They were of the nature of him whose spiritual children they were. The murderous thoughts in their hearts, and their non-receptivity of truth, plainly indicated who their father was.
The reader will hardly, perhaps, need to be cautioned against the old heretical rendering of the first and last clauses of this verse, by “Ye are of the father of the devil... for he is a liar, and also his father.” Still, as this view has been revived in some quarters in our own day, one word of reminder that it is no less opposed to the context and the teaching of this Gospel than it is to the whole tenor of Biblical truth and of rational theology, may not be misplaced. On the personality of the devil, which, if plain words have any meaning, is here implied in the words of Christ, see Notes on Matthew 4.