‘If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God, hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is because you are not of God'.
So then He asked them why, if He was speaking the truth, they would not hear Him and believe Him. And His solution was that it was because they were ‘not of God'. For His life substantiated His teaching, and if they could not fault the one they should have accepted the other. But their response to His teaching brought out the truth about their own lives, for what He taught was the truth, and yet they rejected it. Whatever their claims might be, therefore, they were not of God, for any man who studied the teachings of Jesus, and then turned away from them, was demonstrating thereby his own sinfulness. And that was because if his heart had been right he would have had to respond.