EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
John 2:18. The disciples saw in Christ’s action the fulfilment of the old Scripture, the Jews an excuse for a further demand for a sign.
John 2:19. Destroy this temple, etc.—The reference is at first sight mysterious, especially when taken in connection with the Evangelist’s explanation in John 2:21. But the difficulty is, in part at least, cleared up when we remember that the actual temple which Jesus had just cleansed was the visible expression of the consecration of God’s ancient people to His service and worship, and of His dwelling with and in His people (Ezekiel 43:7). That ancient spiritual temple the Jews would destroy; but by His death and resurrection Jesus would found and raise, to be eternally enduring, His Church, which is indeed His mystical body. And it is this temple of which He speaks—His Church including that of patriarch and prophet—built now upon a foundation which cannot be moved (1 Peter 2:1-10; Matthew 22:2-14; Matthew 23:38). I will, etc. (John 10:17-18, etc.).—The Jews twisted this saying of our Lord, and accused Him of declaring that He would destroy the material temple. The utterance seems to have made a deep impression. It formed the basis of Christ’s accusation before Caiaphas (Matthew 26:61); and Stephen’s enemies accused him of repeating this saying (Acts 6:13-14). Thus the historical accuracy of the saying is established.
John 2:20. The temple was not then completed; but it had taken forty-six years to bring it to the point of completion at which it then stood. “Herod the Great began to restore the temple in B.C. 20 [Jos., B. J., i. 21
(16), i: comp. Antiq., xv. 11
(14), i.], and the design was completed by Herod Agrippa A.D. 64” (Westcott).
John 2:21. He spake, etc.—Not understood at first, the saying afterward became clear to the disciples (comp. John 12:16). He—ἐκεῖνος—is emphatic. The temple of His body.—I.e. “the temple defined to be His body” (Westcott) (1 Corinthians 6:19, etc.).
John 2:22. When therefore He was raised from the dead, etc.—Raised by the power of God (Galatians 1:1, etc.). Remembered in accordance with the promise afterward given (John 14:26). They believed the scripture, etc.—Usually this phrase refers to some particular passage. Doubtless here the reference is to those passages in the writings of psalmists and prophets which foretold Christ’s sufferings and death, the glory of the Church of the latter days, etc., which the disciples were “slow of heart to believe” before the Resurrection and Pentecost (Luke 24:25-27).
John 2:23. Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, etc.—The date of this passover is probably A.U.C. 781, i.e. A.D. 28. At the feast (ἐν τῷ πάσχα),—I.e. during the whole period of the feast of unleavened bread. Many believed on His name, etc.—Belief in His Messiahship is evidently intended; but the reference to “the signs which He did” shows that their “belief” was probably not of a deep abiding nature. It was a Jewish faith, and was founded on that which will strengthen true faith, but will not beget it. Their faith rested on the outer acts merely, and was thus imperfect, and perhaps in many cases evanescent. “The incidental notice of these signs (John 7:31; John 11:47, etc.) is an unquestionable proof that St. John does not aim at giving an exhaustive record of all he knew” (Westcott). See also Mark 3:10, etc.
John 2:24. He knew.—He is emphatic. He Himself knew, etc. He did not commit (ἐπίστευεν, believe). “As they did not give themselves morally to Him, He did not give Himself morally to them” (Luthardt). He knew all, etc. As He read the heart of Nicodemus, so He read the hearts of these people.
John 2:25. And because He needed not, etc.—He did not require that men should bring Him testimonials of character, as it were, from their fellows before He would commit Himself to them. He Himself knew what was in man. He is, indeed, the searcher of hearts, etc. (Jeremiah 17:10, etc.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— John 2:18-25
The sign Christ gave of His authority in cleansing the temple.—The Jewish leaders could not bring any accusation against Christ for His zeal in vindicating the honour of His Father’s house. In their secret hearts they recognised the necessity for such an action, and they were no doubt well aware that the great body of the people would be in sympathy with Christ’s action. But unmoved themselves by the clear expression of divine power and activity manifested in the action of Jesus, they fell back on the device, so often resorted to by them, to demand outward signs and miracles in proof of Christ’s divine authority—signs which, when given, only made their unbelief and hatred more conspicuous. Christ gave them an answer, although not that which they asked for. He well knew that no mere outward signs could remove unbelief, that miracle would be demanded to establish miracle, and that even the signs He wrought would be twisted, as they were afterward, to His prejudice by His enemies. But He gave a sign which would not only, when it occurred, vindicate His action in the eyes of all unprejudiced men, but would tend to strengthen the faith of His disciples. “Destroy this temple,” He said, “and in three days I will raise it again.” Consider:—
I. The preparation for the sign.—“Destroy this temple.” The Evangelist adds the explanation, “He spake of the temple of His body.” As we read these words there rises before us the view of the Redeemer with thorny crown on His head, tottering beneath the weight of His cross. We see Him hanging on that cross—the nails lacerating His hands and feet, the thorny crown pressed on His lacerated brow. And as we look at the fainting, bleeding form we seem to hear Him saying, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow.” And yet again, as we hear the last voice, “It is finished,” and see the Roman soldier thrust his spear into the side of the Redeemer, we realise that the words “Destroy this temple” were a prophecy of what was to come to pass.
II. The sign itself is the Resurrection.—“In three days I will raise it up.” This was the sign above all signs that testified to Christ’s divine Sonship, and His right to cleanse His Father’s house from defilement. And doubtless the Saviour signified by some gesture that He intended to refer this statement primarily to Himself. And it is noteworthy that He here claims power Himself to rise from the dead; whilst in various passages of the New Testament His rising is ascribed to the Father (Romans 4:24; Romans 6:4; 1 Corinthians 15:15; 1 Peter 1:21, etc., etc.). But it must be remembered that “the receptivity of Jesus in the act of His resurrection is not mere passivity” (Godet). Jesus was “one with the Father”; and as it was by an act of His will that He submitted to the temple of His body being left in a measure to the power of the destroyer, so it was in accordance with His will and His Father’s will that His body was raised again on the third day. This is plainly shown in His own words, “I lay down My life, that I might take it again.… I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:17-18). This sign was the seal of His authority, and would carry conviction to all believing hearts. It is the centre of our Christian faith. And from the beginning, and in all ages since, the Church has proclaimed “Jesus and the Resurrection” (Acts 17:18).
III. The reception of the proffered sign by those who heard it.—
1. The Jews replied in wonder and scorn, “Forty and six years,” etc. Utterly unspiritual, they applied our Lord’s words to the material temple alone, which Jesus had just cleansed. More than that, they wilfully misunderstood His words to mean that He Himself would destroy the temple. The saying seems to have made a deep impression on all who heard it; and it was made use of in its perverted form by the false witnesses, who brought lying accusations against our Lord and the protomartyr of His Church (Matthew 26:61; Acts 6:14).
2. The disciples could not understand the full import of Christ’s words at the first. But they also treasured them up in their hearts, not like the Jewish rulers, but believingly. And then after the Resurrection the saying became more clear.
IV. The deeper meaning of the sign.—
1. Not only is the body of the individual Christian likened to a temple, but the whole Church of Christ is His spiritual body (Ephesians 1:23). In Him “all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19-22).
2. And in this view our Lord might well include even the material temple in this “dark” saying. For was it not simply the symbol and representative of the whole nation, which was to be holiness to the Lord?
3. This old order the Jews did destroy when they rejected Jesus. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:38).
4. But the ancient Church of God was not utterly destroyed (Romans 11:26). It was merged in a new and better building, founded on the man Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:22), a spiritual temple in which men should worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:20-24).
John 2:19. “Destroy this temple.”—Amid the intellectual strife of this age we often hear voices crying out, “Destroy this temple.” These voices sadden us, make us indignant, wound us. But it is in presence of such attacks—light, frivolous, learned, passionate, or scornful—that we must hear the voice of Jesus saying, “I will raise up this temple in three days.”
I. Consider first that voice which is the most coarse and clamorous—that of popular materialism.—
1. The dominating passion of the hour may be called enjoyment. This feverish passion menaces both social and moral order. The thirst for riches, luxury, honour, devours this generation. Enjoy quickly, without dignity, without labour, without a care of honour or duty, in a merely individual and egoistic fashion—this seems to many the unique reality. And if there is no longer any moral sphere, no heaven, no God, why speak of duty, of adoration, of sacrifice, etc.? These things are chimerical—a faded superstition. Therefore what need of that temple which is the embodiment of such ideas? “Destroy it,” etc.
2. Unhappy men, take heed! Lay not your sacrilegious hands upon this temple. Who are you? Have you never loved, suffered, wept? Have you not had fathers, mothers, children? Does no voice speak to you when you consider your misery and the infinite greatness of the Highest? Have you never felt the holy tremblings of duty, sacrifice, etc., within you? If in some fatal day through the violence of passion this temple of Christ’s gospel should be for the moment overturned, it will be found of necessity that it should be raised up. For humanity, enlightened and sanctified by Jesus, cannot forsake this temple. Humanity must love, believe, pray, hope. This temple, for a moment overturned, will rise again and issue from the needs of the spirit of religion.
II. The second voice is that of positivism.—
1. It loathes and is ashamed of the gross materialism just described. It desires that humanity should seek after truth, disinterestedly and nobly. But away with illusions! Let men seek for what is real and positive. And what is this? That which is in accordance with our immediate experience, and of which we can have direct experimental proof. Beyond this is the region of dreams; the pretended higher realities are inaccessible. Thus humanity in its infancy has passed through the religious period; in its adolescence through the philosophic; in its virile age it has accepted positivist science. What need now then of earlier dreams—a higher world, prayer, etc.? “Destroy this temple.”
2. In the name of positive science itself we protest against such desolating conclusions. Those higher instincts prove their existence within us, and obtrude themselves with authority on our consciousness. They are inherent in our nature, etc. I must love, believe, pray, raise myself nearer God, as much as I need to breathe, etc. By all means marshal your facts. Show us scientifically how the sap flows in the tree to nourish it, how the earth obeys the law of gravitation in its course round the sun, etc. These facts are real, positive. But that there is a sap which nourishes my spiritual life, that my heart gravitates toward God, that my whole being, drawn by some superior force, rises, is attracted (like the tides), toward heaven, are also facts that are positive and indisputable, as much as the realities of the material cosmos. To deny these moral facts is to mutilate and violate our humanity. And when you cry, “Leave those chimeras,” humanity will not listen. Its greatness, its true joy, its power, lies just in this spiritual, ideal world which you would deny. Humanity demands that the supreme needs of the soul should be satisfied—men will pray, etc.—and in spite of your attempts will raise again the temple you think you have destroyed.
III. The third voice is that of religious idealism and æstheticism.—
1. Those who uphold it agree in condemning this science misnamed positive, which misapprehends the ideal side of humanity. The world of the ideal is the true world, in which to live and dream with the divine Plato. And among those who exercise the highest influence here must be placed first of all the tender, divine dreamer Jesus, who has seized the imaginations of men in all ages and led them into the joy of the infinite. But we must stop here. No need to speak of conscience, duty, sin, redemption, etc. Religion is a grand dream—the supreme charm. Poesy and art will suffice to express it. Therefore this old sanctuary, with its questions of sin, sacrifice, redemption, etc., what need for it? “Destroy it.”
2. Beware of this religious æstheticism, which flatters the imagination and kills the conscience. All the tragic side of human existence in it is denied and scorned. But those great external realities, sin, repentance, sacrifice, redemption, correspond with realities within. History confirms this. What is the central fact of all ages and religions? Sacrifice. This is so because man feels himself miserable, guilty before God, and that he needs reconciliation. From all ages rises the cry, “O wretched man,” etc. (Romans 7:24). Humanity needs a religion of mercy and grace; and however often that may seem destroyed, it will rise again.—From Ariste Viguié.
John 2:23-25. Jesus the searcher of hearts.—Our Lord’s cold reception by the Jewish rulers led Him to confine His labours more to the city, among the general population and the many strangers gathered together during the passovertide. He did not compel men to accept him. He sought to win them to His kingdom through faith and love. Therefore, when rejected of the rulers, He taught those who listened to Him, and wrought miracles of beneficence.
I. The consequence of His activity.—
1. “Many believed in His name, when they saw the miracles which He did.” Not only had His significant action in the temple drawn upon Him the gaze of many, but also the miracles, here unrecorded, which He did among the people.
2. And it must be noticed that Jesus here did not shun publicity. He must be known for men’s salvation; and when He is made known it must be as He who is able to save to the uttermost, because the Sent of God. And in consequence of His activity many believed on Him.
II. His attitude toward those who thus believed on Him.—
1. “He did not commit Himself unto them,” or He did not believe in their belief, had no faith (ἐπίστευεν) in their faith. Their faith, such as it was, was evoked by the outward signs, the miracles Jesus did.
2. But a faith founded on such external foundation is apt to be unstable and fleeting. The sign would require to be constantly repeated if the faith were to continue. But constantly repeated miracles would cease to be wonderful. They might be explained away or misinterpreted. Such a faith cannot claim affinity with that trust and confidence which Jesus requires of His true disciples.
III. The reason why our Lord adopted this attitude.—
1. “He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man,” etc. This power had already been shown in the case of Nathanael, and startling instances of it are given in John’s Gospel. Christ knows and reads the human heart.
2. How little we know of our own hearts—how difficult even for the most skilled observer of the phenomena of the intellectual and moral being to disentangle the various twisted threads of motive, emotion, feeling, etc.
3. But Jesus knows all—every stream of influence, every inception of thought or action, every spring of feeling and emotion, even when these are unperceived by men themselves. It could not be otherwise with Him of whom it is said, “All things were made by Him” (John 1:3). He therefore can detect thought and motive in their most secret recesses. Thus He saw through the shallowness of those men’s faith.
IV. Let us rejoice that Jesus thus knows men.—
1. Because he is the loving, sympathising Saviour, and is therefore able and willing to winnow the false from the true in us—a nominal from a real faith. Our only security, indeed, is that He does know us.
2. He knows full well each one of us—our capacities as well as our weaknesses—and how we can be best fitted for His kingdom.
3. Therefore our highest wisdom, remembering that He knows us altogether, is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and can send us help in time of need, is to yield ourselves to Him submissively, saying, “Lord, thou knowest all things”; therefore work in us such faith that of us Thou mayest say, They are Mine: for “I know My sheep, and am known of Mine” (John 10:14).
HOMILETIC NOTES
John 2:18. The folly of unbelief.—The same psalm which declared the moving cause of Christ’s action in the temple contains also these words: “Because for thy sake I have borne reproach,” etc. (Psalms 69:7-10).
1. That which was to the disciples for edification became a stumbling-block to the degenerate Jews. They assailed Jesus with the question, “What sign?” etc. Where is Thy authority? Thou art not a priest, temple guard, member of the Sanhedrin; and wilt Thou cleanse God’s holy threshing-floors? (Luke 3:17). Dost Thou claim them as Thy Father’s possession?
2. How childish is this play of these opponents! how deceitful their actions! Their appearance of piety was simply piety in appearance! Were not they the sinners against the sanctuary?
3. Did not an action like that of the cleansing of the temple carry its authorisation within itself? Does the unfruitful fig-tree ask of the lightning-flash that lays it low, What doest thou? Does the thief who has been caught ask the officer, What right have you to seize me? Did the Gadarenes, as they saw their swine (possessed by them in opposition to the law) precipitated into the lake, ask for damages? Was not the cleansing of the temple a witness to the spirit and power of our Lord, a proof of His dignity, that He was the Son of God, the inheritor of Israel?
4. The more powerfully Jesus preached, and not as the scribes, the more angrily did those very scribes ask, “By what authority?” etc. The more their hearts were filled with envy and ambition, sins from which sprang the desecration of the temple, the carelessness of the people, the corruption of public affairs, the more jealously and with more pettiness did they lay stress on outward consideration—their authority according to the letter.—Abridged from Kögel.
John 2:19. The foundation of the spirtual temple of God.—
1. The temple was a house built of stone; but in the Lord was the fulness of the Godhead. The Jewish temple was a shadow; the Lord, the Spirit, substance, fulfilment. The temple was the place for typical offerings only; the Lord was sanctuary, offering, and high priest in one. On another occasion He could say of Himself: Here is One who is greater than the temple—here is One who is Lord also of the Sabbath day.
2. Jesus saw from the hate in their eyes, etc., that His enemies would proceed from the profanation, at present stayed, of the outward sanctuary to an open act of violence against the Lord and heir—the Messiah.
3. But the more they prided themselves on the beauty and glory of the sanctuary which required forty-six years to build, the more they would harden themselves against the preaching of repentance. For sin is blind; therefore they did not see the judgment drawing near. Sin is deaf; therefore they did not hear the warning voice of God’s Son. The weight of guilt hastens the fall which precipitates into the abyss. Those who scorn the reformer must face the judge. “Fill up the measure of your fathers”; “destroy this temple”: just as at the last that terrible order was given to Judas, “What thou doest, do quickly.”—Idem.
John 2:22. The resurrection is the sign which includes all verification and authorisation.—Jesus answered this question as to His authority for cleansing the temple, as once when the Pharisees asked Him, in spite of all His miracles, for a sign from heaven. He would point them to none but that of the prophet Jonah—to the resurrection of the Son of man from the grave.—Idem.
John 2:23. Superficial faith.—The original words imply that their faith was dependent upon the signs which they gazed upon, without entering into their deeper meaning. It was the impulsive response of the moment, not based upon a previous preparation, nor resulting in a present deep conviction. It came far short of the faith of the disciples, who passed from a true knowledge of Moses and the prophets to a true knowledge of Christ without a sign; but it came far above the disbelief of scribes and Pharisees, who after a sign rejected Him. It was not the prepared good ground bringing forth abundantly; but neither was it the hardened wayside, which did not receive seed at all.
John 2:24. The deeper faith, the fuller blessing.—But beneath this shallow surface there is the unbroken ledge of rock. They are easily moved just because they are not deeply moved. The eye which looked at, looked into, others (John 1:47, etc.), saw to the very depth of their hearts too, and knew all. It saw in that depth that the true inner man did not believe, did not commit itself to Him; it found not the spiritual receptivity, and there could not therefore be the spiritual revelation. He on His part did not commit Himself unto them (John 8:31).—Archdeacon H. W. Watkins, M.A.