The great law which Christ here lays down is that that which is historically true may be morally false; men may be genealogically akin, and spiritually alien; natural relation may be forfeited by moral apostasy.
I. Jesus Christ dispossesses men of pedigree and claim, and status and record, unless the men themselves are of the right bulk and colour and quality and force. The Abrahamic dignity is not superimposed, or handed down like an heirloom; every man must support his claim by his spirit and his action. If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham; but because ye do not the works of Abraham, ye have no right to use the holy man's name.
II. Jesus Christ showed the Jews, and therefore showed all men, what the test is by which a pure descent may be known. If God were your father, ye would love Me that is the test because ye would know Me; my disguise would not conceal Me, you would be moved by a strange feeling of kinship; you would say, Though we never saw this man before, He belongs to us and we belong to Him; in His voice is music, in His touch is resurrection; we will take up our abode with Him. If God were your father, you would rise above all local prejudice, and seize the essence of the truth; you would know the Divine through every disguise.
III. If, then, we are of God, and have the really godly spirit in us, wherever we find truth, or beauty, or the beginning of the best life, we shall say, Lo, God is here, and I knew it not; this heathen book is, in respect of all these deep, true, pure words, none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven. Here is a flower growing in the fissures of a rock; is it an orphan flower? is it a self-made flower? If it could come down from its rocky heights and walk into the well-cultured garden, might it not say, "We have all one father, and one gardener hath taken care of us every one? I am glad to have come down from my stony isolation, and I am thankful to be able to join the floral brotherhood." What if the garden brotherhood should say, "We do not know thee; we are of our father the gardener; who art thou? what is thy pedigree?" They would be foolish flowers, and not deserve to live another year. It is by the operation of this same law that we know brotherhood. Being of the same quality, we accost one another in the same language.
Parker, Christian Commonwealth,Feb. 17th, 1887.
References: John 8:42. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxi., No. 1257; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 313; Parker, Sermons in Union Chapel, Islington,p. 118; Ibid., Inner Life of Christ,vol. iii., p. 30 2 John 1:8 :43. F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of St. John,p. 240. John 8:44. E. Paxton Hood, Preacher's Lantern,vol. ii., p. 285.John 8:45. Homilist,vol. iii., p. 629.