And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said [or 'hath said' eireeke (G4483 )] unto me, so I speak. See the notes at John 8:28; John 8:38; John 8:47; and similar sayings, emphatically teaching what is here expressed in such terms of majestic dignity.
Remarks:
(1) Once and again have we been led to consider what portion of this wonderful History most transcends the powers of human invention. And ever as we seem to have found it, some other portion rises to view and claims the preference. But certainly, of the present section it may fearlessly be said that, to be written, it, at least, must of necessity first have been real. For who, sitting down to frame such a Life-or what is much the same in relation to powers of invention, to construct it out of a few fragments of fact-would have thought of meeting the desire of those Greeks to see Jesus with such an answer, taking no direct notice of it, but carrying His hearers into the future glorious issues of His death, yet couching even this in such enigmatic terms as to be scarcely half intelligible to the best instructed of His own disciples? Or, if we are to suppose this possible, who would think of interrupting this strain by a sudden inward agitation of the Speaker arising from no outward cause, but the pure result of what was passing in His own mind; and not only so, but of His telling His uninstructed and prejudiced audience that His soul was then agitated, and, amidst conflicting emotions, that He was at a loss what to say; uttering an audible prayer to be saved from His dread approaching "hour," but yet adding that to go through with that hour was just what He had come to it for? Who would have ever put so apparently damaging a thing down in a work which he expected to make way for itself by nothing but its naked truth? And then, after the prayer for glorification, with the immediate answer to it, and the explanation of that answer-as if relieved in proportion to the previous sinking-who could have thrown such gleams of exalted, sublime transport into the utterances that follow, and on which only the subsequent history of Christendom has set the seal of full truth? And let it be borne in mind, that if the truth of the History here is thus self-attested, it is the History precisely as it stands; not 'the substance' or 'spirit of it'-as some now talk-but this Evangelical Record, just as it here stands; because entire it must stand entire, or fall entire.
(2) On the bearing of this agitation of the Redeemer's spirit in the prospect of His "hour," of His prayer for deliverance from it, and yet His submission to it, upon the penal character of His sufferings and death, we need but refer the reader to the remarks on that feature of His Agony in the Garden-of which this scene was a kind of momentary anticipation. See the notes at Luke 22:39-46.
(3) How affecting is the intimation that, just after the utterance of one of the most solemn and compassionate warnings-holding out, almost for the last time, in that spot at least, the sceptre of mercy, but at the same time the danger of closing their eyes upon the Light yet shining on them-He "departed, and did hide himself from them!" What must have been the exasperation of His audience to render that necessary. The Evangelist himself seems saddened at the thought of it, and can find relief under it for himself and his believing readers only in the judicial blindness and hardness which they had been long before taught by prophecy to expect. Nor are those who, in analogous circumstances, have to hold up in vain the glory of Christ, and all day long to stretch out their hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people, precluded from finding the same sad relief; but on the contrary, with their adorable Master, they may confidently say to them that believe not-when conscious that they are pure from the blood of all men, having not shunned to declare unto them all the counsel of God - "But I said unto you that ye have even seen Him, and believe not: All that the Father giveth Him shall come to Him, and him that cometh to Him He will in no wise cast out."
(4) Though a timid policy on the part of real believers is often over-ruled to the getting in of some faint dissent and some feeble protest against extreme measures on the part of those enemies of it to whose society they still adhere-as in the case of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea-that timid policy itself is highly offensive to God, and injurious to their own spiritual growth, springing as it does from a greater concern to stand well with men than with God.
(5) The eternal condition of all who have heard the Gospel, whatever other elements may be found to affect it, will be found essentially to turn on the state of their minds and hearts toward Christ-in the way either of cordial subjection to Him or of disobedient rejection of Him. "He that is not with Me is against Me," will be the spirit of the decisions of "That Day" on all that have been brought within the pale of the Gospel.