Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
'We now come,' says Olshausen admirably, 'to that portion of the Evangelical History which we may with propriety call its Holy of Holies. Our Evangelist, like a consecrated priest, alone opens up to us the view into this sanctuary. It is the record of the last moments spent by the Lord in the midst of His disciples before His passion, when words full of heavenly thought flowed from His sacred lips. All that His heart, glowing with love, had still to say to His friends, was compressed into this short season. At first the contact took the form of conversation; sitting at table, they talked familiarly together. But when the repast was finished, the language of Christ assumed a loftier strain; the disciples, assembled around their Master, listened to the words of life, and seldom spoke a word. At length in the Redeemer's sublime intercessory prayer, His full soul was poured forth in express petitions to His heavenly Father on behalf of those who were His own. It is a peculiarity of these last chapters, that they treat almost exclusively of the most profound relations-as that of the Son to the Father, and of both to the Spirit; that of Christ to the Church, of the Church to the world, and so forth. Moreover, a considerable portion of these sublime communications surpassed the point of view to which the disciples had at the time attained: hence, the Redeemer frequently repeats the same sentiments in order to impress them more deeply upon their minds, and, because of what they still did not understand, points them to the Holy Spirit, who would remind them of all His sayings, and lead them into all truth.'
Let not your heart be troubled. What myriads of souls have not these opening words cheered, in deepest gloom, since first they were uttered!
Ye believe in God, believe also in me, х pisteuete (G4100) eis (G1519) ton (G3588) Theon (G2316), kai (G2532) eis (G1519) eme (G1691) pisteuete (G4100)]. This may with equal correctness be rendered four different ways.
(1) As two imperatives-`Believe in God, and believe in Me.' (So Chrysostom, and several both Greek and Latin Fathers; Lampe, Bengel, DeWette, Lucke, Tholuck, Meyer, Stier, Alford.) But this, though the interpretation of so many, we must regard, with Webster and Wilkinson, as somewhat frigid.
(2) As two indicatives-`Ye believe in God, and ye believe in Me.' So Luther, who gives it this turn-`If ye, believe in God, then do ye also believe in Me.' But this is pointless.
(3) The first imperative and the second indicative; but to make sense of this, we must give the second clause a future turn-`Believe in God, and then ye will believe in Me.' To this Olshausen half reclines. But how unnatural this is, it is hardly necessary to say.
(4) The first indicative and the second imperative, as in our version-`Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.' (So the Vulgate, Maldonat, Erasmus, Calvin, Beza-who, however, gives the first clause an interrogatory turn, 'Believe ye in God? Believe also in Me' - (Cranmer's and the Geneva English versions, Olshausen prevailingly, Webster and Wilkinson.) This alone appears to us to bring out the natural and worthy sense-`Ye believe in God, as do all His true people, and the confidence ye repose in Him is the soul of all your religious exercises, actings and hopes: Well, repose the same trust in Me.'
What a demand this to make, by one who was sitting familiarly with them at the same supper table! But it neither alienates our trust from its proper Object, nor divides it with a creature: it is but the concentration of our trust in the Unseen and Impalpable One upon His Own Incarnate Son, by which that trust, instead of the distant, unsteady and too often cold and scarce real thing it otherwise is, acquires a conscious reality, warmth, and power, which makes all things new. This is Christianity in brief.