Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Ye are of your father the devil. This, as Alford remarks, is one of the most decisive testimonies to the objective personality of the Devil. It is quite impossible to suppose an accommodation to Jewish views, or a metaphorical form of speech, in so solemn an assertion as this.
And the lusts of your father - his impure, malignant, ungodly propensities, inclinations, desires,
Ye will do, х thelete (G2309) poiein (G4160)] - or 'are willing to do,' that is, 'willingly do;' not of any blind necessity of nature, but of pure natural inclination.
He was a murderer from the beginning. The reference here is not to the murderous spirit which he kindled in Cain (as Lucke, DeWette, Tholuck, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson), which yields but a tame and very limited sense, but to that which he did to Man in the person of Adam. So the majority of ancient and modern interpreters, including Grotius, Calvin, Meyer, Luthardt. The death of the human race, in its widest sense, is ascribed to the murderous seducer of our race.
And abode not in the truth. Since the word х hesteeken (G2476)] properly means 'abideth,' it has been, by Lucke and others, denied that the fall of Satan from a former holy state is here expressed; and some superior interpreters, as Olshausen, think this only implied. But though the form of the thought is present-not past-this is to express the important idea, that his whole character and activity are just a continual aberration from his own original truth or rectitude; and thus his fall is not only the implied basis of the thought, but part of the statement itself, properly interpreted and brought out.
Because there is no truth in him - because he is void of all that holy, transparent rectitude which, as God's creature, he originally possessed.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, х ek (G1537) toon (G3588) idioon (G2398)]. Since the word here is plural, perhaps the meaning is, as Alford expresses it, 'of his own resources,' his own treasures (Matthew 12:35). It means that he has no temptation to it from without; it is purely self-begotten, springing from a nature which is nothing but obliquity.
For he is a liar, and the father of it - that is, of lying itself: all the falsehood in the world owes its existence to him. What averse is this! It holds up the Devil, first, as the murderer of the human race; but as this is meant here in the more profound sense of spiritual death, it holds him up, next, as the parent of this fallen human family, communicating to his offspring his own evil passions and universal obliquity, and stimulating, these into active exercise. But as there is "a Stronger than he," who comes upon him and overcomes him (Luke 11:21-22), it is only such as "love the darkness" who are addressed as children of the Devil (Matthew 13:38; 1 John 3:8-10).