{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JHN","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"John","commonName":"John","introduction":"THE author of the Fourth Gospel was the younger of the two sons of Zebedee, a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, who resided at Bethsaida, where were born Peter and Andrew his brother, and Philip also. His mother's name was Salome, who, though not without her imperfections (Mat 20:20-28), was one of those dear and honored women who accompanied the Lord on one of His preaching circuits through Galilee, ministering to His bodily wants; who followed Him to the cross, and bought sweet spices to anoint Him after His burial, but, on bringing them to the grave, on the morning of the First Day of the week, found their loving services gloriously superseded by His resurrection ere they arrived. His father, Zebedee, appears to have been in good circumstances, owning a vessel of his own and having hired servants (Mar 1:20). Our Evangelist, whose occupation was that of a fisherman with his father, was beyond doubt a disciple of the Baptist, and one of the two who had the first interview with Jesus. He was called while engaged at his secular occupation (Mat 4:21-22), and again on a memorable occasion (Luk 5:1-11), and finally chosen as one of the Twelve Apostles (Mat 10:2). He was the youngest of the Twelve--the \"Benjamin,\" as DA COSTA calls him--and he and James his brother were named in the native tongue by Him who knew the heart, \"Boanerges,\" which the Evangelist Mark (Mar 3:17) explains to mean \"Sons of thunder\"; no doubt from their natural vehemence of character. They and Peter constituted that select triumvirate of whom see on Luk 9:28. But the highest honor bestowed on this disciple was his being admitted to the bosom place with his Lord at the table, as \"the disciple whom Jesus loved\" (Joh 13:23; Joh 20:2; Joh 21:7, Joh 20:24), and to have committed to him by the dying Redeemer the care of His mother (Joh 19:26-27). There can be no reasonable doubt that this distinction was due to a sympathy with His own spirit and mind on the part of John which the all-penetrating Eye of their common Master beheld in none of the rest; and although this was probably never seen either in his life or in his ministry by his fellow apostles, it is brought out wonderfully in his writings, which, in Christ-like spirituality, heavenliness, and love, surpass, we may freely say, all the other inspired writings.\n\nAfter the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, we find him in constant but silent company with Peter, the great spokesman and actor in the infant Church until the accession of Paul. While his love to the Lord Jesus drew him spontaneously to the side of His eminent servant, and his chastened vehemence made him ready to stand courageously by him, and suffer with him, in all that his testimony to Jesus might cost him, his modest humility, as the youngest of all the apostles, made him an admiring listener and faithful supporter of his brother apostle rather than a speaker or separate actor. Ecclesiastical history is uniform in testifying that John went to Asia Minor; but it is next to certain that this could not have been till after the death both of Peter and Paul; that he resided at Ephesus, whence, as from a center, he superintended the churches of that region, paying them occasional visits; and that he long survived the other apostles. Whether the mother of Jesus died before this, or went with John to Ephesus, where she died and was buried, is not agreed. One or two anecdotes of his later days have been handed down by tradition, one at least bearing marks of reasonable probability. But it is not necessary to give them here. In the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) he was banished to \"the isle that is called Patmos\" (a small rocky and then almost uninhabited island in the Ægean Sea), \"for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ\" (Rev 1:9). IRENÆUS and EUSEBIUS say that this took place about the end of Domitian's reign. That he was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, and miraculously delivered, is one of those legends which, though reported by TERTULLIAN and JEROME, is entitled to no credit. His return from exile took place during the brief but tolerant reign of Nerva; he died at Ephesus in the reign of Trajan [EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 3.23], at an age above ninety, according to some; according to others, one hundred; and even one hundred twenty, according to others still. The intermediate number is generally regarded as probably the nearest to the truth.\n\nAs to the date of this Gospel, the arguments for its having been composed before the destruction of Jerusalem (though relied on by some superior critics) are of the slenderest nature; such as the expression in Joh 5:2, \"there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool,\" &c.; there being no allusion to Peter's martyrdom as having occurred according to the prediction in Joh 21:18 --a thing too well known to require mention. That it was composed long after the destruction of Jerusalem, and after the decease of all the other apostles, is next to certain, though the precise time cannot be determined. Probably it was before his banishment, however; and if we date it between the years 90 and 94, we shall probably be close to the truth.\n\nAs to the readers for whom it was more immediately designed, that they were Gentiles we might naturally presume from the lateness of the date; but the multitude of explanations of things familiar to every Jew puts this beyond all question.\n\nNo doubt was ever thrown upon the genuineness and authenticity of this Gospel till about the close of the eighteenth century; nor were these embodied in any formal attack upon it till BRETSCHNEIDER, in 1820, issued his famous treatise [Probabilia], the conclusions of which he afterwards was candid enough to admit had been satisfactorily disproved. To advert to these would be as painful as unnecessary; consisting as they mostly do of assertions regarding the Discourses of our Lord recorded in this Gospel which are revolting to every spiritual mind. The Tubingen school did their best, on their peculiar mode of reasoning, to galvanize into fresh life this theory of the post-Joannean date of the Fourth Gospel; and some Unitarian critics still cling to it. But to use the striking language of VAN OOSTERZEE regarding similar speculations on the Third Gospel, \"Behold, the feet of them that shall carry it out dead are already at the door\" (Act 5:9). Is there one mind of the least elevation of spiritual discernment that does not see in this Gospel marks of historical truth and a surpassing glory such as none of the other Gospels possess, brightly as they too attest their own verity; and who will not be ready to say that if not historically true, and true just as it stands, it never could have been by mortal man composed or conceived?\n\nOf the peculiarities of this Gospel, we note here only two. The one is its reflective character. While the others are purely narrative, the Fourth Evangelist, \"pauses, as it were, at every turn,\" as DA COSTA says [Four Witnesses, p. 234], \"at one time to give a reason, at another to fix the attention, to deduce consequences, or make applications, or to give utterance to the language of praise.\" See Joh 2:20-21, Joh 2:23-25; Joh 4:1-2; Joh 7:37-39; Joh 11:12-13, Joh 11:49-52; Joh 21:18-19, Joh 21:22-23. The other peculiarity of this Gospel is its supplementary character. By this, in the present instance, we mean something more than the studiousness with which he omits many most important particulars in our Lord's history, for no conceivable reason but that they were already familiar as household words to all his readers, through the three preceding Gospels, and his substituting in place of these an immense quantity of the richest matter not found in the other Gospels. We refer here more particularly to the nature of the additions which distinguish this Gospel; particularly the notices of the different Passovers which occurred during our Lord's public ministry, and the record of His teaching at Jerusalem, without which it is not too much to say that we could have had but a most imperfect conception either of the duration of His ministry or of the plan of it. But another feature of these additions is quite as noticeable and not less important. \"We find,\" to use again the words of DA COSTA [Four Witnesses, pp. 238, 239], slightly abridged, \"only six of our Lord's miracles recorded in this Gospel, but these are all of the most remarkable kind, and surpass the rest in depth, specialty of application, and fulness of meaning. Of these six we find only one in the other three Gospels--the multiplication of the loaves. That miracle chiefly, it would seem, on account of the important instructions of which it furnished the occasion (John 6:1-71), is here recorded anew. The five other tokens of divine power are distinguished from among the many recorded in the three other Gospels by their furnishing a still higher display of power and command over the ordinary laws and course of nature. Thus we find recorded here the first of all the miracles that Jesus wrought--the changing of water into wine (Joh 2:1-11), the cure of the nobleman's son at a distance (Joh 4:43-54); of the numerous cures of the lame and the paralytic by the word of Jesus, only one--of the man impotent for thirty and eight years (Joh 5:1-9); of the many cures of the blind, one only--of the man born blind (Joh 9:1-12); the restoration of Lazarus, not from a deathbed, like Jairus' daughter, nor from a bier, like the widow of Nain's son, but from the grave, and after lying there four days, and there sinking into corruption (John 11:1-44); and lastly, after His resurrection, the miraculous draught of fishes on the Sea of Tiberias (Joh 21:5-11). But these are all recorded chiefly to give occasion for the record of those astonishing discourses and conversations, alike with friends and with foes, with His disciples and with the multitude which they drew forth.\"\n\nOther illustrations of the peculiarities of this Gospel will occur, and other points connected with it be adverted to, in the course of the Commentary. \n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 1\n\n","order":43,"numberOfChapters":21,"sha256":"2a03297b1e3a6f9e0b82a13c39c82e2202f9e979c173750344c480c63057d8a0","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":21,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/21.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":21},"totalNumberOfVerses":680},"chapter":{"number":5,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["sheep market--The supplement should be (as in Margin) \"sheep [gate],\" mentioned in Neh 3:1, Neh 3:32. \n\nBethesda--that is, \"house (place) of mercy,\" from the cures wrought there. \n\nfive porches--for shelter to the patients.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["impotent--infirm.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["an angel, &c.--This miracle differed in two points from all other miracles recorded in Scripture: (1) It was not one, but a succession of miracles periodically wrought: (2) As it was only wrought \"when the waters were troubled,\" so only upon one patient at a time, and that the patient \"who first stepped in after the troubling of the waters.\" But this only the more undeniably fixed its miraculous character. We have heard of many waters having a medicinal virtue; but what water was ever known to cure instantaneously a single disease? And who ever heard of any water curing all, even the most diverse diseases--\"blind, halt, withered\"--alike? Above all, who ever heard of such a thing being done \"only at a certain season,\" and most singularly of all, doing it only to the first person who stepped in after the moving of the waters? Any of these peculiarities--much more all taken together--must have proclaimed the supernatural character of the cures wrought. (If the text here be genuine, there can be no doubt of the miracle, as there were multitudes living when this Gospel was published who, from their own knowledge of Jerusalem, could have exposed the falsehood of the Evangelist, if no such cure had been known there. The want of Joh 5:4 and part of Joh 5:3 in some good manuscripts, and the use of some unusual words in the passage, are more easily accounted for than the evidence in their favor if they were not originally in the text. Indeed Joh 5:7 is unintelligible without Joh 5:4. The internal evidence brought against it is merely the unlikelihood of such a miracle--a principle which will carry us a great deal farther if we allow it to weigh against positive evidence).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["thirty and eight years--but not all that time at the pool. This was probably the most pitiable of all the cases, and therefore selected.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["saw him lie, and knew, &c.--As He doubtless visited the spot just to perform this cure, so He knows where to find His patient, and the whole previous history of his case (Joh 2:25). \n\nWilt thou be made whole?--Could anyone doubt that a sick man would like to be made whole, or that the patients came thither, and this man had returned again and again, just in hope of a cure? But our Lord asked the question. (1) To fasten attention upon Himself; (2) By making him detail his case to deepen in him the feeling of entire helplessness; (3) By so singular a question to beget in his desponding heart the hope of a cure. (Compare Mar 10:51).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["Sir, I have no man, &c.--Instead of saying he wished to be cured, he just tells with piteous simplicity how fruitless had been all his efforts to obtain it, and how helpless and all but hopeless he was. Yet not quite. For here he is at the pool, waiting on. It seemed of no use; nay, only tantalizing, \n\nwhile I am coming, another steppeth down before me--the fruit was snatched from his lips. Yet he will not go away. He may get nothing by staying, he may drop into his grave ere he get into the pool; but by going from the appointed, divine way of healing, he can get nothing. Wait therefore he will, wait he does, and when Christ comes to heal him, lo! he is waiting his turn. What an attitude for a sinner at Mercy's gate! The man's hopes seemed low enough ere Christ came to him. He might have said, just before \"Jesus passed by that way,\" \"This is no use; I shall never get in; let me die at home.\" Then all had been lost. But he held on, and his perseverance was rewarded with a glorious cure. Probably some rays of hope darted into his heart as he told his tale before those Eyes whose glance measured his whole case. But the word of command consummates his preparation to receive the cure, and instantaneously works it.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Rise, take up thy bed, &c.--\"Immediately\" he did so. \"He spake and it was done.\" The slinging of his portable couch over his shoulders was designed to show the perfection of the cure.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["the same day was the sabbath--Beyond all doubt this was intentional, as in so many other healings, in order that when opposition arose on this account men might be compelled to listen to His claims and His teaching.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["The Jews--that is, those in authority. (See on Joh 1:19.) \n\nit is not lawful to carry thy bed--a glorious testimony to the cure, as instantaneous and complete, from the lips of the most prejudiced! (And what a contrast does it, as all our Lord's miracles, present to the bungling miracles of the Church of Rome!) In ordinary circumstances, the rulers had the law on their side (Neh 13:15; Jer 17:21). But when the man referred them to \"Him that had made him whole\" (Joh 5:11) as his authority, the argument was resistless. Yet they ingeniously parried the thrust, asking him, not who had \"made him whole\"--that would have condemned themselves and defeated their purpose--but who had bidden him \"take up his bed and walk,\" in other words, who had dared to order a breach of the sabbath? It is time we were looking after Him--thus hoping to shake the man's faith in his Healer.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["he that was healed wist not, &c.--That some one, with unparalleled generosity, tenderness and power, had done it, the man knew well enough: but as he had never heard of Him before, so he disappeared too quickly for any inquiries. \n\nconveyed himself away--slipped out of the crowd that had gathered, to avoid both hasty popularity and precipitate hatred (Mat 12:14-19).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["findeth him in the temple--saying, perhaps, \"I will go into Thy house with burnt offerings, I will pay my vows which my lips have uttered and my mouth hath spoken when I was in trouble\" (Psa 66:13-14). Jesus, there Himself for His own ends, \"findeth him there\"--not all accidentally, be assured. \n\nsin no more, &c.--a glimpse this of the reckless life he had probably led before his thirty-eight years' infirmity had come upon him, and which not improbably had brought on, in the just judgment of God, his chronic complaint. Fearful illustration this of \"the severity of God,\" but glorious manifestation of our Lord's insight into \"what was in man.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["The man departed, and told, &c.--little thinking how unwelcome his grateful and eager testimony would be. \"The darkness received not the light which was pouring its rays upon it\" (Joh 1:5, Joh 1:11) [OLSHAUSEN].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["because he had done these things on the sabbath day--What to these hypocritical religionists was the doing of the most glorious and beneficent miracles, compared with the atrocity of doing them on the sabbath day! Having given them this handle, on purpose to raise the first public controversy with them, and thus open a fitting opportunity of laying His claims before them, He rises at once to the whole height of them, in a statement which for grandeur and terseness exceeds almost anything that ever afterwards fell from Him, at least to His enemies.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["My Father worketh hitherto and I work--The \"I\" is emphatic; \"The creative and conservative activity of My Father has known no sabbath-cessation from the beginning until now, and that is the law of My working.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["God was his Father--literally, \"His own [or peculiar] Father,\" (as in Rom 8:32). The addition is their own, but a very proper one. \n\nmaking himself equal with God--rightly gathering this to be His meaning, not from the mere words \"My Father,\" but from His claim of right to act as His Father did in the like high sphere, and by the same law of ceaseless activity in that sphere. And as, instead of instantly disclaiming any such meaning--as He must have done if it was false--He positively sets His seal to it in the following verses, merely explaining how consistent such claim was with the prerogatives of His Father, it is beyond all doubt that we have here an assumption of peculiar personal Sonship, or participation in the Father's essential nature.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["the Son can do nothing of himself--that is, apart from and in rivalry of the Father, as they supposed. The meaning is, \"The Son can have no separate interest or action from the Father.\" \n\nfor what things, &c.--On the contrary, \"whatever the Father doeth that same doeth the Son,\" \n\nlikewise--\"in the like manner.\" What claim to absolute equality with the Father could exceed this: not only to do \"the same things,\" but to do them as the Father does them?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Father loveth . . . and showeth him all, &c.--As love has no concealments, so it results from the perfect fellowship and mutual endearment of the Father and the Son (see on Joh 1:1; Joh 1:18), whose interests are one, even as their nature, that the Father communicates to the Son all His counsels, and what has been thus shown to the Son is by Him executed in His mediatorial character. \"With the Father, doing is willing; it is only the Son who acts in Time\" [ALFORD]. Three things here are clear: (1) The personal distinctions in the Godhead. (2) Unity of action among the Persons results from unity of nature. (3) Their oneness of interest is no unconscious or involuntary thing, but a thing of glorious consciousness, will, and love, of which the Persons themselves are the proper Objects. \n\nshow him greater things, &c.--referring to what He goes on to mention (Joh 5:21-31), comprised in two great words, LIFE and JUDGMENT, which STIER beautifully calls God's Regalia. Yet these, Christ says, the Father and He do in common.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["raiseth the dead and quickeneth them--one act in two stages. This is His absolute prerogative as God. \n\nso the Son quickeneth them--that is, raiseth up and quickeneth. \n\nwhom he will--not only doing the same divine act, but doing it as the result of His own will, even as the Father does it. This statement is of immense importance in relation to the miracles of Christ, distinguishing them from similar miracles of prophets and apostles, who as human instruments were employed to perform super-natural actions, while Christ did all as the Father's commissioned Servant indeed, but in the exercise of His own absolute right of action.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["For the Father judgeth no man, &c.--rather, \"For neither doth the Father judge any man,\" implying that the same \"thing was meant in the former verse of the quickening of the dead\"--both acts being done, not by the Father and the Son, as though twice done, but by the Father through the Son as His voluntary Agent. \n\nall judgment--judgment in its most comprehensive sense, or as we should say, all administration.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["honour the Son as . . . the Father--As he who believes that Christ in the foregoing verses has given a true account of His relation to the Father must of necessity hold Him entitled to the same honor as the Father, so He here adds that it was the Father's express intention in making over all judgment to the Son, that men should thus honor Him. \n\nhonoureth not the Father--does not do it in fact, whatever he may imagine, and will be held as not doing it by the Father Himself, who will accept no homage which is not accorded to His own Son.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["believeth on him that sent me--that is, believeth in Him as having sent Me. I have spoken of the Son's right not only to heal the sick but to raise from the dead, and quicken whom He will: And now I say unto you, That life-giving operation has already passed upon all who receive My words as the Sent of the Father on the great errand of mercy. \n\nhath everlasting life--immediately on his believing (compare Joh 3:18; Jo1 5:12-13). \n\nis passed--\"hath passed over\" \n\nfrom death unto life--What a transition! (Compare Jo1 3:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["The hour cometh--in its whole fulness, at Pentecost. \n\nand now is--in its beginnings. \n\nthe dead--the spiritually dead, as is clear from Joh 5:28. Here He rises from the calmer phrase \"hearing his word\" (Joh 5:24), to the grander expression, \"hearing the voice of the Son of God,\" to signify that as it finds men in a dead condition, so it carries with it a resurrection-power. \n\nshall live--in the sense of Joh 5:24.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["given to the Son, &c.--Does this refer to the essential life of the Son before all time (Joh 1:4) (as most of the Fathers, and OLSHAUSEN, STIER, ALFORD, &c., among the moderns), or to the purpose of God that this essential life should reside in the Person of the Incarnate Son, and be manifested thus to the world? [CALVIN, LUCKE, LUTHARDT, &c.] The question is as difficult as the subject is high. But as all that Christ says of His essential relation to the Father is intended to explain and exalt His mediatorial functions, so the one seems in our Lord's own mind and language mainly the starting-point of the other.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["because he is the Son of man--This seems to confirm the last remark, that what Christ had properly in view was the indwelling of the Son's essential life in humanity as the great theater and medium of divine display, in both the great departments of His work--life-giving and judgment. The appointment of a Judge in our own nature is one of the most beautiful arrangements of divine wisdom in redemption.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["Marvel not at this--this committal of all judgment to the Son of man. \n\nfor the hour is coming--He adds not in this case (as in Joh 5:25), \"and now is,\" because this was not to be till the close of the whole dispensation of mercy.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["resurrection of life--that is, to life everlasting (Mat 25:46). \n\nof damnation--It would have been harsh to say \"the resurrection of death,\" though that is meant, for sinners rise from death to death [BENGEL]. The resurrection of both classes is an exercise of sovereign authority; but in the one case it is an act of grace, in the other of justice. (Compare Dan 12:2, from which the language is taken). How awfully grand are these unfoldings of His dignity and authority from the mouth of Christ Himself! And they are all in the third person; in what follows He resumes the first person.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["of mine own self do nothing--that is, apart from the Father, or in any interest than My own. (See on Joh 5:19). \n\nas I hear--that is, \"My judgments are all anticipated in the bosom of My Father, to which I have immediate access, and by Me only responded to and reflected. They cannot therefore err, as I live for one end only, to carry into effect the will of Him that sent Me.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["If I . . . witness of myself--standing alone, and setting up any separate interest.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":32,"content":["There is another--that is, the Father, as is plain from the connection. How brightly the distinction of the Persons shines out here! \n\nand I know that the witness, &c.--\"This is the Son's testimony to the Father's truth (see Joh 7:28; Joh 8:26, Joh 8:55). It testifies to the full consciousness on the part of the Son, even in the days of His humiliation, of the righteousness of the Father\" [ALFORD]. And thus He cheered His spirit under the cloud of human opposition which was already gathering over His head.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["Ye sent unto John--(See Joh 1:19, &c.). \n\nreceive not testimony . . . from man--that is, depend not on human testimony. \n\nbut . . . that ye might be saved--\"I refer to him merely to aid your salvation.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["He was a burning and a shining light--literally, \"the burning and shining lamp\" (or torch):--that is, \"the great light of his day.\" Christ is never called by the humble word here applied to John--a light-bearer--studiously used to distinguish him from his Master, but ever the Light in the most absolute sense. (See on Joh 1:6). \n\nwilling for a season--that is, till they saw that it pointed whither they were not prepared to go. \n\nto rejoice in his light--There is a play of irony here, referring to the hollow delight with which his testimony tickled them.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":36,"content":["I have greater witness--rather, \"The witness which I have is greater.\" \n\nthe works . . . bear witness of me--not simply as miracles nor even as a miracle of mercy, but these miracles, as He did them, with a will and a power, a majesty and a grace manifestly His own.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["the Father himself . . . hath borne witness of me--not referring, probably, to the voice of His baptism, but (as seems from what follows) to the testimony of the Old Testament Scripture [CALVIN, LUCKE, MEYER, LUTHARDT, &c.]. \n\nneither heard his voice, &c.--never recognized Him in this character. The words are \"designedly mysterious, like many others which our Lord uttered\" [STIER].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["not his word abiding in you--passing now from the Witness to the testimony borne by Him in \"the lively oracles\" (Act 7:38): both were alike strangers to their breasts, as was evidenced by their rejecting Him to whom all that witness was borne.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":39,"content":["Search the scriptures, &c.--\"In the Scriptures ye find your charter of eternal life; go search them then, and you will find that I am the Great Burden of their testimony; yet ye will not come to Me for that life eternal which you profess to find there, and of which they tell you I am the appointed Dispenser.\" (Compare Act 17:11-12). How touching and gracious are these last words! Observe here (1) The honor which Christ gives to the Scriptures, as a record which all have a right and are bound to search--the reverse of which the Church of Rome teaches; (2) The opposite extreme is, resting in the mere Book without the living Christ, to direct the soul to whom is its main use and chiefest glory.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":41,"content":["I receive not honour from men--contrasting His own end with theirs, which was to obtain human applause.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":42,"content":["not the love of God in you--which would inspire you with a single desire to know His mind and will, and yield yourselves to it, in spite of prejudice and regardless of consequences.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":43,"content":["if another shall come, &c.--How strikingly has this been verified in the history of the Jews! \"From the time of the true Christ to our time, sixty-four false Christs have been reckoned by whom they have been deceived\" [BENGEL].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":44,"content":["How can ye believe, &c.--(See on Joh 5:40-41). The \"will not\" of Joh 5:40, and \"cannot\" here are just different features of the same awful state of the human heart.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":45,"content":["Do not think I will accuse you to the Father--\"My errand hither is not to collect evidence to condemn you at God's bar.\" \n\none that accuseth you, even Moses, &c.--\"Alas! that will be too well done by another, and him the object of all your religious boastings--Moses,\" here put for \"the Law,\" the basis of the Old Testament Scriptures.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":46,"content":["he wrote of me--\"an important testimony to the subject of the whole Pentateuch--'of Me'\" [ALFORD].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":47,"content":["If ye believe not--(See Luk 16:31). \n\nhis writings . . . my words--a remarkable contrast, not absolutely exalting Old Testament Scripture above His own words, but pointing to the office of those venerable documents to prepare Christ's way, to the necessity universally felt for documentary testimony in revealed religion, and perhaps (as STIER adds) to the relation which the comparative \"letter\" of the Old Testament holds to the more flowing \"words\" of \"spirit and life\" which characterize the New Testament.\n\n\n\n\nNext: John Chapter 6\n\n"]}],"introduction":"THE IMPOTENT MAN HEALED--DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE PERSECUTION ARISING THEREUPON. (John 5:1-47)\n\na feast of the Jews--What feast? No question has more divided the Harmonists of the Gospels, and the duration of our Lord's ministry may be said to hinge on it. For if, as the majority have thought (until of late years) it was a Passover, His ministry lasted three and a half years; if not, probably a year less. Those who are dissatisfied with the Passover-view all differ among themselves what other feast it was, and some of the most acute think there are no grounds for deciding. In our judgment the evidence is in favor of its being a Passover, but the reasons cannot be stated here.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/5.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":5},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/6.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":6},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JHN/4.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JHN","chapter":4},"numberOfVerses":42}