other hand, the Son abode there for ever; whom He made free by adoption into His
family, they would be free in reality and essentially. 59 60 Then for their very dulness, He
would turn to their favourite conceit of being Abraham's seed. There was, indeed, an
obvious sense in which, by their natural descent, they were such. But there was a moral
descent - and that alone was of real value. Another, and to them wholly new, and
heavenly teaching this, which our Lord presently applied in a manner they could neither
misunderstand nor gainsay, while He at the same time connected it with the general
drift of His teaching. Abraham's seed? But they entertained purposes of murder, and
that, because the Word of Christ had not free course, made not way in them.61 His Word
was what He had seen with (before) the Father,62 not heard - for His presence was
there Eternal. Their deeds were what they had heard from their father63 - the word 'seen'
in our common text depending on a wrong reading. And thus He showed them - in
answer to their interpellation - that their father could not have been Abraham, so far as
spiritual descent was concerned.64 They had now a glimpse of His meaning, but only to
misapply it, according to their Jewish prejudice. Their spiritual descent, they urged, must
be of God, since their descent from Abraham was legitimate.65 But the Lord dispelled
even this conceit by showing, that if theirs were spiritual descent from God, then would
they not reject His Message, nor seek to kill Him, but recognise and love him.66
57. St. John viii. 34.
58. Here there should be a full stop, and not as in the A.V.
60. οντως. Comp. Westcott ad loc.
61. So Canon Westcott aptly
59. ver. 35.
renders it.
62. Not 'My Father,' as in the A.V. These little changes are most important, as we
remember that the hearers would so far understand and could have sympathised, had
the truth been in them.
63. According to the proper reading, the rendering must be 'from your father,' not 'with
your father,' as in the A.V.
64. vv. 37-40.
65. ver. 41.
66. ver. 42.
But whence this misunderstanding of His speech? 67 68 Because they are morally
incapable of hearing it - and this because of the sinfulness of their nature: an element
which Judaism had never taken into account. And so, with infinite Wisdom, Christ once
more brought back His Discourse to what He would teach them concerning man's need,
whether he be Jew or Gentile, of a Saviour and of renewing by the Holy Ghost. If the
Jews were morally unable to hear His Word and cherished murderous designs, it was
because, morally speaking, their descent was of the Devil. Very differently from Jewish
ideas69 did He speak concerning the moral evil of Satan, as both a murderer and a liar -
a murderer from the beginning of the history of our race, and one who 'stood not in the
truth, because truth is not in him.' Hence 'whenever he speaketh a lie' - whether to our
first parents, or now concerning the Christ - 'he speaketh from out his own (things), for
he (Satan) is a liar, and the father of such an one (who telleth or believeth lies).'70 Which
of them could convict Him of sin? If therefore He spake truth,71 and they believed Him
not, it was because they were not of God, but, as He had shown them, of their father,
the Devil.