《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

But his that sent me.—That Isaiah, it is not only directly the doctrine of God, but also more than doctrine, the direct message of God to you, a doctrine of the most decisive words of life.

John 7:17. If any one is willing to do his will [ἐάντιςθέλῃτὸθέλημααὐτοῦποιεῖν].—The indispensable condition for understanding the doctrine of Christ. We must be truly turned towards God, in order to recognize the divine, which proceeds from God, as divine. And more particularly, we must be earnestly bent upon the divine in practice, if we would know it in theory as doctrine. Man’s moral θέλειν of the moral θέλημα of God is the condition of man’s intellectual γινώσκειν of the intelligible διδαχή of God. Without the earnestness of doing there is no truth in our knowing; and like cannot know like without a like bent of soul. Plato, Lys.: “Ὅτι τὸ ὅμοιον τῷ ὁμοίῳ ἀνάγκη ἀεὶ φίλον εἶναι. Comp. Matthew 10:40-42. This condition of willingness to do, that Isaiah, of practical effort, has its root in the doing of the truth, or moral sincerity ( John 3:21), and develops into the love of God ( John 5:42). The point cannot be the doing of the will of God, as against sinners and beginners in knowledge; it is only the θέλειν (which, of course, is the beginning of the doing according to the best of one’s knowledge and conscience, in the form of trying; Romans 7). Meyer: “The θέλῃ is not redundant (Wolf, Lösner, and many others), but is the very nerve of the matter; in θέλῃ—θέλημα the suavis harmonia (Bengel) has been noticed.”

His will: 1. The Old Testament revelation (Chrysostom, et al.). 2. The demand of faith in Christ (Augustine, Luther, etc.); or at least3. In His doctrine (Semler, etc.). 4. Tholuck: “Still further from the truth is the interpretation which makes it even a requirement of faith for proof.” 5. Willing obedience to God in general (Lücke, Meyer).

It is a proposition which, in its universality, certainly refers not merely to believers of revelation; but which, on the other hand, has in view a universal revelation of the divine will. Therefore: He who strives to do the will of God according to the best knowledge he can get on his level of knowledge. This holds even for the heathen; but for the Jews it has special regard to the Old Testament revelation of the will of God (see John 5:38), and now for Christians to the fully developed Christian principles of life; always, however, putting the chief stress on full inward earnestness of moral endeavor (θέλῃ). Meyer: “This passage accordingly contains undoubtedly the testimonium internum, but not in the ordinary theological sense, as applying to persons already believers, but as applying to persons not yet believers, when the divine doctrine addresses them.” The testimonium internum, upon candid consideration, leads on from the subjective testimonium of calm conviction, as well as of unsatisfied doubt and longing, into the objective testimonium Spiritus Sancti, which by all means is promised in the γν̓ώσεται περί, κ. τ. λ. It is false to ask whether, in the conflict in Romans 7:7, the unconverted Prayer of Manasseh, abstractly viewed, or the converted, is the subject; and it is equally false to introduce this division here. The subject is the actual living elect in their motion towards God under the drawing of His grace.^[FN30]

He shall know concerning the doctrine, etc.—The γνώσεται is emphatic. He shall have not only assurance of faith, but living certainty of discernment. And if the demand was universal, so is the promise in the first instance: “He shall know concerning the doctrine,” indefinitely, of every sort of religious doctrine, whether, and how far, it be from God. But from this the other thing immediately follows: He shall know whether Jesus only speaks (λαλῶ) on His own authority (as an uncalled, self-taught individual), or whether, on the contrary, His word be not absolutely the doctrine (from God). Cameron is right, therefore, in making a distinction here between the moral demand and the theoretical doctrine (which Tholuck disputes); only the theoretical doctrine of Christ is as far from being merely theoretical, as an inward ethical bent or nisus is from being merely practical or in the ordinary sense moral. See John 3:12.

John 7:18. He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory, etc.—The proof that He does not speak from Himself. The mark of one who speaks from himself is ambition; ho would glorify himself. Hebrews, therefore, who would not glorify himself, but God, speaks not from himself; ho is true. The direct applying of the proof Christ leaves to themselves. The argument, however, has not an abstract, syllogistic form; it is enriched by a term of life. In the first place a second proof is inserted into the first. If the person sent seeks only the honor of the prince or lord who sends him, his message is to be trusted; he is true. And he is true, because no unrighteousness, no unfaithful conduct appears in his message. It may be depended upon, that what he says his master has said to him. Freedom from all assumption bespeaks the real teacher; if he had received nothing to teach, he could not possibly have taught. Personal disinterestedness bespeaks the commissioned agent; if he had received nothing to deliver, he would not have appeared. And freedom from all assumption and self-interest evince themselves in the undivided energy with which the one sent seeks the honor of the master who sends him. This therefore constitutes the difference between a false Messiah and the true. The motive and the centre of gravity of the false Messiah lie in self-glorification; those of Christ lie in the glorification of the Father, to whom He attributes everything He says and does.

Thus He has proved that He is true in His doctrine; even intellectually true, because there is no moral obliquity in Him, no self-seeking or unfaithfulness to the throne which sends Him. As in men the intellectual knowing of the truth comes as the reward of moral endeavor, so in Christ the truth of His doctrine is founded in the righteousness of His life. Ἀδικία therefore, is not. equivalent here to ψεῦδος (Grotius, et al.); though connected with it, inasmuch as ἀδικία would produce ψεῦδος. Self-seeking darkens knowledge.

John 7:19. Moses_give_you_the_law'>Did not Moses give you the law?—The sudden transition of Jesus here from the defensive to the offensive has led to the hypothesis of an intermediate conversation (Kuinoel) or act between John 7:18-19; for which there is really no ground at all. We must remember: 1. That since the feast of Purim, at which “the Jews” had already begun capital process against Him, Jesus had not met them, but had on their account avoided Judea, and now Revelation -encountered them for the first time2. That all their “assaults and negations” (Meyer), including their last attack on His right to teach, covered the design of bringing Him to a capital conviction3. That it perfectly accorded with the openness and wisdom of Jesus to draw out their hidden plan, and to make it a subject of talk before all the people in the temple. The only protection against secret adversaries is to expose their designs with the most relentless publicity. 4. That Christ has already in fact introduced the offensive by the last words of the defensive: “There is no unrighteousness in him” (as they had charged on the ground of the Sabbath cure).—Moses, quoting their highest authority.—Give you the law.—Of course the law in general; for he who breaks one commandment transgresses the whole law. It is not specifically the prohibition of murder (Nonnus), nor Sabbath law (Kuinoel), which is intended here by “the law.” But that the rebuke does particularly refer to the prohibition of killing, is shown by what follows.

And yet none of you keepeth the law.—A general address. Because there is in you no true striving to do the will of God, ye cannot know My divine mission. And how truly this is the case with you in general (the “none” representing the spirit of the people and its general aim) appears from the fact that ye (the [hierarchical] Judaists in the first instance) seek to kill Me. Yet the people are unconsciously implicated and included in this charge, because the highhanded conduct of the hierarchs has its occasion in the mental indolence of the laity. The people must know that they hate Him and “persecute Him without cause.”

John 7:20. The multitude answered and said, etc.—The [hierarchical] Judaists are speechless under the charge of Christ, because they consider it dangerous to have their plan so soon canvassed before the people. Their silence is a malicious reserve, like that of Judas in John 6:70. The people, however, take the accusation to themselves, thinking it wholly unfounded. As “they of Jerusalem,” who speak in John 7:25, very well knew of the project, which had already become notorious in Jerusalem, it must be the festal pilgrims who speak here, who were still far not only from the design announced, but even from any knowledge of it.

Thou hast a demon [δαιμόνιον.]—The term here is figurative, drawn from the belief in demoniacal possession. It was probably a proverbial expression in this general sense, especially to denote gloominess, melancholy, laboring under jealous, brooding suspicions. So it was compassionately said of John the Baptist: “He hath a demon” ( Matthew 11:18). Men pitied a man otherwise so able and devout. Here also the reply seems to be not malicious [Hengstenberg and older commentators], but rather sympathizing. “Not an expression of malice, but of surprise that a man who could teach so finely, could think of a thing which they considered morally impossible and a mere hallucination” (Meyer). But the same expression in John 8:48; John 10:20 is shown by the connection to be evil-minded. Chrysostom and others take the ὁχλος to be the rulers, and their question to be a dissimulation. This obliterates the true sense of the transaction.

John 7:21. And said unto them, I have done one work.—Jesus, continuing His train of thought, advances as clearly beyond the reply of the people as He did in John 6:70 beyond the answer of Peter. His piercing and foreseeing knowledge contrasts with a stupidity which sets up against it, and which considers Jesus in this case even smitten with a pitiable delusion. It is not an inaccuracy (Tholuck) that John represents the ὄχλος [the multitude] as answering the Lord. Christ intends to bring before the ὄχλος the malicious inquisitorial conduct of the hierarchy. The ὄχλος must be made privy to the secret affair and shown their unconscious complicity in the wickedness.

The one work is the healing on the Sabbath, John 5:2. (Olshausen needlessly inserts here the subsequent murderous designs). The Lord cannot here mean that He has done only one miracle in Jerusalem (see John 3:1). The antithesis lies in the καὶ πάντες θαυμ. It is not the miracle, but the work that here bears the stress; and it is not wonder at a miracle that is meant, but surprise at one work, though not terror, as Chrysostom and others have it. And in the surprise of all an indignation (Grotius) on the part of many is also unquestionably implied. Offence at that work had therefore spread at least very generally in Jerusalem and among the people. And their morbid condition was manifest in the very fact that they all stared and made an ado over one act of a man who abounded with divine works. The supposed spot upon the one work threatens to eclipse in their view all that has ever filled them with wonder. And even this spot is only in their own vision.

Ye all marvel.—The διὰ τοῦτο is referred by Theophylact, etc., Lücke, [Olsh, De Wette, Stier, Hengstenberg, Ewald, Godet] etc., to the clause preceding (θαυμ.); by Chrysostom, Luther [Grot, Bengel, Luthardt, Meyer, Alford] and others to the clause following.^[FN31] But in the latter connection it has been considered by some redundant, by others elliptical (ye ought therefore to know). Meyer has attempted another explanation, which Tholuck considers “tortured.”^[FN32]

John 7:22. (For this cause) Moses gave unto you the (rite of) circumcision, etc.—Jesus now proves to them from their own law that it is good to heal a sick man on the Sabbath. Moses ordained circumcision for you. Parenthesis: Yet he did not introduce it as strictly a Mosaic law, but confirmed it as a patriarchal law (coming down from the fathers, that is to say, a fundamental religious law of the Abrahamic covenant of promise, Genesis 17.) And this patriarchal Mosaic law so outweighs the mere Sabbath-law, that ye not only may, but must circumcise a man on the Sabbath, when the prescribed day (the eighth day, Luke 2:21; Rabbinical passages in Lightfoot; Rabbinical maxim: Circumcisio pellit Sabbatum) falls on a Sabbath. The reason of this higher superiority of the patriarchal law lies in the design of circumcision, to make the man partially (in a symbolical sense) whole. But if this is Song of Solomon, how much more is the Sabbath-law suspended (in the legal point of view suspended, in the higher view fulfilled) by the eternal law of God which enjoins the healing of a man wholly diseased; enjoins it even in legal form in the commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

Christ thus sets forth three sorts of laws: (1) Eternal principles of humanity, as enacted formally in the decalogue; among which is the law not to destroy life, but to preserve it, to heal. (2) Patriarchal fundamental laws of theocratic civilization; among which belongs circumcision. (3) Mosaic law in the narrower sense.

To this last class belongs, not indeed that Sabbath-law which is the safe-guard of human nature with its need of rest (the humane and moral Sabbath [grounded in the very constitution of Prayer of Manasseh, and hence dating from creation]), yet doubtless the symbolical and ritual Sabbath with its prohibition of every kind of work as a symbol of the legal theocracy. If, therefore, these Mosaic ordinances must be suspended by patriarchal practice, how much more by the primal laws of God. But just so far as they are suspended in the spirit of the law, they are only raised out of a prescribed symbolical meaning to their real truth; they are fulfilled. The Sabbath is fulfilled by doing good, by healing men ( Matthew 12:12); circumcision is fulfilled by regeneration, according to the commandment: “Thou shalt not covet,” as it is written on the heart by faith as a law of the Spirit.

The observation that circumcision “is of the fathers,” has been interpreted by Euthymius Zig. and others as depreciating circumcision by showing it to be not a Mosaic institution. “It might rather express the superiority of circumcision, by virtue of its higher antiquity (and by virtue of its more fundamental character). Then the gradation is very piquantly expressed by Bucer: ‘Ye rank the fathers above the law, I the Father’ ” (Tholuck).—Circumcision had its origin not in Moses (ἐκ τοῦ Μ.), but in the fathers (ἐκ τῶν πατ).

John 7:23. If a man on the Sabbath receive circumcision, that, etc.—Circumcision is emphatic, in antithesis with the healing of the whole man in the next clause; hence placed [in the Greek] at the beginning of the sentence.—It is wrong to weaken the ἵνα μή so as to read: without breaking the law (Bengel, et al.). It is just by circumcising a man on the Sabbath, if that be the eighth day, that violation or nullification of the law is to be prevented. The idea in the prescription of the eighth day is that the circumcision should be performed as early as possible, the earlier the better. The higher import of the patriarchal ordinance appears also in the fact that what are called the Noachic commandments continued for a time to be morally binding in the Christian church, while the specifically Mosaic law, even in regard to circumcision, became extinct as a religious statute ( Acts 15.) Hence, too, the parallel cited by Luthardt from Galatians 3:17, which subordinates the law to the promise, is not without force. Meyer thinks it is; and Tholuck (p216) here again fails to see the precedence given to the patriarchal dispensation, as brought out even by Lampe. He thinks that if that had been intended, the words would have been: ἵνα μὴ λυθῇ ἡ ἐντολὴ τῶν πατέρων that the statement is therefore inserted simply as matter of history. But the law of Moses had sanctioned anew even the usage of the patriarchs, and had soared above specific camp regulations.

Are ye angry at me because I have restored a whole man to health?—The ὅλος is emphatic in antithesis with περιτομή, which was the healing of a single member. Purport of the antithesis:

1. Wounding and healing (Kling, Stud. u. Kritik., 1836). This is against the notion of the particular healing, or of an argument a minori ad majus. Likewise unsuitable is the reference, by Lampe, etc., to the subsequent healing of the wound of circumcision.

2. The legal observance of circumcision, and the real mercy of the miraculous cure (Grotius).

3. “Circumcision was a sanitary measure, purifying and securing against disease. If ye perform on a Sabbath the wholesome act of circumcision, which after all pertains only to one member, I will have a still better right to heal an entire man on a Sabbath. (Philo De circumcisione, ed. Mangey, Tom. II. Michaelis Mos. Recht, 4, § 186, particularly the article ‘Beschneidung’ [Circumcision] in Winer).” Lücke.^[FN33]

4. Meyer: The sanitary purpose did not lie in the law, but in the religious notion of the people; the circumcision was performed only with a view to making the person pure and holy.^[FN34] (Tholuck also is of Meyer’s opinion. But of a “sacramental healing of the single member” one can hardly form an idea, though Kurtz is for it. Sensual lust has its seat in the heart. Of more account, is the argument of the Rabbi Eliezer quoted by Tholuck, and similar to the reasoning here in question). In support of this Meyer quotes the later sentiment from Bammidbar: “Præputium est vitium in corpore;” vitium in corpora, however, is put away, not by purification, but by a surgical or medical operation; i.e., the removal of it is an act of healing. And this must be intended; for circumcision in the symbolical sense also made the whole man pure and holy. The literal surgical healing of a part, therefore, which symbolically purified the whole Prayer of Manasseh, is the thing intended. It is manifest that a symbolical act performed on a man in this form must be founded in a presumed need of physical healing, however temporary, local, or peculiar to antiquity this might be (the Lord puts Himself at His adversaries’ point of view, as in the Synoptical Gospels, Matthew 12:12, etc.); which is also true of the Jewish “laws of purity and purification.”

5. We have still to mention the antithesis of a healing performed only on the flesh (σάρξ), and a healing extending to the whole Prayer of Manasseh, body and soul (Euthymius, Bengel, Stier, etc.). This antithesis does not come into view here, although the miraculous cures of the Lord did extend even to the soul. In truth the bodily circumcision also was intended to be the means of circumcision of the heart.

John 7:24. Judge not according to appearance [κατ’ ὄψιν]—1. Augustine, etc.: Not according to the person, but according to the fact2. Melanchthon, etc.: Not according to the outward form of the work, but according to its motives3. Not according to the startling appearance of things, but with a righteous and true judgment, which is expressed in the gradations of the ordinances, and executed in the actual healing of that sufferer.

John 7:25-26. Some of them of Jerusalem.—These are better instructed than the ὄχλος; they openly avow that the rulers have laid a plan to kill Jesus; yet cautiously, without directly naming them. The repetition of ἀληθῶς shows that they demanded in the Messiah qualifications which they did not find in Jesus. They seem, as an ultra party, to be solicitous even over the circumspection of the rulers, and to treat it with irony. They follow their ironical expression with their own judgment, which breathes the haughtiness of the citizens of a hierarchical capital. As the Rabbis reproach the Lord with His lack of a regular education and graduation, these Jerusalemites cast up against Him His mean extraction.

John 7:27. Whence he is.—This, no doubt, refers both to the despised town of Nazareth and to the family of the carpenter; not, however, by contrast with Bethlehem, as in John 7:42, but by contrast with the purely supramundane or mysterious origin which was claimed for the Messiah. Meyer’s restriction of the “whence” to the father and mother is arbitrary, and proceeds from a confounding of the different views here expressed.

As to the origin of the view that men should not know whence the Messiah Isaiah, there are different opinions.

1. Lücke [Alford] and others, referring to Justin Martyr (Dialog. cum Tryph.): According to the Jewish view the Messiah should be ἄγνωστος, even unknown to Himself, until Elijah should have anointed Him. Against this Tholuck, after Meyer: In that case the earthly πόθεν of Christ would doubtless be known, but not His Messiah-ship. This dismisses the passage in question too cheaply; for a man who does not himself know whence he is till he is anointed, must have something mysterious about his origin.

2. Tholuck: From Daniel 7:13 they expected a sudden heavenly manifestation of the Messiah who, according to one of the various popular notions, lived in a secret place or in paradise (Targum Jonathan, Micah 4:8; Gfrörer, Jahrh. des Heils, II, p223). It must be remembered that Daniel’s doctrine of the Son of Man was but little known. On the contrary educated people in Jerusalem might very easily be familiar with Alexandrian ideas (as in cultivated regions gleanings of spiritualistic and rationalistic literature combine in various ways with reigning orthodoxy), and Philo taught (De exsecrat. 8) that the Messiah in the restoration of the people would appear and go before them as an ὄψις. Such people, too, can make up a view ex tempore, for the sake of an impudent denial; and the demand that for every opinion a previous origin must be shown, refutes itself as a scholastic pedantry. At all events these Jerusalemites think that Jesus ought to have at least as noble an extraction as themselves.

John 7:28. Therefore Jesus cried, teaching in the temple, and saying.—We do not think, with Meyer, that He raised His voice to a shout. The upstart loses confidence, when His origin is spoken of; Jesus purposely enters very emphatically into what they say of His origin. Even in the temple among the throng of people He makes no reserve. It is not without an ironical accordance that He takes up their own arrogant word (τοῦτον οἴδαμεν, which is with them quite equivalent to knowing πόθεν ἔστιν).

Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.—He makes a difference, however, between Himself and His origin, because the latter implied in their view the utmost meanness, in His view His supreme dignity.

Different interpretations:

1. Grotius, Lampe, and others take the words interrogatively (know ye me? etc.).

2. Calvin, Lücke, etc, ironically.

3. Chrysostom and others, as charging them that they did certainly know His divine person and origin, but denied them.

4. Meyer (after De Wette), as a concession: “The people really had this knowledge.” But that they had with it nothing, and less than nothing, even an obstacle towards the knowledge of Himself, Christ asserts by the ironical tone of His words, when He says: Ye both know Me (by rote) and ye know (by rote) whence I am.^[FN35]