John 10:33-42

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

Vv. 33-42. 1. There can be no doubt that the Jews understood Jesus as claiming to be God. John 10:33 clearly proves this. The words of the following verses are to be explained, accordingly, in view of this fact.

2. There are two parts in the answer of Jesus: John 10:34-36, and John 10:37-38. For the appreciation of the meaning, it must be borne in mind that Jesus enters upon an argument, and does not merely make a new assertion. It is natural, therefore, that what He says should have a progressive character, and should present the claim which He makes through the evidences for it. The claim is that of John 10:30, with what it suggests which they had interpreted in the sense of John 10:33 b. In such a progressive argument we might easily expect Him to begin, as He does, with a sort of argumentum ad hominem, founded upon the Old Testament, which they could not reject, and to say, If the O. T. addresses magistrates as gods, in their capacity as God's ministers in the world, surely there is no blasphemy in the appropriation of this title by one who, in a far more exalted sense, is God's ambassador the one whom He has sent into the world to reveal Himself. His position is therefore, He says, exalted enough, even from the point of view of the Divine messenger and teacher revealing the truth in which capacity they might easily recognize Him to justify the title. But now He moves forward to the more positive side. What His real position is, they may know by the evidence of the works. If they will not be convinced by His words, let these latter teach them. These will show that there is something more in Him than the highest Divine messenger, that He is even the one who is consecrated and sent into the world to make known the truth that there is a vital and essential union between Him and the Father (the Father in me and I in the Father), that union which is implied in, and the necessary condition of, unity of power (I and the Father are one, John 10:30).

3. In John 10:40 Jesus is represented as going again into the region where He is first brought before the reader, in John 1:28. The public ministry of Jesus, in a certain sense, closes at this point, and, in accordance with the carefully-arranged plan of the book, it seems not unnatural that the writer should thus bring the narrative again to its starting-point. The introduction of John the Baptist again, at the close, is characteristic of the author. The testimony which John had given before his death produces its fruit when Jesus is drawing near to the time of His own death, and that which had led the writer himself to Jesus, at the beginning, is now represented as bringing many others to a like faith. They believed, as he had done, because of the confirmation which the sight and hearing of Jesus gave to what John had told them. The placing of this testimony and its results at the end of these most striking declarations of Jesus respecting Himself is worthy of notice, as connected with the development of the proof of the truth which the author desires to establish. The insertion of these three verses can hardly be explained, except as they are regarded as having relation to such a plan of the Gospel as has been indicated in these notes the plan of setting forth progressive testimony and a growing faith which moves along with it; and their presence here, accordingly, gives a new evidence that the author wrote his Gospel under the guiding influence of this plan.

4. The statement here made respecting John corresponds with the declaration of the Prologue with reference to him and with his statements respecting himself in chs. 1 and 3. The σημεῖα of this Gospel are, all of them, σημεῖα in the sense of John 20:30-31. John was not the light, but his mission was to bear testimony to the light. The object of his mission and testimony was “that all might believe through him.” This object was realized in the case of the persons here mentioned. The prominence given to John's testimony in this Gospel is thus easily explained.