John 12:47,48

“ And if any one hear my sayings and keep them not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48. He that rejects me and receives not my sayings has already his judge; the word which I have spoken, this it is which will judge him at the last day. ”

Woe to him who does not believe on Jesus and His word in which He manifests Himself and bears testimony of Himself! As His presence is the pure manifestation of God, His word is the perfect revelation of the thought of God. This will be the one touchstone of the judgment. The declaration of John 12:47 does not exclude the personal role of Jesus in this great act. It merely says that the sentence which He will pronounce at that time will be simply that which will follow from the position which the man has taken with regard to His word; it is the idea of John 3:18 (ἤδη κέκριται), John 5:24; John 8:15. The reading φυλάξῃ, keep, is to be preferred to the received reading πιστεύσῃ (and believe not); for the former term is less common than the latter; it applies not to the keeping in the conduct with this meaning, Jesus employs the word τηρεῖν but to inward appropriation and possession. The last words of John 12:47 reproduce the idea of iii 17; comp. John 9:39; John 9:41.

In John 12:48, where the rejection of Jesus is identified with that of His words, the express mention of the last day is very remarkable. As Gess observes, “the moral judgment of humanity through the word is incessantly effected even now, according to the entire Gospel. And yet the notion of the last judgment is so indispensable in the thought of the evangelist, that he expresses it here as the limit without which the purely moral judgment would fail of its consummation” (II. p. 452). How is it that Reuss, Scholten, Hilgenfeld affirm that the final judgment is denied in our Gospel! And what is striking is that the evangelist mentions, in speaking thus, a fact which is not indicated in the saying of Jesus on which this is founded (John 3:17). The last two verses explain the reason why the position taken by man with regard to Jesus and His word has so decisive an importance. It is because He has nothing of His own mingled in His teaching, and that He has transmitted it, as to substance and form, exactly as He received it from the Father.