John 5:38-40

“ And his word ye have not abiding in you, for ye believe not him whom he hath sent. 39. Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me. 40. And ye will not come to me that ye may have life. ”

The written word might have supplied the place of the personal revelation; they have had it in their hands and on their lips, but not in the heart. They have studied the letter, but have not appropriated to themselves the contents, the thought, the spirit. Thus it has not become a light lighted within them to guide them, a power to bear sway over them. Jesus gives a proof of this inward fact it is their unbelief towards Him, the divine messenger. Undoubtedly, there is no argument here; for the reality of His divine mission was precisely the point in question. It is a judgment which Jesus pronounces, and which has its point of support, like the entire discourse, in the miracle which He had wrought.

The 39th verse may be regarded as a concession: No doubt, you study the Scriptures with care. But we must rather see herein the indication of a fact which Jesus is about to contrast with another. “You search the Scriptures with so much care; you scrutinize the externals of them with the most scrupulous exactness, hoping to make eternal life spring forth from this minute study; and at the same time you obstinately reject the one to whom they bear testimony!” We take the verb ἐρευνᾶτε, therefore, as an indicative: you search; as do Cyril, Erasmus, Bengel, Lucke, Westcott, and now also Luthardt. A large number of commentators and translators (Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Stier, Hofmann, Keil, Ostervald,) make this verb an imperative: Search. Jesus would exhort them to a profound study of the Scriptures. But, in that case, He should not have said, “because you believe you have in them...,” but “because you will have in them;” or at least “because you yourselves think you have in them.” And then He should have continued, in order to give a ground for the exhortation, by saying: “ For these are they. ” The verb ἐρευνᾶν, search, is very suitable as characterizing the Rabbinical study of the Scriptures, the dissection of the letter. ᾿Εκεῖναι, they, still with the emphatic and exclusive meaning which this pronoun has in John: and it is precisely they.

The copula καί, and, in John 5:40, sets forth, as so often in John, the moral contradiction between the two things which unbelief succeeds in causing to move on together: to study the Scriptures which testify of Christ, and, at the same time, not to come to Christ! They seek life, and they reject Him who brings it! The words: ye will not, mark the voluntary side of unbelief, the moral antipathy which is the real cause of it. We find again in this passage the sorrowful tone of that saying preserved in the Synoptics: “ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I.... But ye would not! ” This passage clearly shows how Jesus recognized Himself in the Old Testament. He beheld there so fully His own figure, that it seemed to Him impossible to have sincerely studied that book and not come to Him immediately.

But whence arises, then, the not willing pointed out in John 5:40, and what will be its result? These are the two questions which Jesus answers in the words which close the discourse, and which are, as it were, the practical application of it.