John 5:43

Ver. 43. The result of this contrast between His moral tendency and theirs. While they reject Him, the Messiah, whose whole appearance bears the seal of dependence on God, they will receive with eagerness every false Messiah who will act from his own wisdom and his own force, glorifying man in his person. All glorious with the glory of this world will be the one welcomed by these lovers of human glory. In the name of God: coming by His authority and as His delegate. In his own name: representing only himself, his own genius and power. ῎Ελθῃ, comes, in its relation to ἐλήλυθα, I have come, can only denote a pseudo-Messianic appearance. According to the Synoptics also, Jesus expected false Christs (Matthew 24:5; Matthew 24:24 and the parallels). History has confirmed this prophecy; it speaks of sixty-four false Messiahs, who all succeeded in forming a party among the Jewish people in this way. See Schudt, Judische Merkwurdigkeiten (cited by Meyer). You will receive him; comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11. The application of this expression; another to the false Messiah Bacochebas (about 132), which some critics have desired to make for the purpose of proving that the composition of our Gospel belongs to the second century (Hilgenfeld, Thoma), is an absolutely gratuitous supposition, which has no authorization in the text.

This vicious tendency with which Jesus reproaches His adversaries went so far as even to destroy in them the faculty, the possibility of believing: John 5:44. The pronoun, ὑμεῖς, you, signifies: men such as you are (John 5:42-43). In the last words, the adjective μόνου, only, may be connected with the idea of θεοῦ : God who is the only God. Jesus would, in this case, characterize God as having, as only God, the right to bestow the true glory. This is the meaning ordinarily given to this expression. I think that it is more in the spirit of the context to understand, with Grotius and de Wette: the glory which is received from God alone, from God only, and not from men. The idea of these verses is that nothing renders men more unfit for faith than the seeking for human glory. But as necessarily as the current of Pharisaic vainglory bears the rulers of the people far away from faith, so infallibly would the spirit of love for God which inspires the books of Moses have directed them to Jesus and led them to faith.