John 5:45-47

“ Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. 46. For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words. ”

After having unveiled to them the moral cause of their unbelief, Jesus shows to His hearers the danger to which it exposes them, that of being condemned in the name of that very law, on the observance of which they have founded their hopes of salvation. It is not He, the Messiah rejected by them, it is Moses himself, in whose name they condemn Him, who will demand their condemnation. Jesus pursues them here on their own ground. His word assumes an aggressive and dramatic form.

He causes to rise before them that grand figure of the ancient deliverer, to whom their hopes were attached (εἰς ὅν), and transforms this alleged advocate into an accuser. The words: that I will accuse you, show that, already at that time, a sentiment of hostility to His own people was imputed to Jesus. It was His severe discourses which gave rise to this accusation. ῎Εστι, is very solemn: “ He is there, he who...” The words: on whom you hope, allude to the zeal for the law, which the adversaries of Jesus had manifested on this very day; this zeal was their title, in their eyes an assured title, to the Messianic glory. “It will be found that this Moses, whom you invoke against me will testify for me against you.” What an overturning of all their ideas! Meyer and Weiss claim that the words: who will accuse you cannot refer to the last judgment, since Jesus will then fill the office, not of accuser, but of judge. But Jesus does not enter into this question, which would have had no meaning with people who did not recognize Him as the Messiah. To the Father: who will judge by means of Christ.

The two verses, John 5:46-47, prove the thesis of John 5:45, by showing, the first, the connection between faith in Moses and faith in Christ; the second, the no less necessary connection between the two unbeliefs in the one and in the other. In other words: Every true disciple of Moses is on the way to becoming a Christian; every bad Jew is on that towards rejecting the Gospel. These two propositions are founded on the principle that the two covenants are the development of one and the same fundamental thought and have the same moral substance. To accept or reject the revelation of salvation at its first stage, is implicitly to accept or reject it in its complete form. This is exactly the thesis which St. Paul develops in Romans 2:6-10; Romans 2:26-29.

The words: wrote of me, allude to the Proto-gospel, to the patriarchal promises, to the types such as that of the brazen serpent, to the Levitical ceremonies which were the shadow of things to come (Col 2:17), more especially to the promise Deuteronomy 18:18: “ I will raise up unto them a prophet like unto thee; ” this last promise, while including the sending of all the prophets who followed Moses, finds its consummation in Jesus Christ. Ye would believe on me: in me as the one whom Moses thus announced. In truth, many of the prophecies had not yet found in Jesus their fulfillment. But we must think especially of the spirit of holiness in the law of Moses and the theocratic institutions, which found in Jesus its full realization. Moses tended to awaken the sense of sin and the thirst for righteousness, which Jesus came to satisfy. “To give access to this spirit, was to open one's heart in advance to the great life-giver” (Gess).

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

XXXI.

Vv. 45-47.

1. Meyer and Weiss hold that the last judgment is not referred to in these verses, because Christ is represented as the judge on that day, and therefore cannot be spoken of as an accuser in connection with it. Keil affirms the opposite, saying that, as the Jews did not acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah or the judge, this consideration can have no weight in the decision of the question. The true view of this matter is, not improbably, to be found as we observe the peculiarity of the thought of this chapter and of other parts of this Gospel which are kindred to it. This writer does not leave out of view the final judgment, but his mind moves in the sphere of the present and permanent inward life, and the end is only the consummation. In a certain sense, therefore, judgment is present, though it is also in a certain sense future. The mind of the hearer or reader is left to pass from the one to the other, and thus to include both.

2. Moses is here spoken of as the foundation of the Jewish legal system and thus as, in a sense, the foundation or centre of the Old Testament. It may be that, according to this view of the matter, he and his writings are referred to as if including the whole idea of the Old Testament Scriptures; see John 5:39. If the reference is to the Pentateuch only, the allusion is doubtless to Deuteronomy 18:15, and the other points which Godet mentions in his note.

That this first formal discourse of Jesus, which is recorded in this Gospel, is intended by the evangelist to serve as testimony to his readers cannot be questioned. That it is, in this respect, an advance upon what has preceded, is also clear. The relation of Jesus to the Father is here set forth not indeed as fully as it is in later Chapter s, but in a part of the unfolding of its true idea, and as it is not in the conversation with Nicodemus. The occasion on which this discourse was given, it must be remembered, was a year, or nearly a year later than that conversation, and much must have been done and said by Jesus in the interval. That Jesus in the opening of the second year of His ministry should have advanced in His teaching as far as this discourse might indicate, cannot justly be regarded as improbable. It was, moreover, with the leading Jews that He carried on this discussion, not with the common people. If the deeper truths respecting His person and His relations to the Father were to be set forth in His earthly ministry at all and how strange it would have been, if no such declaration had been made, it would seem that, at this time, the beginnings of the full teachings might appear. The discourse of this chapter stands no less truly in its legitimate and natural historical position, as related to the teachings of the Chapter s which precede and follow, than it does in its proper place in the progress of the testimony, which the author brings before his readers in proof of the great doctrine of his book.