John 7:16-17

“ Jesus answered them and said, My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me; 17 if any one wills to do his will, he shall know of the teaching whether it comes from God or whether I speak of myself. ”

Jesus enters for form's sake into the thought of His hearers: in order to teach, it is surely necessary to have been the disciple of some one. But He shows that He satisfies this demand also: “I have not passed through the teachings of your Rabbis; but I nevertheless come forth from a school, and from a good school. He who gave me my mission, at the same time instructed me as to my message, for I do not derive what I say from my own resources. I limit myself to laying hold of and giving forth with docility His thought.”

But how prove this assertion as to the origin of His teaching? Every man, even the most ignorant, is in a condition to do it. For the condition of this proof is a purely moral one. To aspire after doing what is good with earnestness is sufficient. The teaching of Jesus Christ, in its highest import, is in fact only a divine method of sanctification; whoever consequently seeks with earnestness to do the will of God, that is to say, to sanctify himself, will soon prove the efficaciousness of this method, and will infallibly render homage to the divine origin of the Gospel. Several interpreters, especially among the Fathers (Augustine) and the reformers (Luther), have understood by the will of God the commandment as to faith in Jesus Christ: “He who is willing to obey God by believing in me, will not be slow in convincing himself by his own experience that he is right in acting thus.”

The sense given by Lampe approaches this; he refers the will of God to the precepts of Christian morality: “He who is willing to practise what I command will soon convince himself of the divine character of what I teach.” Reuss, in like manner: “Jesus declares (John 7:17) that, in order to comprehend His discourses, one must begin by putting them in practice.” The earnest practice of the Gospel law must lead in fact to faith in the Christian dogma. But, true as all these ideas may be in themselves, it is evident that Jesus can here use the words will of God only in a sense understood and admitted by His hearers, and that this term consequently in this context designates the contents of the divine revelation granted to the Israelites through the law and the prophets. The meaning of this saying amounts, therefore, to that of John 5:46: “ If you earnestly believed Moses, you would believe in me,” or to that of John 3:21: “ He who practices the truth, comes to the light. ” Powerless to realize the ideal which flees before it in proportion as it believes itself to be drawing near to it, the sincere soul feels itself forced to seek rest at first, and then strength, in the presence of the divine Saviour who offers Himself to it in the Gospel.

Faith is, therefore, not the result of a logical operation; it is formed in the soul as the conclusion of a moral experience: the man believes because his heart finds in Jesus the only effectual means of satisfying the most legitimate of all its wants, that of holiness. Θέλῃ, wills, indicates simply aspiration, effort; the realization itself remains impossible, and this it is precisely which impels the soul to faith. The intrinsic and communicative holiness of the Gospel answers exactly to the need of sanctification which impels the soul. See the normal experience of this fact in St. Paul: Romans 7:24; Romans 8:2. Suavis harmonia (between θέλειν and θέλημα), says Bengel. There is a special feature in the teaching of Jesus which will not fail to strike him who is in the way of making the trial indicated in John 7:17. This feature will reveal to him in the most decisive way the divine origin of the teaching of Jesus: