John 8:15-16

“ You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one; 16 and if I judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. ”

The objection of the Pharisees, John 8:13, contained a judgment respecting Jesus. They treated Him as an ordinary man, as a sinner, like themselves. They accused Him of overrating Himself in the testimonies which He bore to Himself. It is to this that the charge refers: “ You judge according to the flesh. ” We must not confound κατὰ τὴν σάρκα, “according to the flesh,” with κατὰ σάρκα, in a fleshly way. The flesh here is not the veil extended before the eyes of the one who judges falsely (the carnal spirit or mind); it is rather, according to the article τήν, the appearance marked by weakness of the one who is the object of judgment, by reason of which, at first sight, he is not at all distinguished from other men. The first sense, however, is included in the second, for with a less carnal heart the Jews would have discerned in Jesus, under the covering of the flesh, a being of a higher nature and would have accorded to Him, in the midst of mankind, a place by Himself. This superficial estimate of which Jesus sees Himself to be the object on their part, awakens in Him the feeling of a contrast. While these blind persons allow themselves to make their estimate of Him, with a perfect confidence in their own light, He, the incarnate light, judges no one. Thus, those who are ignorant allow themselves to judge, while He who knows denies Himself this right. And yet, it cannot be denied, Jesus judges also; He Himself declares it in John 8:16.

Writers have put themselves to great pains to explain this contradiction. The word no one has been paraphrased in this way: “No one, according to the outward appearances” (the flesh); so Cyril. Or, what amounts to nearly the same thing: “No one... as you judge me ” (Lucke). Or again: “No one now, in contrast with the judgment to come” (Augustine, Chrysostom). But according to these views, there is an addition of what is not said. Or, without an ellipsis and in the sense of John 3:17: “The principal aim of my coming, is to save; and if in exceptional cases I judge, it is only with reference to those who will not allow themselves to be saved” (Calvin, Meyer, Astie, Luthardt, Weiss, Keil, Westcott, with different shades of explanation). But the idea of these exceptional judgments is definitely excluded by the οὐδένα, no one, of John 8:15. Reuss makes John 3:18 apply here: “No one, because those who are judged have judged themselves.” But how then are we to explain the words: And if I judge? To all these opinions I should prefer that of Storr, who translates ἐγώ, I, in the sense of I alone. Comp. John 8:26.

What Jesus charges upon the Jews is that they think themselves competent to judge Him by themselves and according to their own light (ὑμεῖς, you). “As for me,” Jesus means to say, “in so far as I am left to myself, reduced to my own human individuality, I do not allow myself anything of the kind; as such I judge no one.” It is the same thought, in a negative form, as that of John 5:30 in an affirmative form: “ As I hear, I judge.” The emphasis would thus be upon the pronoun ἐγώ, I, which its position in the sentence, indeed, makes prominent. And Jesus could thus add, without contradicting Himself, John 8:16: “And yet if I judge.” For then, it is not really He who judges, since He does nothing but pronounce the sentences which He has heard from His Father. This is the sense which I formerly adopted. On weighing well the import of the word οὐδένα, no one, however, I ask myself whether Jesus did not mean that He judges no individual, in the sense that He pronounces on no one a final sentence; and if He judges the moral state of the people and the character of the acts of which He is a witness, these sentences which He pronounces are dictated to Him by His Father. Wecome back thus to the preceding sense, indeed, but by another path (the contrast of the individual with the people and with things). The received reading ἀληθής, worthy of faith, is more appropriate to this context then the variant of some Alexandrian and Greco-Latin authorities, ἀληθινή. Jesus does not intend to say that, in these cases, the sentence which He gives is a real sentence, but that it is a true sentence, to which one can trust. Thereby He returns to the idea from which He started, the truth of His testimony concerning Himself, and to the question of form which had been proposed to Him. He confirms the answer which He has just given by an article of the code: