John 8:17-18

“ And besides it is written in your law that the testimony of two men is worthy of belief. 18. I bear witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me. ”

Jesus enters, at least in form, into the thought of His adversaries (as in John 7:16; John 7:28). The Mosaic law required two witnesses, for testimony to be valid (Deuteronomy 17:6; Deu 19:15). Jesus shows that in the judgments which He pronounces on the world (John 8:16), as well as in the testimonies which He bears to Himself (John 8:18), He satisfies this rule; for the Father joins His testimony to His own. Where the eye of the flesh can see only one witness, there are really two. This testimony of the Father is generally referred to the miracles, according to John 8:36. But the connection with John 8:16 leads us to a much more profound explanation. Jesus describes here a fact of His inner life, as in John 5:30. The knowledge which He has of Himself and of His mission (John 8:12) differs essentially from the psychological phenomenon which is called in philosophy the fact of consciousness; it is in the light of God that He contemplates and knows Himself. Herein is the reason why His testimony bears, in the view of every one who has a sense for perceiving God, the stamp of this divine authority.

In the expression: your law, the adversaries of the authenticity have found a proof of the Gentile origin of the author (Baur). Reuss formerly explained it by the spirit of our Gospel, which has as its end in view nothing less than “a lowering and almost a degradation of the old dispensation.” We have been able to judge from the close of chap. 5 as to what is the value of these assertions. Weiss, Keil, Reuss himself (now) see in this your an accommodation: “This law on which you rest at this moment for condemning me.” I think rather, notwithstanding what Weiss and Keil say, that Jesus, in expressing Himself thus, is inspired by the feeling of the exceptional position which He is claiming in all this section. As He nowhere says, our Father (not even in the address of the Lord's Prayer), but: your Father, Matthew 5:16; Matthew 5:45; Matthew 5:48; Matthew 6:8; Matthew 6:15; Matthew 6:32, etc.), or, when He wished to express the divine fatherhood at once with reference to Himself and to us: “ My Father and your Father” (John 20:17), because God is not His Father in the sense in which He is ours, so no more can He say: our law, uniting under one and the same epithet His own relation and that of the Jews to the Mosaic institution.

Who does not feel that He could not, without derogation, have said in John 7:19: “Has not Moses given us the law?” Jesus was conscious of being infinitely elevated above the entire Jewish system. His submission to the law was undoubtedly complete, but it was free; for His moral life was not dependent on the relation to an external ordinance. The word men is not found in the Hebrew text; this term, whatever Weiss may say, must have been added intentionally; it was suggested by the contrast between the human witnesses whom the law demanded, and the divine witness whom Jesus here introduces (the Father who sent me). In this judicial form Jesus expresses at the foundation the same thought as when He spoke in John 8:16 of the inner certainty of His own testimony. The idea of this entire passage is the following: “You demand a guaranty of that which I am saying of myself and of you; behold it: It is in God that I know myself and that I assert myself, as it is in Him that I know you and judge you.” And it is in virtue of this divine light which shines within Him and by means of which He also knows others, that He is present as the light of the world (John 8:12). A fact so spiritual could hardly be understoood by every one; hence the following: