John 8:23-25

“ And he said to them, you are from beneath, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 24. Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins; for, if you do not believe that I am he, you shall die in your sins. 25. They said therefore to him, Who art thou? Jesus said to them, Precisely that which I also declare to you. ”

Jesus lets their jesting go unnoticed. He continues the warning which was begun in John 8:21. An abyss separates them from Him; this is the reason why He cannot serve them as a Saviour and raise them with Himself to heaven, His own country. The parallelism between the expressions: “ from beneath ” and “ of this world ” (John 8:23) does not permit us to include in the former the idea of Hades. We must rather see in the first antithesis: from beneath and from above, the opposition of nature, and in the second: of this world and not of this world, the contrast of disposition and moral activity. The world designates human life constituted independently of the divine will and consequently in opposition to it. One may be from beneath (by nature), without being of the world (by tendency), in case the soul attains to the desire of the higher good. The negative form: I am not of this world, expresses forcibly the repugnance inspired in Jesus by this whole course of human life, which is destitute of the divine inspiring breath.

Their perdition is consequently certain, if they refuse to attach themselves to Him, for He alone could have been for them the bridge between beneath and above. The brief clause by which Jesus formulates the contents of faith: “If you believe not that I am...” (literally), is remarkable because of the absence of a predicate. The whole attention is thus evidently directed to the subject, ἐγώ, I: “that it is I who am...and no other.” It seems to me difficult to suppose that, in using this expression, Jesus is not thinking of that by which Jehovah often expresses what He is for Israel (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 43:10: ki ani hou, literally, for I am He). As has been said: in this word is summed up by God Himself the whole faith of the Old Testament: “I am your God, besides whom there is no other.” In the same way, Jesus sums up in this word the whole faith of the new covenant: “I am the Saviour besides whom there is no other.” It is remarkable that in the passage in Deuteronomy, the LXX. use, for the translation of these words, precisely the same Greek expression which we find here: ἴδετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι; which leads us to think that Jesus used the same Hebrew expression as the Old Testament. The understood predicate was certainly the Christ. But Jesus carefully avoided this term, because of the political coloring which it had assumed in Israel. The hearers could understand paraphrases such as these: He whom you are expecting: He who alone can answer the true aspirations of your soul; He who can save you from sin and lead you to God. But this word Christ which He carefully avoids is precisely the one which His hearers desired to wrest from Him; this is the aim of their question: who art thou then? In other words: “Have at last the courage to speak out plainly!” His enemies might indeed use to their advantage as against His life an express declaration on His part on this decisive point.

The reply of Jesus is one of the most controverted passages in the Gospel. There are two principal classes of interpretations, in accordance with the two chief meanings of ἀρχή : beginning (temporal) and origin (substantial or logical). In the first class must be reckoned that of Cyril, Fritzsche, Hengstenberg: “From eternity (ἀρχή, John 1:1), I am that which I declare unto you.” But why not, instead of the unusual phrase τὴν ἀρχήν, simply say ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, as in John 1:1 ? Then, in this sense, would not the perfect λελάληκα have been more suitable than the present λαλῶ ? Besides, the thought of Jesus would in any case have been altogether impenetrable for His hearers. The Latin Fathers, e.g.,, Augustine, translated as if it were the nominative: “who art thou? The beginning (the origin of things).” There would be but one way of justifying this sense grammatically; it would be to make the accusative τὴν ἀρχήν a case of attraction from the following ὅτι : “The beginning, that which I also say to you.” But the construction, as well as the idea, remains none the less forced. Tholuck, abandoning this transcendental sense of ἀρχή, applies this word to the beginning of Jesus' ministry: “I am what I have unceasingly said to you ever since I began to speak to you.” But why not simply say ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, as in John 15:27 ?

And it must be admitted that the inversion of τὴν ἀρχήν cannot well be explained, any more than can the καί, also, before λαλῶ. There remains, in the temporal sense of ἀρχή, the explanation of Meyer. He holds that there is at once an interrogation and an ellipsis: “What I say to you concerning Myself from the beginning (is this what you ask me)?” The ellipsis is as forced as the thought is idle. And how can we explain the καί, the choice of the unusual term τὴν ἀρχήν, and the use of the present λαλῶ, instead of the perfect λελάληκα which would certainly be better suited to this meaning? The interpreters who give to ἀρχή a logical sense and make τὴν ἀρχήν an adverbial phrase: before all, in general, absolutely, are able to cite numerous examples drawn from the classic Greek. Thus Luthardt and Reuss: “ At first, I am what I say to you” which means: “This is the first and only answer that I have to give to you. If you wish to know who I am, you have only to weigh, in the first place, my testimonies respecting My own person.” The sense is good; but to what subsequent way of explaining Himself would this in the first place allude (see, however, below)? And why not, in this sense, simply say πρῶτον (Romans 3:2)? Chrysostom, Lucke, Weiss, Westcott explain thus: “ In general, why do I still speak with you?” Understand: “I do not myself know” (Lucke), or: “This is what you should ask me.” I confess that I do not understand how it is possible to put into the mouth of Jesus anything so insignificant. Then, if we could overlook these ellipses, which are, however, quite unnatural, what are we to do with the ὅ τι ? Are we to take it in the sense of τί or διατί, why, or because of what? Weiss acknowledges that the examples from the New Testament which are cited for one of these senses (e.g.,, Mark 9:11), are not to be thus explained. The only analogous use of this word seems to me to be found in the LXX., 1 Chronicles 17:6; comp. with 2 Samuel 7:7. Is this sufficient to legitimate this use in our passage? Moreover, the very rare phrase τὴν ἀρχήν is not sufficiently justified on this interpretation.

The only logical sense of this expression which seems to me probable is that which Winer has defended in his Grammar of the New Testament (§ 54, 1) and to which de Wette, Bruckner, Keil, etc., have given their adhesion, and in the main Reuss also: “ Absolutely what I also declare unto you,” that is to say: “neither more nor less than what my word contains.” Jesus appeals thus to His testimonies respecting His person as the adequate expression of His nature. “Fathom my speech and you will discern my nature. ” This sense fully accounts for the minutest details of the text: 1. The striking position of the word τὴν ἀρχήν, absolutely; 2. The choice of the pronoun ὅ τι all that which: “whatever it may be that I may have said to you;” they have only to sum up His affirmations respecting Himself, the light of the world, the rock from which flows the living water, the bread which came down from heaven..., etc., and they will know what He is; 3. The particle καί, also, which brings out distinctly the identity between His nature and His speech; 4. The use of the verb λαλεῖν, to declare, instead of λέγειν, to say, to teach. As Keil well says in reply to Weiss: “His λαλεῖν does not designate what He has said of Himself on this or that occasion; it is His discourse in general, presented as an adequate expression of His nature;” finally, 5. The present tense of the verb, which gives us to understand that His testimonies are not yet at their end. It is objected, it is true, that τὴν ἀρχήν does not have this sense of absolutely except in negative propositions. But, in the first place, the sense of the proposition is essentially negative: “Absolutely nothing else than what I declare.”

And can we demand of the New Testament all the strictness of the classical forms? Besides, Baumlein cites the following example from Herodotus: ἀρχὴν γὰρ ἐγὼ μηχανήσομαι (John 1:9; John 1:1), an example whose value seems to be but little diminished by the fact that the phrase is followed by a negative proposition. This explanation seems to me indisputably preferable to all the others. I still ask myself, however, whether we cannot revert to the temporal sense of ἀρχή, beginning, and in that case explain: “ To begin, that is to say, for the moment,” and find the afterwards or at the end, which should correspond to the beginning, in John 8:28: “When you shall have lifted up the Son of man, then you shall know...” At present, Jesus reveals Himself only by His speech; but when the great facts of salvation shall have been accomplished, then they will receive a new revelation still more luminous. If this relation between John 8:25 and John 8:28 seems forced, we must, as I think, abide by the preceding explanation. We omit a multitude of explanations which are only varieties of the preceding meanings, or which are too entirely erroneous to make it possible to consider them.

The application of this answer of Jesus was that the thorough examination of the testimony which He bore continually to Himself was enough to lead to the discovery therein of His nature and of His mission as related to Israel and to the world. On this path, one will learn to know Him successively as the true temple (chap. 2), as the living water (chap. 4), as the true Son (chap. 5), as the bread from heaven (chap. 6), etc. And in this way it is that His name Christ will be in a manner spelled out, letter after letter, in the heart of the believer, and will formulate itself there as a spontaneous discovery, which will be worth infinitely more than if he had learned it in the form of a lesson from an outward teaching. To be salutary indeed, this profession: “Thou art the Christ,” must be, as in the case of Peter (John 6:66-69), the fruit of the experiences of faith. Comp. Matthew 16:17: “Flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” Such was the way in which the homage of Palm-day arose. Jesus never either sought or accepted an adhesion arising from any other origin than that of moral conviction. This reply is one of the most marvelous touches of Jesus' wisdom. It perfectly explains why, in the Synoptics, He forbade the Twelve to say that He was the Christ.