John 8:41-43

Vv. 41b-43. “ They said therefore to him: We are not children born in fornication; we have only one father, God. 42. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, you would love me; for I came forth and am come from God; for neither am I come of myself, but he sent me. 43. Why do you not recognize my speech? Because you cannot understand my word. ” The Jews now accept the moral sense in which Jesus takes the notion of sonship and use it in their own behalf: “Let us not speak any more of Abraham, if thou wilt have it so; whatever it may be, in the spiritual domain, of which it seems that thou art thinking, it is God alone who is our Father. And we have been able to receive in His house only good examples and good principles.” We, ἡμεῖς, at the beginning of the clause; persons such as we are! From the time of the return from the captivity (comp. the books of Nehemiah and Malachi), the union with a Gentile woman was regarded as impure, and the child born of such a marriage as illegitimate, as belonging through one of its parents to the family of Satan, the God of the heathen. It is probably in this sense that the Jews say: “We have only one Father, God.” They were born in the most normal theocratic conditions; they have not a drop of idolatrous blood in their veins; they are Hebrews, born of Hebrews (Php 3:5). Thus, even when rising with Jesus to the moral point of view, they cannot rid themselves altogether of their idea of physical sonship. Meyer, Ewald and Weiss think that they mean that their common mother, Sarah, was not a woman guilty of adultery. But how could a supposition like this come to their thought! Lucke and de Wette suppose rather that they assert the fact that their worship is free from any idolatrous element. But the question here is of origin, not of worship. It would be possible, according to the sense which we have given, that they were alluding to the Samaritans born of a mingling of Jewish and heathen populations.

But Jesus does not hesitate to deprive them even of this higher prerogative, which they think they can ascribe to themselves with so much of assurance. And He does this by the same method which He has just employed, in John 8:40, to deny their patriarchal filiation: He lays down a moral fact against which their claim is shattered. By virtue of His origin, of which He is distinctly conscious (John 8:14), Jesus knows that His appearing carries with it a divine seal. Every true child of God will be disposed to love Him. Their ill-will towards Him is, consequently, enough to annihilate their claim to the title of children of God. The true translation of the words: ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἥκω, is: “It is from God that I came forth and am here,” (ἥκω, present formed from a perfect). Jesus presents Himself to the world with the consciousness that nothing in Him weakens the impression which the heavenly abode that He has just left must make upon accessible souls. ᾿Εξῆλθον, I came forth, refers to the divine fact of the incarnation; ἥκω, I am here, to the divine character of His appearing. And along with His origin and His presence, there is also His mission which He has from God: “For neither am I come of myself. ”

This second point is fitted to confirm the impression produced by the first ones. He does not accomplish here below a work of His own choice; He continues in the service of that work which God gives to Him at each moment (for...neither). If they loved God, they would without difficulty recognize this character of His coming, His person and His work.