John 11:27

Ver. 27. “ She says to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. ”

To see in this confession of Martha, as some have done, only a simple avowal of a want of understanding with reference to the preceding words of Jesus: “I do not comprehend all these profound things of which thou art speaking to me, but I hold thee to be the Messiah,” is strangely to depreciate its significance. This meaning would give to this scene which is of so grave import a character almost ridiculous. By her answer: Yes, Lord, Martha certainly appropriates to herself all that which Jesus has just affirmed respecting His person. Only, she does not feel herself in a condition to formulate spontaneously her faith in the things which are so new for her, and she makes use of terms which are familiar to her in order to express the thought that Jesus is to her all that which is greatest, and that, whatever He may affirm respecting His person, He will never say too much for the faith of her who speaks to Him. The Christ: the end of the theocratic revelations and dispensations; the Son of God: evidently something else than the Christ, unless there is an idle tautology here: the personage in whom God manifests Himself as in no other, and who is in an intimate and mysterious relation with God. The expression: who comes into the world, is not a third title, but an apposition explanatory of the two others. The present participle ἐρχόμενος, who comes, is the present of idea: the one who, according to the divine promise, should come, and in fact comes. The world: the foreseen theatre of his Messianic activity. There is a great psychological truth in this reply of Martha: by designating Him thus, she implicitly acknowledges that He is indeed all that which He has said: the resurrection and the life. ᾿Εγώ : I whom thou art questioning; πεπίστευκα (perfect): this is a conviction which I have gained.