John 3:20

Ver. 20. “ For, every one who practiseth evil hateth the light and doth not come to the light, that his works may not be condemned. ”

Night was reigning at the moment when Jesus was speaking thus. How many evil-doers were taking advantage of the darkness, to pursue their criminal designs! And it was not accidental that they had chosen this hour. Such is the image of that which takes place in the moral world. The appearance of Jesus is for the world like the rising of the sun; it manifests the true character of human actions; whence it follows, that when any one does evil and wishes to persevere in it, he turns his back upon Jesus and His holiness. If his conscience came to be enlightened by this brightness, it would oblige him to renounce that which he wishes to keep. He denies therefore, and this negation is for him the night in which he can continue to sin: such is the genesis of unbelief. The expression ὁ φαῦλα πράσσων, he who does evil, denotes not only the tendency to which the man has hitherto surrendered himself, but also that in which he desires to persevere. This is what the present participle πράσσων (instead of the past πράξας) expresses. For the word πονηρά (perverse things) is substituted the word φαῦλα (things of nought) of John 3:19; the latter is taken from the estimate of Jesus himself, while the former referred to the intrinsic nature of the acts, to their fundamental depravity. We must also notice a difference between the two verbs πράττειν and ποιεῖν : the first indicates simply labor the question is of works of nought the second implies effective realization, in the good the product remains. But we need not believe that the term practise evil refers only to what we call immoral conduct. Jesus is certainly thinking, also, of a life externally honorable, but destitute of all serious moral reality, like that of the greater part of the rulers in Israel, and particularly of the Pharisees: the exaltation of the I and the pursuit of human glory, as well as gross immorality, belong to the φαῦλα πράττειν, “ practise things of nought ” in the sense in which Jesus understands it. Μισεῖ, he hates, expresses the instinctive, immediate antipathy; οὐκ ἔρχεται, he comes not, denotes the deliberate resolution. The verb ἐλέγχειν (perhaps from πρὸς ἕλην κρίνειν, to hold to the light in order to judge) signifies: to bring to light the erroneous or evil nature of an idea or a deed.

The reason of unbelief, therefore, is not intellectual, but moral. The proof which Jesus gives, in John 3:20, of this so grave fact is perfectly lucid. All that Pascal has written most profoundly on the relation between the will and the understanding, the heart and the belief, is already in advance contained in this verse and the one which follows. But that which is true of unbelief is equally true of faith. It also strikes its roots into the moral life; here is the other side of the judgment: