John 8:30-32

“ As Jesus spoke thus, many believed on him. 31. Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had become believers on him: If you abide in my word, you shall be really my disciples, 32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ”

The term “ believed ” designates here undoubtedly the disposition, openly expressed, to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. In this quite considerable number of believers, there were perhaps some members of the Sanhedrim; John 12:42: “ Many of the rulers believed on him. ” They perceived indeed that, in the words which Jesus had just uttered, there was something else than a vain boast. But Jesus is no more dazzled by this apparent success than he had been by the confession of Nicodemus (John 3:1-2), and by the enthusiasm of the Galilean multitude (John 6:14-15). Instead of treating these new believers as converts, He puts them immediately to the test by addressing to them a promise which, notwithstanding its greatness, presents a profoundly humiliating side. It is thus that Jesus often acts. At once, the one whose faith is only superficial stumbles at the holiness of the new word and falls; the one whose conscience has been laid hold of perseveres and penetrates farther into the essence of things. The particle therefore in John 8:31, sums up in a word the connection of ideas which we have just developed.

This new scene can scarcely have taken place on the same day with the preceding. John 8:31 is explained in the most natural way by holding that those of the stranger pilgrims who had believed had departed on the day after the feast, and that, at this moment, Jesus was surrounded only by believing hearers who had until then belonged to the Jewish party. We are surprised, at the first glance, to meet in this gospel a connection of words such as Jews who had become believers. But this contradictio in adjecto is intentional on the part of the author; it is even the key of the following passage. These believers, at the foundation, belonged to the party of the adversaries; they were indeed still really Jews; they continued to share in the Messianic aspirations of the nation; only they were disposed to recognize in Jesus the man who had the mission to satisfy these aspirations. Theirs was nearly the condition of mind of the Galilean multitude, at the beginning of chap. 6. Undoubtedly, these Jewish believers were not all of the πολλοί, many, of the preceding verse, but only a group among them, as Weiss and Westcott think. In the view of the latter, the difference between the two limiting words, αὐτῷ, him, and εἱς αὐτόν, on him, John 8:30, is explained even by this fact. But the meaning seems to me rather: They believed on him (as the Messiah) because they for a moment put confidence in His word (him).

The nature of the promise made in John 8:31-32, is admirably fitted to the end which Jesus proposes to Himself. He knows that emancipation from the Roman yoke is the great work which is expected of the Messiah; He therefore spiritualizes this hope, and presents it under this more elevated form to the heart of the believers. The pronoun ὑμεῖς, you, has as its aim to contrast these new disciples with the unbelieving multitude. According to Weiss, this word serves rather to place them in opposition to the true believers among the πολλοί; but this distinction was not sufficiently marked. We might also see here a contrast with the early disciples. The first sense is the most natural. The expression to abide in contains the idea of persevering docility. There will be for this rising faith obstacles to be overcome. The Word will find in their hearts inveterate prejudices; a relapse into unbelief is therefore for them, though believers, a serious danger. By this figure: to abide in, the revelation contained in the word of Jesus is compared to a fertile soil in which true faith must be rooted ever more deeply in order to thrive and bear fruit.