John 8:46

Ver. 46. To justify their distrust with respect to His words, it would be necessary that they should at least be able to accuse Him of some fault in His actions; for holiness and truth are sisters. Can they do this? Let them do it. This defiance which Jesus hurls at His adversaries shows that He feels Himself fully cleared, by His defense in chap. 7, of the crime of which He had been accused in chap. 5 We must be careful, indeed, not to take ἁμαρτία, sin, in the sense of error (Calvin, Melanchthon) or of falsehood (Fritzsche). The thought is the same here as in John 7:18: Jesus affirms that there absolutely does not arise from His moral conduct any ground of suspicion against the truth of His teaching. We must imagine this question as followed by a pause sufficient to give opportunity to whoever should wish to accuse Him to be heard....No one opens his mouth. The admission involved in this silence serves as a premise for the following argument: “Well, then, if (εἰ δέ, now if, or simply εἰ), as your silence proves, I teach the truth, why do you not believe?”

Here again a pause; He had invited them to judge Him; in the face of His innocence which has just been established, He leaves them a moment now to pass judgment on their conduct towards Him. After this silence, He pronounces the sentence: “You are not of God: herein is the true reason of your unbelief towards me.” The expression to be of God designates the state of a soul which has placed itself, and which now is, under the influence of divine action. It is the opposite of the οὐχ ἑστηκεν affirmed with regard to Satan. This state does not exclude, but implies, the free determination of the man. Otherwise, the tone of reproach which prevails in our verse would be unjust and even absurd. ᾿Ακούειν, properly, to hear, takes here, as often the French term does, the sense of intelligent hearing (hence the limiting word in the accusative). Comp. the manner in which the declaration of Jesus respecting the truth which gives freedom (John 8:32) had been received. The διὰ τοῦτο, for this cause, refers at once to the general principle laid down in the first part of the verse, and the following ὅτι : “It is for this cause..., that is to say, because...”

The perfect holiness of Christ is proved in this passage, not by the silence of the Jews, who might very well have ignored the sins of their interlocutor, but by the assurance with which Jesus lays this question before them. Without the immediate consciousness which Christ had of the perfect purity of His life, and on the supposition that He was only a more holy man than other men, a moral sense so delicate as that which such a state would imply, would not have suffered the least stain to pass unnoticed, either in His life, or in His heart; and what hypocrisy would there not have been in this case in addressing to others a question with the aim of causing them to give it a different answer from that which, in His inmost heart, He gave Himself! In other terms: to give a false proof whose want of soundness He hopes that no one will be able to prove.