John 5:40

John 5:40. And ye will not come to me, that ye may have life. The Jews did search the sacred writings, to do so was their honour and their pride. Their own belief was that in possessing them they possessed eternal life; as one of their greatest teachers said, He who has gotten to himself words of the Law has gotten to himself the life of the world to come. But these very Scriptures were the writings that bore witness concerning Jesus (see the note on John 5:38). Had they entered into their spirit, they would have joyfully welcomed Him; yet they refused to come (it was not their will to come, see John 5:6) to Him for life. Such is the general meaning of the verses. The Jews had used the witness of the Scriptures as they had dealt with that given by the Baptist (John 5:35). What was designed as a means had been made by them an end; what should have led them to Christ detained them from Him. In a certain sense the Scriptures did contain eternal life, in that they bore witness of Him who was the true bestower of this gift; but as long as men busied themselves with the words of Scripture to the neglect of its purpose, believing that the former would give all they needed and sought, the Scriptures themselves kept them back from life. It is a little difficult to decide what is the reason for the emphasis which in the original is laid on ‘ye' (‘ye think that,' etc.). The meaning may be: ye yourselves set such honour on the Scriptures that ye think eternal life is found in them. In this case an argument is founded on their own admissions. Or our Lord may intend to refer to this doctrine respecting the Scripture as their belief only not the truth, not His teaching; ye think that in the Scriptures ye have eternal life, but it is not truly so, eternal life is given by me alone. The latter meaning seems most in harmony with the context. So understood, the words do indeed rebuke that view of Scripture which rests everything on the letter, and also the inconsistency between the reverence which the Jews paid to the sacred writings and their neglect of the purpose they were designed to serve; but to the Scriptures the highest honour is assigned, for Jesus says, ‘it is they which bear witness concerning me.' When thus interpreted in the sense in which it appears necessary to understand them, the words of John 5:39 supply a lesson almost the opposite of that usually drawn from them. While they exalt instead of depreciating the Scriptures, their main object is to warn us against putting them into an undue position, or supposing that they are more than a guide to Him in whom alone life is to be gained (comp. John 6:63). The ordinary rendering of the first word (‘Search ‘for ‘Ye search') seems altogether inconsistent with the course of thought in these verses.