John 8:18

John 8:18. I am he that beareth witness concerning myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness concerning me. In all the Son's witness concerning Himself, it is the Father that beareth witness concerning Him. This is the teaching of chap. 5, and it is easy to see that the witness may with equal truth be spoken of as that of Two, or as that borne by One (the Father). In thus speaking to His enemies of a twofold witness, He may mean either (1) that they should themselves have discerned in Him, over and above that which in a holy human prophet they would have accepted as ‘witness,' a higher presence which could only be Divine; and that, had they done this, they could never have thought of His word as standing alone: or (2) that in the witness which He had borne they had dreamed of unsupported words only because they could not attain to that perfect knowledge which He alone possessed. They heard and saw one witness only: to His consciousness there were two. The first of these two views is by much the more probable. Jesus appeals to two facts which they ought to have known, that He was the expression of the Father, and that what He was the Father was. These were two wholly separate and independent things, although the validity of each depended upon that consciousness of the Divine in them which they had silenced. There is thus here no petitio principii as has been thought even by distinguished commentators.