John 8:44

John 8:44. Ye are of the father who is the devil, and the desires of your father it is your will to do. It seems desirable to preserve in translation the expression ‘the father' (for ‘your' is not found in the Greek), because it seems to be our Lord's design to set this in strongest contrast to the name which He has used with most significant emphasis, ‘the Father' (see the notes on John 8:27; John 8:38). All the desires of this their father it was their will to do. Their works, deliberately chosen, answered to their parentage: hence their seeking to kill Jesus (John 8:37; John 8:40), and their inability to listen to His word (John 8:43) .

He was a man-killer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth. Well may they seek to kill Jesus, for their father, the devil, was a man-killer from the beginning of his dealings with mankind. His seduction of mankind was itself a murder, severing man from the life of God, and bringing in the evil that has been the cause of every crime. Thus he is the shedder ‘of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth.' Not only was he a man-killer, but he ‘stood not in the truth.' [1] It does not seem likely that these words refer to the fall of the angels who kept not their first estate,' for then surely the order of the clauses would have been reversed. Throughout all past human history the devil shunned ‘the truth,' took his stand without the borders of ‘the truth,' because this action alone is suitable to his essential (though not original) nature.

[1] Not ‘standeth:' the word is probably an imperfect (of ἔστηκεν).

Because there is no truth in him. His hatred of ‘the truth' springs from this, that he is not true; ‘truth' (now used without the article) is not in him; and his own hatred of the truth is transmitted to his children, who cannot hear the word of Jesus (John 8:43).

Whensoever one speaketh the lie, he speaketh of his own, because his father also is a liar. Whensoever a man who is a child of the devil uttereth falsehood, he is giving forth what by very nature belongs to him, what is his peculiar property by right of kindred and inheritance, because his father also, the devil, is a liar.