John 8:24

If ye believe not that I am he, &c.— That is, "The person whom I have represented myself to be." There is evidently in the original an ellipsis here to be supplied by comparing the passage with John 8:12. See Ch. John 13:19. Mark 13:6. Acts 13:25. "If ye do not believe that I am the bread of life, the heavenly manna, the light of theworld, the Messiah, you shall die in your sins." The repetition of the threatening here from John 8:21 is an awful rebuke to the folly of their answer, John 8:22 as if our Lord had said, "It very ill becomes you to trifle and amuse yourselves with such silly and spiteful turns, when your life, even the life of your souls, is at stake; and to talk of mykilling myself, when by your unbelief and impenitence you are plunging yourselves into death eternal." Thus do those passages in our Lord's discourses, which to a careless reader might seem flat tautologies, appear, on an attentive review, to be animated with a most penetrating spirit, and full of adivine dignity; a remark which will frequentlyoccur, especially in reading those important discourses of Christ, which St. John, through the infinite goodness of God to his church, has recorded after they had been omitted by the other evangelists.