7:25-30 Christ proclaimed aloud, that they were in error in their thoughts about his origin. He was sent of God, who showed himself true to his promises. This declaration, that they knew not God, with his claim to peculiar knowledge, provoked the hearers; and they sought to take him, but God can tie men's hands, though he does not turn their hearts.

Verse 28. - Jesus therefore cried - lifted up his voice in such a way as to cause wide astonishment. (The word is found in John 1:15 of John the Baptist, and ver. 37 and John 12:44; but frequently in the synoptists and Acts, and very frequently in the LXX.) The trumpet peal sounded through the courts of the temple, and the crowds rushed in the direction from which it proceeded. He cried in the temple. This clause is added, notwithstanding the statement of ver. 14, and it intimates a break in the discourse, a sudden and trenchant response to certain loudly uttered murmurs of the Jerusalem multitude. Ye both know me, and know whence I am. Surely (with De Wette, Meyer, Westcott, Moulton) the Lord distinctly concedes to the men of Jerusalem a certain amount of superficial knowledge. It is lamentably defective in respect of that for which they imagine it all-sufficient; and yet this knowledge was highly significant and important as far as it went. Such knowledge of his birthplace and his family, his provincial training, his Galilaean ministry, were all proofs to them of his humanity - that he belonged to their race, was bone of their bone, and sympathizing in their deepest sorrows, understood their noblest aspirations. Such a concession, moreover, repudiates the supposed docetic character of the Christ of the Fourth Gospel. Many commentators regard the exclamation its ironical and interrogatory (Grotius, Lampe, Calvin, Lucke, and even Godet), without sufficient warrant. Our Lord, however, soon shows that, though they are rightly informed about certain obvious facts, there were others of stupendous importance which could go a long way towards rcconciling their many-sided and conflicting ideas of Messiah, of which they were yet in ignorance. And yet (all commentators show that there is a certain adversative force about this third καί; see also ver. 30; John 8:20; John 9:30; Mark 12:12) I am not come from myself (see John 5:30). I have not risen upon the wings of my own ambition. It is not my mere human whim and purpose, or my desire for self-glorification, which brings me before you. You may know the home of my childhood; and watched as I have been by your eager spies, as you had full right to do, you may know all my public proceedings, and yet you have not fathomed the fact that I have not come on my own errand, nor does my humanity as you have grasped it cover the whole of the facts about me. There is a peculiarity, a uniqueness, about my coming that you have yet to learn. I have been sent to you; but he that sent me is real - a reality to me, which makes it an absolute reality in itself. The use of ἀληθινός is somewhat peculiar, and, unless with some commentators and Revisers we make it equal to ἀλήθης, and thus disturb the uniform usage of St. John, we must either imagine under the word a real "Sender," or one really answering to the idea already announced as of One competent to send. "He that sent me, the Father," of whom I spoke (John 5:37) when last we conversed together, is the overwhelming Reality in this case. Whom ye know not. The Jerusalem multitudes were suffering grievously from the superstitious limitations of their own faith, from the traditions, the symbolism, the letter, the form, which had well nigh strangled, suffocated, the underlying truths. They had in many ways lost the God whose great Name they honoured. They failed to apprehend his awful nearness to them, his love to every man, his compassion to the world, the demand of his righteousness, the condition of seeing him, the way to his rest - "Him ye know not." This was a serious rebuke of the entire system which prevailed at Jerusalem. Not understanding nor knowing the Father, they were unable to see the possibility of his having sent to them, through the life and lips of a Man whom they knew, his last and greatest message.

Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught,.... Overhearing the reasonings of these men, however, knowing what they said; so the Persic version adds, "having secretly known this"; exalted his voice as he was teaching in the temple, and in the midst of his discourse, publicly before all the people, in the temple, spoke out with a loud voice, that all might hear:

saying, ye both know me, and ye know whence I am; some, as the Ethiopic version, read these words by way of interrogation, "do ye both know me, and do ye know from whence I am?" no; you do not. Or they may be considered as an ironical concession; yes, you know me, and you know whence I am; you know me to be Jesus of Nazareth, but you are wrong, I am not of Nazareth; you suppose I come, from Galilee, but that is your ignorance; you take me to be the real son of Joseph, to be begotten by him on Mary, but that is your mistake: such is your knowledge of me: you know me indeed who I am, and from whence I come.

And I am not come of myself; into this world, by incarnation, or the assumption of human nature, to work out the salvation of men; the Father called him to it, and he agreeing to do it, was in the fulness of time sent about it; this was not a device of his own, or an honour he took to himself; he was not alone in it; it was a mutual agreement between him and his Father, in consequence of which he was sent and came.

But he that sent me is true; to the covenant he made with Christ, and to the promises he made to the fathers of the Old Testament, concerning the mission of his Son; and he is true to be believed, in the testimonies he gave of him, particularly by a voice from heaven, declaring him his beloved Son.

Whom ye know not; so that notwithstanding all their boasted knowledge of him, they knew not his Father, from whence he came, and by whom he was sent; and notwithstanding also their boasted knowledge of the one, only, true, and living God, see Romans 2:17; yet they knew him not in a spiritual sense; they knew him not in Christ, nor as the Father of Christ; they knew neither the Father nor the Son: and this their ignorance of both was the reason of their hatred of Christ, and of his followers, John 15:21.

28, 29. cried Jesus—in a louder tone, and more solemn, witnessing style than usual.

Ye both, &c.—that is, "Yes, ye know both Myself and My local parentage, and (yet) I am not come of Myself."

but he that sent me is true, &c.—Probably the meaning is, "He that sent Me is the only real Sender of any one."

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