[Said God...his Father. ..equal with God.^ It is clear that our Lord's words about His Son ship struck the Jew5 in a far more for- cible way than ihey seem to strike us. In a certain sense all believers are " sons of God." (Rom, viii. 14.) Bat it is evident that they are not so in the sense that our Lord meant when He talked of God as His Father, and Himself as God's Son. The Greek undoubtedly might be translated more clearly, "said that God was His own particular Father." (Compare Rom. viii. 32). The Jews at any rate accepted the words as meaning our Lord to assert His own peculiar Sonship, and His consequent entire equality with God the Father. Their charge and ground of anger against Him amounted to this : — " Thou callest God Thine own particular Father, and claimest authority to do whatsoever He does. By so doing Thou makest Thyself equal with God." And our Lord seems to have accepted this charge as a correct state- ment of the case, and to have proceeded to argue that He had a right to say what He had said, and that He really was equal with God. As St. Paul says, — " He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." (Phil. ii. 6.)
Augustine remarks, — " Behold the Jews understood what the Arians would not understand."
Whitby remarks that the Jews never accused our Lord of blasphemy for saying that he was the Messiah, but for saying that He was the Son of God, because they did not beUeve that Messiah when He appeared was to be a Divine Person.
Ferus remarks that the Jews probably took notice of our Lord calling God " My Father," and not " our Father." — CartwrJght also thinks that there is much weight in the expression *'my," and that the Jews gathered from it that Christ claimed to be the only -begotten Son of God, and not merely a Son by adoption and grace.
19 — [Then answered Jesus and said unto them.'] This verse begins a long discourse, in which our Lord formally defends himself from the charge of the Jews of laying claim to what He had no right to claim. (1.) He asserts His own Divine authority, com- mission, dignity, and equaHty with God His Father. (2.) He brings forward the evidence of His Divine commission, which the Jews ought to consider and receive. (3.) Finally, He tells the Jews plainly the reason of their unbelief, and charges home on their consciences their love of man's praise more than God's, and their inconsistency in pretending to honour Moses while they did not honour Christ. It is a discourse almost un- rivalled in depth and majesty.
There are few chapters in the Bible, perhaps, where we feel our own shallowness of understanding so thoroughly, and dis-