teaching that I am proclaiming is not a thing of my own private invention, and the product of my own isolated mind. It is the doctrine of my Father who sent me. It deserves attention because it is His message. He that despiseth it, despiseth not only me, but Him whose messenger I am." — The great truth of His own inseparable and mysterious union with God the Father, is here once more pointed at. It is like, " I can of my own self do nothing," (John v. 30,) and "as my Father hath taught me I speak these things," (John viii. 28,) and " I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me He gave me com- mandment what I should say and what I should speak." (John xii. 49.)
Some think that our Lord only meant, " The sense of Scrip- ture which I give is not my own, but the sense in which God at first gave it." But this is a very meagre view of the sentence, though an Arian or Socinian may like it.
Cyril remarks: "In saying that He was sent by the Father, He does not show Himself inferior to the Father. For this mis- sion is not that of a servant, though it might be called so, as He 1 took on Him the form of a servant.' But He is < sent,' as a word is out of the mind, or a sunbeam out of the sun."
Augustine remarks : " This sentence undoeth the Sabellian heresy. The Sabellians have dared to say that the Son is the same as the Father : the names two, the reality one. If the names were two, and the reality one, it would not be said, ' My doctrine is not mine.' If Thy doctrine be not Thine, Lord, whose is it, unless there be another whose it may be?"
Hengstenberg thinks that our Lord had in view the famous prophecy of Moses in which God says of Messiah,—" I will put my words in his mouth." (Deut. xviii. 18.)
Let us carefully note with what peculiar reverence we should receive and study every word that fell from our Lord's lips. When He spoke, He did not speak His own mind only, as one of His Apostles or prophets did. It was God the Father speaking with and through Him. No wonder when we read such expres- sions as this that St. John calls our Lord " the Word."
17.— [If any man will do his will.~\ The English language here fails to give the full force of the Greek. It is literally, " If any man is willing to do, — has a mind and desire and inclination to do God's will." It is not the simple future of the verb " do." There are two distinct verbs. The stress, therefore, in reading the sentence, must not be laid entirely on " doing" God's will. It is "if any man is willing to do."
[He shall know of the doctrine.] This means he shall know " concerning and about" the doctrine I am proclaiming.
[Whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself] This means " whether the doctrine is from God, as I say it is, — the