serves special notice. Our Lord teaches that His resurrection, as well as His death, was in His own power. When our Lord rose again He was not passive, and raised by the power of another only, but rose by His own Divine power. It is note- worthy that the resurrection of our Lord in some places is at- tributed to His Father's act, as Acts ii. 24, 32 ; once, at least, to the Holy Spirit, as 1 Pet. iii. 18; and here, and in John ii. 19, to Christ Himself. All leads to the same great conclusion, — that the resurrection of Our Lord, as well as every part of His mediatorial work, was an act in which all three Persons of the Trinity concurred and co-operated.
Hutcheson observes that if Christ had power to take life again, when He pleased, " so He can put a period to the suffer- ings of His own when He pleaseth, without any help of their crooked ways."
[This commandment. ..received.. .Father."] Chrysostom, and most other commentators, apply these words strictly to the great work which our Lord has just declared He had power to do : viz., to lay down His life and to take it again. " This is part of the commission I received from my Father on coming into the world, and one of the works He gave Me to do."
No doubt this is good exposition and good divinity. Yet I am rather inclined to think that our Lord's words refer to the whole doctrine which He had just been declaring to the Jews : viz., His office as a Shepherd, His being the true Shepherd, His laying down His life for the sheep, and taking it again, His hav- ing other sheep who were to be brought into the fold, His final purpose to exhibit to the world one flock and one Shepherd. Of all this truth, He says, " I received this doctrine in charge from my Father, to proclaim to the world, and I now declare it to you Pharisees." — I suspect that both here and elsewhere, the word " commandment " has a wide, deep meaning, and points to that solemn and mysterious truth, the entire unity of the Father and the Son in the work of redemption, to which John frequently refers : " I am in the Father and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works." (John xiv. 10.) " The Father gave Me a commandment what I should speak." (John xii. 49.) Our Lord's object in these often re- peated expressions seems to be to keep the Jews in mind that He was not a mere human Prophet, but one who was God as well as man, and in whom, both speaking and working, the Father always dwelt.
When our Lord speaks of " receiving a commandment," we must take care that we do not suppose the expression implies any inferiority of the Second Person of the Trinity to the First. We must reverently remember the everlasting covenant between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the salvation of man, and in- terpret "commandment" as meaning a part of the charge or commission with which the Second Person, Christ, was sent into the world, to carry out the purposes of the Eternal Trinity.