However, it is useless to deny that the abrupt manner in which the verse before us and the following verses come in is a difficulty, and one which we know not exactly how to explain. One thing only is very clear : this was probably one of the last public discourses which our Lord delivered in Jerusalem, and forms a kind of conclusion to His ministry in that city. It is a short but solemn winding up of all His public testimony to the Jews.
It deserves notice, that some, as Tittman, Stier, Olshausen, Tholuek, Bloomfield, and Alford, consider the whole of the pas- sage, from verse forty-four to the end of the chapter, to be not the words of Jesus Christ, but a statement of John the Baptist himself, concerning the doctrine Jesus taught throughout His ministry, and specially at Jerusalem. From this view, however, I strongly dissent. The beginning, " Jesus cried," etc., seems utterly inconsistent with the theory. There seems no special necessity for adopting it. A plain reader of the chapter would never dream of it.
It is worth remarking, that the Greek expression, " He cried," is very seldom applied to our Lord in the New Testament. It is found in Matt, xxvii. 50; Mark xv. 39; John vii. 28— 37, and here. In every instance it means a loud cry, such as any one uses to call attention to what he has to say.
Flacius thinks that the address beginning here is a kind of peroration and summing up of all our Lord's public teaching to the Jews. In it He repeats the proclamation of His own Divine office and dignity, — the purpose for which He came, to be a " light," — the danger of neglecting His testimony, — the certainty of a final judgment, — and the direct procession of His doctrine from the Father.
[He that believeth...me...Hlm that sent me.'] This remarkable expression seems meant to proclaim, for the last time, the great truth so often insisted on by our Lord, — the entire unity between Himself and the Father. Once more Jesus declares that there is such a complete and mysterious oneness between Himself and the Father, that he who believes on Him believes not only on Him, but on Him that sent Him. — Of course the sentence cannot literally mean that the man who believes on Christ does not believe ou Christ. But according to a mode of speech not un- common in the New Testament, our Lord taught that all who in obedience to His call put their trust in Him, would fiud that they were not trusting in the Son only, but in the Father also. In short, to trust in the Son, the sent Saviour of sinners, is to trust also in the Father, who sent Him to save. The Son and the Father cannot be divided, though they are distinct Persons in the Trinity; and faith in the Son gives an interest in the Father. (Compare John v. 24 : " He that heareth my word, and belie veth on Him that sent Me." And 1 Peter i. 2) : " Who by Him do believe in God.")