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" filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ." (Coloss, i. 24.) He is " bearing the reproach of Christ." (Heb. xi. 26.)
{^Because they know not. ..sent Me.] This sentence is ellipti- cat. It means that dark ignorance was the great cause of the conduct of the unbelieving Jews. They did not rightly know God the Father who had sent Christ into the world. They did not know that Christ was the Messiah whom the Father had promised to send. In this state of ignorance they blindly per- secuted Christ and His disciples.
This judicial blindness and hardness of the Jewish nation in the time of our Lord and His Apostles is a thing that ought to be carefully observed by all Bible-readers. (See Acts iii. 17 ; xiii. 27 ; xxviii. 25-27 ;* 1 Cor. ii. 8 ; 2 Cor. iii. 14.) It was a peculiar judicial blindness, we must remember, to which the whole nation was given over, like Pharaoh, as a final punish- ment for many centuries of idolatry, wickedness and unbelief. Nothing but this seems thoroughly to account for the extraor- dinary unbelief of many of our Lord's hearers.
In leaving this passage we should not fail to notice the sin- gular frequency with which our Lord speaks of " the world." Six times he mentions it. We should also notice the singular resemblance between the line of argument adopted in the pas- sage, and the line of St. John in the third chapter of his first Epistle. The Apostle writes his Epistle in that part, as if he had this chapter before him.