John viii. 42. Jesus said unto them, If God ivere your Father,
ye ivoicld love me.
IF experience did not convince us, we could scarcely believe that presumption should be so rooted in the heart of man as we find it is. That it should exist, not only without any grounds, but in oppo- sition to the strongest possible evidence, and be held fast with a pertinacity which nothing can shake, is truly surprising. Yet so it is : men believe that God is their Father, though not one feature of his image is found upon them, and their resemblance to Satan is complete. The Jews accounted themselves children of God merely because of their carnal descent from Abraham, his friend: and when our Lord endeavoured to shew them, from their works, that they could have no spiritual relation either to Abraham or to God, they could not so much as understand his words ; so strange and incomprehensible did his dis- tinctions appear. But, as he had just before shewn them that their works disproved their relation to Abraham, so now he appeals to their works as unde- niable evidences that they were not children of God ; " If God were your Father, ye would love me."
In discoursing on these words, we shall,
I. Consider the test here proposed —
Our Lord is proving that his obstinate opponents neither were, nor could be, children of God : and he gives them a test whereby they may try themselves. Now this test was the most easy, and most certain, that could be imagined : for if they were children of God,
1. They would have in themselves a disposition to love —
[God is love ; and all his children bear his image, espe- cially in this particular. However vile they may have been in their unregenerate state, " living in malice and envy, hateful