The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. IIDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
Dods, Marcus
Bible. John; Bible. John -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
meant to acknowledge Him to be the Messiah. In point of fact, flesh and
blood did reveal the Messiahship of Jesus to Peter, for it was his own
brother Andrew who told Peter that he had found the Messiah, and brought
him to Jesus. Plainly therefore Jesus meant that Peter had now made a
further step in his knowledge and in his faith, and had learned to
recognise Jesus as not only Messiah, but as Son of God in the proper
sense.
In this Gospel, then, we have various forms of evidence. We have the
testimonies of men who had seen and heard and known Jesus, and who,
though Jews, and therefore intensely prejudiced against such a
conception, enthusiastically owned that Christ was in the proper sense
Divine. We have John’s own testimony, who writes his Gospel for the
purpose of winning men to faith in Christ’s Sonship, who calls Christ
Lord, applying to Him the title of Jehovah, and who in so many words
declares that “the Word was God”—the Word who became flesh in Jesus
Christ. And what is perhaps even more to the purpose, we have
affirmations of the same truth made by Jesus Himself: “Before Abraham
was I am”; “I and the Father are one”; “The glory which I had with Thee
before the world was”; “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Who
that listens to these sayings can marvel that the horrified Jews
considered that He was making Himself equal with God and took up stones
to stone Him for blasphemy? Who does not feel that when Jesus allowed
this accusation to be brought against Him at the last, and when He
allowed Himself to be condemned to death on the charge, He must have put
the same meaning on His words that they put? Otherwise, if He did not
mean to make Himself equal with the Father, would He not have been the
very first to unmask and protest against so misleading a use of
language? Had He not known Himself to be Divine, no member of the
Sanhedrim could have been so shocked as He to listen to such language or
to use it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account