john 4:16 19 commentary

As the new birth for the kingdom of God, so the cross is absolutely necessary for eternal life. The same God who did not leave Himself without witness among the heathen, doing good, and giving from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, did not fail, in the low estate of the Jews, to work by providential power at intervals; and, by the troubled waters of Bethesda, invited the sick, and healed the first who stepped in of whatever disease he had. Thus a despised Christ is not merely a crucified Son of man, and given Son of God, as in John 3:1-36, but Himself a divine giver in communion with the Father, and in the power of the Holy Ghost who is given to the believer, the source of worship, as their God and Father is its object for the worshippers in spirit and truth (though surely not to the exclusion of the Son, Hebrews 1:1-14). The hour was one for faith, or unbelief. For were it not God Himself in the person of Jesus, it had been no glory to God, but a wrong and a rival. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." Salem Media Group. Heavenly things are set in evident contradistinction, and link themselves immediately here, as everywhere, with the cross as their correlative. (Verses John 5:13-16), A graver issue, however, was to be tried; for Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Indeed, it is the total eclipse, not merely of law and remedial mercies, but even of promised Messianic glory, by everlasting life and resurrection at the last day. So does his confession: Rabbi, thou art the Son of God: thou art the King of Israel. The allusion to the fig-tree confirms this. What you have just said is quite true.. If His time was not yet come, their time was always ready. Jesus is crowned, clothed, and proclaimed king by Roman soldiers. How blessed the contrast with the people's state depicted in this chapter, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, looking to "letters," rulers, and Pharisees, perplexed about the Christ, but without righteous judgment, assurance, or enjoyment! 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. Both of them were in relation to man on the earth; the one while He was here, the other from above. So rich and transparently divine was the grace: not some souls, more meritorious than the rest, rewarded according to a graduated scale of honour, but "of his fulness have all we received." One must be born again. And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." They entered not into His words more than His grace, but thought and spoke, like the Samaritan woman, about things of this life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. He who, living, was received for eternal life, is our meat and drink in dying, and gives us communion with His death. Get Your Bible Minute in Your Inbox Every Morning. So on the last day, that great day of the feast (the eighth day, which witnessed of a resurrection glory outside this creation, now to be made good in the power of the Spirit before anything appears to sight), the Lord stands and cries, saying, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." Copyright 2023, Bible Study Tools. Thus, as in the former case the Lord's dealing in Galilee was a type of the future, this appears to be significant of His then present path of grace in that despised quarter of the land. It passes over all question of dispensations, until it accomplishes, in all its extent, that purpose for which He thus died. How singularly is the glory of the Lord Jesus thus viewed, as invested with the testimony of God and its crown! He reminds them of his previous disclaimer of any place beyond one sent before Jesus. I do not mean by this all individuals, but creation; for nothing can be more certain, than that those who do not receive the Son of God are so much the worse for having heard the gospel. Do any believe on His name? Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. But if the Spirit speaks of the Son of God, the law dwindles at once into the smallest possible proportions: everything yields to the honour the Father puts oil the Son. For evidently it is the theme of worship in its Christian fulness, the fruit of the manifestation of God, and of the Father known in grace. This will be displayed in the millennium, when the marriage will be celebrated, as well as the judgment executed (Jerusalem and its temple being the central point then). he might be; and this, too, as the expression of the true and full grace of God in His only-begotten Son given. (See Hebrews 12:2, Hebrews 13:11-13) Again, let me just remark in passing, that although, no doubt, we may in a general way speak of those who partake of the new nature as having that life, yet the Holy Ghost refrains from predicating of any saints the full character of eternal life as a present thing until we have the cross of Christ laid (at least doctrinally) as the ground of it. There is no other way in which the new nature is made good in a soul. These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. We love him, because he first loved us. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. Expressly had He told the man to take up his couch and walk, as well as to rise. All is in the character of the Son of man. Who Is Lillith and Why Don't We Find Her in Our Bible? This, of course, supposes the setting aside of Jerusalem, its people and house, as they now are, and is justified by the great fact of Christ's death and resurrection, which is the key to all, though not yet intelligible even to the disciples. John 7:25-31) He is going where they cannot come, and never guessed (for unbelief thinks of the dispersed among the Greeks of anything rather than of God). For He who spoke was divine. How were they not enjoyed in despised Samaria those two days with the Son of God among them! (VersesJohn 6:1-21; John 6:1-21). but He, who is the Word made flesh, is the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, and so competent to declare, as in fact He has. Remark, too, the extent of the work involved in verse 29. Here the unlimited scene is in view; not Israel, but the world. Did the dead (for so men are treated, not as alive under law) did they hear the voice of the Son of God? Resurrection will be the proof; the two-fold rising of the dead, not one, but two resurrections. : a Jewish prophet who according to Gospel accounts foretold Jesus' messianic ministry and baptized him. Governmental healing even from Him might only end in "some worse thing" coming. (Verses John 5:1-7), On the other hand, the Lord speaks but the word: "Rise, take up thy couch and walk." The great fact of the incarnation is brought before us "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father"). No man hath seen God at any time. Web1 John 4:16-19 NIV 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. A second and wholly new man appears the bread of God, not of man, but for men. (Verses John 6:59-71) What and if they should see Him, who came down and died in this world, ascend up where He was before? They should have understood more about Him those that were specially favoured. But how precious the grace, in presence of their hatred and proud self-complacency! John, therefore, who had been the honoured witness before of God's call, "the voice," etc., does now by the outpouring of his heart's delight, as well as testimony, turn over, so to say, his disciples to Jesus. Therefore, it seems to me, He adds verse 24. This He does in verses 16-19. Web1. But here these streams of the Spirit are substituted for the feast of tabernacles, which cannot be accomplished till Christ come from heaven and show Himself to the world; for this time was not yet come. None else could do either work: for here we see His great work on earth, and His heavenly power. "John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This is he of whom I spake: He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me." The result immediately follows. But this, however worthy of God, and indispensable for man, could not of itself give an adequate expression of what God is; because in this alone, neither His own love nor the glory of His Son finds due display. How truly it is man under law! Other arguments follow, engaging to it, as that God is invisible; and if he is to be loved, then certainly his people, who are visible; and that such who love one another, God dwells in them, and his love is perfected in them; and that he dwells in them is known by the gift of his Spirit to them, 1Jo 4:12,13, and that God the Father so loved the world, as to send his Son to be the Saviour of it, before asserted, is confirmed by the apostles, who were eyewitnesses of it; who also declare, that whoever confesses the sonship of Christ, God dwells in him, and he in God; and who had an assurance of the love of God to them, who is love itself; so that he that dwells in God, and God in him, dwells in love, 1Jo 4:14-16. They were not to wonder then at what He says and does now; for an hour was coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those that have done good to resurrection of life, and those that have done evil to resurrection of judgment. (Psalms 132:1-18) Then they wanted to make Him a king. Each had his own; all are harmonious, all perfect, all divine; but not all so many repetitions of the same thing. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. (John 2:1-25) The change of water into wine manifested His glory as the beginning of signs; and He gave another in this early purging of the temple of Jerusalem. Could they, then, reject the Son, and merely miss this infinite blessing of life in Him? Nevertheless, Christ did come to His own things, His proper, peculiar possession; for there were special relationships. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. It is the final setting aside of Judaism then, whose characteristic hope was the display of power and rest in the world. It is not now the revelation of God meeting man either in essential nature, or as manifested in flesh; nor is it the course of dispensational dealing presented in a parenthetic as well as mysterious form, beginning with John the Baptist's testimony, and going down to the millennium in the Son, full of grace and truth. But the Spirit would not confine His operations to such bounds, but go out freely like the wind. The Lord Jesus did, without question, take humanity in His person into that glory which He so well knew as the Son of the Father. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. Not Jacob was there, but the Son of God in nothing but grace; and thus to the Samaritan woman, not to the teachers of Israel, are made those wonderful communications which unfold to us with incomparable depth and beauty the real source, power, and character of that worship which supersedes, not merely schismatic and rebellious Samaria, but Judaism at its best. And while He does not hide the privilege of the Jews, He nevertheless proclaims that "the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. Still the eternal day alone will show out the full virtue of that which belongs to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who takes away the world's sin. The author is the apostle John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (13:23 [see note there]; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7,20,24). It is the revelation of God yea, of the Father and the Son, and not merely the detecter of man. Pilate, disposed to gratify the If He put forth His power, it was not only beyond man's measure, but unequivocally divine, however also the humblest and most dependent of men. The healing of the courtier's son, sick and ready to die, is witness of what the Lord was actually doing among the despised of Israel. His name was John. Verse John 1:29 opens John's testimony to his disciples. "He came unto his own [things], and his own [people] received him not. John 3:14-15; John 3:14-15) It is not a question simply of the Son of God, nor is He spoken of here as the Word made flesh. Thus, in His person, as well as in His work, they joined issue. WebMatthew Henry's Commentary on 1 John 4:16-19 Commentary on 1 John 4:14-21 (Read 1 John 4:14-21) The Father sent the Son, he willed his coming into this world. And as life is in the person of the Son, so God in sending Him meant not that the smallest uncertainty should exist for aught so momentous. Spite of the most express signs, and the manifest finger of God that wrote the ten words on tables of stone, the law sinks into comparative insignificance. Wonderful things in the Bible I see, 1 John 4:16. John 19 Jesus Is Crucified A. Jesus is condemned to crucifixion. 1. (1-4) Pilate hopes to satisfy the mob by having Jesus whipped and mocked. So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. The truth is, the design of manifesting His glory governs all; place or people was a matter of no consequence. As this chapter sets forth the Lord Jesus with singular fulness of glory, on the side both of His Godhead and of His manhood, so it closes with the most varied and remarkable testimonies God has given to us, that there may be no excuse. for he knew He was the Christ. The refusal of His precious blood will, on the contrary, make their case incomparably worse than that of the heathen who never heard the good news. 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