17 And his disciples remembered that it The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. was written, m Ps. Ixix. 9. 18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, " What n Matt. xii. 38. sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? ch, vi. 30. 17. "The zeal of thine house; " or, "my zeal for thine house" (Alford). to the Messiah, contains, "They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink." The latter part of this verse here quoted by the Evangelist, is also cited by St. Paul in Rom. xv. 3. Even Christ pleased not Himself, but as it is written, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me." No more wretchedly untrue perversion of Scripture has ever gained currency among Christian people, than that which has been so pertinaciously asserted by certain leading so-called "Broad Church" writers, that our Lord's attitude to the Law and the Old Testament was one of indifference. On the contrary, two of the three occasions on which He manifested extreme anger, was when He saw the Temple, the one centre of the sacrificial worship, polluted. [The other was when they forbade little children to be brought to Him.] Are we not all taught a lesson by this, eminently necessary at the present time? If we can preserve a lofty and supercilious equanimity when we see God's house profaned, His worship, especially the highest worship of His Church, neglected or accounted as an inferior thing, and, above all, the gift of His co-equal and co-eternal Son treated as an open question, can we have any such zeal for the honour of His Father as burnt within Him? This place also teaches us that the Spirit of Christ is not altogether a mild, gentle, quiet Spirit, after the manner of that mildness and gentleness which is engendered, not by the love of God, but by the love of ease, by fear of the faces of men, by indifference to the value of the truths of the Gospel. 18. "Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" What made them ask for a sign, seeing that the thing which He had done was itself a sign? If an unknown man, alone and unaided, could overawe, and even deprive of their gains, a large number of un 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, temple, and in three days I will raise it up. o Matt. xxvi. 61. & xxvii. 40. & xv. 29. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years Mark xiv. 58 was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 20. "Rear;" better, "raise." Keeping the same rendering of the same word, as in verse 19. scrupulous and covetous men after the manner in which He had done, no other sign seems to have been needed. It was asking for a sign of a sign. But what they really meant was, "What proof dost Thou give that Thou exercisest such authority in the house of God (which is by His ordination under the chief priests) as to drive out those who sell victims for sacrifice by the express permission of those priests? What sign shewest Thou why Thou exercisest an authority in the Temple above that of its governors?" Our Lord's answer was: 19. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." This, if we carefully consider it, was about the only answer which He could give. The act of authority in driving out the traffickers from the sacred precincts was a plain intimation that in the Theocracy He was higher than the chief priest. To have given an ordinary sign, such as healing a diseased person, would have been insufficient. It might be a sign why they should listen to Him, but not a sign that He had authority and right to take the law into His own hands as He had done. The authority He assumed was that of the only Son of the God of the Temple. He acted as a Son over His own house. The crowning proof of this was His Resurrection. By the Resurrection from the dead He would be declared to be the Son of God with power. On two other occasions He held out to them this sign, and this sign only : (1) "When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then [by the Resurrection] ye shall know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself" [John viii. 28]: and (2) when the Pharisees desired a sign from heaven He said, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall be no sign given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah," i. e., of His own Resurrection (Matth. xvi. 4). The difficulty, of course, is, why did He tender this sign enigmatically, and not plainly? To which we answer: He may, by 21 But he spake P of the temple of his body. P Col. ii. 9. Heb. viii. 2. So 1 Cor. iii. 16. & vi. 19. 2 Cor. vi. 16. q Luke xxiv. 8. q 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. 22. " Unto them" not in oldest MSS., N, A., B., L., most Uncials, Vulg., and Peshito. He did not say the words to the disciples, but to the Jews. some gesture, or by some word which has not been preserved, have plainly intimated to them, if they would receive the intimation, that he spake enigmatically or mysteriously; but they rejected such intimation, and perversely determined to take His words in the lowest and most literal sense that they could, as, in fact, they did on several other occasions, notably in those recorded in the third and sixth chapters of this Gospel. Throughout this Gospel our Lord speaks mysteriously-not parabolically, but mysteriously; and on no occasion did they reverently, or even seriously, endeavour to give Him credit for veiling some deep truth under such enigma. As it was, this saying sunk deep into the hearts of both enemies and friends. His enemies remembered it, and produced a perverted account of it at the trial before Caiaphas; His disciples, after His Resurrection, remembered it, and it confirmed their faith in Him, as witnessed to both by the Scripture, and by His own words. 21. "He spake of the temple of his body." His Body was the true temple of God. In It was the true and abiding Shechinah: the presence of the Word. "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In the rending of It upon the cross, the veil between God and man was rent, and now we have boldness to enter into the holiest through that veil-viz., His flesh. (Heb. x. 19.) And because His Body is the temple of God, so are ours. (1 Cor. iii. 16.) 22. "His disciples remembered that he had said this." Christ was especially "manifested in remembrance." Passages in His life, and words on His lips, which at the time, in their state of half belief, seemed to the disciples obscure or common-place, started forth from the dark recesses of memory, and were transfigured, and shone out with a light which amazed them, that they had heard them, and had been so feebly affected by them. 23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. 24 But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, 23,"Feast day." "Day" should not be understood, as the feast lastel a week. Miracles," "signs." 23. "Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles [signs] which he did." It has been said that their faith was a false faith, because Jesus, Who saw their hearts, did not trust Himself to them. But we have no right to say this: for in the Scriptures, especially in this Gospel, every degree of faith is recognized as faith. If it exhibits its weakness and deficiency, it is not because the faith is deficient, quâ faith, but because the heart is shallow. Faith is the product of the Word of God, received into the heart. It may spring up, and afterwards wither, or be choked; but the springing up is real for the time, and it withers because it has no root, on account of the shallowness of the ground of the heart. Godet remarks: "This faith, in many, was not really of the essence of faith it had for its object only the title (believed in His Name) of Christ." But, surely, when he wrote this he must have forgotten that those to whom He gave power to become the sons of God were those that "believe on His Name." (i. 12.) We shall have to notice continually throughout this Gospel this matter of degrees of faith: it is one of its most striking features that it exhibits men believing, and yet their belief coming short. 24. "Jesus did not commit himself." What does this mean? It cannot mean commit His person to them: for He was well aware that no man could lay hold on Him, because His hour was not yet come. It must mean, "did not speak to them, or teach them unreservedly." So Chrysostom: "He who dwells in men's hearts, and enters into their thoughts, took no heed of outward words; and knowing well that their warmth was but for a season, He placed not confidence in them as in perfect disciples, nor committed all His doctrine to them, as though they had already become firm believers." 25 And needed not that any should testify of man: for The knew what was in man. r 1 Sam. xvi. 7. 1 Chron. xxviii. Matt. ix. 4. 9. Mark ii. 8. ch. vi. 64. & xvi. 30. Acts i. 24. Rev. ii. 23. 25. "He knew;" rather, "He himself knew;" ipse sciebat (Vulg.). His not committing Himself to them may be best understood by contrasting His conduct to them with that to his Apostles, to whom He says, "I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." (xv. 15.) THE CHAP. III. HERE was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 1. "There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews." Are we to connect this discourse with Nicodemus with the declaration in the last chapter, that "many believed in His Name when they saw the miracles which He did," and so have we here the example of one to whom, being more sincere than the greater part, the Lord so far "committed Himself" as to disclose to him one of the deepest mysteries of His kingdom? There may be some truth in this, but the exhibition of the development of mere subjective belief seems very subordinate to the exhibition of those mysteries which have seemed to the Church to be the real burden of this Gospel. Jesus was continually revealing truths respecting Himself and His Kingdom which could not be understood at that time, even by those who accepted Him as the Messiah. In fact, they were the last things which, owing to their mysteriousness, could be taught to the very Church itself, and so it was reserved to the Beloved Disciple, in extreme old age, after the Kingdom or Church of God had been established for nearly seventy years, to put on record certain discourses of Christ, the teaching of which had leavened the Apostles, and, through them, the Church, secretly |