Thus did the Lord assume and imply divine glory as His, no less than the Father's, spite of the place of man de had taken in the humiliation of love, in order to undo the works of the devil, and deliver guilty sinners who hear His voice from the bondage o: sin and God's most righteous judgment. This roused again the murderous hatred of His hearers.
“The Jews therefore again took stones, that they might stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I showed you from the Father: for which work of them do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” (Vers. 31-33.)
Alas for the will and self-confidence of man! They were right in saying that Jesus was a man; they were not wrong in understanding that He claimed to be God. But it was the insinuation of Satan working on man's unbelief of all beyond his senses and mind, that He who was God would not deign, in love to men and for the divine glory, to become man, in order to accomplish redemption. Was it incredible that God should stoop so low for these most worthy ends? And had not Jesus given adequate evidence of His glory and relation to the Father, in power and goodness, as well as truth? A life of purity unknown, of dependence on God beyond parallel, of active goodness untiring,, of humility and of suffering the more surprising, because in evident command of power unlimited in testimony to the Father, and this in accomplishment of the entire chain of scripture types and prophecy, combine to hurl back the imputation of imposture on the old serpent, the liar and father of it, whose great lie is to oust God from being the object of man's faith and service and worship for false objects, or no object but self, which however little suspected is really Satan's service.
Nothing therefore so rouses Satan as God thus presented in and by the Lord Jesus, who displays His own perfect meekness and man's enmity by no intervention of power to save Him from insult and injury. “First he must suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation” —a generation which goes on still morally, and will, till He returns in glory to judge. They therefore took stones to stone Him; for Satan is a murderer as well as a liar, and nothing so awakens violence, even to death, as the truth which condemns men pretending to religion. To their blinded and infuriated minds it was blasphemy for Him to say that He gave His followers eternal life beyond the weakness or the power of the creature—blasphemy to assert that He and the Father were one; whereas it is the truth, so vital and necessary that none who reject it can be saved. His words were as good as His works, and even more momentous to man; while both were of the Father. He that God sent, as John testified, spoke the words of God. It was they who blasphemed, denying Him to be God who, in grace to them, condescended to become man.
But He meets them on their own ground by an a fortiori argument, which left His personal glory un touched. “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?” (Vers. 34-36.)
Thus does He reason most conclusively from the less to the greater; for every Jew knew that their inspired books, as for instance Psa. 82, calls judges Elohim (gods), as commissioned by God and responsible to judge in His name. If such a title could be used of a mere magistrate in scripture (and its authority is indissoluble), how unreasonable to tax with blasphemy Him whom the Father set apart, and sent into the world, because He said He was God's Son! He is not affirming or demonstrating what He is in this, but simply convicting them of their perverseness on the ground of their law.
“If I do not the works of my Father, believe not; but if I do, even if ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may perceive and [believe, or] know that the Father is in me, and I in him.” (Vers. 87, 88.) There was no denying the irresistible force of this appeal. The character of the works bore testimony, not only to divine power, but to this in the fullness of love. Think as they might of Him, the works were unmistakable, that they might learn and come to know the unity of the Father and the Son. It is not that He enfeebles the dignity of His person, or the truth of His words; but He was pleading with them, and dealing with their consciences, by those works which attested not more the power than the grace of God, and consequently His glory who wrought them. But self-will holds out against all proofs.
“They sought, therefore, again to seize him, and he departed out of their hand. And he went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was at first baptizing, and abode there. And many came unto him and said, John did no sign, but all things whatsoever John said about him were true. And many believed on him there.” (Vers. 39-42.) Thus it was not that their unbelief was incomplete, but that His time was not yet come. The Lord therefore retires till the moment appointed of God, and meanwhile goes to the scene of John's work at the first, and there abode, where grace wins many a soul that recognized in Him the truth of John's testimony.