THE fourth and crowning witness is that of the scriptures. “Search” [or “ye search"], “the scriptures, for ye think that ye have in them eternal life, and it is they that testify of me. And ye are not willing to come unto me that ye may have life.” (Vers. 39, 40.) The practical difference between the indicative and the imperative is not great, because the context decides that it is an appeal, as it has been well remarked, rather than a command. They were not so infatuated as to suppose that they had eternal life in themselves; they looked for it in the scriptures, and so were in the habit of searching them, as they do, more or less, to this day. But though the scriptures testify about the Lord Jesus, they have no willingness to come unto Him that they may have the life He alone can give. For the scriptures cannot give life apart from Him, nor will the Father; yet are the scriptures the standing witness of Christ, continually holding Him forth as the revealed resource for man, and triumph for God, and this in goodness, not merely in judgment, to the utter confusion of the enemy and of all who take their part with him against God. The presence of Christ put to the test, not merely man in his misery and universal departure from God, but those who were intrusted with those, oracles of God; and the Savior Son despised by the Jews has but to pronounce the sentence on them thus willfully slighting their own best witnesses to Him “Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life.”
Was it, then, that the Lord Jesus sought present honor? His whole life, from His birth to His death, declared the contrary with a plainness which none could mistake. How was it with His adversaries? “Glory from men I do not receive; but I know you that ye have not the love of God in yourselves. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not if another come in his name, him ye will receive.” (Vers. 41-43.) “Glory from men” is the moving spring of the world: Jesus not only sought it not, but did not receive it. He always did the things that pleased the Father, who gave Him commandment what He should say, and what He should speak. He kept His Father's commandments, and abode in His love. In no sense had the Jews the love of God in them: ambitious of human glory, and self-complacent, their soul abhorred Jesus, as His soul was straitened for them. His coming had put them to a fresh and far fuller test. He had brought God too close to them, yea, the Father; but they knew neither Christ nor the Father: if they had known the one, they should have known the other.
But there should be another test yet: not His coming in the Father's name with the simple aim of doing His will and glorifying Him, but another to come in his own name. This would suit the Jew-man. Self- exaltation is his bane, and Satan's bait, and therein utter irremediable ruin under divine judgment. It is the man of sin in contrast with the Son of God, the man of obedience and righteousness, and, according as we have heard that Antichrist comes, even now there have come many antichrists. But the presence of the Antichrist will be according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in every deceit of unrighteousness, to those that perish, because they have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved. They would not have the true God and eternal life in the Son become man and suffering in love for man; they will receive Satan's man when he sets up to be God. This is the great lie of the end, and they will be lost in it who rejected the truth in Christ.
Nor is there anything strange in such a close for those who know the ways of man from the beginning. “How can ye believe who receive glory one of another, and seek not the glory which [is] from the only God?” (Ver. 44.) Such is the world, the scene where man walks in a vain show, blessing his soul while he lives, and praised by his fellows when he did well to himself; but such shall never see light. This their way is their folly, let posterity ever so much delight in their mouth. Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. If the “children” are told to keep themselves from idols, one cannot wonder that the idolatry of man—of self—should be the death of faith. Any object is welcome rather than the true and only God, who shall render to each according to his works; to those who in patience of good work seek for glory, honor, and incorruption, life eternal; but to those that are contentious, and are disobedient to the truth, and obey unrighteousness, [there shall be] wrath and indignation, tribulation and distress.
Does the Lord, then, take the place of accusing the Jews? Not so: they boasted of Moses, but will find in him testimony fatal to themselves. “Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, Moses, on whom ye trust; for if ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for be wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” (Vers. 45-47.) Never was such honor put on the written word. Jesus had, if any one, God's word abiding in Him. Nobody ever had the Father's words and His word as He; no one gave them out invariably, and at all times, as He; yet does He set the writings of the Bible above His own sayings, as a testimony to Jewish conscience. It was no question of superior claim in themselves, or in the character of truth conveyed, for none of old could compare with the words of Christ. The Father on the holy mount had Himself answered the foolish words of Peter, who would have put Moses, Elias, and the Lord in three tabernacles, and co-ordinate glory! Not so. “This is my beloved Son: hear ye Him.” The lawgiver, the prophet, must bow to Jesus. They had their place as servants: He is Son and Lord of all. They retire, leaving Him the one object of the Father's good pleasure, and of our communion with the Father through hearing the Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Nevertheless it is Himself who here gives to the writings of Moses a place in testimony beyond His own words, not because the servant approached the Master, or the decalogue the sermon on the mount, but because the scripture, as such, has a character of permanence in testimony which can attach only to the written word. And Moses wrote of Christ, necessarily therefore by divine power, as a prophet of “the prophet which should come into the world,” of the Prophet incomparably, more than prophet, the Son of God, who quickens every believer, and shall judge every despiser, raising from the grave these for a resurrection of judgment, as those for one of life. Had the Jews then believed Moses, they would have believed Christ: words which teach us that faith is no such otiose exercise as some would make it; for the Jews in no way questioned but received his writings as divine. But not to doubt is far from believing; and they saw not in any of his books the great object of testimony in all, Jesus the Messiah, a man, yet far more than man, a divine Savior of and sacrifice for sinners, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. If they believed Moses, they would have believed Him, for he wrote of Him. But if they believed not his writings, the Savior did not expect them to believe His own words. What an estimate of the authority of those very scriptures which self-sufficient men have assailed as untrustworthy! They dare to tell us that they are neither Mosaic in origin, nor Messianic in testimony, but a mass of legends which do not even cohere in their poor and human reports of early days. On the other hand the Judge of quick and dead declares that the scriptures testify of Him, and that Moses wrote of Him, setting the written word, in point of authority, above even His own. As the Savior and rationalism are thus in direct antagonism, the Christian has no hesitation which to receive and which to reject, for one cannot serve both masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. So it is, and must be, and ought to be; for Christ and rationalism are irreconcilable. Those who pretend to serve both have no principle as to either, and are the most corrupting dogmatically of all men. They not only do not possess the truth, but they make the love of it impossible, enemies alike of God and man.