We have had, then, the Lord's anticipative declaration of the power of the Spirit which the believer was about to receive, which he did receive at Pentecost and thenceforward: not the quickening of the unbeliever, nor yet power rising up in worship, but flowing forth abundantly from the inner man in testimony, both eminently characteristic of Christianity. How painful that Christendom should now, and for ages, show itself incredulous and hostile! But thus it is that God's warnings must be verified in every tittle. In man's hands each dispensation makes manifest nothing so much as faithlessness to its own special privileges and responsibility. Thus Israel not only rebelled against the law but renounced Jehovah for heathen vanities, the remnant even rejecting their own Messiah. Is the Spirit now sent down and present since Jesus was glorified? Christendom, since the apostolic days, ran greedily after law and forms, reinstating thus the first man, to the denial of the cross on earth and of the Second man in heaven about to come again. It opposes itself to no truth so expressly as to that which it is called above all to testify in word and deed.
The words of our Lord made a certain impression; but all is in vain unless conscience be reached before God. “[Some] of the crowd, therefore, when they heard these sayings, said, This is truly the prophet; others said, This is the Christ; others said, Doth the Christ, then, come out of Galilee? Did not the scripture say that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? A division therefore took place in the crowd on account of him; and some of them wished to seize him, but none laid his hands on him.” (Vers. 40-44)
Men do not only join what God separates, but separate what God joins. Some called Him the prophet, others the Christ, as we have seen from the beginning of this Gospel, a distinction then prevalent but unfounded. The objections which lack of knowledge makes expose an ignorance which the least conscientious inquiry must have dispelled. With faith too there may be, and often is, want of light; but, spite of obstacles, it holds on to what it discerns to be of God, instead of being stumbled by a difficulty which further knowledge would have shown to be unreal. Bartimaeus, when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was at hand, did not fail to cry,” Son of David, have mercy on me;” and his faith reaped the blessing immediately. None the less was He the Messiah from Bethlehem, and of David's line, because He was the despised prophet of Galilee. But unbelief is blind to His glory, and finds only an occasion of division in the only center of union. Yet, whatever the hostility of men, they could not take Him till the hour was come, little as they thought it, for God to accomplish the reconciliation in His cross.
There were darker traits, however, in the religious leaders than in the crowd; and this the Spirit next brings before us. “The officers therefore came unto the high priests and Pharisees, and to them they said, Why did ye not bring Him? The officers answered, Never man so spake as this man. The Pharisees therefore answered them, Are ye also deceived? Did any one of the rulers believe on him, or of the Pharisees? But this crowd, that knoweth not the law, are accursed.” (Vers. 45-49.) Here conscience answered to the words of the Lord in such a manner at least as to draw out before their masters an involuntary confession of the power with which He spoke. It was not as the scribes. But the Pharisees, with invincible hardness, retort on their weakness, challenge them to produce one of the rulers of the Pharisees that believed, and betray their contempt for the mass of their countrymen. Boasting in law, they, by transgression of the law, and far worse, were then dishonoring God. But God brings forward an unexpected, even if feeble, witness from among themselves, not only a Pharisee but a ruler.
“Nicodemus saith unto them, being one of them, Doth our law judge the man, unless it have first heard from him, and known what he doeth? They answered and said to him, Art thou also out of Galilee? Search and see that no prophet ariseth out of Galilee.” (Vers. 50-52.) Unable to resist the righteous requirement of their own law, they proved that their insubjection had a deeper root by their haughty contempt, not now of the ignorant rabble, but of not the least of their own chiefs; and, as usual, they manifest that men are never so sure to err as when most confident in an arm of flesh. Indeed, it is the fatality of tradition mongers to be always astray, whether in Judaism or in Christendom. Scripture alone is reliable; and those who profess to be ruled by scripture as interpreted by tradition, will be found, like all who serve two masters, to hold to tradition and its uncertainty, and to despise scripture spite of its divine authority, with a blindness to their own state which is truly pitiable though not less censurable also. Thus Eusebins, though by no means the least able or the most superstitious of the Fathers, makes the grossest mistakes in reporting ecclesiastical facts from the Acts of the Apostles, or elsewhere. So here the Pharisees assume that no prophet arises out of Galilee. They were wrong in every possible way. Were they prophets to speak for God at that time? Had they never heard of Jonah or Nahum? The greatest of the prophets who wrote not—the mysterious Tishbite—who had arisen, and will yet again arise, was of Gilead, and so even more remote than Galilee from the seat of religious pride, being on the east of the Jordan. But the truth is, that the One their soul abhorred, on whom the poor of the flock waited, had come forth out of Bethlehem Ephratah, whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity. Of Him they were profoundly ignorant, though law and prophets everywhere testified to Him; but the pillar of the clouds which encompassed Him gave no light to the proud men of Jerusalem. Their darkness comprehended not the true light.