John 5:38

And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(38) Abiding in you.—This striking thought of the word taking up its abode in the mind, and forming the mind in which it dwells, meets us only in St. John. (Comp. John 15:7; 1John 2:14; 1John 2:24; 1John 3:9; 1John 3:17; and Note on John 6:36.) They had, indeed, the word of God, but they had it not as a power ever living in them. They locked it up with sacred care in ark and synagogue, but it found no home in their inmost life, and had no real power on their practice. They could take it up and put it down. It was something outside themselves. Had it been in them, it would have produced in them a moral consciousness, which would have accepted, as of the same nature with itself, every fuller revelation from God. Their own spirits, moulded by the word of God dwelling in them, would have received the Word of God now among them. (Comp. Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word.) The fact that they believed not Him whom God sent (not “hath sent”) was itself the proof that they had not the abiding word.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:30-38 Our Lord returns to his declaration of the entire agreement between the Father and the Son, and declared himself the Son of God. He had higher testimony than that of John; his works bore witness to all he had said. But the Divine word had no abiding-place in their hearts, as they refused to believe in Him whom the Father had sent, according to his ancient promises. The voice of God, accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost, thus made effectual to the conversion of sinners, still proclaims that this is the beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased. But when the hearts of men are full of pride, ambition, and the love of the world, there is no room for the word of God to abide in them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

His word abiding in you - His law does not abide in you - that is, you do not regard or obey it. This was the "third" thing that he charged them with.

1. They had not obeyed the command of God.

2. They had not regarded his manifestations, either in the times of the old dispensation, or now through the Messiah.

3. They did not yield to what he had said in the revelation of the Old Testament.

For whom he hath sent - God had foretold that the Messiah would come. He had now given evidence that Jesus was he; but now they rejected him, and this was proof that they did not regard the word of God.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

38. not his word abiding in you—passing now from the Witness to the testimony borne by Him in "the lively oracles" (Ac 7:38): both were alike strangers to their breasts, as was evidenced by their rejecting Him to whom all that witness was borne.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Though they had heard the word of the Lord, their forefathers by the prophets, and in that generation by John the Baptist, (the messenger sent before Christ’s face), and now by Christ himself, whom the Father had sent; yet the word of the Lord had no place in their hearts, John 8:37; it was unto them as a tale told; they received the sound of it, but it was not graven in their hearts. And this appeared, because as of themselves they had no intimacy of communion with God to know his mind; so, when the Son was sent out of the bosom of the Father to reveal God unto them, yet they would not receive him, so as to give any steady, fixed assent to what he revealed, and to yield him any just and true obedience.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And ye have not his word abiding in you,.... Which some understand of Christ himself, the Logos, or word: who, though he was now with them, being made flesh, and dwelling among them, yet would not long continue with them: though rather this designs the written word, or the Scriptures of truth; and especially that part of them, which contains prophecies concerning the Messiah, which did not dwell in them richly, nor they dwell in their meditation on them, as was requisite. Or rather, it may intend that word of God expressed in the testimony he bore to the sonship of Christ at his baptism, by a voice from heaven, which made no lasting impression upon the minds and hearts of the Jews that heard it; as appears by what follows:

for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not; meaning himself; for if they had had either a due regard to the sacred oracles, or to that voice from heaven at his baptism, they would have received and embraced him as the Messiah, and sent of God, and not have disbelieved and rejected him, as now they did.

Geneva Study Bible

And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 5:38. At the end of John 5:37 we must place only a comma. John might have continued: οὔτε τὸν λόγον, κ.τ.λ.; instead of which he attaches the negation not to the particle, but to the verb (οὔτε … καὶ, see on John 4:11), and thus the new thought comes in more independently: And ye have not His word abiding in you; ye lack an inner and permanent appropriation of it; comp. 1 John 2:14. The λόγος θεοῦ is not “the inner revelation of God in the conscience” (Olshausen, Frommann), but, conformably with the context (John 5:37; John 5:39), what God has spoken in the O. T., and this according to its purport. Had they given ear to this as, what it is in truth, the word of God (but they had no ear for God’s voice, John 5:37), had they discerned therein God’s manifestation of Himself (but they had no eye for God’s form, John 5:37), what God had spoken would have penetrated through the spiritual ear and eye into the heart, and would have become the abiding power of their inner life.

ὅτι ὃν ἀπέστειλεν, κ.τ.λ.] demonstration of the fact. He who rejects the sent of God cannot have that word abiding in him, which witnesses to Him who is sent (John 5:37). “Quomodo mandata regis discet qui legatum excludit?” Grotius.

τούτῳ ὑμεῖς] observe the emphasis in the position of the words here.

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 5:38. καὶ τὸν λόγον … you have not heard His voice—as you have heard mine (John 5:25)—and His word which you have heard, and which has been coming to you through all these centuries, you do not admit to an abiding and influential place within you.—τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ is God’s revelation, which the Jews were conscious they had received; but though the word of God had come to them, they did not have it “abiding in” them; cf. 1 John 3:15; a phrase which in John denotes permanent possession and abiding influence. God’s message does no good until it inwardly possesses those to whom it comes. The proof that the Jews had not thus received it is: ὅτι ὃν ἀπέστειλεν … “whom God hath sent, Him ye believe not”. Had the revelation or word of God in law and prophets possessed them, they would inevitably have recognised Jesus as from the same source, and as the consummation of the message, the fulfilment of the promise. Not that the Jews held their Scriptures in no esteem, no, (John 5:39), ἐρευνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς; the indicative is to be preferred, “Ye search the Scriptures”; the reason being ὅτι ὑμεῖς δοκεῖτε ἐν αὐταῖς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἔχειν, “because you suppose that in them you have life eternal”—already it is hinted, by the emphatic ὑμεῖς implicitly opposed to a contrasted ἐγώ, and by the emphatic ἐν αὐταῖς suggesting another source, that eternal life was not to be had in the Scriptures, but in something else. But it is of me these Scriptures themselves into which you search testify. καὶ ἐκεῖναι … ἐμοῦ. “They testify that in me is life eternal; and yet you will not come to me that you may have life.”

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

38. And ye have not his word] ‘And hence it is that ye have no inner appropriation of the word’—seeing that ye have never received it either by hearing or vision. ‘His word’ is not a fresh testimony different from the ‘voice’ and ‘shape:’ all refer to the same thing,—the testimony of Scripture to the Messiah.

for whom he hath sent] Better, because whom He sent. This is the proof of the previous negation: one who had the word abiding in his heart could not reject Him to whom that word bears witness. Comp. 1 John 2:14; 1 John 2:24.

Bengel's Gnomen

John 5:38. Ὅτι, because) Therefore, those who believe, in hearing the Son, hear the Father; ch. John 6:45, “Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me;” and in seeing the Son they see the Father; ch. John 14:9, [Jesus to Philip] “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” although previously they had not heard nor seen Him: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him;” and they have abiding in them the Word of the Father, which is the same as the Word of the Son.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 38. - And further, you have not his Word (ΤΟΝ ΛΟΓΟΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ) abiding in you. The Word of the Father (for the αὐτου refers to the Father), i.e. the full expression of the Father's heart, was sounding through the voice of the Son of God, and might have entered into and become an abiding power in their inmost conscience and their spiritual life; but they had not received the "Word" of the Lord through the "Voice" of the Lord. The reason given is, Because him whom he (the Father) sent, him (this One) ye believe not. In other words, "Your lack of faith in me accounts for your perverse misconception, for your inability to see and hear all that there is of the Father's personal testimony to me." Some suspect a petitio principii in this argument, but the reasoning seems to be this; there is abundant evidence, corroboration, and cooperative glory, affirming the truth of all that Christ has said about himself as the Source of life and Judge of man; but the moral susceptibility of his hearers is paralyzed, and their faith in the most fundamental facts of their own experience is at fault. They seem impervious, not only to Christ's Word, but to the corroborative testimonies themselves. John 5:38

Vincent's Word Studies

His word

Emphatic, commencing the sentence. Compare John 17:6 sqq.; 1 John 1:10; 1 John 2:14.