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I. ITS CONTENTS.

1. Concerning God.

(1)  His nature — spirit (John 4:24).

(2)  His character — love (John 3:16).

(3)  His purpose — salvation (John 3:17).

(4)  His requirement — faith (John 6:29).

2. Concerning Himself,

(1)  His heavenly origin — from above (John 6:38).

(2)  This higher being — the Son of the Father (John 6:17).

(3)  His Divine commission — sent by God (John 5:37).

(4)  His gracious errand — to give life to the world (John 5:21; John 6:51).

(5)  His future glory — to raise the dead (John 5:28).

3. Concerning man —

(1)  Apart from Him, dead (John 5:24) and perishing (John 3:16).

(2)  In Him possessed of eternal life.

4. Concerning salvation —

(1)  Its substance — eternal life (John 5:24).

(2)  Its condition — hearing His word (John 5:24), believing in God (John 5:24), coming to Him (John 5:40).

II. ITS DIVINITY. Three sources possible for Christ's teaching.

1. Others. He might have acquired it by education. But this Christ's contemporaries negatived. He had never studied at a rabbinical school .(ver. 15).

2. Himself. He might have evolved it from His own religious consciousness. But this Christ here repudiates.

3. God. This He expressly claimed, and that not merely as prophets had received Divine communications, but in a way that was unique (John 5:19, 20; John 8:28; John 12:49), as one who had been in eternity with God (John 1:1,18; 3:11).

III. ITS CREDENTIALS.

1. Its self-verifying character: such as would produce in the mind of every sincere person who desired to do the Divine will a clear conviction of its divinity (ver. 17).

2. Its God-glorifying aim. Had it been human it would have followed the law of all such developments; its Publisher would have had a tendency to glorify Himself in its propagation. The entire absence of this in Christ's case was a phenomenon to which He invited observation. The complete.absorption of the messenger and the message in the Divine glory was proof that both belonged to a different than human category.

3. Its sinless bearer. This follows from the preceding. A messenger whose devotion to God was perfect as Christ's was could not be other than sinless. But if the messenger were sinless there could be no unveracity in His message or in what He said concerning it. Lessons:

1. The marvellous in Christianity.

2. The insight of obedience.

3. The danger of high intellectual endowments.

4. The connection between truth and righteousness.

5. The sinlessness of Jesus an argument for His divinity.

(T. Whitelaw, D. D.)

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KJV: Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught.

WEB: But when it was now the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and taught.