(36) Whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world.--Better, Whom the Father sanctified, and sent into the world. The tense refers to the time of His consecration to His Messianic work, and to the Incarnation, which was the commencement of it.
Because I said, I am the Son of God.--He had not said this in express words, but, as we have seen, it is directly implied in John 10:29-30, and the Jews had so understood what He said (John 10:33).
So far, then, the argument is simply a technical one, such as formed the staple of those customary in Rabbinic schools, and based on the letter of the Scriptures. The law (Psalm) applied the term "Elohim" (gods) to men representing God; no word of that Scripture could fail to hold good; how much more, therefore (a minori ad majus), could the term Son of God be applied to Him who was not a man consecrated to any earthly office, but consecrated by God, and sent into the world to represent God to man. (Comp. Note on John 1:18.) Their charge of blasphemy is, on their own principles, without the shadow of foundation. But in these words there is a deeper meaning than this technical one. When we speak of "men representing God," we are already in thought foreshadowing the central truth of the Incarnation. Priests who offered sacrifices for sins, and kings who ruled God's people, and prophets who told forth God's will, were consecrated to their holy office because there was the divine in them which could truly be called "god." Every holy life was in its degree a type of the Incarnate life of the Son of God. But He was the ideally true Priest sacrificing Himself for the world, the ideally true Prophet declaring God's will in its fulness, the ideally true King ruling in righteousness. Every holy life was as a ray of the divine glory manifest in human flesh, but all these rays were centred in the nimbus of glory which rested as a crown on the head of Jesus Christ.
Verse 36. - If it be so, Say ye of him whom the Father sanctified (or, consecrated), and sent into the world. The order of these words requires us to conceive of this consecration as occurring previously to the incarnation of the eternal Son. Before his birth into the world he entered into relations with the Father to undertake a work of indescribable importance. He was destined, or designated, or appointed, and then sent to do this sublime deed of redemption. Unlike those to whom the eternal Logos came, conferring thereby honorific titles, and calling them to occasional and alas! His discharged duties, he was the eternal Word himself, and he was moreover (as those old judges (lid) "to die like men," to lay down that life in order that he might take it again; consequently, he asks, with sublime self-consciousness, "Say ye of him, thus consecrated, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am Son of God?" It is remarkable that Christ should, instead of repeating the phrase, "I and the Father are one" - one as we have seen, in power and purpose and attribute - imply that in that former saying he had but told them he was "Son of God," in a sense to which the old Hebrew kings, notwithstanding their theocratic symbolism and mysterious names of honor, could not aspire. This is clearly a bold utterance of the Messianic dignity (cf. John 1:49; John 5:19, 20). The fact that he continually treated the two ideas of Father and Son as correlative (John 8:19; cf. John 9:35-37; John 14:7-13, etc.) makes the one assertion an equivalent of the other. This is a much greater claim than that yielded to the judges of old, and it is a new revelation of the Father and of the Son. Moreover, he showed them that there were many anticipations, foreshadowings of the incarnation of God in their own Scripture. We have an argument from the less to the greater, but one which, while it technically freed him from the charges of blasphemy, revealed the age-long preparation that had been made for the union between the Infinite and finite, between the Creator and creature, between the Father and his child, which was effected in himself. Some may have supposed that in the leveling up of the theocratic adumbrations of the Incarnation, he was virtually relinquishing the uniqueness of his own; but the following words, and the interpretation put on them by his hearers, answer such a charge.
10:31-38 Christ's works of power and mercy proclaim him to be over all, God blessed for evermore, that all may know and believe He is in the Father, and the Father in Him. Whom the Father sends, he sanctifies. The holy God will reward, and therefore will employ, none but such as he makes holy. The Father was in the Son, so that by Divine power he wrought his miracles; the Son was so in the Father, that he knew the whole of His mind. This we cannot by searching find out to perfection, but we may know and believe these declarations of Christ.
Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified,.... Not by making his human nature pure and holy, and free from all sin, and by bestowing the holy Spirit on him without measure, though both true; but these were upon, or after his mission into the world; whereas sanctification here, designs something previous to that, and respects the eternal separation of him to his office, as Mediator, in the counsel, purposes, and decrees of God, and in the covenant of his grace, being pre-ordained thereunto, before the foundation of the world; which supposes his eternal existence as a divine person, and tacitly proves his true and proper deity:
and sent into the world; in human nature, to obtain eternal redemption and salvation his people: to save them from sin, Satan, the world, law, hell and death, which none but God could do:
thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God; for what he had said in John 10:30 is equivalent to it; and in it he was rightly understood by the Jews, and what he here and afterwards says confirms it: the argument is what the Jews call , "from the lesser to the greater", and stands thus; that if mere frail mortal men, and some of them wicked men, being made rulers and judges in the earth are called gods, by God himself, to whom the word of God came in time, and constituted them gods, or governors, but for a time; and this is a fact stands recorded in Scripture, which cannot be denied or disproved, then surely it cannot be blasphemy in Christ, to assert himself to be the Son of God, who existed as a divine person from all eternity; and was so early set apart to the office of prophet, priest, and king; and in the fulness of time was sent into this world, to be the author of eternal salvation to the sons of men.
Because I said, I am the Son of God.--He had not said this in express words, but, as we have seen, it is directly implied in John 10:29-30, and the Jews had so understood what He said (John 10:33).
So far, then, the argument is simply a technical one, such as formed the staple of those customary in Rabbinic schools, and based on the letter of the Scriptures. The law (Psalm) applied the term "Elohim" (gods) to men representing God; no word of that Scripture could fail to hold good; how much more, therefore (a minori ad majus), could the term Son of God be applied to Him who was not a man consecrated to any earthly office, but consecrated by God, and sent into the world to represent God to man. (Comp. Note on John 1:18.) Their charge of blasphemy is, on their own principles, without the shadow of foundation. But in these words there is a deeper meaning than this technical one. When we speak of "men representing God," we are already in thought foreshadowing the central truth of the Incarnation. Priests who offered sacrifices for sins, and kings who ruled God's people, and prophets who told forth God's will, were consecrated to their holy office because there was the divine in them which could truly be called "god." Every holy life was in its degree a type of the Incarnate life of the Son of God. But He was the ideally true Priest sacrificing Himself for the world, the ideally true Prophet declaring God's will in its fulness, the ideally true King ruling in righteousness. Every holy life was as a ray of the divine glory manifest in human flesh, but all these rays were centred in the nimbus of glory which rested as a crown on the head of Jesus Christ.
and sent into the world; in human nature, to obtain eternal redemption and salvation his people: to save them from sin, Satan, the world, law, hell and death, which none but God could do:
thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God; for what he had said in John 10:30 is equivalent to it; and in it he was rightly understood by the Jews, and what he here and afterwards says confirms it: the argument is what the Jews call , "from the lesser to the greater", and stands thus; that if mere frail mortal men, and some of them wicked men, being made rulers and judges in the earth are called gods, by God himself, to whom the word of God came in time, and constituted them gods, or governors, but for a time; and this is a fact stands recorded in Scripture, which cannot be denied or disproved, then surely it cannot be blasphemy in Christ, to assert himself to be the Son of God, who existed as a divine person from all eternity; and was so early set apart to the office of prophet, priest, and king; and in the fulness of time was sent into this world, to be the author of eternal salvation to the sons of men.