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THE KING’S BUSINESS
messengers. God had sent the Son from His own side which was the Son’s eternal abode' (ch. 1:1, 2) to this world with a message from the heavenly world. *No other had ever been sent in this sense, bringing His message from that world from which He had been sent. That message was distinctly and absolutely divine. He spoke the very words of God (cf. ch. 6:68). The word translated “words’’ here is not the Word Which in the singular is translated “word” in chap ter 1 :1 (and many other places) and in the plural,“words” in chapter 14: 24, R. V. (and other places). Its exact significance is “that which ’ is. uttered by a living voice” “things spoken,” and the thought is that Jesus spoke the very utterances of God, the Very words which He had heard from God (cf. v. 32; ch. 8:28). ’ So we have it explicitly taught here that what the Lord Jesus said was the very words of God. This has a very definite bearing on the teaching so Common in our day that when our Lord Jesus in His incarnation emp tied Himself (Phil. 2:7),. He emptied Himself of flis Divine wisdom as well as of His Divine glory, and that therefore He might be mistaken in some things that He said, and that consequently we cannot accept His statements as finally conclusive (on such subjects for example. as the authorship of books of the Old Tes tament). If this theory of our Lord’s emptying of Himself (kenosis) were true, still the inference would be false; for here we are distinctly told that as a Teacher He spoke the very words of God, and we may therefore say of eyery utterance of Jesus, “This is God’s Word.’’ ' The last clause of verse 34 gives the reason why Jesus spoke the very words of God, namely, because the Father did not give the Spirit by measure unto Him, i. e. that He did
Here and there then was one who did receive the witness of Jesus. In receiving the witness of Jesus they had believed God, for he was from God and spoke the very words of God (cf. v. 34), ' By receiving the witness of this one who came from God and spoke the words of God and thus set ting their seal to what He said, they set their seal to What, God had said and thereby testified that God was true.' Oh the contrary, the one who refuses to fully credit the witness of the Lord Jesus, and the witness ot God to Him, makes God a liar (1 John, 5:10). It pleases God when we con firm what He has.said through His Soil by ,accepting His testimony, and on the other hand, it greatly displeases Gpd when We reject the witness of His, Son and refuse to set our seal to it that God is true, and thereby make God a liar. The word translated “received” sets forfh not merely a passive receiving but an active laying hold of, and thus has in it the thought of retaining that which is received. It is not enough to merely accept the testimony of Jesus, it should be retained or kept (cf. ch. 14:21. 23). The first “His’’ in the verse is very emphatic in the Greek, the thought being that the one’ who receives the witness of that one Person, the Lord Jesus, as distin guished from the. testimony of anyr, body else or , all others, he it is that sets to his seal that God is true. , V. 34. “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God (rather, He) giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him (omit, unto Htm).” Jesus was the One whom God had sent. John himself had been sent from God (ch. 1:6), but not in the sense that Jesus had. The Lord Jesus was the One Heavenly Messenger as con trasted with John and other earthly
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