The charge of blasphemy.
There is now a second address.
I. OUR LORD'S METHOD OF ELICITING THE TRUE MOTIVE OF JEWISH VIOLENCE AND ANGER. "Many good works have I showed you from the Father; for which of these works do ye stone me?"
1. Jesus had wrought many more miracles which are not recorded in this Gospel.
2. They were not only works done, as visible indications of the Father, but they were, as the word signifies, "beautiful works." With a moral excellence that ought to have touched the Jewish heart.
3. Yet they excited the deepest hostility of the Jews.
II. THE REPLY OF THE JEWS. "For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God."
1. Their interpretation of his language was perfectly just. When he said, "I and my Father are one," he asserted his true Deity. The Jews saw in the words more than our modern critics.
2. Our Lord's declaration was designed to set forth his distinctness from the Father as against Sabellianism, and his co-ordination with the Father as against Arianism.
III. OUR LORD'S VINDICATION OF HIS DEITY. He appeals to their Law, in which judges are called gods, and asks, if this be so, "say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?"
1. He does not retract the assertion of his Divine nature, nor tower the sense of the word "God," as if he were God in no higher sense than an Israelite judge. But, arguing upon the principles of their Law, he urges that he does not deserve to be treated as a blasphemer for having called himself the Son of God.
2. He argues, from the contrast between himself and the "gods" of the Jewish Law, that the charge cannot apply to himself. How could blasphemy be charged to him who was not consecrated to a mere earthly judgeship, but sent into the world to reveal the Father to men?
3. Our lord puts honor on the Scriptures of the Old Testament, when he asserts that they cannot be broken.
IV. FRESH STRESS LAID UPON THE EVIDENCE OF HIS WORKS.
1. Jesus returns to the undeniable evidence of his works. To believe the works is a necessary step to believing for the works' sake.
2. He emphasizes the truth taught by the works. "That ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him."
V. THE BAFFLED ANGER OF THE JEWS. "Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand."
1. His arguments restrained their violence. For they did not venture to fling their stones at him, though they had a desire to arrest him.
2. Jesus used the interval of their indecision to escape beyond reach of their violence.