Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keeps the law? Why go you about to kill me?
All Commentaries on John 7:19 Go To John 7
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Or He means to say, that if they kept the law, they would see Him pointed to in every part of it, and would not seek to kill Him, when He came. The people return an answer quite away from the subject, and only showing their angry feelings: The people answered and said, You have a devil: who goes about to kill You? He who cast out devils, was told that He had a devil. Our Lord however, inno way disturbed, but retaining all the serenity of truth, returned not evil for evil, or railing for railing.
As if He said, What if you saw allMy works? For all that they saw going on in the world was of His working, but they saw not Him Who made all things. But He did one thing, made a man whole on the sabbath day, and they were in commotion: as if, when any one of them recovered from a disease on the Sabbath, he who made him whole were any other than He, who had offended them by making one man whole on the sabbath.
As if He said, you have done well to receive circumcision from Moses, not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers; for Abraham first received circumcision from the Lord. And you circumcise on the Sabbath. Moses has convicted you: you received a law to circumcise on the eighth day; and you received a law to rest on the seventh day. If the eighth day after a child is born happen tobe the sabbath, you circumcise the child; because circumcision appertains to, is a kind of signof, salvation; and men ought not to rest from the work of salvation on the sabbath.
Circumcision also was perhaps s a type of our or Lord Himself. For what is circumcision but a robbing of the flesh, to signify the robbing the heart of its carnal lusts. And therefore it was not without reason that it was applied to that member by which the mortal creature is propagated: for byone man sin entered into the world. And therefore every one is born with the foreskin, because every one is born with the fault of his propagation. And God does not change us either from the corruption of our birth, or from that we have contracted ourselves by a bad life, except by Christ: and therefore they circumcised with knives of stone, to prefigure Christ who is the stone; and on the eighth day, because our Lord’s resurrection took place on the day after the seventh day; which resurrection circumcises us, i.e. destroys our carnal appetites. Regard this, said our Lord, as a type of My good work in making a man every whit whole on the sabbath day: for he was healed, that he might be whole in body, and he believed, that hemight be whole in mind. You are forbidden indeed to do servile work on the sabbath; but is ita servile work to heal on the sabbath? You eat and drink on the sabbath, because it is necessary for your health: which shows that works of healing are by no means to be omitted on the sabbath.
What our Lord here tells us to avoid, in judging by the person, is very difficult in this world not to do. His admonition to the Jews is an admonition to us as well; forevery sentence which our Lord uttered, was written for us, and is preserved to us, and is read for our profit. Our Lord is above; but our Lord, as the truth, is here as well. The body with which He rose can be only in one place, but His truth is diffused every where. Who then is he who judges not by the person? He who loves all alike. For it is not the paying men different degrees of honor according to their situation, that will make us chargeable with accepting persons. There may be a case to decide between father and son: we should not put the son onan equality with the father in point of honor; but, in respect of truth, if he have the better cause, we should give him the preference; and so give to each their due, that justice do not destroy desert.
