Healing of the sick, teaching, miracles. He showed them of the Father, because He sought His Father’s glory in all of them. For which of these works do you stone Me? They confess, though reluctantly, the benefit they have received from Him, but charge Him at the same time with blasphemy, for asserting His equality with the Father; For agood work we stone you not, but for blasphemy; and because that You, being a man, make Yourself God.
At this speech, I and My Father are one, the Jews could not restrain their rage, but ranto take up stones, after their hardhearted way: Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him.
This is their answer to the speech, I and My Father are one. Lo, the Jews understood what the Arians understand not. For they are angry, for this very reason, that they could not conceive but that by saying, I and My Father are one, He meant the equality of the Father and the Son.
i.e. The Law given to you, I have said, you are Gods? God saith this by the Prophet in the Psalm. Our Lord calls all those Scriptures the Law generally, though elsewhere He spiritually distinguishes the Law from the Prophets. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. In another place He makes a threefold division of the Scriptures; All things must he fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me. Now He calls the Psalms the Law, and thus argues from the...
The Jews therefore look up stones to stone Him, as a blasphemer. The Jews show in this their hypocrisy, malignity, and hatred of Christ, and that they did not honestly, but craftily and insidiously, ask Him whether He were the Christ. But Christ as being God kept them from casting on Him the stones which they held in their hands. "Hard as stones," says S. Augustine, "they rushed to the stones." Mystically, says S. Hilary (de Trinit. lib. vii), "And now also heretics hurl the stones of their words, to cast down, if they can, Christ from His throne; inspired, no doubt, by Lucifer, who aimed at obtaining this throne of Godhead, and therefore grudged it to Christ, and is active in taking it away by means of heretics."
For not refraining themselves from Him, when He said that Himself was One with the Father, they rush to kill Him; although each of the works wrought by Him proclaimed that He was in His Nature God. And not only now, but on other occasions also when they took up stones to kill Him, they stood motionless through the power of Christ; so that it became evident from this also, that He would not suffer except He was willing. Moreover in His gentleness Christ checked their unreasonable impulse, saying not: "For which of the words that I said, are ye angry?" but: "For which of the works that I did?" For if I had not done, He says, many God-befitting works which shew that I am in My Nature God, ye might be reasonably angry with Me now, hearing Me say that I and the Father are One. But I should not have said this, had I not shewn it by all things that I did. And He speaks of the works as from the Father, not from Himself, shewing this modesty for our profit, so that we may not boast when we rece...
Then took up stones because, said they, being a man, thou makest thyself God. The Jews, says St. Augustine, understood well enough what the Arians will not understand, that from Christ's words it followed that he was one and the same God with the eternal Father. (Witham)
The Jews, in opposition to our Saviour's doctrine, took up stones to destroy him, in order that he might preach no more to them. So heretics at the present time exercise the odium of their impiety against the same Lord, by perverting his holy doctrines, and, as much as in them lies, pulling him and his servants down from the glorious seats of heavenly bliss. (St. Augustine)
The heretics now, as unbelieving and rebellious against our Lord in heaven, show their impious hatred by the stones, i.e. the words they cast at Him; as if they would drag Him down again from His throne to the cross.
The Jew said, You being a man, the Arian, you being acreature: but both say, You make Yourself God. The Arian supposes a God of a new and different substance a God of another kind, or not a God at all. He said, You are not Son by birth, you art not God of truth; you art a superior creature.
Before proving that He and His Father are one, He answers the absurd and foolish charge brought against Him, that He being man made Himself God. When the Law applied this title to holy men, and the indelible word of God sanctioned this use of the incommunicable name, it could not be a crime in Him, even though He wereman, to make Himself God. The Law called those who were mere men, gods; and if any man could bear the name religiously, and without arrogance, surely that man could, who wa...
Our Lord did not correct the Jews, as if they misunderstood His speech, but confirmed and defended it, in the very sense in which they had taken it. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, .
Or, we must consider this a speech of humility, made to conciliate men. After it he leads them to higher things; If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; which is as much as to say, that He is not inferior to the Father. As they could not see His substance, He directs them to His works, as being like and equal to the Father’s. For the equality of their works, proved tile equality of their power.
Our Lord remonstrates with them; Many good works have I showed you from My Father, strewing that they had no just reason for their anger.
Or, sanctified, i.e. set apart to be sacrificed for the world: aproof that He was God in a higher sense than the rest. To save the world is a divine work, not that of a man made divine by grace.
