Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                 Chapter Five

                                                                                                                                      Verses 39-47

Jesus then began to preach that the scriptures testify that He is God and their Savior. Jesus knew that these unbelievers would not come to Him for salvation and that knowledge seemed to grieve Him.

When Jesus said that He did not receive honor from men, He did not contradict that which He said in verse 23. Jesus simply meant that He would not receive human honors such as being called merely a good teacher or a prophet. Jesus insisted that humans must honor Him as being God and their Savior.

When Jesus told these unbelievers that they could not believe because they had no love for God in them, He meant that they had allowed their evil natures to suppress the love for God that He had put into them when He created them to the extent that they could not have enough spiritual discernment to be able to recognize Him as their God and Savior. God will allow the Devil to do his worst to humans, but God will never allow the Devil to make evil so strong that it will annul the good, spiritual nature that God has put into every human. Job 1:12; Job 2:6. God's Love nailed Him to a cross to prevent the Devil from ever being able to annul the spiritual nature of any human. Hebrews 2:9. Any eternal spiritual death that could annul spiritual life, Jesus suffered on the cross, but being totally innocent, spiritual death could not hold Him in the grave. Should the Devil ever be able to annul the spiritual life of any human, then that event would be a subtraction from God's creations and that can never happen. Ecclesiastes 3:14.

Since the Devil has injected spiritual death into every human, most humans have allowed their evil natures to dominate their spiritual natures. Romans 1:18-23. But God knows how to cause every living human to return to faith in Him of their own free will that lies latent in their good natures and that will prove beyond all doubt that His Love is real and that it always wins. The Devil has wagered that he can somehow cause God's Love to fail. I Corinthians 13:8; Ecclesiastes 3:14; John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14; I Corinthians 15:22.