5. He exhibits His control over the wills of men at the cleansing of the 12 After this He went down to Capernaum,' He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they continued there 13 not many days. And the Jews' passover 2 was at hand, and 14 Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money 15 sitting and when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; 16 and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; 17 make not My Father's house a house of merchandise. And His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine : 1 Capernaum. The Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. have Capharnaum. Dr. Robinson, after a very thorough examination, determines the site of this place to have been on the western shore of the sea, known as the region of Gennesaret. Christ was soon to make His first official visit to Jerusalem. St. John mentions four passovers as occurring during our Lord's public ministry. That referred to here was the first. The "feast of the Jews," chap. v. 1, was the second. The third is recorded in vi. 4; and the last, at which He suffered, in xii. 1, proving that His ministry must have continued three and a half years. 3 His taking a scourge in His hands was only a part of this great symbolical transaction. It was not for the infliction of pain on the innocent animals, or their owners and purchasers, but part of the mere insignia of His authority. 4 The cleansing of the temple, involving, as it did, control over the wills of men, can be regarded as nothing less than a miracle. Some, as Origen and Jerome, have regarded it as the most wonderful of all the wonderful works of Christ, exhibiting in the fullest manner the Messianic character and Divine glory of Him who wrought it. The great number of sacrifices required at the passover must have required a large supply of animals. Their sellers and purchasers, and the brokers who were in attendance to exchange foreign for current money, must have constituted a numerous throng. They were there by permission of the constituted authorities. Here, under the very eyes of the priests, and within the sacred precincts of the temple, the crowds of strangers might be sure of obtaining animals duly inspected, and meeting with honest dealing. It was as much for the interests of these crowds as of the market men and exchangers that the use to which the court of the Gentiles had been appropriated should not be disturbed. But a Galilean Stranger enters; He has no retinue save some five or six Galileans, poor men like Himself. His command is instantly obeyed when He said, "Take these things hence." Why did not avarice, and resentment, and those violent passions which govern mercenary minds, prompt them to resist? An invisible power accompanied Him. He had suddenly come to His temple, of whom the last of the prophets had asked, "Who shall stand when He appeareth?" (Mal. iii. 2.) It is worthy of notice, and not without instruction, that this miracle with which our Lord opened His public ministry at Jerusalem was repeated by Him at its close (Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Mark xi. 15-19; Luke xix. 45-48). These purgations, both at the beginning and at the close of His public ministry, were decisive acts of Messianic 18 house hath eaten Me up. Then answered the Jews and said unto Him, What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou 19 doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, De20 stroy this temple,1 and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years 2 was this temple in building, 21 and wilt Thou rear it up in three days? But He spake of the 22 temple of His body. When therefore He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which 23 Jesus had said. Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in His name, when they 24 saw the miracles 3 which He did. But Jesus did not commit 25 Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man. 6. The conviction wrought in the mind of one of the most intelligent of the Jews, a member of their great council, that Jesus was the promised Saviour. III.] [Ver. 1-21. 1 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a 2 ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night," and said power, which involved a direct claim on the part of our Lord to that high character and office. They were miracles by which He manifested His Divinity and authority, and, at the same time, shadowed forth the holiness of His kingdom, or the effect of His coming on the moral and religious interests of men. 1 Temple. The Jews understood Him to refer to the edifice where they were assembled; but He used language in a highly symbolical sense. The temple was but a type of that body which enshrined His wonderful person as the God-man. His resurrection from the dead made all clear to His disciples. The temple of Herod was begun in the fifteenth year of Herod's reign, twenty years before the birth of Christ, according to the Dionysian reckoning; add the age of our Lord, thirty years, and we have fifty, from which take the four years required for the correction of our era, and we have the exact period of forty-six years. 8 The purification of the temple is the only miracle recorded at this His first visit ot Jerusalem. There can be no doubt He performed others (chap. iii. 2, xxi. 25). Many believed in Him as the Messiah when they saw His miracles. Their senses were strongly impressed, but their faith was such only as men have who walk by sight. Hence Jesus, who knew what was in men, did not commit Himself to them. Nicodemus belonged to the ruling sect among the Jews, the Pharisees; he was also a member of the Sanhedrin, the Areopagus of the Hebrew nation. It was composed of some seventy of the most learned and distinguished men to be found in the nation. The conviction wrought in the mind of such a man, so capable of forming an intelligent judgment, so little likely to be led astray, was well suited to the evangelist's object in setting forth to the great Gentile world His claims as the Messiah and the Word of God. 5 The fact that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night has often been interpreted : unto Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except 3 God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born' again, he can4 not see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the 5 second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom 6 of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that (perhaps most usually) as proof of his moral cowardice. But the work of conviction in Nicodemus cannot be supposed at this time to have proceeded so far as to justify this view; nor had the hostility to Jesus, on the part of his associates, been so early developed as to lead him to wish to conceal his interview. The evangelist does not, either expressly or by implication, attribute fear to Nicodemus. There was a tradition among the Jews that the night was the most appropriate time for the study of religious subjects, by which Nicodemus, as a rabbi and Pharisee, would be apt to be influenced. Or, as he was a member of the Sanhedrin, and the business of that body would be greatly increased at the time of the Passover, the night might have been the only opportunity for such an interview as he desired. Moreover, as Jesus would be surrounded by crowds during the day, night was the only season when he could hope for a private interview. 1 Nicodemus is given to understand that the kingdom is not an external, but an internal, invisible kingdom, the title to which must rest on a renewed spiritual condition, independent of natural birth, and necessary to every son and daughter of Abraham and of Adam. 2 So long had Nicodemus been accustomed to look upon descent as contributing a title to membership in God's kingdom, and so thoroughly had this been inwrought with his most intimate convictions, that he understands Christ as speaking literally of natural birth. 366 'Born again" now becomes "born of water and of the Spirit." Seeing becomes entering the kingdom. The Spirit, the Agent in this indispensable renewal, is expressly mentioned, and the water is joined with the Spirit, because, as it purifies in washing, the Spirit purifies and sanctifies the soul, by the washing of regeneration. The Divine Teacher meant by being born of water that we must be born again by the word of God; in complete harmony with which we find the apostle Paul, when describing the same great change, saying that we must be sanctified and cleansed, "with the washing of water by the word" (Eph. v. 26). The sacrament of baptism, not then instituted as a Christian rite, cannot be alluded to, though it is understood by Lutherans as well as Romanists. Calvin and the able expounder of his doctrines, Beza, understood the expression "born of water as exegetical, or explanatory of the expression "born of the Spirit." Zwingle, the great Swiss reformer, interprets "water" as a figurative designation of “ knowledge, clearness, heavenly light," i.e. the knowledge or light that comes through the word, and which the Holy Spirit employs as the instrument in renewing the soul. This, comparing Scripture with Scripture, seems to be the true interpretation (John i. 11-13; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Jas. i. 18; Eph. v. 25, 26; Tit. iii. 5–7). 4 Is flesh, is corrupt, and must in all cases be corrupt, because it is so born. U |