In this conversation two points are of the utmost significance.
1. The comparative equanimity with which they consider the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah is changed into fury when they imagine that He claims also equality with God. Their first appeal, “If Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly,” is calm; and His answer, though it distinctly involved an affirmation that He was the Christ, was received without any violent demonstration of rage or of excitement. But their attitude towards Him changes in a moment and their calmness gives place to uncontrollable indignation as soon as it appears that He believes Himself to be one with the Father. They themselves would not have dreamed of putting such a question to Him: the idea of any man being equal with God was too abhorrent to the rigid monotheism of the Jewish mind. And when it dawned upon them that this was what Jesus claimed, they could do nothing but stop their ears and lift stones to end such blasphemy. No incident could more distinctly prove that the claim to be the Messiah was in their judgment one thing, the claim to be Divine another thing.
2. The contrast our Lord draws between Himself and those who had in Scripture been called “gods” is significant. It is the eighty-second Psalm He cites; and in it the judges of Israel are rebuked for abusing their office. It is of these unjust judges the psalm represents God as saying, “I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” To these judges this word of God, “Ye are gods,” had come at their consecration to their office. Having been occupied with other work they were now set apart to represent to men the authority and justice of God. But, argues our Lord, if men were called gods, to whom God’s word came,—and they are so called in Scripture, which cannot be broken,—appointing them to their office, may He not rightly be called Son of God who is Himself sent to men; whose original and sole destiny it was to come into the world to represent _the Father_? The words are overweighted with manifold contrast. The judges were persons “to whom” the word of God came, as from without; Jesus was a person Himself “sent into the world” from God, therefore surely more akin to God than they were. The judges represented God by virtue of a commission received in the course of their career—the word of God _came_ to them: Jesus, on the other hand, represented God because “sanctified,” that is, set apart or consecrated for this purpose before He came into the world, and therefore obviously occupying a higher and more important position than they. But, especially, the judges were appointed to discharge one limited and temporary function, for the discharge of which it was sufficient that they should know the law of God; whereas it was “the Father,” the God of universal relation and love, who consecrated Jesus and sent Him into the world, meaning now to reveal to men what lies deepest in His nature, His love, His fatherhood. The idea of the purpose for which Christ was sent into the world is indicated in the emphatic use of “the Father.” He was sent to do the works of the Father (ver. 37); to manifest to men the benignity, tenderness, compassion of the Father; to encourage them to believe that the Father, the Source of all life, was in their midst accessible to them. If Jesus failed to reveal the Father, He had no claim to make. “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not.” But if He did such works as declared the Father to be in their midst, then, as bearing the Father in Him and doing the Father’s will, He might well be called “the Son of God.” “Though ye believe not Me, believe the works; that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”