Jesus said to the Jews:
"If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true.
Here we notice that Jesus was conforming his argument to the Jewish idea that testimony must be confirmed by multiple witnesses. But isn't it a little bit frustrating to see someone not stand up in their own defense, particularly when we know that said individual could make an airtight case? Don't we prefer to see someone coming on their own name, making their own case, and being vindicated? We can see in the approach Jesus took that he was not concerned with the praise of men. By contrast, the Pharisees preferred an approach where the praise of men was an integral part, because they themselves are addicted to it. They ultimately reveled in the triumph of the individual ego whereas Jesus delighted instead in a response of love to the will of his Father.
You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth.
I do not accept human testimony,
but I say this so that you may be saved.
Jesus did not leave the Judeans without any explanation or testimony. He pointed to John the Baptist, whose words had captured their imaginations but not their hearts, at least not in a lasting way. Rather than being opened by the testimony of John it seemed that they hardened their hearts to it. They did not follow it through to John's own declaration of Jesus as the lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.
But I have testimony greater than John's.
The works that the Father gave me to accomplish,
these works that I perform testify on my behalf
that the Father has sent me.
Jesus did not perform his deeds to receive the praise of men, always telling those who saw or received them not to speak about them. Often his works had quite the opposite effect on the religious leadership, stirring up discontent and persecution rather than revelation of the Father. But the works themselves were the finger of God at work, works that could not be done by someone to whom the Father did not listen. The way Jesus performed these deeds without calling attention to himself demonstrated an example of how good works could reveal him as the light of the world even while he himself did not do them to be seen, that is, to receive the praise of men.
But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form,
and you do not have his word remaining in you,
because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent.
The Son himself was the Word of the Father. Refusing to listen to the Son was the same decision as refusing to listen to the Father. The Word desired to dwell and to "remain" in them but they were not interested. But the Judeans could not escape this need to respond to the Son in order to be rightly related to the Father. Wherever they thought to look they were in fact confronted with the Son himself and a need to make a decision about him. Even in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant they were making an implicit choice about Jesus himself, to whom all Scriptures pointed.
For if you had believed Moses,
you would have believed me,
because he wrote about me.
The Law and the Scriptures seemed safely impersonal and inert. The Judeans were able to use them to justify themselves and their ways of life. Jesus, by contrast, was living and effective, dangerous to any ways of life that were anything less than love. He was a concrete particular historical individual, one who seemed to have elements of his personality both that would captivate and also that others would find hard to swallow. It was easy to reject him just as we often push away from those who are not 'our type of people' or 'compatible personalities'. There was an amazing draw toward the person of Jesus himself, but it required allowing one's heart to be made more capacious to fully accept him. This was why and how accepting him was also accepting the lowest and the least, the sinners and the tax collectors, and many whom we would find naturally grating. Accepting Jesus was in some way also accepting humanity as God accepted it. Being preoccupied with praise and accomplishment made this possibility of accepting Jesus all but invisible to the Judeans. But God himself had always been working with his people to develop in them a heart of mercy, one that would embrace sinners and stand in the breech for them. May he also develop this capacious heart of mercy in us so that we can embrace the testimony about that Son, so that he himself may come to live and remain in our hearts.
Then he spoke of exterminating them,
but Moses, his chosen one,
Withstood him in the breach
to turn back his destructive wrath.
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