I said therefore unto you
Because they were from beneath, and of the world, and discovered
an earthly, worldly, carnal, yea, devilish disposition, in their
conduct towards him:
that ye shall die in your sins;
this he had said in ( John 8:21 ) , and now
repeats it, and confirms it by the following reason:
for if believe not that I am he;
the everlasting and unchangeable I am, the true God, God over
all, blessed for ever; the eternal Son of God, God manifest in
the flesh, really made flesh, and become incarnate; the true
Messiah, the only Saviour of sinners; the one and only Mediator
between God and man; the Head of the church, prophet, priest, and
King, and the Judge of quick and dead; as also the light of the
world he had declared himself to be: these are things that are
necessary to be believed concerning Christ; indeed, carnal and
unregenerate men may believe all these things; the devils
themselves do, and tremble at them; but then they, and so
unconverted men, have no faith in them, with an application of
them to themselves: true faith in Christ deals not with him in a
general way, but in a special regard to a man's self; it is a
seeing of Christ for a man's self; it is not an implicit faith,
or a believing him to be what he is, merely upon report, but upon
sight; it is a going out of the soul to Christ, a renouncing its
own righteousness, and a trusting in him alone for life and
salvation; it is with the heart, and from it, and is unfeigned;
it works by love to Christ, and his people, and is attended with
the fruits of righteousness, and a cheerful obedience to the
commands and ordinances of Christ. Though perhaps no more than a
general faith is here intended, for want of which, and their
rejection of Jesus, as the Messiah, the Jews suffered temporal
ruin; and had they but believed that Jesus was the Son of God,
and true Messiah, they had been saved from that temporal
destruction which came upon their nation, city, and temple; but
not believing this in a general and notional, way, they perished,
as is here threatened:
ye shall die in your sins;
in which they were, being defiled with them, guilty before God
for them, under the power of them, and liable to punishment for
them; and so they remained, and did remain, and were yet in their
sins, even until death, when they died in them, and for them, not
only a corporeal, but an eternal death: for dying in their sins,
these would be found upon them, and they would be charged with
them, and must be answerable for them, and consequently endure
the punishment of them, which is the second death. Dying in sin,
and dying in Christ, are two widely different things. They that
die in faith, die in Christ: they that die in unbelief, die in
sin; and this is a dreadful dying; see ( Joshua 22:20
) , where the Targum paraphrases it, "and he, one man", (or
alone,) (hybwxb)
(twm al) , "did not die in
his sins".