John 8:41

41 You persist in repeating the works of your father." They said, "We're not bastards. We have a legitimate father: the one and only God."

John 8:41 Meaning and Commentary

John 8:41

Ye do the deeds of your father
Not Abraham, but the devil.

Then said they unto him, we be not born of fornication:
meaning either literally, that they were not a brood of bastards, children of whoredom, illegitimately begotten in unlawful copulation, or wedlock; or figuratively, that they were not the children of idolaters, idolatry being called fornication in Scripture; but that they were the holy seed of Israel, and children of the prophets, who had retained the pure word, and the true worship of God, though in all this they might have been contradicted and refuted; to which they add,

we have one Father, [even] God;
Israel being called by God his Son, and firstborn to them belonged the adoption, in a national sense, and of this they boasted; though few of them were the children of God by special adoption, or God their Father by regenerating grace.

John 8:41 In-Context

39 They were indignant. "Our father is Abraham!"

40 And yet here you are trying to kill me, a man who has spoken to you the truth he got straight from God! Abraham never did that sort of thing.

41 You persist in repeating the works of your father." They said, "We're not bastards. We have a legitimate father: the one and only God."

42 "If God was your father," said Jesus, "you would love me, for I came from God and arrived here. I didn't come on my own. He sent me.

43 Why can't you understand one word I say? Here's why: You can't handle it.